The OnePlus One Review
by Joshua Ho on November 19, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Android
- Mobile
- OnePlus
Still Image Performance
Quibbles with the camera application aside, it's important to look at the results that the OnePlus One's camera is capable of putting out. While it was effectively impossible to properly frame the ISO chart for resolution testing, we can look at a broad range of other situations that can help to distinguish the OnePlus One's camera one way or another.
In this example, the OnePlus One really does a good job with handling fine detail and dynamic range. There's relatively little artifacting given the sheer amount of detail that has to be captured in this landscape shot, and there's very little blurring of detail. Unfortunately, we can already start to see some luminance and color noise, as seen on the building on the left side of the photo.
In the interest of documenting camera behavior with the various OTAs, I managed to take a few lightbox photos with the OnePlus One as well. In this scene, we can see that the pre-38R the camera has similar behavior, but with much more detail preserved when viewed at 100%. Unfortunately, this also comes with rather significant luminance noise despite strong lighting to keep the camera at a relatively low ISO.
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Unfortunately, the camera software is also lacking when it comes to HDR mode. A good HDR mode is almost required at this point as these smartphone cameras have so little dynamic range, and this is where the OnePlus One also falls short. Significant halos can be seen all around high-contrast areas. On the bright side, the output does have very high dynamic range, but it is glaringly obvious when used. This is especially odd as the IMX214 supports SME-HDR, which makes it possible to do HDR within a single photo instead of requiring multiple exposures that can cause these halos and ghosting effects.
On the other end of the spectrum, the OnePlus One is really a bit disappointing in low light. As one can see, before the 38R update there was effectively zero attempt at noise reduction in low light, and even when shrunk to 678 pixels wide it's pretty obvious that there is an immense amount of color noise. At 100%, there are even hot pixels present that make for an incredibly poor image. The slow shutter mode does make for some incredible quality, but this requires a tripod as exposure time can easily reach a second or more.
Thankfully, with recent updates OnePlus has added some level of noise reduction to the camera processing. Unfortunately, this doesn't fix much as pretty much any low contrast detail is smeared away and areas that don't have detail loss from noise reduction have significant amounts of noise. However, OnePlus is far from the only OEM that has these issues as the Galaxy S5 LTE-A actually has a bit less detail in this test scene despite the larger sensor size. The new updates have also made it extremely difficult to get a photo without significant blur from hand shake with RAW capture on, so this is an issue to consider as well.
On the bright side, with the flash on the OnePlus One does a respectable job. I don't see any real issues here, although the LEDs are a bit on the weak side compared to other devices that I've used this year. Overall, the camera of the OnePlus One is really just average at best. In daytime the camera is definitely quite good but there's already a lot of noise creeping into the photos before we consider low light photos. While the results are better than what we see with devices like the Galaxy S5, this comes at the cost of high amounts of shutter lag and motion blur.
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melgross - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I know this may seem to be a very minor issue and nitpicking, but I would just like to comment that the thinness of the oleophobic coating, if there is one, would have no effect on the feel of the screen. You interact with the surface of the coating, not the thickness. It might lead to a shorter effective life for the coating, but not a difference in swiping feel.I bothers me, because this is something that a little bit of thought would have revealed as being illogical. And if writers write things that are illogical in one part of the article, where else will they do that where we won't notice it, and come to a wrong conclusion because of it?
cr0wb4r - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I think two options in CM11S will make all the nit picks worthwhile: Profiles and double tap to wake.Having a Home and Work profile allows me to turn off/on lock screen. Huge
Double tap to wake and see notifications and then double tap status bar area to go back to sleep. Again Huge.
Just my 2 cents on the plethora of CM11S options
cr0wb4r - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
Sorry, forgot to mention that Profiles make it AUTOMATIC to turn on/off lock screen. I realize this is obvious to most...phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Profiles have been available in Android ROMs for at least a year now, if not longer. It's one of the first things I turn off when flashing an AOSP-based ROM on my phone.DT2W has been available in Android ROMs within a month or so of LG releasing their sources, as they were the first ones to enable it (works wonderfully with the LG G2 where the power button is on the back).
IOW, neither of these features are exclusive to CM 11S, or even CM, or even just AOSP.
toyotabedzrock - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I have read that the updated version of Chrome running on lollipop on the nexus 5 sees a rather large bump in the Octane benchmark.Allan_Hundeboll - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I was beginning to think this site would never review the OPO, much appreciated.But:
Oneplus One has strong reception! (But lacks LTE 800Mhz band)
And people should know that a 5.5" phablet is big, so how can the size be a problem?
Maybe the author also think the iphone 6+ is just too big? Let customers decide what screen size he/she wants, please.
Joshua Ho seem to forget this phone wasn't made for average joes! CM is all about customization so how can too many options be a problem? Please understand a lot of geeks chose android because we appreciate the almost endless possibilities and CM takes this further than google's stock android.
So this phablet is perfect for XDA members NOT for someone like my mother.
mfmx - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Are you sure your mother wouldn't like it? My grandmother that is 96 years old thinks 5,5" is the perfect size for her. Also my mother that has a 5,3" phone doesn't want a smaller device.Munna2002 - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
My mother and grand aunt also like the size of the OPO.grayson_carr - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
The display calibration results are perplexing to me. I know when the phone was first released, it was using a calibration profile created by then CyanogenMod employee François Simond (supercurio), who has also worked with Anandtech on reviews in the past. It didn't surprise me that the screen was very accurate then. But then a couple months ago, OnePlus released an update that did away with supercurio's calibration profile (and let supercurio go / didn't renew his contract) because too many people were complaining that the screen looked too yellow (warm), as 6500K often does to the untrained eye. The update shifted the white point drastically up to the 8000K range (super cold and blue looking) and presumably made colors less accurate. I sold the device a short time later due to annoying bugs, but now I'm confused by these results. What version of CM11S was this phone running as tested? Did you test an old version of the software or did they reinstate the proper calibration profile in a recent update? This review could mislead some people hoping for a properly calibrated screen if you did indeed test the One with the older software.techcrazy - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Where is Sony Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact review?