Friends+Design
- The best looking OnePlus phone to date - has a polished refined design, with a glass rear panel, and three distinct (and beautiful) color options (plus the Marvel Avengers edition)
- Excellent build quality
- The phone is comfortable to hold, thanks to the curved glass rear
- Face unlock works great in most conditions, and unlocks the phone in a fraction of a second (except in low light or under very bright sunlight)
- There is also of course the fingerprint sensor at the back, if you wish to use that instead, and it works great too
- OnePlus's excellent alert slider is there too (it has now moved to the right side of the phone) - and is now more simplified toggling between 3 simple states - ring, vibrate and silent, with a pop-up that tells you instantly which mode you are switching to every time
- Will also tend to pick up smudges very quickly
- It's not the easiest to reach all corners of the newly enlarged screen - people who prefer more compact phones might have preferred a smaller-screen option for themselves
- While OnePlus does claim that the phone has water-resistance, it's not IP rating certified, which likely means that the protection is quite basic
- A little slippery because of the glass
- At 177g, the phone is a bit on the the heavier side too
Display
- Excellent display - catches on to the modern 'notch' trend, with a tall screen ratio - the AMOLED screen is vivid, with punchy colours and great viewing angles - videos looks great, and you can also set your own custom colour temperature if you prefer
Software
- OxygenOS continues to be a huge differentiator for OnePlus - it strikes a great balance between keeping the base UI identical to stock Android but still adding a number of useful additions - like shortcuts, a dark theme, a scrolling screenshot capture tool, and controls for giving the on-screen buttons additional functions, night and reading modes, a choice of system fonts, and configurable colours for the notification LED - all in all, its a great software experience, that ticks the right boxes
- Another interesting add-on is an optional gesture scheme that lets you get rid of the Android navigation buttons altogether, and gives you a full gesture based navigation scheme like the iPhone X - thus giving you even more screen space to play with - the gestures do take some time to get a hang of, but once you do, they will become second nature
- There's also a Gaming Mode that not only suppresses non-essential notifications, but can also limit background apps' Internet usage, which can make a difference in online games - you can even route calls directly to the loudspeaker so you don't have to stop playing
Performance
- Top-notch, breathtaking performance, backed by the latest flagship processor from Snapdragon, the Snapdragon 845 - the SoC has eight Kryo 385 cores, integrated Adreno 630 graphics, improved security and image processing subsystems, a faster LTE modem, and even hardware dedicated to AI processing - all of this means the performance is top-bracket, matching (or beating) the Galaxy S9/Plus in benchmark scores
Camera
- Good set of dual rear cameras, significantly improved from the OnePlus 5T - especially in terms of portrait mode photos, low light performance, and video recording (including a new super-slow motion mode)
- The rear cameras now also come with OIS
- Decent (though not great) front camera, pretty similar to the OnePlus 5T - a software bokeh mode for the front camera is also there
- The rear and front cameras are good, but not really up to the high benchmarks set by the likes of the iPhone X, the Galaxy S9, or the Pixel 2 - this continues to be the only one significant area, where you will be making a compromise over the best flagship smartphones, when you buy a OnePlus device (of course admittedly for a much lower price)
Audio
- Decent loudspeaker (pretty loud) - although it tends to get blocked when you hold the phone in landscape mode
Battery
- Good (but not exceptional) battery life - will comfortably last the day with moderate to heavy use
- Fast charging support, still one of the best in the business - the Dash Charger takes the phone up from zero to just over 50 percent in half an hour, and gives you a full charge in around an hour and a half
More
- On the whole, the OnePlus 6 is good-looking, well crafted, extremely powerful - it is also a solid upgrade to the OnePlus 5T in almost all the departments such as display, performance, design and camera - and ultimately the OnePlus 6’s bang for buck is still about the best you can get in the smartphone world
