(instrumental music)
- This is the One Plus 6, it's the latest
in a line of Android phones that
have steadily gotten better year over year.
Now before we get into this, we see you guys
have been commenting, we know you've been asking
for it for a long time, so we're shooting this in 4K.
So, if you want the best video quality,
maybe bump your resolution up to 4K, cool?
(jazz music)
Okay, so, if you're familiar with One Plus,
then most of what comes with the One Plus 6
is probably a known quantity.
But if you're not, here's what that quantity is.
A One Plus phone has high-end specs,
a big screen, a clean Android software experience
and it comes with a price that's considerably less
than other high-end Android phones
with similar specs and features.
Now nothing about that changes with the One Plus 6,
but it also means, on the other side of the coin,
that nothing changes about the other things
that are known quantities with a One Plus either.
It still isn't gonna work with Verizon or Sprint,
it still doesn't have the best camera you can get
and it's still not completely water resistant.
Overall, the One Plus 6 is a lot like
the last few One Plus phones.
It offers a great experience for a price
that's hundreds of dollars less
than a similar size Samsung or Pixel.
(upbeat jazz music)
Here's the headline info you're looking for,
for a starting price of $529,
you get a 6.3 inch edge-to-edge screen,
a Snapdragon E45 processor,
a glass and metal design,
extremely fast, fast charging,
6 gigabytes of RAM and 64 gigs of storage,
Android 8.1 with some thoughtful,
not annoying additions, and a dual camera system
that's capable of all the latest portrait effects
and slow motion video trends.
You can also spend more to upgrade the RAM and storage
but you'll still be spending substantially less
than you would on say, a Pixel 2 XL.
Now the most noticeable change from older One Plus phones
is a switch to a design with glass on the front and the back
which makes the One Plus 6 look like basically
every other phone to come out this year.
Now I think it looks great, until I touch it
and then it becomes a fingerprint magnet,
especially on the glossy version.
There's a matte finish model that is much nicer looking
and helps hide those fingerprints,
but at the same time it's much more slippery
to hold than the already pretty slippery glossy phone,
which might lead to a shattered glass phone
sooner rather than later.
Then the other big change is the screen
is even larger than the six inch display
on One Plus' last phone.
(jazz music)
Now that's mostly because the screen now reaches
the very top of the phone's frame,
except for a cutout in the middle
that houses the earpiece, front camera,
proximity sensor and notification light.
So yeah, it has a notch, but frankly,
I don't really care and I don't have a problem with it.
The notch means that I have more vertical space
to read something on my phone whether
that's email or messages or tweets,
or use split screen multitasking
or whatever else I want to do with the phone.
And One Plus is able to make this bigger screen fit
in here without making the phone any bigger
than it was last year which means that I get
more screen in the same size phone,
that's a trade-off I'm willing to make any day of the week.
Now there are a couple of things to be aware of
with the One Plus 6's notch.
I have yet to encounter an app that didn't work
as I expected because of it being there,
but it does mean that the battery percentage
is hidden until you swipe down
to see your notifications.
It also means that if you have a lot of icons
for Wifi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb, NFC or whatever,
it can get pretty crowded pretty quickly up there.
But One Plus does let you toggle a lot of these off
if you don't want them to display.
And if you really hate that full lead look,
you can opt to black out the background of the notch
so all of your apps just fill just out below it.
Honestly, I think this mode looks worse
and I've never really felt a need to obscure
the notch's existence.
Now other than it's larger size,
this year's panel isn't much different than before.
It's 1080p pixels wide, it's oled,
it's got deep colors and vibrant blacks.
It doesn't get as bright and it doesn't have
as many pixels as a Samsung screen
but it's still easy to read outdoors
and I haven't seen any major
color shifting problems or issues.
(upbeat music)
Now handling the One Plus 6 is a lot like holding
other similar size, mostly glass phones.
And most of the times, it feels like it's too big,
especially if I'm trying to do something with one hand.
Now most of the premium phones give you a choice
of sizes, whether that's the S9 or the iPhone 8
or the Pixel 2, you can choose between a small
or a large version which let's you decide
between having a big screen or having a phone
that fits more comfortably in your hand.
But with the One Plus 6, it's only available
in one size and that size is big.
Now performance-wise, the One Plus 6 is really fast
which isn't a huge surprise considering
it's got a top of the line processor and lots of RAM.
But One Plus has done a number of things under the hood
to make it feel even faster than other phones,
whether that's optimizing background processes
or just kinda speeding up animation
so everything happens a millisecond or two faster.
The result is that the phone feels like it's really fast
and it just powers through everything
without really feeling like it's ever running out of steam.
For stamina, the big 3300 Milli-Ampere Hour power battery
in the One Plus 6 means it's able
to keep going for a full day of use
for me without much of an issue.
Now it doesn't have wireless charging
even though it has that glass back now,
but One Plus' dash charger is basically
the fastest wired charging option you can get
so topping up the battery is never really
a chore or a hassle.
(soothing music)
So let's talk about this camera
because traditionally that's where One Plus phones
can't quite match up to the bigger players.
Now on paper, the One Plus 6 has
an upgraded camera, it's got bigger pixels
and it has optical image stabilization.
There's a 16 mega pixel main sensor
that handles most of the heavy lifting,
and then there's a 20 megapixel secondary sensor
that adds more detail and enables portrait-style effects.
Now if you compare the One Plus 6 versus the One Plus 5
or 5T from last year, it's definitely an improvement.
There's more detail and less noise
and images are brighter especially in low light.
And the portrait mode is just as gimmicky as before
and even though it's nice to have slow motion
in the video recording now,
I don't really see myself ever using it.
But if you stack the One Plus 6 camera
against the newer phone like the Samsung S9
or the Pixel 2XL or even the Huawei P20 Pro
unfortunately it doesn't hold up.
And none of this is to say that the camera is bad,
it's actually pretty good, especially for the price you pay.
But it's definitely the thing where you see
the biggest difference between the One Plus 6
and more expensive phones.
(techno music)
Now for software, the One Plus 6 is running Oxygen OS
which is One Plus' take on Android
and it's running 8.1 Oreo in this case.
Mostly, it looks really similar to what
you find on a Google Pixel phone.
It's clean and it's easy to use
without a bunch of gimmicky things getting in the way.
But there's a couple of neat things that I wanna point out.
First is a gesture control system that you can use
in place of the standard Android onscreen buttons.
I really like this idea because it lets
my content make full use of the display
and stretch all the way to the bottom,
but unfortunately the gestures are not
as smooth or as fluid as on an iPhone 10
and they could use a good amount of work.
I really hope One Plus keeps working on this.
A second is a reading mode which shifts
the display to a monochrome appearance
and it mimics an eReader or Kindle.
It makes reading long articles or eBooks much nicer
and you can even have it turned on or off automatically
depending on what app you're using.
There are some other hardware features
worth mentioning, too.
The One Plus 6 has something that you won't find
on any other Android phone.
It has a physical switch to move between ring,
vibrate and fully silent modes.
It's something I wish more phone makers would adopt.
And there's two easy ways to unlock the One Plus 6.
You can use your finger or your face.
The face unlock is not as secure,
but it's super convenient and fast.
And then for some reason, One Plus removed
the swipe gestures on the fingerprint scanner
that reveal the notification shake,
which seems like a minor thing,
but honestly it's annoyed me the entire time
I've used the phone.
The One Plus 6 also still has a headphone jack
which is great if you don't want to deal
with wireless headphones or Bluetooth in your car.
And for speakers, it has a loud and clear
single speaker at the bottom.
But it doesn't have the even better dual speaker set-ups
that many other phones offer at this point.
And while One Plus claims that the 6 is splash resistant,
it doesn't have any proper water resistant ratings,
so it can't be fully submerged or truly get wet.
It's okay if you're out in the rain,
but don't go dropping it in a pool.
(drumming music)
So that's a One Plus 6, it's everything we've come
to expect from a One Plus phone,
but it doesn't really change the conversation.
Now it's still a great value and it still has most
all the features you'd want on a high-end 2018 Android phone
and it doesn't have any annoying things
like AI everywhere or dedicated buttons
for a virtual assistant you don't wanna use
or weird squeezing interfaces that just
are kind of gimmicky and get in the way.
But at the same time, if you're on Verizon or Sprint
or maybe you want the best camera you can get,
or maybe you want a phone that you don't have
to worry about if you drop it in the sink,
or maybe you just want something that isn't enormous,
then the One Plus 6 probably isn't for you.
But for everyone else, the One Plus 6 is pretty great.
Hey, thanks for watching and a special shout-out
to Ernesto Alonso who made this really cool wallpaper
you saw in this video.
You can download it at the link below and be sure
to check out our new Verge Art Instagram page.
It's got all of our cool custom wallpapers there.