Wednesday 12 October 2016 6:37 pm

OnePlus 3 review: This Chinese-made phone is one of the best non-exploding Android handset on the market

If you can keep your head, wrote Mister Kipling, while all around you phones are literally catching fire and exploding, then you can pretty much claim the Android throne unimpeded, my son.

The new OnePlus 3 is, for its price (and for prices a great deal higher too), one of the best non-exploding Android phones on the market.

This is the first time the Chinese manufacturer has ditched its shortsighted “invite” method of selling phones – you can now buy one directly, or on contract from O2 – and problems with previous versions of the phone have been thoroughly addressed. There’s now NFC for contactless payments, no issues with overheating, a highly tuned and bloat-free OS, and much improved build quality.

Dash Charge can give you seven hours battery life with just a half hour of charging, which feels a bit like magic. The camera falls just short of the class-leading iPhone 7, but holds its own with manual controls and more than decent picture quality.

And it’s mind-smearingly fast. The Oxygen OS takes stock Android software and optimises it even further, squeezing every last transistor’s worth of efficiency out of the hardware while adding a few neat tricks, such as lock screen gestures. With O2 selling the phone in stores too, after-sales support is no longer a mission.

With the 3, OnePlus has come of age, producing an Android handset that rivals leading flagships.

OnePlus 3 Specs

Dimensions: 152.7 x 74.7 x 7.35 mm
Weight: 158 g
Material: Anodised aluminum
Operating System: OxygenOS based on Android Marshmallow
CPU: Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 820 Quad Core, Kryo™: 2x 2.2 GHz, 2x 1.6 GHz
GPU: Adreno 530
RAM: 6GB LPDDR4
Storage: 64GB UFS 2.0
Ports: USB 2.0, Type-C, Dual nano-SIM slot, 3.5 mm audio jack
Battery: 3,000 mAh (non-removable)