Is OnePlus 2 actually the best smartphone available in the market?

OnePlus One was a fine piece of hardware. When launched a year and a half ago, it packed in all the high-end specifications and features at half the price of flagship devices. The success gave way to OnePlus 2, which sounded even more promising with the latest processor on Qualcomm 810 chipset, 4GB of RAM, Type C charging port, a fingerprint scanner, better camera and a bigger battery.

It sports the best specifications at half the price of the flagship smartphones but not all is well and it has got some issues of its own.

The OnePlus 2 boasts a 5.5-inch full HD display with great viewing angles. The sunlight legibility has been improved and everything appears to be sharp and crisp on this display.

It continues to have a sandstone finish rear, which is removable, giving access to two nano-SIM slots. The volume keys have been moved to the right panel, just above the power key.

Speaker grills are placed at the bottom along with the charging port. OnePlus has also added a notification toggle that switches between all notifications, priority interruptions or no interruptions. This comes handy to put the phone on silent mode while stepping into a meeting. The side panels are made magnesium alloy. There is also an addition of a fingerprint scanner on the home button below the display, which works seamlessly. OnePlus 2 weights 175 grams.

Without increasing the megapixel count, OnePlus has improved the camera optics on board. The 13 MP camera is paired with optical image stabilizer, laser auto focus and dual LED flash.

It captured images quickly and the results were sharp and offered natural colours. Low-light imaging was also decent. But there isn't any gallery app on the Oxygen OS. You have to access images from the camera app only. Also, the interface over here isn't user friendly. OnePlus 2 has got a 5 MP front facing camera and can capture 4k videos.

The Oxygen OS on OnePlus 2 isn't impressive and lacks basics such as support for Exchange email. Honestly, the company could have gone ahead with stock Android over the Oxygen OS, which would have covered these gaps.

While OnePlus 2 manages most of the basic tasks with ease, but the side panels and the top front of the phone tends to heat up after few minutes of watching YouTube videos, navigation or playing games (not as much as the Sony Xperia Z3+), which should be fixed in the upcoming OTA update. The sound output is decent and it has an audio tuner by MaxxAudio for enhancing sound while listening to music, watching movies or playing games.  

The call clarity is loud and I didn't experience any call drop or network issue on OnePlus 2. OnePlus 2 comes with 64 GB internal memory (of which 54 GB is user accessible) and it does not support expandable memory.

The 3300 mAh battery onboard doesn't last long. Surprisingly, it drained from 8 per cent to 1 per cent in less than 15 minutes while browsing the web. It takes more than two hours to charge and doesn't even last a full day.

This smartphone will go on sale on Tuesday but will be available though invite only on Amazon.in.

Bag it or Junk it: Has its share of low points, which can be fixed with the software updates.

Rating: 3.5/5

Price: Rs 24,999

Plus: Display, camera

Minus: OS, battery, heats up