A 16GB version is also available for $325. The 64GB is plenty of storage for most users, given the availability of cloud storage and other means to add storage to Android, but 16GB may well not be. With its original OnePlus One smartphone this then-tiny Chinese company came from nowhere with the product everyone wanted and no-one could get hold of, fiercely fuelling hype over it.
OnePlus claims it has improved its invitation system, added the ability to reserve an invitation, and made sure it has more phones in stock. Even so, it's inevitable that OnePlus will once again struggle to make supply and demand work in unison together. The Chinese model sold by Geekbuying does not support 800MHz/Band 20 LTE. This means O2 customers (which is the only UK network to rely solely on 800MHz for 4G) will not be able to get more than 3G connectivity.
O2 customers looking to buy the OnePlus 2 will need to get the UK or India/SEA version (sold directly through OnePlus) which does support 800MHz in order to benefit from 4G. The 64GB Sandstone Black OnePlus 2 we review here today costs $399 from Geekbuying, and runs the software build A2001_14_150725 which confirms it is the Chinese version of the phone. It does come with a two-pin charger, but Geekbuying will throw in a free UK adaptor for you. We have no reason to believe it is anything other than genuine.
Design and Specs:
A flagship phone with a mid-range price, the OnePlus 2 has some quirks but also several highlights in its specification. It's one of the first Android phones to market with a reversible USB Type-C charging port, which will become more common with 2016 flagships as Google builds in USB Type-C support to Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and the supplied cable is also reversible at the Type-A end.In comparison with the original OnePlus One the 2 also has a slightly higher-capacity battery, now 3,300mAh in place of the previous 3,100mAh cell, but unfortunately it doesn't support Qualcomm Quick Charge or wireless charging out of the box. This means it will take two- to three hours to charge (over a relatively hard-to-come-by cable) and, for me at least, that could be a deciding factor.
It features the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chip that is found in the HTC One M9 and was originally slated for the Samsung Galaxy S6, but this is a second-generation chip that is said to have been optimised for OnePlus' Oxygen OS and avoids the overheating problems of its predecessor. This chip is paired with 4GB of LP-DDR4 RAM (3GB in the 16GB model) and Adreno 430 graphics. All that means performance is more than capable for everyday users. In fact it's very good, if not the best you'll find on the Android phone market.
The OnePlus 2 is also a dual-SIM phone and, although it's dual-standby rather than dual-active, we were impressed to find that both SIMs operate on 4G. Dual-SIM phones are becoming increasingly popular in the UK if traffic to our best dual-SIM phones article is anything to go by. Dual-standby means that although you can use either SIM for mobile data, you must set a preference for which one you want to use before you go online.
For calls and texts you can also set a preference, or get the OnePlus 2 to ask which SIM you want to use before the call is connected or message is sent. With both SIMs on standby, you'll be able to answer calls and receive texts on either number, but only one number can accept a call at once. Other connectivity options include the latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1 and GPS, although you won't find a microSD card slot or NFC in the OnePlus 2.
In the real world the latter is useful only for making mobile payments, and even that is still in its infancy in the UK. We can certainly wait until the OnePlus 3 for NFC, but it is nonetheless a notable omission with Android Pay soon to launch. The OnePlus 2's design is very similar to that of the OnePlus One, a fraction shorter but a little chunkier and wider. There's a new Alert Slider on the left side and physical home button with fingerprint scanner on the front, twin speaker grilles (although just the one speaker) and a USB Type-C port at the bottom, a volume rocker and power button on the right, and a headphone jack at the top.
The rear cover has the same grippy sandpaper-like rough texture as that of the OPO - a useful feature for a large 5.5in phablet that could otherwise be easy to drop - and it's removable, allowing you to swap in a new cover and giving access to the twin-Nano-SIM tray and non-removable battery. The fingerprint scanner, in common with that of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6, uses touch- rather than swipe-based input, which means it actually works.
You can configure up to five fingerprints to work with the OnePlus 2, allowing you to also set up a fingerprint for use with a Guest account. Even better, the fingerprint scanner is operational even when the screen is inactive. On the down side, the home button itself is sometimes unresponsive or at least slow to respond. Something we haven't seen before is the OnePlus 2's Alert Slider.
To be quite honest I get an awful lot of work emails and my phone is almost always on vibrate mode, so it's not something I'd use, but we're sure many Android users will find useful the ability to alter what types of notifications are allowed to disturb them without even taking the phone out of their pocket. A hardware component that hasn't changed is the screen.
This 5.5in full-HD IPS panel can't live up to the ultra-crisp Quad-HD resolution of phones such as the Galaxy S6 and LG G4, but OnePlus reckons it's found the sweet spot between a decent display and one that places too much drain on the battery. Sat beside our S6 we won't pretend you can't tell the difference - the screen on the S6 is brighter, more vibrant and even clearer, making the OnePlus 2 look almost dull by comparison - but the OnePlus' screen is very decent nonetheless, and the company is keen to point out that its 600 nits brightness compares well to the 559 nits of the iPhone 6. Viewing angles are good, too, at 178 degrees.
Camera:
As before the cameras are set at 5- and 13Mp at the front and rear respectively. For standard photography it offers a dual-LED flash, optical image stabilisation, a laser autofocus (which focuses in 0.3 seconds), an f/2.0 aperture, 1.3μm pixels and six lenses to avoid distortion and colour aberration, and the OnePlus 2 can shoot 4K-, time-lapse- and slow-mo video.We found the laser focus a bit jerky during recording, but camera performance is otherwise good for the money - but the best phone camera 2015 title goes to joint winners the Galaxy S6 and LG G4. New to the OnePlus 2 is Oxygen OS, which is based on Android Lollipop (the OnePlus One ran Cyanogen Mod 11S, based on KitKat). It's very much like stock Lollipop, but with some useful additions.
Customization include the ability to set preferences for the functionality of the physical home button and software recents and back buttons, a handful of gestures that work while the screen is switched off, a Dark mode, scope to alter the accent and LED colours, plus the ability to control app permissions. All these things are common to Chinese phones, but new to UK users who are more familiar with the Samsung Galaxies and HTC Ones of this world. Oxygen OS also features the in-beta Shelf, which sits a single swipe away from the home screen and displays your most frequently used apps and contacts, plus weather information.
And there's an Audio Tuner, which lets you fine-tune the bass, treble, balance and more to preset audio profiles for music, movies and games. The OnePlus 2 is a large and sturdy-feeling black slab of a phone with a 5.5in screen; it's almost too large for us, but phablets such as this are becoming increasingly common in 2015 so it's clear there is a demand. We wouldn't want to go any larger, but the OP2 is just about usable in a single hand and its grippy, sandpaper-like and slightly curved rear helps prevent you from dropping it as your thumb stretches to the far corner of the screen.
This rear cover is removable, and extremely thin and flimsy. Given that the battery is non-removable and there's no microSD slot, we can't envisage you needing to take it off too often, however - all it gives access to is a dual-SIM slot. While a side-opening SIM tray would have done the trick, OnePlus also sells removable covers in Bamboo, Rosewood, Black Apricot and Kevlar for £19.99 each, which may appeal if the standard Sandstone Black does not. And anyway, we found no creaking or flexing in the OP2's chassis, which is often the case with phones with removable backs.
On the rear you'll see the OnePlus 2's 13Mp camera with dual-LED flash. There's also a strange-looking sensor here that works the laser autofocus. Unlike many high-end phones the rear camera doesn't protrude from the case, which nets the OP2 a thumbs-up in our books. We'll speak more about the camera performance later on in this review.The OnePlus 2, despite its size, is a good-looking smartphone. It's a plastic phone but with a stylish metal trim, and as is fairly standard for Android phones you get a volume rocker and power button on the right side, and a headphone jack at the top.
Down the bottom are two speaker grilles, which make it appear that you get stereo speakers; you do not. Instead, the single speaker sits under the phone's right speaker grill, and if you're not careful you could smother it with your palm. Of course, this is no different to many other flagship phones on the market, including the Galaxy S6. With the speaker free from your palms the OnePlus 2 is capable of some decent-volume audio and, as we'll see in the software section, has controls to configure audio presets for music, movies and games.
New to the OnePlus 2 is a physical home button with a built-in fingerprint scanner, which sits in the middle of two software buttons - resents and back the functionality of which you can reverse in the Settings. We say physical, but actually it feels more like a software button with a hardware ring rather than a button you can actually like, you know, push. When we began testing the OnePlus 2 we found this home button rather unresponsive, which led us to the impression that it could actually be just a fingerprint scanner and not a home button at all.
Over time, though, either we got used to it or it became more responsive. It remains the single-most laggy aspect of the OnePlus 2, taking a second or two to spring into action, but the gentle tactile response you get when tapping it does at least confirm you have pressed it and aren't waiting around for the bus that will never come. Regardless of our gripes with the home button, the fingerprint scanner itself is incredibly good, and OnePlus says it can scan your fingerprint in just half a second. Like that on the Samsung Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 it accepts touch- rather than swipe-based input, which is far more accurate - in our tests it worked nearly every time.
You can save up to five fingerprints on the OnePlus 2, which means you could spare one or two for Guest users, making use of the phone's ability to configure a Guest account and keep prying eyes away from your personal stuff. Better still, the fingerprint scanner works even when the screen is switched off, meaning you're a step closer to using the phone. If only the OnePlus 2 had NFC it could be an ideal tool for secure mobile payments. Also new to the OnePlus 2 is a hardware notifications slider known as an Alert Slider.
It's the first of its kind we've seen on a smartphone, and allows you to toggle between interruptions, priority interruptions and all notifications without even taking the phone out of your pocket. As we mentioned in our introduction, this isn't a feature that especially appeals to us personally, but we know many Android users who would like this to not only feature on their phone but to become a standard feature of Android phones.
The charging port on the OnePlus 2 looks different to that of any other Android phone we've seen. It's quite a bit larger than what we're used to with Micro-USB and symmetrical in shape. This is a USB Type-C port and, although the OP2 isn't the first smartphone to include one, it is the first that we have reviewed. USB Type-C is a reversible connection, meaning you can insert the connector either way up and it will still work.
The USB Type-C cable supplied with the OnePlus 2 is also reversible at the Type-A end (that which goes into your mains adaptor or PC's USB port). It's a pretty cool-looking cable, with a flat, tangle-free design and bright red colouring. Which is good, since it's probably the only USB Type-C cable you'll own and you will therefore be carrying it around everywhere you go in order to keep the OP2 topped up. Sadly, the USB Type-C connector implemented here works over USB 2.0 and not the faster USB 3.0 protocol. Slow connection is something of a theme for the OnePlus 2: for some absurd reason, despite the Snapdragon 810 chip inside the company has neglected to include support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0, which can reduce charging time by up to 75 percent.
That's our single biggest gripe with the OP2, and the fact it also lacks support for wireless charging is a kick in the teeth when you're already down. Also see: How to add Qi wireless charging to a phone. Something that hasn't changed from the OnePlus One is the screen, and the OnePlus 2 is as before fitted with a 5.5in IPS panel with a full-HD resolution. At 1920x1080 pixels, it has a pixel density of 401ppi. We think we may have been spoiled by the gorgeous Quad HD Super AMOLED panel fitted to our everyday Galaxy S6, because sat next to it the OnePlus 2 just doesn't compare.
The Samsung is notably crisper, colors are more vibrant and the screen is brighter. The OP2 looks almost dull by comparison - but it's not. Take away the S6 from the mix and the OnePlus' screen starts to look a lot better. It has a 600 nits brightness rating that is higher than that of the iPhone 6, and it has excellent viewing angles. Colors are indeed more vibrant with AMOLED tech, but in response IPS offers a more realistic co lour palette.
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