The OnePlus 2 Review

by Brandon Chester on 12/14/2015 8:00 AM EST
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  • Matias - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I would like to see Anandtech review the Moto X 2015.
  • MonkeyPaw - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    While we are making a list, add the Lumia 950/950XL. Reviews are so mixed on it, and many review sites seem to havr just "phoned it in."
  • Flunk - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I think you can find out if you want a Lumia 950 by following these simple steps:

    Do you want a Windows Phone? (if yes continue)

    Do you want a High-end Phone (if yes continue)

    Buy a Lumia 950 or 950 XL (if you want a bigger one), because there is no other option.
  • MonkeyPaw - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Yes and no. Is the camera that much better than the 1520 or 930? Battery life? Other reviews have been subjective, but Anandtech is one of the last places that throws out actual testing (especially screen quality and battery) to go along with the subjective portions. Heck, one well known site didn't even use the device as a phone for lack of a proper data plan.

    If I must wait, fine. The current culture of rush-job, me-too journalism isn't doing much for me.
  • faizoff - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I too hope there is a review in the works for a Lumia 950/950 XL, I've become a huge fan of the WMP and would like a Anandtech treatment of those phones. The reviews I've read add a lot of personal opinions and preferences without being that objective. Though the overall reaction is definitely mixed on those phones. The sentiments seems to be these phones are 'almost there but not there yet'
  • Sttm - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I'd like to see a 950 XL review if only for a good Anandtech deep dive into the liquid cooling on the Snapdragon 810. Curious to see if this is going to become a more common thing.
  • JanSolo242 - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    This is the only technical review on the Lumia 950 XL I've seen so far.
    http://www.gsmarena.com/microsoft_lumia_950_xl-rev...
  • blzd - Friday, January 1, 2016 - link

    You realize the "liquid cooling" is a heat pipe and has been used in many 810 phones already though right? Nothing unique about the 950 XL implementation.

    Wow Microsoft marketing really did a number on some people.
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    We do not currently have a Lumia 950 review planned.
  • faizoff - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
  • podspi - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    ...why? Blows my mind you'd review the OnePlus Two and not the flagship Windows Phone device...
  • ABR - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Also mystified by this decision. Why review obscure niche phones most people will never see and whose only remarkable feature is their price, while ignoring a mainstream player that brings major innovation to the table?
  • faizoff - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    I can only hope and think they meant that they won't review the 950 but will review the XL. One can hope...But like Brandon mentioned in another comment, MS didn't send out a sample lumia to them.
  • ArKritz - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Wow, all the four people actually using windows in one thread. What are the odds? :p
  • blzd - Friday, January 1, 2016 - link

    One Plus One sold over 2 million devices. 950 XL won't sell that many units, especially without the help of carriers.

    How many people are willing to splash iPhone money for a Windows Phone that gets out specced by a cheaper Nexus device? Very few.
  • zeeBomb - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Brandon, is this using the marginally newer 810 v2.1 chipset?
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Only the G Flex 2 and what seems to be early units of the One M9 use the 2.0 revision.
  • zeeBomb - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I heard a while ago the HTC CEO or someone stated now current released models will use the 810 v2.1. Can't confirm tho. To LG, yeah that phone is the only one with v2. In regards to one plus 2:

    https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/oneplus-2-cpu-q...
  • knights - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    yes it is.
    https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/oneplus-2-cpu-q...
  • forgot2yield28 - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Agreed. I really want to know how the Moto X Pure stacks up against the N5X. For whatever reason, the writers here have never to my knowledge even commented on the lack of a Moto X Pure review, either to say it's coming or that they don't have a review unit and aren't going to publish a review.
  • grayson_carr - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Here's my review. I owned a Moto X Pure for a couple months. Then I got a Nexus 5X. Now I'm selling the Moto X Pure. The Moto X Pure is fast in the sense that it opens and switched between apps quickly, but slow in the sense that its GPU has a tough time pushing that QHD resolution and it often has trouble maintaining a high framerate when scrolling in apps. The Nexus 5X is the opposite, which I vastly prefer. The 5X takes a little longer to open apps than the Moto X Pure, but it feels much smoother when scrolling in most apps and is better at maintaining a high framerate. Also, the Nexus 5X has an awesome fingerprint sensor, a vastly better camera in low light, faster updates, and a better calibrated screen (even with the Moto X Pure display in standard mode and not vivid). Battery life is similar between the two. The two things the Moto X Pure does have going for it over the Nexus 5X is build quality (which is very solid) and the speakers (which are excellent).
  • Landiepete - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link

    I can do that right now for you.

    1. It does not have a ingerprint scanner so if you absolutely want one, walk away.
    2. It doe not have wireless charging, so if you feel plugging it in to a wall socket is too much trouble walk away.

    What it DOES do :
    1. With marshmallow, battery life is about 2 days for me. If you use it intensively, I gather you will have to charge it every day
    2. The screen is excellent
    3. It's not metal, but it does not feel cheap
    4. The memory card is a great way to increase storage without paying the premium handset manufacturers charge for built in storage
    5. It DOES get warm to the touch if you use the fast cores, like when it upates or you use 4K filming, but it won't burn your paws
    6. Contrary to popular belief, the 808 is NOT too slow for the quad res screen. Caveat : I do not use it as a gameboy.
    7. Near stock droid, so no crapware or bloatware. I don't edit movies on my Phone.
    8. Very good camera
    9. It still has the usual USB connector, so your old chargers and car kits still work

    Conclusion : unless your prime goal is to sollicit oohhhs and aaaahhhs from onlookers, I thoroughly recommend it.

    Pete
  • aijazz - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    would be great to get a much awaited nexus 6p review.
  • Devo2007 - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Given how late this review is, you'll probably be waiting until February.... :P
  • Brandon Chester - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    The Nexus 6P review is being done by Andrei and is almost complete. Look for it this week.
  • mcbhagav - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    <bait> Moto X Pure seems to be favorite among the kinda of users visit your site </bait>
  • amdwilliam1985 - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    thank you for the heads up, looking forward to the 6P review.

    I'm so glad I've got the 6P instead of OP2 :)
    When in doubt, go with Nexus ;)
  • zeeBomb - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Thusday / Friday, lets get it!
  • Nexus6P - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Maybe one day a review of me will be posted.
  • LemmingOverlord - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    You, Sir, are in that unique classe of "smartassphones" :D
  • jann5s - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    +10
  • VnnAmed - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Yep, cant wait to see you all naked and desperately trying to justify that OvenDragon 810. No worries tho, I adore you and will get you anyway.
  • Thermogenic - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Wow, what a horrible showing for the CPU. What was OnePlus thinking with this implementation? "Fixing" the thermal issues by rarely using the high power CPU is a pretty poor "fix". Hopefully running CyanogenMod will alleviate some of these issues without a scorching hot phone.
  • mrdude - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    This is precisely what happens when a marketing company attempts to make a smartphone.
  • Gigaplex - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    No, that would be Apple.
  • mrdude - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    That may have been true once (arguably...), but take a look at the A9 SoC. They have great marketing, true, but they also have the best engineering teams and bar-none the best SoC on the planet.

    All OnePlus has going for it is an invite system to simulate limited availability/prestige for a crappy smartphone.
  • 5th element - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    What I don't understand is how a manufacturer can release a device with such a poorly calibrated display.... And a premium one at that.
  • theduckofdeath - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    This is a mid-range phone, not a premium phone. The fact that you think it's high-end is purely down to their marketing.
  • 5th element - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Anything costing $400+ in my book is premium. Maybe there are more expensive phones, maybe there are less, but IMO someone who is looking at spending $400 on a phone isn't doing so because of its price, they are doing so because it has the tech specs and performance they want it to have and they'd be happy to spend more if that gave them more of the good stuff.
  • theduckofdeath - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Half the price spectrum is hardly defined as premium in any dictionary.
  • mcbhagav - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Nexus 5x - 329$, and has a well calibrated display. ( visit review in this site).
  • Antoine. - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    And still no Nexus 6P review...
  • 5th element - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Complaining won't make it appear any faster. Anand are aware that people want it.
  • mmsmsy - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I would really love to see a thorough review of one of the new chinese phones, f.e. Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 or Meizu Metal. These are really cheap (200$ for 3GiB RAM and 32GB NAND) and are receiving great reviews. I don't think that typical European/US (OnePlus included) brands would look this good in comparison. And it would be nice to see it verified on one of the sites like this. Please tell me what You think.
  • evancox10 - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    First paragraph under NAND Performance, did you mean to say OnePlus *Two* instead?
  • Brandon Chester - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Indeed I did. Thank you.
  • cknobman - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Their invite system ruined it for me, and will eventually ruin it for OnePlus as well.

    I wanted to buy one of these very badly and was doing everything asked for several months to get an invite. Social media, forums, etc.. heck we jumped through hoops like a trained monkey yet received nothing from OnePlus.

    September rolls around and no invite and my wife could not wait any longer so we bought her and LG G4.

    Then in November I started getting invites and emails from them. In the last month I have received 4 different invites from OnePlus. Sorry guys the ship has sailed.

    What you think is a clever marketing scheme and hype generator actually pisses customers off and drives them to other products.

    OnePlus, your products are good, but not THAT GOOD. Get rid of the stupid invite system, have a regular store, or continue to turn away customers.

    I'd imagine sales cannot be that great anymore if you continue to send me invite after invite.
  • cknobman - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Ok after reading the entire review thank goodness we did not buy this thing.

    Poor implementation of the SOC and definitely not worth buying over competitors.
  • amdwilliam1985 - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    felt the same, I'm so glad I got the 6P over OP2, after seeing this review, it is shameful to even consider OP2 next to the all mighty 6P(of course until Anandtech finds a way to ruin it ;).
  • DanD85 - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    The OnePlus One was quite a groundbreaking device at its time, too bad OnePlus fails to follow it with a worthy successor. Hopefully they'll learn their lessons and come back with a better OnePlus 3.
  • Cow86 - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I really wonder if there isn't anything wrong with your Oneplus 2 Brandon, I've just been going over some reviews from other sites, and they all seem to be very happy with the phone, both on the performance side and the screen. That being said, most don't look at the screen as detailed as you guys do, but they all call it pleasant, vibrant, if a little blue, and things like that, and the general performance with browsing etc never really seems to be an issue. At the same time, their battery life is pretty poor. It seems to indicate that in most other cases the A57 cores are getting used where with your phone they aren't...

    That all being said, not a phone for me either way, but I figured I'd just point to the discrepancy.
  • Brandon Chester - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I actually think the display discrepancy is actually a good example of how sites that do those very superficial evaluations tend to be wrong about most aspects of a device. A good example is how some reviews parrot the PR line that S808 is perfectly fine despite us having published data showing that it is not. Another example is the mind boggling complaints of the Nexus 5X display being dull or washed out, when it's actually incredibly accurate and covers its target gamut.
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    And part of the issue is that the human visual system is absolutely terrible about accuracy.

    For as well as we can see, we are easily tricked by bright colors. Most people will find a bright, oversaturated display to be better. Which if that's what they like, that's fine. But it's not desirable as a stock setting on a phone since it causes shared media to be displayed inaccurately.
  • Cow86 - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    All fair points, and I do agree I wouldn't trust most other sites to be more than subjective comparisons, but at the same time I do wonder how they can say the performance is smooth when your phone clearly was not (which by the way was the main point I was trying to make, I should've put that first and not the screen issue :P). Then again, 'smooth' is subjective as well. My Moto G 2013 is considered smooth by me most of the time...*shrug*
  • grayson_carr - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I dunno. I have owned a lot of phones this year as an Android developer and tech enthusiast and I did feel that the OnePlus 2 underperformed compared to other phones with the Snapdragon 810 and even 808.
  • K_Space - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I couldn't agree more. I had an OPO which I bought quite late in 2015 by which time most custom ROMs matured a fair bit. I ended up getting a quick invite for the OPT having attended their launch event almost by chance. The OPO made its way to a family member but I had a chance to play with both for quite a while. Not only do I find the SoC a lot less responsive but the OS is SERIOUSLY lacking in terms of features. Having never used Oxygen 1.0 and moving straight to an 'unofficial' Temasek ROM from CM 11.0 the OP2 truly feels like regression. To add insult to injury, as far as I know OPO still hasn't received Oxygen 2.2 (setteling for that trend that plague other manufacturers of no support for older phones). OPO was a great phone which seriously disrupted the market and forced the hands of other companies to raise their game in the bangs for bucks category. OPT was merely hoping to float on the hype of its predessecor. I'll be waiting for the more mature custom ROMs to land and hopefully that will bring some shine into the phone.
  • zeeBomb - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Wow... This review surprised me. Dropped outta nowhere, but I find this device disappointing compared to it's predecessor.
  • zodiacfml - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Ouch.
  • bruh123 - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    im not saying that the phone isn't cool im just saying the price is tooooo much
  • eddieobscurant - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Will you review the oneplus X ?
  • tipoo - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    It's basically running like a Snapdragon 410 on web browsing since it doesn't turn on the A57 cores? That's...Errm...Suboptimal. OnePlus did say they were sorting out the S810 throttling through software - I didn't think they meant by just not using the big cores!

    Granted, web browsing is so network bound with modern CPUs, maybe that's relatively ok as the wifi battery life is indeed decent.
  • tipoo - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Actually nevermind the last, as the author said it even felt slower. That's just screwey on Oneplus's side.
  • tipoo - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    "Even with that, it's not exactly clear to me what additional factors make the Snapdragon 808 and 810 devices all perform so poorly here compared to a device like the Moto G which just has 4 Cortex A53 cores. "

    Could there be any differences in how the SoC provides bandwidth to the A53s, since they're just backup in the 810 but the only CPUs in the 410? Are the cache configurations the same too?
  • lucam - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Dear Anand on regard to GPU performance, why don't you start using 3D Mark Slingshot which runs at 1080p and uses Open GL 3.0 rather than the Ice storm which starts to be old (720p, Open Gl 2.0).
    And for the GFXBench 3.0, maybe you can start using the 3.1 version of Manhattan as well, more intense. I believe you know there is the IOS version of Manhattan 3.1 as well now.
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    All of our mobile benchmarks are set to be overhauled for 2016. We're just at the end of the year, so it's the latest point in the calendar.
  • lucam - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Excellent!!
  • tipoo - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    (Anand doesn't work here anymore :P )
  • lucam - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    You are right and I've totally forgotten that :)

    Where is he actually?
  • Araa - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    He works for Apple now
  • ikjadoon - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I wonder if he is secretly responsible for the stellar sequential write performance on the iPhone 6 lineup.
  • lucam - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Hahaha...lol!!!
  • cuex - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Is it possible for you to give review using a custom kernel that allow the usage of A57 Cores in normal usage? Would like to know whether it's really the "hesistant of using A57 Cores" is the cause of slow-down...
  • danielfranklin - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Yes you can, i have and its very fast.
    In fact ive calibrated my display as well and im quite impressed with it now, the high contrast really comes alive.
    Unfortunately with further hacking OnePlus havent properly released their source code and Devs are leaving it in droves.
    Im quite happy with it (got it on special) but i cant help but think they have alienated the power users with the lack of code and alienated the normal users with the CPU performance and lack of calibration on the screen.
    Personally i think they have kind of lost the plot.
  • adityarjun - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Umm, sorry to hijack this thread but I am in the market for a 5inch-ish android phone. My requirements are a good battery and camera and a decent enough display and lag free UI interaction. I don't game. My current phone is Moto G 2014. I am looking at the 5x, OnePlus X and Moto X 2014. I favor the last. Is it still a good buy?
  • mcbhagav - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    IMO, if you are dead set on 5" screen. You should get Nexus 5X ( i suggest 32 GB) out of above 3 contenders. Why not one Plus X? HW, SW, Radio are slower than 5X. Why not Moto X-14? smells already end of life.
  • grayson_carr - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Wow, I was kind of shocked by the display analysis. I actually owned a OnePlus 2 for a short time way back in August and thought the display looked quite accurate. Granted, I was just using my eyes to compare it to my wife's iPhone 6 and my MacBook Pro and not a measurement tool, but it certainly seemed more accurate than the Nexus 6 and LG G4 which I also had at the time. But maybe I was just looking for oversaturation inaccuracies and not general innacuracies. Also, their website has this quote: "We focused on producing professional grade, true-to-life colors, avoiding over-saturation." (https://oneplus.net/2/technology) But Brandon also mentions that they keep changing the calibration profile with updates, so maybe the calibration has actually gotten worse since I owned it haha. I remember that happening with my OnePlus One... with one of the updates to that phone the color temperature went from like 6300K to 8000K.

    Bottom line, these little issues are why I ended up selling both my OnePlus One and OnePlus 2 after a very short time. I am a phone nerd and love to try different phones, but I think I'm done giving OnePlus chances to impress me only to be disappointed with the software and abundant other minor annoying issues that add up. I'm not sure how it is now, but when I owned the OnePlus 2 back in August the software was super buggy.

    I currently own a Nexus 5X and I would highly recommend it over the OnePlus 2. Don't let the theoretically better specs of the OnePlus 2 fool you. I am having a vastly better end user experience with the 5X even though it doesn't match up spec wise.
  • zeeBomb - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Oh definitely. Very cautious move you have done there Grayson. To me, Oneplus has been slipping in terms of...what's the word...I guess presentation for what they have to offer.
  • zeeBomb - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Take the One Plus X, another device that they had made this year. On paper the specs seem really good for the price you are getting it for... Then you realise it uses a modified 801AA chip plagued with bugs and sluggish graphical performance. I hope in the future Oneplus can fix these things so the user experience isn't such a hassle. At least the updates are quick enough.

    Another thing that seems to not be mentioned is the USB C cables. They were so cheap to buy, but little that we knew until the faithful Benson Leung came along is the resistor type was way incorrect, which makes charging the device pretty dangerous!

    Granted to sum up Oneplus this year: You win some, you lose some.
  • sandy105 - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Where did you read about the 801AA and its graphics performance issues ? . I have the OPO and the 801 does well on most games , but i saw a oneplus X review where game performance was sun optimal and it got me thinking why did it happen.
  • zeeBomb - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Oneplus forums say it all.
  • Huan - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Brandon Chester & Ryan Smith, great review as always. Seeing this terrible web browsing java script performance with A57 not activing at all. I am wondering is this review done on the latest OnePlus Two firmware?

    I currently have OnePlus Two, Galaxy S6 Edge and iPhone 6s Plus, the OnePlus Two is slower then iPhone 6s Plus on web browsing. But it has similar web browsing experience as Galaxy S6 Edge using Chrome.

    I am full time engineer, and a part time wedding photographer, I always take picture in RAW and adjust white balance in Lightroom for post processing. When I compared the white point of iPhone 6s Plus ~7000K, to my OnePlus Two, it did look slightly colder, maybe ~7300K but not 8297K. I do noticed OnePlus have sourced panel from different OEMs, maybe I am just lucky and gotten a "more calibrate" display unit in the lottery.

    Never the less, OnePlus using a tag line of "2016 Flagship Killer", the least they can do is to ensure consistent calibration on the display and actually build a good kernel that optimize battery life & thermals while taking advantage of SOC's full performance.
  • Brandon Chester - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    It is indeed done with the latest firmware. As I mentioned, I also wiped the device to confirm that there wasn't anything weird going on. As an additional confirmation I actually wiped it again around thirty minutes ago, and re-ran the tests. Nothing has improved, and Kraken is actually much worse at 30,000ms because it takes 20,000ms to complete Astar.

    OnePlus has behavior to automatically detect when Chrome is open and shut off the entire A57 cluster. Even if you use CPUBurn to put extremely heavy loads that activate the A57s they will still shut off the moment you open Chrome. I posted a video of this on Twitter a little while ago to demonstrate it, and you can find it below.
    https://twitter.com/nexusCFX/status/67654327791559...
  • Huan - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Brandon, thanks for the reply, I just run Kraken on the OnePlus Two with the latest firmware the best I can do is ~16,000 ms.

    This is such an unprofessional implementation of the kernel, the easy way out, rather then spending time optimizing performance, battery life and thermals.
  • grayson_carr - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    The Exynos in the S6 is notoriously poorly optimized for Chrome and has very poor performance in Chrome. The web benchmarks you see on Anandtech for the S6 are using the Samsung browser, which is much better optimized for Exynos. So the OnePlus 2 performing similar to the S6 in Chrome is not a good thing since Qualcomm chips are typically well optimized in Chrome and should perform much better than the Exynos there.
  • zeeBomb - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    I think I read some where you can download chromium that is well optimized for new Qualcomm devices. For Samsung, maybe a binary lib can help but ima agree with you and recommended stock.
  • Lavkesh - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    What kind of a company parrots "flagship killer" all the time knowing how shitty their product is? Such a huge disappointment.
  • danielfranklin - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    A Chinese company...
  • fguerro - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    I have a One Plus 2 and out of the box noticed it was slower than expected. However, I installed a custom kernel and set the cpu governor to performance and turned on the A57 from two cores to four and wow, made a big difference in benchmarks and everyday use.

    3DMark is 1229
    Basemark OS II 2.0 Overall is 1927
    PCMark Work Performance Overall is 5196
    Geekbench 3 Single-Core Score is 1265
    Geekbench 3 Multi-Core Score is 5037
    AnTuTu v5.7 is 67467
    Quadrant Standard is 39128
  • zeeBomb - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Damnnn. What custom kernel + ROM are you using? Those are some insane gains.
  • fguerro - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    I'm using stock Oxygen OS 2.1.2 and the custom kernel is Boeffla
  • zeeBomb - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Wow. Boeffla better than AK? Or both have their strengths & weaknesses...dunno why OP will just shutdown 2 A57s and render it as a 6 core device :/

    Does it get reaaaly hot on everyday usage too?
  • fguerro - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    I don't notice the phone getting significantly hotter with the changes in the Boeffla kernel.
  • fguerro - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    With my OnePlus 2 and custom kernel, running Chrome:

    Kraken 1.1 = 4419.8ms
    Google Octane = 8016
    WebXPRT 2015 = 118
  • MarcSP - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Absolutely agree with you.
  • MarcSP - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    So you review "random" Android devices, but do not review the flagship device of the third mobile platform?
    And please don't say "2% marketshare worlwide". First, in many countries in Europe it has more than 10%, even more than iPhone. Second, products should be reviewed by relevance, not only marketshare. I think a flasgship phone for one of the major tech companies in the world, with the most used OS (in this case mobile version) is quite relevant.

    I am specially interested in the screen: some reviewers said "washed out" and others "very accurate colors". I assume the first group are the ones that like TV sets in the store, with over the top colors and contrast, but I would prefer to see Anandtech numbers to make sure :).
  • Brandon Chester - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    Microsoft and their PR agencies have not found a way to send a non-AT&T branded and locked unit to Brett. Might be worth petitioning them to figure that situation out.
  • Vishalaestro - Monday, December 14, 2015 - link

    you guys need to review the Asus zenfone 2 laser for the fact that how important the ISP is for camera performance , the camera is night and day better than the Asus zenfone 2 with the intel chipsets.
  • zeeBomb - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Honestly its just a lot faster to snap, and yeah images are marginally better.
  • LiverpoolFC5903 - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Quick question from a n00b. I thought the 4 A57 cores are synchronous, as in all four run at the same frequency when active or none at all. Same with the A53 cluster to my knowledge. But your statement about two A57 cores running with two of them shut sort of contradicts that.

    I also use Treqn profiler app from Qualcom to study CPU performance for different workloads and I have noticed that all four A57 cores show the same frequency curve when mapping CPU use in a graph.

    Anyone?

    So how does it work?

    "For example, in this case the Cortex A57 cores are in use during the web test, while in general they never get used at all during web browsing, and in more intensive situations the best case is that there are two A57 cores in use at some frequency and the other two are shut off."
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Frequency is independent from power states, cores can be shut off or power gated in idle even if the cluster frequency is high.
  • LiverpoolFC5903 - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Sorry for sounding thick! So basically even though ALL the cores are operating synchronously, indvidual cores in a cluster can be into different power states and/or shut off altogether?

    How does this compare with something like a Snapdragon 801 where all 4 cores run at different frequencies depending on the workload?
  • phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    The cores in the S810 work the same way as in the S801.

    There's 3 ways that ARM's big.LITTLE setup works:
    1. Cluster migration: either the A57 cluster is active, or the A53 cluster is active. The OS only ever sees 1 cluster of cores (so an S810 would appear as a 4-core SoC). This is done in hardware on the SoC itself.
    2. Core migration: each A57 core is paired with an A53 core. Either the A57 or the A53 is active in each pair, never both at the same time. But an A57 from pair 1 can be active while an A53 from pair 2 is active, while the other two pairs are offline, for example. The OS only ever sees 1 cluster's worth of CPUs (so the S810 would appear as a quad-core). I believe this is done in hardware on the SoC itself.
    3. Forget the name of this one, but all cores in all clusters are available for scheduling, and it's up to the OS to manage everything. 1 core can be online, 2 cores can be online, all the way up to all 8 cores can be online. And the kernel scheduler determines whether a process runs on an A53 core or an A57 core.

    The first big.LITTLE SoCs from Samsung (the Exynos 54xx-something) used method 1. The latest big.LITTLE SoCs from everyone (Exynos 7xxx, Snapdragon 810/808, MediaTek Helios, etc) uses method 3.
  • LiverpoolFC5903 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Thanks mate, but as Andrei pointed out, my question was a different one. But useful information all the same.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Please ignore phoenix's comment, he seems to have misunderstood the question at hand.

    The Snapdragon 801 behaves as you say, they each have individual frequencies, meaning they're all on their own clock domain. Also each core has their own power domain, meaning each core can be individually turned off.

    The difference again is that ARM CPUs such as the A57 in the S810 have all the same clock domain. However even if they all have the same clock they can still be individually powered off as the power domains are individual as well.

    As to how it compares, it has both benefits and disadvantages. But there seems to be no clear winner.
  • LiverpoolFC5903 - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Thank you Andrei, its pretty clear to me now! Synchronous cores (A57, standard ARM cores) have the same clock domain which means cluster frequency remains the same. However, individual cores within each cluster can be powered off based on need and workloads.

    And Krait based quadcores have different clock domains for each core as well as different power domains.

    Understood.
  • WoodyPWX - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Nice and honest review as always, thank you! A Lumia 950xl review would be awesome.
  • victorson - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    I love Anand and the insight in the reviews, but sometimes you guys throw something that even the more experienced reader will find hard to understand. "As always, all devices are calibrated to 200nits except when their brightness curves necessitate testing above that value." Could you kindly elaborate on what is that supposed to mean to those of us who are interested in display quality, but don't have a PhD on the matter? :)
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    As close to 200nits as we can get. If we can't hit 200 exactly, then it's the first value over that which we can hit.
  • kasakka - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    The sandstone black back cover is one of the best things about Oneplus phones. It really helps keeping a big phone like that firmly in your hands. By comparison the Oneplus X or iPhone 6S really needs a cover because they are very slippery.

    Where Oneplus went wrong with the Two was the Snapdragon 810 and that it's not that much of an upgrade from the One. As a One owner, the only things I'd like from it are LTE band 20, better speaker and vibration motor and the fingerprint reader which is positioned very poorly. On phones this size they should be in the back like on the Nexus phones because reaching down to that bottom area when using with one hand is quite annoying. I use the onscreen buttons on my One because of the same reason.

    I really hope they manage a better design with the inevitable Oneplus Three. I like that they haven't jumped on the 1440p bandwagon because that doesn't really give any benefit in phones at this screen size. Just more pixels to push.
  • lid - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Thank you for providing LTE band information! It has always been a deciding factor for me, since I travel constantly. This phone doesn't seem great for anyone who frequently visits the EU from the US (since the US version is missing LTE band 3), or vice versa (since the EU version is missing LTE bands 2/4).
  • aenews - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    The author mentions his dislike of the "back cover material" many times throughout the article and fails to see the point of a removable back plate. He clearly does not realize StyleSwap™ exists and is a major selling point of the phone.

    He also doesn't seem to realize there's a color slider in settings that adjusts the tint of the screen. Pulling the slider all the way to the right would yield more color-accurate displays for most OnePlus 2's. He should have tested further with the spectrophotometer IMO. Everyone has his own temperature preferences in regards to the display.
  • Brandon Chester - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link

    I'm not sure how you can assert that the slider would have an impact without having measured a difference. I did do that, and the difference is insignificant. It's just not a good display.

    Also, no company offering heavy phone customization is doing very well financially in the smartphone market, so something like StyleSwap is clearly not a major selling point for most consumers.
  • MarcSP - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Random Android device: Review
    Flagship of the third mobile platform: Nope!
  • MarcSP - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    That's really weird. In any case, you could have explained that from the begining.
    Still, thanks for the reply :-). And ignore another message I posted later. I thought the first one had failed.
  • vishnumrao - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Well written and informative review.

    This review is giving me a sever bout of "buyer's remorse". I was deliberating with myself, between the Nexus 6P and the OnePlus Two. I jumped the gun, when I got an invite. I bought it based on the "on paper" specs and the rave reviews of the predecessor.

    Right off, I felt the UI sluggish. Ever so slightly! Some hesitation to move! I installed Cpu Spy app and I started noticing that the processors were maxed out at 1555 (1.56 GHz on the A53). Even when playing games, I never saw CPU states higher than that.

    I was surprised by the color accuracy assessments. I never noticed it. Maybe I am not very color sensitive.

    The hope is that CM 13 will officially support OnePlus Two phones. That should fix some of the issues on the CPU usage. Oxygen OS is buggy too! An example of a bug I found: https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/cpu-usage-durin...

    No official acknowledgement of the issue and no fix either.

    I wish I had never got that invite to buy!
  • SydneyBlue120d - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Still no HEVC encoding from the Snapdragon 810, do You know if there is some hack to shot videos in HEVC? Thanks a lot.
  • dexterkarthik - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    finally - this review helped in ruling out OP2 and wait for the SD820 to come and then zero in on the Nexus 6P is on sale!!
  • vladx - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    Wtf are you putting S808 in the same sentence with S810? S808 does very well, as shown by the LG G4 score in the tests. Even beats S6 in some.
  • Lbhati - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link

    @Brandon oneplus one never had ois. Please correct that.
  • albireox - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Is the reviewer actually aware that the much highlighted Oneplus One display had a yellow tint on a great number of batches sold by Oneplus? So is then relevant that the OnePlus One had better calibrated screen ?
    On the other hand, you seem to miss that Oneplus 2 has dual SIM functionality that isn't present in a lot of phones that you regard (and recommend) as better purchases?
  • Allan_Hundeboll - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    Some info in this review is wrong. OnePlus One do not have OIS but it does have a metal frame.
  • jabber - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    I was going to get the One Plus 2 but waited so long for an invite I just gave up and went on Amazon and bought a LG G4.

    The invite appeared the next day. I kind of thought it would. Too late guys. You lost a sale.

    I do not regret getting the G4. Great phone.
  • gg555 - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link

    This review demonstrates everything that I've always thought about OnePlus. It's all hype over substance.

    They do not make flagship phones (let alone flagship killers). They put a couple high end features in the phone, cut corners in many other places, try to distract and dazzle you with the high end features, and then sell you essentially a mid-range phone at a mid-range price, which is exactly what you should expect for the money.

    They also have engineering issues and not so great quality control. How they can have taken the already hobbled Snapdragon 810 and reduced it's performance even more, to the level of a budget phone like a Moto E (as the review says) is beyond comprehension. But still, they made a whole big promise about how they'd handled the 810s heat issues. Handled it by making the chipset worse than far inferior chipsets.

    If this is your budget range, you're far better off with a Moto X, which is a truly nice phone.
  • p51d007 - Tuesday, December 22, 2015 - link

    Not to mention out right LIES.
    "First to have a USB-C port"....yeah, the plug & jack are "USB-C" like, but the PORT itself is still USB-2. No support, buggy software, ghost touches.
    The X is a MUCH better phone. If you really really have your heart set on the 2 (personally, I'd pass), wait a few months for them to eventually work out the bugs. The OnePlus One is now not really a bad phone, but it took them nearly a year to get most of the bugs out.
    OnePlus, is nothing but the beta tester for Oppo. Every OnePlus phone, has a Oppo version that comes out later. The Oppo Find9, was SUPPOSE to be out at the end of this year, but feedback from the suckers who bought the OnePlus2, about the glitches with the overheating/underclocking, they've DELAYED the Find9 until next year and it will come out with the SD820 chip, NOT the 810 chip.
  • UtilityMax - Saturday, December 26, 2015 - link

    I have OPO since February, and it had been running pretty smooth. Fantastic smartphone for the money. Even today, it sort of makes sense given the price dropped $50 to $300 for 64GB version. One amazing thing about it is not just the great screen, camera and battery life, but also the reception. I must be living in an area with a sh1tty LTE coverage since all of our other smartphones work barely faster than 3GB (including iPhones), but the OPO, zOMG! The signal is like 10dbm better at all times, which results in very nice data benchmarks often slaughtering the broadband connection I have (used to be 20Mbps, now 40Mbps with Oneplus One getting that much over LTE)
  • UtilityMax - Saturday, December 26, 2015 - link

    I'd disagree with your comment. Both the OnePlus One and OnePlus X were a home run, but with a few small reservations. OnePlus One was well rounded and was at least 90% as good as any flagship phone, but sold for about half the typical price. Even today the 64GB Oneplus One probably remains the best $300 (with a few reservations, such as the store shows they're out of stock). And Oneplus X is basically a Oneplus One, but in a form factor and build quality that really should have been in Oneplus Two, and at $250 in the US, again it's one of the best phone for that price. The Oneplus Two may have its issues, but guess what.. all of the current crop of Android phones using Snapdragon 64-bit 808/810 SoCs have those issues.
  • Ashwith - Friday, December 25, 2015 - link

    Seems like the reviewer does not have much experience in reviewing nor regarding smartphone. These days we get to see reviewers dime a dozen and sadly most of them sucks like this one. There is no phone which is perfect and oneplus 2 has its list of cons which are many. But for the prize of $389/- it will give a stiff challenge to all other phones in that range. Only when you use 5X you will get to see that it does not stand a chance with Oneplus 2 and along with goes the credibility of this reviewer. S6 on the other hand does better in all departments. Cheers!
  • UtilityMax - Saturday, December 26, 2015 - link

    One great alternative is still the old good Oneplus One. Sold for 250/300 for the 16GB/64GB version respectively. Even today, it's still probably the best $300 smartphone, which is a testament to how well it was made. The only issue though is that it's out of stock at oneplus store...
  • blzd - Friday, January 1, 2016 - link

    Your experience reviewing and regarding smartphones is clearly inferior to that of the reviewers. Maybe one day you'll review a smartphone and not just try and justify your purchase decisions. Cheers!
  • Cloudane - Sunday, January 31, 2016 - link

    Yikes... what a slating. I just ordered one of these having seen other reviews and thinking they were good, starting to wonder about cancelling my order now :(
  • Cloudane - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link

    To follow up, I did cancel my OP2 order and bought a 5X. Whilst I think it was the right decision as I like to have the latest Android version ASAP, I think there's some anti Oneplus bias here and elsewhere. The 5X has the same issue with its SoC shutting down its faster cores and acting as a Moto G 95% of the time. Okay it doesn't deliberately shut them off in Chrome afaik (but seriously who's going to have the nerdiness to read something like this and not know how to install Chrome Beta or RBrowser?), but for example I play a fairly CPU intensive Gameloft game and after about 30 seconds the A57s go into meltdown and the game runs like treacle (i.e. like it's being played on a Moto G) until it's quit and left to cool off. Qualcomm Snapdragons are just crap, whatever they're enclosed in.
  • sa2016 - Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - link

    Hi, can you run test again with new ota update i.e oos 3.0.2

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