OnePlus 6 Review Part 3: The small things

Not so long ago, we put the OnePlus 6 against the recently released Pocophone F1 in a performance showdown, which revealed a rather surprising verdict. In this part, we will discuss the OnePlus 6’s software, battery life, and audio as well as other less noticeable aspects that make for the whole experience.

Audio

OnePlus was never known for their focus on the audio experience of their devices. And this year is no different. For starters, the OnePlus 6 sports a standard, mono speaker situated on the bottom like its predecessor with no tricks up its sleeves. In a year where even a $300 phone has stereo speakers, having a phone with a single bottom firing speaker sounds a bit too lame. Not to mention that this year’s edition sounds a bit tinnier and more muffled than last year’s OnePlus 5T. Part of that is caused by OnePlus’ endeavors to make the OnePlus 6 waterproof, despite lacking an official IP rating.

Luckily, OnePlus kept the jack alive on the bottom next to the USB-C port, though those who spared their money for the upcoming 6T will probably have to mourn for it. Still, I didn’t feel that encouraged to plug it into my modest sub-woofer.

On the upside, there was not that much noise or any sort of distortion to complain about even at max volume. However, the audio output retained a rather weak sound profile. While loudness wasn’t that much of an issue, it sounded a bit too feeble for my taste, lacking the oomph some of its predecessors used to have, such as the OnePlus 5 and even the older OnePlus 3 and 3T.

I wouldn’t deem the experience a complete failure, most of the average people won’t really notice my complaints. For those who have invested in a wired pair of high-impedance headphones, however, this phone doesn’t get the green light.

Software

The OnePlus 6 ships with Android Oreo out of the box, featuring OxygenOS—OnePlus’ own skin on top. OnePlus never ceased to amaze with its clean and intuitive software experience. Unlike some of the other manufacturers, OxygenOS is arguably the closest to the “Stock Android” baseline, with a few nifty features to fill in the gaps Google left behind.

However, this year OnePlus stepped up its game quite a bit, with the OnePlus 6 being one of the very few non-Google handsets that support Google’s Android P Developer Preview program. Not only that, OnePlus was the second manufacturer to update its newest flagship to Android Pie, only beaten by Essential. It took them just 46 days to iron out all the bugs and push OxygenOS 9.0 through the stable channel. Of course, Essential’s endeavors makes OnePlus’ efforts look a bit lame. But then, Essential’s software is a bit more barebones and therefore requires less work.

Other than that, it is the same OxygenOS experience you get on any older OnePlus phone, with a few exceptions. Gaming Do Not Disturb continues to be my most favorite feature, especially after the improvements it received in the latest Android Pie update. Now you have the option to have your notifications displayed in a much more convenient way. Instead of completely blocking the notifications, OnePlus has included the option to only display the text instead of having a massive Heads Up card sliding in from the top while playing. I am still not sure if I would choose that over entirely blocking my notifications while playing on my phone, but I am sure some people will find that more useful.

Do Not Disturb mode is now managed independently through the software instead of the alert slider. This seemingly subtle change now allows you to switch to Vibrate mode while Do Not Disturb is switched on. OnePlus veterans will relate to the struggle. With Android Pie, you can configure how your phone behaves when Do Not Disturb mode is activated, including the option to block Google’s slightly intrusive Heads Up notifications from popping on your screen.

This is by far one of the most radical changes that I actually enjoy. Having that control over your notifications should be the norm on Android honestly—I don’t really enjoy having half of my screen buried by a notification card while watching YouTube. Once again, OxygenOS comes to the rescue with its garnish of really cool features that just add up to the whole experience without getting in the way. It’s just that type of convenience and simplicity that makes me one of the fans of OnePlus’ software, despite some of its shortcomings which we will get to in a second.

Another thing worth mentioning is how OnePlus adopted the small notch on the top. Not only did OnePlus prevented the notch from being too intrusive—you have to get out of your way to force the notch to take some of your screen space while watching YouTube for instance—but also offered the option to leverage that AMOLED screen to cleverly conceal it. The downside is that overlay apps like Energy Bar, an app that displays your battery level in the form of a thin strip on top of the screen, gets completely nuked since it’s displayed on top of the status bar. And even if you don’t hide the notch, this is one of the very few moments where the notch gets in the way, literally and figuratively.

Fortunately, with Android Pie came Google’s native solution to adopt all notches seamlessly, which moved the thin battery bar down to the bottom of the status bar. Still, OnePlus deserves an applause for their efforts, even if they were eventually superseded by Google’s own solution.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all rosy with OxygenOS. For starters, OnePlus weirdly decided to do away with the fingerprint gestures altogether, meaning that you can no longer swipe down on the rear fingerprint scanner to drop down the notifications shade. More annoyingly, the app I used to work my way around that bizarre decision has been plagued with compatibility issues after the Android Pie update.

Second on my list is the navigation controls. While OnePlus’ navigation work fantastically, I can’t say the same when switching to the native gesture controls in Android Pie. Swiping the pill to the right often switches to the second last application instead. And if you decided to switch between the apps by sliding the pill in the Recent Apps view, the phone suddenly feels like it has a mind of its own.

Last but not the least is the way OnePlus treats background services. It still sounds weird to mention that as a complaint when having 8 gigs of RAM on board, but it is an issue that has started to become more evident especially after the Android Pie update. I am not entirely sure whether I should point my fingers at OnePlus or Google at this point—the latter has included a new feature called Adaptive mode. But my experience with Android Oreo has been very similar, which makes me convinced to blame the former.

A victim of this obnoxiously aggressive memory management is Slack, where I open the app out of pure curiosity to find myriads of delayed notifications from nearly every workspace. I even missed out on a lot of messages from my friends on Facebook’s Messenger app and Hangouts app. This is not a small issue to turn my blind eye to, and I would like to see OnePlus not only acknowledging the issue but also putting it very high on their priority list. If OnePlus wants to implement a hardcoded watchdog-like functionality, at least it shouldn’t be that invasive. A notification or a prompt before axing any apps going rogue would be much more convenient.

Battery life

In a world where a $300 phone with 4000mAh in tow exists, having ‘only’ a 3300mAh battery sounds lame. And when you factor in the fact that this is the exact same capacity of the battery inside last year’s phones, you kinda look at your precious OnePlus 6 in grief. You won’t feel as disappointed as some might have felt when moving from the OnePlus 3T to the OnePlus 5 or 5T—that transition saw a slight reduction in battery size. But every time a friend of yours flashes his Pocophone F1, which will probably happen more than you wish considering how affordable it is, you will only look at him with sheer envy and jealousy.

My experience in this particular area has been a mixed bag. In some days, topping up my phone in the afternoon was the obvious smarter decision, especially when leaving LTE always on. But more often I find myself not in a hurry to go home to charge my phone. Idle drain on this phone was indeed very worrisome—I had to take drastic measures if I had a long day at the university like switching off mobile data or lowering the brightness a little bit.

Fortunately, that wasn’t a concern anymore after updating my phone to Android Pie. While I didn’t notice any improvements in power consumption while using the phone—I still see the same screen-on time figures—the phone now drains noticeably less juice while idling, even when leaving LTE and WiFi always enabled. Over a total time of 8 hours with the phone connected to the WiFi at home overnight, the OnePlus constantly drops only 3% of its battery. To put things into perspective, that’s the same battery drain rate of the OnePlus 6 on Oreo with flight mode enabled.

Gaming endurance on this phone is okay. You can’t expect that much from a phone with a relatively small battery inside. Playing a game of PUBG will not fully deplete your phone’s battery while you are out and about. However, bringing your Dash Charger around will be nothing short of wise if you intend to kill your time with a PUBG game with your friends.

Verdict

Once again, OnePlus’ latest flagship gives its more pricey contenders a serious run for their money. With the OnePlus 6, the design is no longer an uninspiring copycat of other devices. It also boasts arguably one of the finest OLED panels on any smartphone right now, despite coming ‘only’ at 1080p resolution. Even in the camera department, where OnePlus’ cost-cutting usually shows, the OnePlus 6 takes photos of comparable quality even to phones that cost nearly twice as much. And just like its predecessors, performance is not something to worry about, given how light the software is.

But this year OnePlus is not alone in the arena of the so-called flagship killers. Xiaomi decided to give OnePlus a taste of its own medicine with the Pocophone F1. Not only does it have the same Snapdragon 845 chipset and plentiful RAM, but it also has a bigger battery and a more reliable infrared-assisted Face Unlock implementation. Not to mention Xiaomi’s water-cooling implementation which helps keep the phone a tad cooler under heavy workloads.

However, Xiaomi had to cut the corners more aggressively to sell the Pocophone F1 for that cheap. For starters, the marvelous glass-and-metal design is swapped with a much cheaper plastic construction. The OLED panel is traded with an IPS one, with a much bigger notch and comically rounded corners. Xiaomi has also decided to ditch NFC and skimp on HD playback support on Amazon Prime and Netflix. Not to mention that MIUI is an unsubtle detraction from the stock Android theme the OnePlus 6 retains.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to what you prioritize when splashing your cash on your new phone. But if you are looking for a phone that looks, feels and performs just like a premium phone, the OnePlus 6 is the obvious choice.

Featured-Image: Tech Advisor