OnePlus 6: Top notch smartphone at an unbelievable price; check features

OnePlus has always delighted customers by launching flagship smartphones at prices that are not over the top. With OnePlus 6, the company takes it up a notch by packing in the latest hardware in a stunning design at an incredulous price. OnePlus 6 scores well in appearance - be it the all-glass design rounded at the corners, curved back, ergonomically placed fingerprint sensor, the vertical dual camera set-up or the proprietary alert slider button. It is lightweight and slippery; but, thankfully, its glass body is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5, one of the toughest in the market.

The curved design accentuates the 6.28-inch display with 19:9 aspect ratio. Even though OnePlus hasn't used an OLED screen, the AMOLED display with 2,280x1,080p resolution is bright and offers great colour reproduction. There is a small notch at the top of the display, which can be turned off. OnePlus 6 is the first smartphone to launch in India with Snapdragon 845 processor. Our review unit had 8 GB RAM and 128 GB of onboard storage. OnePlus' Oxygen OS running on Android 8.1.0 offers an experience very close to stock Android - a neat user interface minus bloatware. With gestures replacing navigation buttons (optional) - swipe up from bottom to go to home screen, swipe up and hold to see recent apps and a swipe up from either side to go to the previous screen - the usage is intuitive and addictive. There is a Gaming DND mode that stops displaying notifications while gaming. When I added games, customised settings automatically kicked in while playing.

The vertical dual camera set-up, with a 16-MP sensor and a 20-MP sensor, captured superb images with true-to-life colour reproduction, great bokeh effect and good slow-motion videos. However, the edges started to bleed in low light. Features such as Portrait mode in front camera will be added with software updates. OnePlus 6 has the face unlock feature, but doesn't appear to be as secure as Apple's Face ID. Thanks to the phone's dash charge technology, 50 per cent of the battery gets charged in 30 minutes. Although it is unfortunate that OnePlus 6 missed out on wireless charging support, that's not really a deal breaker. The 3,300 mAh battery lasted a day despite heavy use.