OnePlus have earned a reputation of giving top end specifications and the company here also retained that status.
The SoC of choice is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835, which has eight CPU cores capable of running at up to 2.45GHz. There are two variants, Slate Gray with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and Midnight Black with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. About the type of RAM and storage it has used for the OnePlus 5 - LPDDR4X and UFS 2.1 respectively, OnePlus have used top in this series. with a two-lane ROM which is said to double bandwidth for faster app install speeds and loading times.
In benchmarks, the OnePlus 5 put on a very good show compared to its peers.
Other specifications include NFC, Bluetooth 5.0 with aptX and aptX HD support, dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac with 2x2 MIMO antennas, GPS, and USB-OTG. The fingerprint sensor is integrated into the home button. It's very quick at authentication and we rarely ever had a misread. You can use it to access locked apps and your Secure Folder in the File Manager app. You also get the usual suite of sensors along with a gyroscope. Certain features like FM radio and wireless charging are missing.
Other than OnePlus 5's brand new hardware, another big change is the slick new OxygenOS 4.5.0. It’s built on Android 7.1.1 Nougat and feels a bit more refined than before, with slightly smaller icons and text for the menus.
OxygenOS also has other cool features like Reading Mode, which turns the display monochrome, making it easier to read text. It also goes a step further and adjusts the white balance to the ambient light around you, so depending on the light, you’ll have anything from a pale white to pale yellow. You can select which apps need to run in Reading Mode, so it kicks in automatically when you launch them, or you can manually engage it for the entire OS. Expanded Screenshots essentially let you take scrolling screenshots of webpages; Night Mode can now be engaged automatically based on time; there are five vibration patterns for incoming calls; and Gaming DnD mode lets you disable the capacitive buttons and block notifications in apps of your choosing.
OnePlus 5 performance, camera, and battery life
With Qualcomm’s processor velocity and the slick new OxygenOS, system and app performance is excellent. Call quality is very good . The speaker is also pretty loud for conference calls
The OnePLus 5 excels at gaming and media playback. . The best part is that the phone doesn’t overheat even when we used outdoors in our humid climate. The back gets a bit warm but nothing that would make you have to stop to let it cool down. The display produces very good colours and deep blacks, thanks to the AMOLED panel.
High-resolution videos played with ease, and the mono speaker belted out pretty high volumes. The phone also supports Dirac HD audio enhancements with earphones. This helps a bit, but we didn’t find the in-built DAC to be anything exceptional.
More than the design and powerful components, the biggest change that the OnePlus 5 ushers in is its dual rear cameras. The similarities with the iPhone 7 Plus extend well beyond just physical design, as even the camera app is pretty much identical. The app has a simple layout and it's easy to find what you’re looking for. Shooting modes are hidden in the hamburger menu in one of the corners.
The primary camera has a 16-megapixel sensor (Sony IMX 398) with a large f/1.7 aperture and electronic stabilisation (EIS). The focal length here is 24mm (35mm equivalent). The lack of optical stabilisation (OIS) is a big disappointment given that the OnePlus 3T had it. While we couldn’t get any official response from OnePlus as to why this decision was made, we think it could be due to the slimmer profile of the phone and perhaps done to keep the overall cost within control.
The other sensor has a 32mm focal length (35mm equivalent), 20-megapixel resolution and an aperture of f/2.6, but lacks EIS. To switch between the two sensors, you just have to hit the 2x button on the screen. According to OnePlus, optical zoom actually only goes up to 1.6x, and the rest is software but still "lossless". You can then zoom in all the way up to 8x (digital zoom). If the light is anything less than ideal, the phone sticks to the primary camera and basically does a digital zoom instead. What would have been ideal is if the second sensor also had a decently large aperture, like at least f/2.0, which would have made it usable in low light too.
The front 16-megapixel sensor features a f/2.0 aperture which captures very sharp and detailed images in good lighting. It’s not too bad in low light either, as the new app adds a screen flash. You also get Auto HDR and a Beauty mode.
The 3300mAh battery capacity is 100mAh and is almost satisfactory for running the apps including videos.
