OnePlus X: First impressions

The OnePlus X arrived at Mobile Fun HQ this week. It’s the company’s first attempt at a mid-range smartphone, carrying a very attractive price tag of only £199. Here are my first impressions after spending a few hours with the device.

Upon unboxing the phone you’re stuck by its shinyness, and the build quality is pretty impressive for such a low cost phone. However, the glass finish is definitely a fingerprint magnet and it didn’t take long at all for the back of the device to be covered in them. As a user of an LG G2, and someone who has been waiting for a good-looking, well-specced 5″ device for quite some time, I have to admit the OnePlus X feels great in the hand and is pretty close to being the perfect size for my taste. It’s slim at just 6.9mm depth, and the aluminium edges are another nice touch.

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The included accessories are impressive too. There is the awesome red Micro USB charging cable that comes as standard with all OnePlus phones, a UK wall charger, and a silicone case which was a welcome surprise. The case provides some much needed grip to the glass back, but only a very basic level of protection so as always you’d be wise to check out some third party options too.

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The OnePlus X uses its own version of the Android Lollipop OS called Oxygen, which is very close to stock in both appearance and feel. Performance is snappy and there was no noticeable slowdown when multitasking. You get some nice customisation options which you’re prompted to enable or disable when booting the phone for the first time, including knock-to-wake (a feature I’ve grown used to from owning an LG).

The 1080p AMOLED screen promises vivid colours and it doesn’t disappoint. My biggest bugbear though has been with the hardware navigation buttons below the screen. They don’t light up, which makes using them at night much harder than it should be. I found myself missing the buttons on more than one occasion and eventually had to switch to software buttons, sacrificing screen estate in the process.

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I haven’t really put the camera through its paces yet, but it’s quick and easy to fire up, and the few indoor shots I did take all look fine to my relatively untrained eye. Finally, I found the speakers to be a little underwhelming, but it’s probably unfair to compare these to higher end smartphones given its price point (which is easy to forget, given how the other aspects of the device perform.)

Look out for our OnePlus X reviews roundup coming soon!

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