OnePlus X review

It's only been three months since the OnePlus 2 shook up this year's flagship smartphones with its premium specs and sub-£300 price, but now the company hopes to corner the other end of the smartphone market with the £199 OnePlus X.

It certainly makes a great first impression. With a brushed, anodized metal frame only 6.9mm thick, and a smooth glass front and rear, the OnePlus X looks and feels much more high-end than its price might suggest. The grooved metal is a little scratchy in the hand, but I certainly prefer it to the rough textures of the OnePlus 2, and it even makes Samsung's metal-edged Galaxy A3 and Sony's glass-backed Xperia M4 Aqua look a bit cheap by comparison. Even better, its 5in display is a far more practical size than either of its 5.5in predecessors.

The bad news is that you still need an invite in order to buy one, as OnePlus has once again opted for an invite-only system rather than partnering with mobile networks or online retailers. Right now, you can sign up to be put on OnePlus' reservation list, but you might be in for a long wait. However, OnePlus has also said it will be holding weekly open sales for the OnePlus X, so those quick enough off the bat might be able to nab one without waiting for an invitation. The only other alternative is knowing someone who already has one, as everyone who does manage to buy one gets their own batch of invites to share with friends and family.

OnePlus X Ceramic

There's also a limited edition Ceramic version, but you'll need one of the specific 10,000 Ceramic invites to get it, so chances are you'll probably end up with the standard glass 'Onyx' model reviewed here instead. Not that there's a massive difference between the two phones; I found it incredibly hard to tell them apart when holding them both at the same time.

The only discernible difference, at least from the outside, is a very small change in the style of the bezel. While the Onyx model has more rounded edges, the Ceramic's edges are ever so slightly flatter. However, when both phones generate such vast quantities of reflections and ugly fingerprint marks, you'd be hard pushed to spot it at a glance.

In my eyes, this makes the Ceramic version rather redundant, as it's in no way more obviously desirable than the Onyx model. It's hardly got the same wow factor as the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, for example, and I certainly don't think it's worth spending another £70 on what's otherwise an entirely identical handset. It may weather better over long-term use, but I'm not convinced it will survive a fall any better than its glass cousin.

^ The Ceramic model (left) looks almost identical to the standard Onyx version (right)

Display

Either way, OnePlus' somewhat infuriating invite system rather puts the OnePlus X out of reach for your average consumer, which is a shame considering what's inside. For the first time in the company's history, OnePlus has chosen an AMOLED panel for its 5in, 1,920x1,080 resolution display, which immediately trumps the somewhat disappointing image quality of the OnePlus 2.

With a full 100% coverage of the sRGB colour gamut, the OnePlus X's display looks gorgeous, delivering bright, punchy colours against pitch-perfect 0.00cd/m2 blacks. Contrast is also extremely high, and its whites are much cleaner than those on other AMOLED displays, such as the Nexus 6P. In fact, its colour temperature was much closer to the slightly more neutral tones of the LCD-based Sony Xperia Z5, which is pretty impressive for an AMOLED screen. Brightness tops out at 326.00cd/m2, but it's still more than enough for outdoor use.

Performance

The OnePlus X is powered by the rather elderly quad-core, 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor and 3GB of RAM. Last year, nearly every top-end smartphone had a Snapdragon 801 chip, including the Samsung Galaxy S5, but newer Snapdragon chips are now much faster, so it's not as quick as it once was.

It's still pretty generous for a £199 smartphone, but with Geekbench 3 scores of 929 in the single core test and 2,459 in the multicore test, the OnePlus X's 801 chip isn't actually much faster than other low-to-mid-range handsets powered by a Snapdragon 615, such as the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua. The OnePlus X has the edge in the single core test, but it's hardly the same kind of price-defying speed we've come to expect from OnePlus phones.

The M4 Aqua also beat the OnePlus X in Peacekeeper, finishing the test with a score of 839 as opposed to the X's 751. There's not much in it to be fair, as web browsing speeds were once again nigh on identical. It coped with most web pages, but some, such as the Guardian, proved more taxing, as scrolling was very jerky while the page was still loading.

The main benefit of the 801 is its Adreno 330 GPU. This is able to cope with demanding games more effectively than the 615's Adreno 405 chip, as the OnePlus X was able to complete GFX Bench GL's offscreen Manhattan test in 534 frames (roughly 8.6fps) rather than a stuttering average of around 360 frames (or 5.8fps). It's still not great by any means, as games like Hearthstone still experienced numerous frame rate drops, but it handled other titles like Threes! absolutely fine.

Oxygen OS

Like the OnePlus 2, the OnePlus X uses the company's own Oxygen OS, which is based on Android 5.1.1. This looks very much like stock Android at first glance, but it contains a few extra helpful features that make the phone easier to use day-to-day. The system-wide Dark Mode is by far my favourite feature, as turns Android's default white and grey-green colour scheme to black, helping you save battery by illuminating fewer pixels on its AMOLED display.

Another attractive prospect is the ability to alter individual app permissions. This will be coming to all Android 6.0 Marshmallow handsets, but it's still great to see it here nonetheless. It's particularly handy for those who want to keep their data private, giving you full control over what information your apps can access while still having full use of each service.

^ The additional sound button is another great addition, making it much easier to switch between all notifications, priority interruptions and no interruptions with the flick of a switch

Likewise, Oxygen OS lets you assign up to two shortcuts to each of the physical home back and recent apps buttons, such as automatically opening the camera, activating voice search or your last used app. However, the lack of app shortcuts available here will limit its overall use. Likewise, there isn't an option to illuminate any of the buttons either, which can make them a bit tricky to find, particularly in low light. Luckily, there are optional onscreen buttons you can enable instead. OnePlus has also included a few gesture controls, such as drawing an O to open the camera, or a V to toggle the flashlight, but I was never able to get any of these to work. It doesn’t even provide you with any kind of tutorial on how to use them either, which isn't exactly useful.

Storage and Battery Life

Fortunately, its two SIM card slots should prove more beneficial. One of them can double up as a microSD card slot, too, allowing you to expand the phone's 16GB of default storage up to 128GB if you run out of space. The only rather glaring omission, at least compared to OnePlus' other smartphones, is the lack of a USB Type-C port. Instead, the OnePlus X charges via good, old-fashioned Micro USB, which makes it more likely to be compatible with your current crop of cables, but has no support for QuickCharge.

This shouldn't be too much of a problem, though, as its 2,525mAh battery has plenty of stamina. With the screen set to 170cd/m2, it lasted for 13h 06m of video playback in our continuous video playback test, outlasting the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua by almost three hours. The Galaxy A3 still has the edge with its impressive battery life of 14h 37m, but the OnePlus X should have plenty of juice to get you through the day.

Camera

The OnePlus X has an 8-megapixel camera on the front and a 13-megapixel sensor on the back. However, the rear camera was probably one of the OnePlus X's weakest areas, as photos looked very over-processed at full resolution. Areas around the edge of each frame were hit the worst, as fine details were drowned out by fuzzy patches of noise.

It's not all bad news, as colours were largely very bright and colourful and there was a good level of contrast on show. It's just a shame everything looks so grainy up close. Switching to HDR mode didn't improve matters either.

^ The sky is rather blown-out, but colours are largely accurate. It's just a shame that it doesn't look so good up close

^ Indoors, the camera struggled even more, as objects looked blurred and hazy round the edges and detail was severely lacking

It was a similar story indoors, but here the camera struggled to focus even in bright lighting conditions. Again, colours were reasonably accurate and there was a decent amount of contrast, but nearly every object outline was soft and hazy, and the stems of our flowers were full of artefacts.

It also failed to capture much detail in the fur of our teddy bear, instead blurring large patches of fur together in one lump of pixels. The flash was disappointing, too, as this made images appear very dull and dingy, providing little to no extra illumination whatsoever.

Conclusion

This is a shame, especially after the excellent camera on the OnePlus 2, and it rather brings down the handset as a whole. The OnePlus X has a lovely screen, great build quality and excellent battery life, but when its performance levels are roughly on par with other smartphones in this price range, and its camera is bit of a let-down, it fails to stand out in the same way as its predecessors did. Even if you have an invite to buy one then it's not a straightforward decision.

If you still don’t want to pay more than £200 for a great smartphone, the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua is still our top pick. It's £20 cheaper at present, has a better camera and is waterproof, though its battery life, while good, can't compete with the X's. So if battery life is more important than photo detail then the OnePlus X is the phone for you, otherwise we'd recommend buying the Sony.