The latest smartphone from Chinese startup OnePlus is here… and it’s pretty much exactly what we were expecting thanks to a series of leaks in recent weeks. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, as the OnePlus 5 is a phone with most of the features you’d want from a 2017 flagship at a lower-than-flagship price.

But with a starting price of $479, the phone that much cheaper than the competition.

The OnePlus 5 features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, a 5.5 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel AMOLED display, support for up to 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage, and up to 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM.

It has a dual-camera system on the back, with a 16MP Sony IMX398 camera and a 20MP telephoto camera, allowing you to capture more light, adjust depth of field, and use 2X optical zoom.

There’s also a 16MP front-facing camera, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, and a 3,300 mAh battery. The phone supports 4G LTE Cat 12 networks. There’s a fingerprint sensor. And the phone supports fast charging using OnePlus’s Dash Charge system,.

There are a few features that make the OnePlus 5 stand out a bit from some other modern flagship phones. It doesn’t have a 2560 x 1440 pixel or higher-res display. It’s not waterproof. There’s no optical image stabilization. And it doesn’t have super-slim bezels or an ultra-wide display.

But the phone does have a headphone jack as well as a USB Type-C port. And the 1080p screen should be good enough for many users who are more interested in long battery life than using a phone in a VR headset.

The OnePlus 5 measures 7.25mm thick and has a design that looks… a lot like an iPhone. But it does have at least one extra button you won’t find on most Android or iOS devices: an alert slider button that lets you adjust which notifications you’ll receive. It’s a feature that OnePlus first introduced with the OnePlus 3 smartphone.

OnePlus also includes a few special software features including support for gestures such as three-finger swiping to capture a screenshot (and then tap a button to scroll down a page and save everything you see in the screenshot until you hit the button again to stop). You can also choose up to 5 different apps to launch with custom gestures.

There’s also a gaming mode that mutes notifications and temporarily disables soft keys to keep you from accidentally clicking the back, home, or recents buttons during a gaming session.

The Oneplus 5 is available in two configurations: a $479 model with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage and a $539 version with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Prices start at 499 Euros in Europe, and pre-orders open today in the US and Europe. The OnePlus 5 will be available globally starting June 27th.

 

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

4 replies on “Meet the OnePlus 5 smartphone (up for pre-order for $479)”

  1. 480 is kinda expensive, even if it does come with 6GB of DRAM. However, the unlocked version S8 can be obtained at Samsung currently with any working smartphone trade in (even crappy ones that you can buy on CL for $10-$20) for $425, and I think that’s a much better deal.

  2. >Hoping to have this phone for a long time

    Phones obsolete fairly fast, because new LTE bands are continually introduced. Despite the large number of bands 1+5 has, it’s missing B71 (600MHz). TMO spent nearly 10 billion on 600MHz spectrum for nationwide coverage, and it’s starting phased deployment starting this year. In 3 years, it’ll become TMO’s heavy-lift band, superceding B12. ATT spent a billion, so it’ll be in use there as well.

    Then there’s the 3.5GHz CBRS and 5GHz bands that will be used for 5G by all networks. They should go online in the same time frame.

    In other words, whatever you buy now will need to be replaced in 3 years, if you want to have optimal reception. It doesn’t matter how good quality your present phone is.

  3. Order the higher spec one. I figured $60 for 2x the storage makes some sense. Hoping to have this phone for a long time so I don’t mind investing a little more up front. I also like the “world phone” aspect. I don’t understand why more companies don’t just make one version that supports all bands like that.

  4. I wouldn’t want an Android phone with only 2GB of ram, but 8GB seems like overkill–or even 6GB. Odd they don’t have lower options at a lower price.

Comments are closed.