In front of me I have the newest phone from the company One Plus. This is the One Plus
3. I've previously tested the One Plus 2 and the One Plus X. Both of which survived my
durability tests... lets see what happens with this new design... which is supposedly
carved out of a single slab of aluminum.
[Intro]
The One Plus 3 was bigger than I anticipated. It is the same size as my Galaxy S7 Edge.
After admiring the reflective logo on the back... lets jump into the scratch test. It
does come with a preinstalled plastic screen protector. So I will remove that. I have a
set of picks that tell me where the hardness of the screen falls on Mohs Scale of Hardness.
Each pick has a different material on the tip. The OnePlus 3 has Gorilla Glass 4 on
the screen. So its no surprise that the glass does not scratch until a level 6. A much deeper
groove is left with a level 7 pic. But this is normal, and on par with most every other
smart phone that doesn't have a plastic screen, like the Galaxy S7 active.
The home button is made of ceramic which is awesome. If you remember on my Galaxy S7,
and LGG5 scratch tests, Both of those have plastic home buttons that can scratch easily.
The Galaxy S7 Active even scratched to the point of not working anymore. That wont be
a problem with this OnePlus 3. There are zero scratches. Which means the fingerprint scanner
can last longer. Thumbs up for ceramic!
The 16 megapixel rear camera lens is made of glass. So even though it protrudes out
of the back of the phone a little, it is resistant to normal scratches. Unlike the plastic camera
lenses of the Z5 Premium and the Blackberry Priv. Clear pictures are always important.
Onto that solid slab of premium aluminum. The phone is pure metal, so there is no thick
coating of primer or plastic like you'll see on the LGG5. And you can feel it. The phone
is cold to the touch. I tried scratching the reflective logo, to see if it would pop out
like the Lumia 950 XL or the Nexus 6, but it is very well embedded into the rear metal.
So it wont be falling out on its own. So far this device is a champion.
The volume buttons, alert slider, power button and even the sim card trey are all made of
metal. So there wont be any warping of plastic buttons like we saw with the old Evo phones.
Even the speaker grill is made of metal. Little things like that add up when making a quality
phone. OnePlus did not skimp on materials.
Onto the flame test. One Plus 3 went with an AMOLED Screen for this device. Lets see
how it holds up to the extreme heat. The Galaxy S7 Edge lasted 14 seconds before turning white
and not recovering. As you saw at the beginning of this video, it has a permanent white spot
on the screen. The OnePlus 3 also made it 14 seconds before the pixels turned white.
But after removing the heat, the screen slowly recovered and went back to normal. It was
cool to the touch within seconds.
Onto the bend test. While putting this much pressure on a phone at one time, most likely
wont happen in every day life. It does tell us if the phone will survive any extreme accidents.
AND all of the test together will show us what the phone will look like after 2 years
of abuse. Cell phones are realistically the most abused pieces of technology on the planet.
So, If you haven't subscribed yet, I would recommend it. It's free! And insures that
you wont be buying a cheap phone in the future.
The bend test scared me at first, because the screen popped out of the frame. But even
after exerting a lot of pressure, the phone still wouldn't snap. Remember that I have
tested over 25 phones now. 4 of them snapped catastrophically. But the rest survived. The
OnePlus 3 is a survivor. Even after bending both directions, the front and back, there
is no permanent damage. The best part is that there is no kinks in metal frame either. Some
of the Huawei phones would have permanent damage or kinks next to the power or volume
buttons, after a hard flex. But The one plus three can be straightened out to look just
like new.
Ill open up the phone during my tear-down and repair video to see whats inside and how
to repair everything. Its fun to analyze tech from the inside.
From a durability and build quality perspective. This is one of my favorite phones so far this
year. I did do a behind the scenes snap story of the durability test on this phone. I'll
also be snapping the tear down process. So if you are into disappearing videos... head
on over to my snap chat. I hope to see you around! Thanks for watching.