OnePlus 3 review: Proof great smartphones don’t have to cost the Earth

There's little complain about the phone which is half the price of an iPhone and top-spec Samsung Galaxy.

The OnePlus 3 smartphone is excellent value. Courtesy OnePlus

The new OnePlus 3 once again proves that a great smartphone needn’t cost the earth. It’s not quite up there with the iPhones and Galaxy S7s of this world, but it’s a great all round performer and fantastic value at Dh1,599.

The 3’s form factor has come on leaps and bounds from last year’s solid but unspectacular OnePlus 2. Gone is the polycarbonate body, replaced by a curved, brushed metal back that looks and feels like a far more expensive handset, even if the rear camera lense protrudes a little too much for my liking.

It’s not quite iPhone 6S and Galaxy S7 calibre, but the 3’s design certainly gives the likes of the HTC 10 and LG G5 a run for their money.

The 3’s 5.5 inch Optic Amoled display is where one or two corners have been cut to keep the price down, although there’s little to complain about. True, the likes of the HTC 10 and the just launched, similarly priced, recently launched Alcatel Idol 4S pack a higher pixel density. But the 3’s display still does the job admirably, the deep reds and blacks of the Ghostbusters trailer rendering beautifully.

There are no such shortcuts in the camera department; the 16MP rear facing camera, while not the equal of benchmarks like the Galaxy S7 or LG G5, takes images with good colour and contrast, while the selfie camera has been upgraded to 8MP from the OnePlus 2’s 5MP.

Above all, the OnePlus 3 has the zippy, powerful feel of a premium device, thanks to its Snapdragon 820 processor and a massive 6GB of RAM. The cherry on cake is the 3’s fingerprint reader, which is every bit the equal of its more expensive peers.

Retailing for Dh1,599, the OnePlus 3 goes for just over half the price of the iPhone 6S and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. While it doesn’t quite hit the heights of those two flagships, the OnePlus 3 is outstanding value for money, given its great design and performance, and is right up there with the best mid range smartphones on the market.

q&a far from typical marketing

John Everington expands on the new OnePlus 3:

OnePlus? Remind me who that is again?

A relatively new manufacturer, having launched its first phone, the OnePlus One, in April 2014. The OnePlus 3 is the company’s fourth device, following on from the OnePlus 2 and the OnePlus X.

I don’t see their smartphones on sale in Sharaf DG and Jumbo Electronics.

OnePlus eschews the typical retail model by selling only online, either via its own website, or approved local distributors – souq.com in the case of the Middle East.

That sounds good. But I couldn’t see the OnePlus 3 on souq.com the other day.

OnePlus’s media people told me that the handset was temporarily sold out, and that new stock would be arriving soon. This could be down to the phone’s runaway popularity in the Middle East, or it could be because souq.com has only being given lim­ited stock.

Any other details I should know?

The 3 runs Marshmallow, the latest version of Android. Its inbuilt 64GB memory is pretty generous, although that’s no doubt in part to offset the lack of an SD card slot.

Of course, if the OnePlus 3 really wants to compete with premium handsets like the ­iPhone, then surely it must come in rose gold …

Well, it is available in “soft” gold. So that’s close. And you never know, the OnePlus 4 might even come in pink.