New OnePlus 5 Reveals a Major Truth about Premium Smartphones, Currently Ready to Pre-Order

OnePlus 5

The OnePlus 5 comes in at the bottom of the premium smartphone segment; or, put another way, the high-end of the mid-range segment. Either way, the OnePlus 5 comes packed with some cool premium features, but it is the missing features that reveal a great truth about premium smartphones.

OnePlus 5 is currently available to pre-order, and will be generally available about a week from now, on June 27, 2017. Priced at $479 for the base model, it costs significantly less than the entry-level iPhone 7 ($644) and the base model Galaxy S8 ($719.) In terms of features, it does sport some premium – and very useful – elements.

One of these is the silent switch, which you won’t find on any Android phone at the moment. That’s an iPhone feature they’ve used on the OnePlus 5, and it lets you put your device on silent mode without having to wake your phone screen.

The Dash Charging feature is another useful premium benefit. But it’s even better than fast charging on the Galaxy S8 because it still charges fast when you’re using the phone. That means you don’t have to interrupt what you’re doing just to do a quick top-up. The best part is that it doesn’t heat up when you’re charging and using the phone at the same time.

The fingerprint scanner is one of the fastest on the market, on almost any phone. OnePlus 5’s makers say that they is a 0.2-second lag before it reacts, but that’s barely perceptible and feels instantaneous.

The camera is probably the other great premium feature. The telephoto zoom helps maintain detail when you zoom in, and the dual camera sensors allow you to take portrait shots with the bokeh effect that iPhone 7 Plus can deliver.

All of these make it a kickass mid-range device, but when you look at a lot of the features it does NOT have, you realize that those are features you might not miss that much anyway.

Take, for example, the narrow bezels on the upcoming iPhone 8 and on the Galaxy S8. Or the curved OLED screen or iris scanning or wireless charging or a virtual home button or any of those things.

When you think about it, it’s better to be paying $150 to $250 less for a phone that has all the premium and useful essentials, but without the bells and whistles that add to the retail price.

That phone is definitely the OnePlus 5. It has ‘just enough’ features to make it feel like a premium phone, but you’re not paying hundreds of dollars more for stuff that’s not absolutely necessary anyway.

The makers of OnePlus 5 seem to have found the right balance of features versus cost with this product. It’s hard to recommend any other Android device, except for Google Pixel because OS updates are available immediately after being released.

Even the Galaxy S8 seems far too pricy for the kind of superfluous features it has, like iris scanning that’s not entirely reliable. As for iPhone 8 that’s coming later this year, there’s simply no contest. Buyers with the money might go for a $1,000 iPhone, but it doesn’t bring that much to the table on top of what OnePlus 5 offers.

If you’re “brand-conscious” then you’ll probably want to go with Samsung or Apple or even Google. But if all you’re after is pure premium functionality without the embellishments, then OnePlus 5 is a smartphone that you absolutely must consider before buying anything.

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Source: Business Insider