OnePlus 3 Tries To Solve Battery Woes With ‘Dash Charge’ Feature
China’s OnePlus releases OnePlus 3, a £309 smartphone that strives to continue the startup’s favourable legacy of Android devices
Chinese mobile startup OnePlus has released its latest flagship device the OnePlus 3, a £309, 64GB smartphone priced dramatically less than its immediate rivals: the iPhone 6s Plus and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 5.
Like the OnePlus 2 and the OnePlus X, the 5.5-inch device runs on the company’s very own take on Android, called OxygenOS, a fairly customisable and bloat-free operating system based on Android Marshmallow.
The phone is the Shenzen-based company’s fourth in just two years, and OnePlus has steered clear of peddling the device with novelties you’ll find touted around the release of smartphones made by larger rivals. “We know that the best smartphone is the one that works exactly how you want it to,” said OnePlus Founder and CEO Pete Lau.
With that in mind, for the relatively competitive price tag, there certainly are some features that OnePlus has brought to the phone that look like they could shine.
Dash Charge
One of these features is Dash Charge, which promises to replenish 60 percent of the 3,000 mAh battery in 30 minutes. Dash Charge carries more current than other phone charging methods, claim OnePlus, and at lower temperatures too.
Other, small features aim to bump this phone up to premium territory, such as optical image stabilisation on the 16 MP camera, as well as something called Electronic Image Stabilisation that promises to banish blurs.
Aside from these, you’ll find everything else you should expect when forking out upwards of £300 on a smartphone.
It’s got an all-metal (aluminium alloy) unibody, which sits at 7.3 mm deep. The 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED display is expected, and it comes into two colours: graphite and soft gold. Inside is a Snapdragon 820 processor running at 2.2GHz. OnePlus said that the 3 performs tasks 35 percent faster than the OnePlus 2 and has a 40 percent boost in graphical power. There’s also 6GB of RAM, a dual-SIM slot, and 64GB of storage.
The OnePlus mantra is “never settle”, a message by which you are greeted with when you first boot up the device, and a message OnePlus seems keen to stick to.
“It’s a flagship smartphone inspired by – and made for – our fans,” said Lau.
Check out our gallery of the OnePlus 3 below:
Take our smartphones of 2016 quiz here!
