The OnePlus 5 has big shoes to fill; being the successor to the remarkably popular OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T, it needs to be better than its predecessors to gather the attention of OnePlus' niche fan base, while also patching up compromises and broadening the phone's appeal to capture new customers.
It's near impossible to not take into account every aspect of the OnePlus 3T when evaluating this new device. After all, there's only a little over half a year of a gap between them. While the OnePlus 3T improved upon the original OnePlus 3 in minor but surgical ways, this new offering from OnePlus is far broader in its changelog — luckily, almost every single relevant specification has been revised, with most (excluding some bullet points like battery capacity) being thoroughly modified for the better. This is most evident in OnePlus' newfound focus on image quality, forged through a collaboration with DxOMark and by borrowing key components from its parent company, Oppo. With a faster processor, copious amounts of power-efficient memory, minute changes all over internal hardware and, of course, a radical new and familiar design… has OnePlus been able to hit the mark? Or is the OnePlus 5 going to be living under the shadow of its successful predecessors?
Our XDA First Impressions features give you our thoughts and findings after our short time with a device, summarized in a lighter article than our full examination. Opinions expressed might change by the time our XDA Review arrives. If you have any questions about this device, or want to see something in the full review, leave a comment and let us know!
| Device Name: | OnePlus 5 | Price | U$D 479 |
| Android Version | 7.1.1 (Oxygen OS ROM) | Display | 5.5 inch 1080p AMOLED (401 ppi) |
| Chipset | Snapdragon 835: 10nm, Octa Core
4x 2.45GHz Kryo, 4x 1.9GHz Kryo, Adreno 540 GPU | Sensors | Fingerprint, Hail, Accelerometer, Gyroscope,
Proximity, Ambient Light, Electronic Compass, Sensor Hub |
| RAM | 6GB/8GB LPDDR4X | Battery | 3,300mAh; Dash Charge (5V 4A) |
| Storage | 64GB/128GB UFS 2.1 | Connectivity | USB 2.0 Type C, Dual nano-SIM slot, 3.5mm audio jack |
| Rear Camera | Dual Rear Camera:
16MP Sony IMX398, f/1.7, EIS
20MP Sony IMX350, f/2.6, Telephoto;
RAW support, 4K 30FPS / 720p 120FPS video | Front Camera | 16MP Sony IMX371, f/2.0, EIS, 1080p 30FPS video |
| Dimensions | 154.2 x 74.1 x 7.25 | Weight | 153g |
Design
The OnePlus 5's design is, of course, a controversial point of discussion given the reported similarity between this device and Apple's iPhone 7 Plus. You wouldn't be wrong in asserting that there is clear borrowing of Apple's design elements, most noticeable in the camera layout and the antennae arrangement. The location of and spacing between the cameras, middle hole and flash are near-identical to Apple's, and OnePlus also cleverly hid the antennae lines by integrating them into the top and bottom of the design, just like Apple did. The trick ultimately works out quite well, with the bands being of different color for different color options in order to best mask them. My only complaint is the diferrent resistance of the metal and the band can lead to scuffs and scratches not after too long, but that's a small nitpick considering most people protect their devices.
OnePlus' "hard edge" has been refined generation after generation, and while the device does look like an iPhone when looking at it directly from the back, the similarity quickly fades when rotating the device. Measuring at just 7.25mm, the OnePlus 5 is an extremely thin phone with the edges of the device sporting a curious curve into the back that is unconventional, but does help with overall comfort and grip. It's worth noting that the device is narrower than the OnePlus 3T, as well as thinner, but it's actually slightly taller, and that's strengthened by the fact that its top and bottom bezels are also not as sharp and more rounded. Other than that, the front of device looks about the same, and while press material might make it seem like there are no side bezels, that's just a clever illusion achieved through strategic use of 2.5D glass.
This phone's design is ultimately not a risk-taker, it's conservative in the sense that it keeps much of the company's design language while also imitating the back of a massively-imitated flagship. In fact, it doesn't take a genius to realise that the OnePlus 5's back plate is identical to that of the Oppo R11, suggesting it was Oppo's component sourcing and borrowed manufacturing techniques that ultimately had the most influence on the phone's design. OnePlus claims they did experiment with various arrangements of the back of the device, including attempts at centering the dual camera setup, and a recent feature by The Verge showed prototypes with different, more-original approaches to design. Ultimately they arrived to a look that's not very inventive, though also not bad looking at all. Considering that some of OnePlus' strongest markets also have customers that look up to the iPhone as a status symbol, it might not be a bad idea for them to go down this route. In the end, the device looks quite good and the array of official cases also give it a little more character, should you be willing to spend some additional money.
Performance
This is actually one of my favorites aspects of the OnePlus 5 — as frequent readers probably know by now, I am a performance fiend and it's one of the aspects of a phone I value the most. The OnePlus 3T was wicked-fast with a slew of optimizations in both hardware, software and even aesthetic designs to arrive at a speedy device. The OnePlus 5 comes with the inherent advantage that its specifications are just better in every way: a Snapdragon 835 at the right reference frequencies, 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM for the higher-end model (with this memory being 17% more power efficient over the previous package), and even UFS 2.1 storage that further aids app-opening speeds. We still have to do a full performance analysis, which you can expect sometime this week. It's worth reminding readers that the OnePlus 5 was caught manipulating benchmarks, so we are abstaining from publishing misleading results in this First Impressions, and doing any analysis from synthetic benchmarks until OnePlus addresses this issue.
The result is a very fast and smooth device that keeps some of the better strategies previous devices employed. For example, despite not using a Qualcomm-provided implementation for boosting frequencies while launching apps, the phone keeps maxing out clockspeeds in such occasions to ensure there are no bottlenecks (I was led to believe we wouldn't see this on the 8-core 835). The filesystem is still F2FS, which we showed to result in improved app opening speeds last year, especially benefiting heavier apps and 3D games where the improvements were shown to be up to twice as fast. Finally, the device is still designed with speed at the level of the user interface, with the same transitions making use of transparencies, and some other additions throughout the OS such as homescreen scrolling lowering the alpha of the app icons near the end of the page sidescroll. All of this come together to create a phone that not only feel fast, but that's also objectively smooth in day-to-day operation.
Don't expect to fill that bar.
That was reportedly something OnePlus focused on, making use of high-speed cameras and other tools to minimize touch latency and maximize responsiveness. I was assured that these improvements are ultimately related to software changes, though, and not a different digitizer implementation, but the result is very noticeable in general usage. Finally, the device does skip very few frames while scrolling through lists, putting ahead of the OnePlus 3T and remarkably close to the Pixel XL. Just like we saw last year, the 8GB of RAM aren't fully utilized on this device as the background process limit remains at 32, the same value they arrived to in an update to fix the OnePlus 3's memory management woes. So this device won't be much better at holding regular apps, though it'll be able to keep heavier services and games in RAM at once. OnePlus claims that the additional RAM is not necessarily something they expect users to make use of at this moment in time, and they see it as a way for developers to extend the potential of this device.
OxygenOS
In the past, we've commended OnePlus for providing a remarkable user experience with OxygenOS (once you look past the bugs and vulnerabilities), and that hasn't changed with the OnePlus 5. That's actually simply because OxygenOS itself hasn't really changed that much — it's the same ROM you'll find on the latest stable builds for the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T, with some features from beta builds, and a handful but very minor exclusive features. All in all, it's the same experience with just a tiny couple of cosmetic changes (mostly relegated to the launcher) and a few additional features that not only can you live without, but you'll likely find on your device anyway, one way or another (more on that below).
So what are these new features, exactly? First things first, we find a revamped launcher that you'll undoubtedly be able to use, officially or not, on your OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T should you have one. For the most part, nothing changes here You can still swipe down to access notifications/quick settings, the OnePlus Shelf is still there and works like it always has, and you can choose different icon packs as well. With the OnePlus 5 coming with Android 7.1.1 by default, we see shortcut menus when long-pressing icons and the ability to drag menu entries and create shortcut icons as well. The ability to swipe up to quick search is gone, though, and for a very good reason: the app drawer has been replaced from the traditional icon to one that's hidden behind a swipe-up motion, like on the Pixel Launcher. There's a subtle transparency to the app drawer as well. Other than the launcher and some tiny adjustments to icon proportions around the UI, OxygenOS looks and feels the same.
There is some new and "exclusive" (for now) functionality in here, though. One such feature is reading mode, which you can enable for certain apps (meant for reading-intensive ones) in order to adjust the color temperature of the screen in accordance to the lighting around you, in order to make the screen as pleasing to read as possible, giving it the appearence of a kindle or an e-paper display. On a conversation with a OnePlus representative, I was informed that this isn't merely a software change, though the spokesperson wasn't able to go into details. It works well, for what it's worth, and while it's not something that's necessarily new (Apple advertised a similar feature for their iPad Pro, though not to make it look like an e-paper and simply to adjust the tone of the screen), it's still a rather exclusive feature that goes beyond other, loosely-similar features light night mode (which is also automatic on the OnePlus 5). Night mode on the OnePlus 5 also works not just according to time ranges, but the lighting of the environment. 
The Weather app is one of the minimal and functional experiences I like about OxygenOS
Then there's Gaming Do Not Disturb Mode from the OxygenOS betas, which you can enable on specific apps (and not just games) to disable hardware keys to prevent accidental input, as well as heads-up notifications that might distract you from your activity. You can control it through the notification menu and also set it to trigger automatically in the apps you chose. With the OnePlus 3T, the company had introduced app locking, and now they expand that functionality with Secure Box, with is a specific folder found in the File Manager that's encrypted and is only accessible by a 6-digit PIN or fingerprint, and it's hidden from the phone storage. Finally, there are some small changes here and there, like three new gestures ('S', 'M', 'W'') and the ability to tie them to any app/activity, customizable vibration with three intensity settings and different vibration patterns, and expanded screenshots (well, this isn't actually new, but still cool and worth mentioning).
Camera
I am still assessing the camera capabilities of the OnePlus 5 and I'll be saving my complete judgment for the full review coming in the next few weeks. As I learned in an interview with Carl Pei, camera quality was a focus point of OnePlus' ongoing efforts and we see this fully materialize with the OnePlus 5, which sports a dual-camera setup of 16MP+20MP with the main sensor being the Sony IMX 398, a piece of hardware developed by Sony exclusively for Oppo that has now made it to the OnePlus 5. To go alongside the dual camera setup that aims to provide better optical zoom and improved bokeh shots, the company has added some exclusive camera features and revamped the camera UI as well. Below you can see a comparison between devices.
Portrait mode allows you to take "professional looking" pictures with a solid bokeh effect, not unlike what many companies have been offering recently but specially not too different from Apple's solution in their dual-camera iPhone 7 Plus. It works quite well and there are other adjustments made besides the background blurring, as lighting and color temperature are adjusted as well to make a nicer-looking portrait picture. It's not done simply through software like on other devices, and as such there is no odd blurring of the edges. Then there's Pro Mode, now more intuitive and feature-packed than the "manual" mode of previous OxygenOS offerings. It can do everything you expect such mode to do, including adjusting ISO, white balance, shutter speed, focus points, exposure, it can capture in RAW, it features a nifty histogram and you can save your settings too in different presets.
All photos taken with auto mode, auto-HDR enabled, same focus point in every picture.
| OnePlus 3T | OnePlus 5 | Pixel XL |
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