OnePlus 3: The flagship killer is back with a vengeance

OnePlus has dropped the bomb. The OnePlus 3 is their latest and greatest smartphone to date and boy does it pack a punch.

On paper, the highly anticipated smartphone lives up to the company’s mantra of never settling. You get the best of the best specifications for a 2016 flagship smartphone with a 2.2GHz Snapdragon 820 processor mated to 6GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB of UFS 2.0 storage.

On the front, the OnePlus 3 gets a 5.5-inch Full HD Optic AMOLED display that is tucked under the protective arm of Corning’s Gorilla Glass 4. The OnePlus 3 also sports a smaller 3,000 mAh battery (down from the 3,300 mAh OnePlus 2) that supports the Chinese company’s new Dash Charge quick-charging technology.

Dash Charge is OnePlus’ new fast-charging technology that pushes 5V/2A through a special Dash Charge cable that connects to a USB 2.0 Type-C port for what they claim is incredibly quick charging speeds without the heat. It’s supposed to charge cooler than conventional quick-charging technology and can give the OnePlus 3 a 63% charge in 30 minutes.

OnePlus has also upped the ante in the camera department. The OnePlus 3 features a new 16-megapixel Sony IMX 298 sensor with OIS, EIS, Phase Detection AF and a fast f/2.0 aperture lens. It is also capable of 4K video recording at 30fps and has support for RAW image capture, Auto HDR, Dynamic Denoise (less noise in low light photos) and manual controls. On the front, the OnePlus 3 sports an 8MP Sony IMX179 sensor with relatively large 1.4 micron pixels and a fast f/2.0 aperture lens.

The icing on the cake is that encasing all those juicy specifications is brand new full-metal anodised aluminium unibody. It looks like OnePlus are ditching the swappable back plates found on their OnePlus 2, instead opting for a more conventional metal finish. It honestly looks pretty good and is very reminiscent of a HTC One M7 smartphone.

In terms of software, the OnePlus 3 comes with OxygenOS that’s built on top of Android Marshmallow and comes with features that we’ve come to expect on a OnePlus device like the Shelf, gesture controls, hardware and on-screen navigation buttons and the Alert Slider. The fingerprint sensor also makes a return and takes its usual spot on the front of the device. This time, OnePlus says it’ll unlock the device in just 0.2 seconds and will progressively learn to improve subsequent scans, making them more precise over time.

OnePlus’ 3 sports 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, dual-SIM Cat. 6 4G LTE connectivity, GPS, GLONASS, BelDou and, finally, support for NFC. It will come in two colours, Soft Gold and Graphite.

As a whole, the new OnePlus 3 seems to pack a healthy amount of specifications and that’s a great thing. Add that to the fact that you can pick one up for USD399 (around RM1,636) and the OnePlus 3 becomes an incredible value-for-money flagship smartphone. Perhaps even a flagship killer, though, OnePlus seems to have steered clear of using that term with the new 3. The best part is, you no longer need an invite system to purchase one.

It looks like the newly announced USD499 (around RM2,045) ASUS ZenFone 3 Deluxe has a new rival to contend with and that get’s me plenty excited.

For more information on the OnePlus 3, head on over to OnePlus.net.

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