Sony Xperia X Performance review: $700 worth of disappointment
Oh, Sony. The company has tried time and again to craft a smartphone that would find success in the US, and time and again it has fallen short. But when Sony pulled back the curtain on a batch of new Xperia X’s at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, I allowed myself to get a little excited. Maybe these were the right phones at the right time, I thought, and maybe a company whose products I otherwise respected would find the foothold it was looking for. After being underwhelmed by the standard Xperia X last month, I still held out hope that the high-end Xperia X Performance would be the phone Sony needed.
Long story short, it’s not. Don’t get me wrong: It’s a serviceable device, and in many ways it’s actually very nice. The thing is, a $700 smartphone should be able to deliver some modicum of excitement to the person who owns it; the X Performance mostly just leaves me cold.
Hardware
Even though the X Performance is the most high-end of the four Xperia phones Sony plans to launch in the US, you wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at it. In fact, do yourself a favor: Don’t put an Xperia X Performance down next to a regular Xperia X, because you’d probably never tell them apart. From the 5-inch, IPS LCD display up front to the 23-megapixel camera around back, these two devices are nearly identical. Well, until you spill a drink on them, at least. The X Performance picks up where previous Sony flagships left off with an IP68-rated chassis that helps it shrug off dust and water with ease, even when you stick it under a soda machine and let sticky stuff like Coke fly.
Beyond that (and as the name implies) we’re basically looking at an Xperia X with a faster quad-core Snapdragon 820. That has its ups and downs, though: The chipset, paired with 3GB of RAM, gives the X Performance flagship-level horsepower, but the phone still suffers from some irritating design quirks. For one, you’d think a modern flagship phone — one that costs $700, no less — would have a fingerprint sensor for quick and easy authentication. Nope! The international version has one, but we Americans have to do without. Meanwhile, the placement of the volume buttons beneath the sleep/wake button on the right edge just seems dumb. Unless you’re a professional finger contortionist, it’s really difficult to hold the X Performance in your right hand and turn the volume down. It might be a mainstay of Sony’s “OmniBalance” design language, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a bad idea.
It’s not all frustrating, though. The X Performance’s fit and finish are lovely, and there’s something alluringly … friendly about its look. There’s a physical, two-stage camera button sitting below those tricky volume keys, and it’s generally a joy to use. On the other edge is a SIM/microSD card tray you can pull out with just your fingernail, instead of having to rely on a paper clip you had to scrounge for. That tray, by the way, will take memory cards as big as 200GB, which is helpful, since 12GB of the X Performance’s 32GB storage allotment is eaten up by system software. Since the X Performance comes with a more powerful processor, it has a bigger battery than the normal X too, if only just. Think: 2,700mAh instead of 2,620mAh.
Display and sound
I liked this 5-inch, 1080p IPS LCD screen when I first saw it on the Xperia X, and my feelings about it haven’t changed. It’s a generally great panel, capable of bright, vivid colors and deep blacks. We have the one-two punch of Sony’s Triluminos display tech and its X-Reality engine to thank for those colors, though you have the option to tweak the screen’s white balance and saturation settings if the defaults aren’t your speed.
While the screen Sony used hasn’t changed, though, the context around that display couldn’t be more different. A 1080p panel is fine for an ostensibly mid-range phone like the Xperia X, but some of the most impressive flagships we’ve seen this year came with Quad HD displays. Remember, this is a phone that costs $700 — if Sony could squeeze an honest-to-goodness 4K screen into the Z5 Premium, why couldn’t it have tried to at least match its competitors with a screen running at 2,560 x 1,440?
Resolution aside, I really can’t complain about the X Performance’s screen. The speakers, on the other hand, leave a little more to be desired. There are two drivers baked into the Xperia’s face for stereo sound, and most of the time audio comes out clear, if a little spacious. The phone’s maximum volume falls short of some competitors’ too — though, really, you probably weren’t going to use this thing to run your next party playlist anyway. Curiously enough, you can make up for that lack of oomph a bit by putting it down on a table instead of holding it. Seriously! A selection of show tunes I played seemed noticeably meatier when the X Performance was sitting face up on a wooden table. Or, you know, you could just plug in a pair of headphones. If you do, you’ll be prompted to go through an “automatic optimization” process that didn’t seem to do much during my week of testing.
Software
While earlier Xperia phones didn’t receive software updates in a timely manner, there’s nothing to worry about here: The X Performance ships with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. As usual, it’s obscured somewhat by Sony’s custom interface, and it can be pretty damn polarizing. For the most part, I’m fond of Sony’s use of bold colors and minimal changes to the core Android experience. Those changes aren’t minimal enough for some, though; my new colleague Cherlynn is no fan of Sony’s changes, stylistic or otherwise. Sure, you’ll have to contend with a few widgets enabled out of the box, but for the most part Sony has done well staying out of Android’s way. My only real gripe: Swiping right in the app launcher brings up a search screen with recommendations for apps you should download, and some of them are sponsored. Ugh.
That’s not to say the X Performance doesn’t come with extras. The upside to Sony’s not having an overbearing carrier partner this time around is that there’s no carrier bloatware in sight. Instead, the few pre-loaded apps here are welcome additions: The SwiftKey keyboard is enabled by default, for one, and the PlayStation app is there for those who want to control their PS4’s. Still, you also get an undeletable copy of AVG Protection that you’ll probably never use, and a Sony app called Sketch lets you doodle on photos you’ve taken. Why did we need this? It’s a mystery for the ages. If it were up to me, all high-end Android phones would just ship with stock Android. Since that obviously will never happen, we’ll have to keep dealing with custom UIs painted on top of Android. At least Sony’s is among the least troublesome.
Camera
As mentioned, the Xperia X Performance has the same cameras as the bog-standard Xperia X, which means it has the same issues too. First, the good: The 13-megapixel selfie camera is pretty great, and the 23-megapixel main camera can snap some vibrant, detailed photos in well-lit conditions. It’s fast to lock on to targets too, if not quite as fast as Samsung’s Galaxy S7 line.
For situations with moving subjects, you’ll be glad to know you can tap the target on-screen to make the focus follow it. (In my experience, it’s good for babies, so-so for cats and kind of lousy for cars.) And there’s really something to be said for having a physical shutter button, one that you can half-press to focus on something. They’re more or less passé at this point, but as far as I’m concerned, the more physical controls, the better. If you require even more control, you can switch into a full manual mode that allows for adjustments to white balance, exposure and more.
Things get a little less pleasant in the dark, where you’ll start to see a fair amount of grain and soft edges appear. Sony tried to mitigate this from the get-go by setting the default image resolution to eight megapixels with oversampling. This mode basically tries to squeeze the data of a 23-megapixel photo into an 8-megapixel still, but it isn’t enough to give the Galaxy S7’s a run for their money. And while the X Performance typically does well in bright light, there’s such a thing as a situation that’s too bright. When that happens, you’ll notice colors start to get washed out. Oh, and you won’t be using the Xperia X Performance to shoot 4K video — another flagship feature that’s missing here. The 1080p videos the phone records are middling too, so I’m not really sure what Sony was trying to accomplish here.
And then there are the camera apps, which Sony uses to inject some silly fun into an otherwise cut-and-dried camera experience. These range from AR applications that put dinosaurs smack in the middle of your office to masks that cling to your face through the selfie camera to a beautiful sketch filter that turns the world around you into an art student’s homework assignment. The only problem is that these features can cause the phone to overheat; when they do, the camera app force-closes to keep things from getting out of hand. At no point was the phone uncomfortably warm, and I guess I’m glad it acted the way it did, but I can’t remember the last time a first-party feature forced a device to behave so drastically.
Performance and battery life
Thankfully, the Xperia X Performance manages to live up to its name: It feels as snappy as other flagships I’ve tested recently. That’s all thanks to the Snapdragon 820 chipset thrumming away inside, along with 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 530 GPU. As usual, my week testing the X Performance involved lots of Slack messages, emails, podcasts and camera use, not to mention playing Real Racing 3, Mortal Kombat X and Hearthstone. The verdict: mostly great. Aside from those moments when using the camera made the phone overheat, I saw only occasional moments of slowdown while multitasking. The Xperia X Performance has 1GB less RAM than most of its rivals, which probably accounts for those occasional hiccups, but it’s also worth noting that Sony’s flagship was basically spanked when it came to benchmark tests:
HTC 10
Samsung Galaxy S7
OnePlus 3
AndEBench Pro
12,637
16,673
14,168
13,841
Vellamo 3.0
3,307
4,876
4,285
5,202
3DMark IS Unlimited
26,070
26,747
28,529
30,058
SunSpider 1.0.2 (ms)
710
608
1547
699
GFXBench 3.0 1080p Manhattan Offscreen (fps)
37
48
45
48
CF-Bench
40,252
49,891
51,227
41,653
SunSpider 1.0.2: Android devices tested in Chrome; lower scores are better.
As it turns out, the 2,700mAh battery in the X Performance is a mixed bag. When putting it through our standard video rundown test (looping a high-definition video with the screen brightness set to 50 percent and WiFi connected), the phone lasted only nine hours and eight minutes. That’s about 50 minutes less than what we squeezed out of the OnePlus 3, and hours behind the HTC 10, LG G5 and both versions of the Samsung Galaxy S7. Thankfully, the X Performance fared better with daily use. I’d normally get a full day of work out it, with notable bumps in longevity on days I didn’t use the camera much. If I was smart about what I used the X Performance for (note: this rarely happens) and used the included Stamina mode, I could get it to last for almost a day and a half. This is one area where the normal Xperia X outshines its more powerful cousin: I could keep that thing alive for nearly three days of light usage on a single charge. Guess that Snapdragon 820 can get pretty thirsty.
The competition
The Xperia X Performance is a phone with a flagship processor and a flagship price tag, but I’ll be blunt: It’s a terrible deal. Sorry! Between the average camera, underwhelming battery, questionable design choices and lack of a fingerprint sensor and 4K video recording, this phone is a hard sell. You’re better off spending your $700 on a Galaxy S7 or an HTC 10, or even a OnePlus 3 and a fancy dinner. One could even make the argument that you’re better off buying a year-old Sony phone like the Z5 Premium: It has a stunning 4K display, shoots 4K video and boasts a bigger battery for far less than $700. Sure, you’d be giving up an improved front-facing camera and the latest version of Android, but some people probably wouldn’t mind the trade-offs at all.
Wrap-up
If anyone from Sony is reading this, here’s a serious question: What were you trying to accomplish with the X Performance? It’s a perfectly passable flagship, but is this really the sort of flagship you want your name attached to? I don’t mean to be overly harsh, because in most ways the Xperia X Performance is an adequate phone. The bigger issue is whether a phone that costs $700 should really just be “adequate.” I’d argue no. Sony’s competitors are busy innovating just to maintain some sort of edge over one another, be it Samsung devoting resources to building first-class cameras, HTC constantly refining its approach to software or LG basically throwing caution to the wind. And here’s Sony, with a smartphone that costs just as much as the others and brings nothing new to the table. The Xperia X Performance is far from a bad phone; it’s just halfhearted, and that won’t get Sony anywhere.
iPhone 7 will get a larger camera, according to spy shot
Another week, another iPhone 7 leak. (Hey, it rhymes!) Following the set of components allegedly showing dual-SIM support, up to 256GB of storage and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the next iPhone, Chinese repair shop Rock Fix is back with a photo of what it claims to be the 4.7-inch iPhone 7’s rear casing. Most notably, there are fewer plastic antenna bands here, and the main camera is said to feature a larger CMOS sensor — here’s hoping this will offer larger pixel sites to boost light sensitivity. What’s interesting is that contrary to WSJ’s report earlier this week, Rock Fix reiterated that the headphone jack is here to stay on the 4.7-inch version, but there’s no word on whether the same applies to the 5.5-inch Plus model. We certainly hope that’s the case.
Rock Fix added that we should expect the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 to arrive in two flavors: One being a base model to replace the aging iPhone 6 (don’t worry, we were told it won’t be a plastic rehash), with the other being the one we’re looking at here. This leaves us with the iPhone 7 Plus which is expected to feature the dual-lens camera we saw last time. Both sizes will apparently have dual-SIM slots, which is a common feature in competitive markets like China and India. If true, this move will hopefully give Apple a much needed boost after its recent iPhone sales decline.
Source: Rock Fix (Sina Weibo)
OnePlus 3 review: The best phone you can get for $399
OnePlus has been trying to craft a full-blown, “flagship killer” of a smartphone since day one, but how successful it’s been is up for debate. From my perch, the company’s first phone proved that a relatively unknown startup could build a high-caliber handset and a die-hard fanbase around it. Its second-generation device pushed it even further into the big leagues. And now there’s the $399 (£309) OnePlus 3, which launches today.
Make no mistake: The competition is even fiercer than ever, but OnePlus is trying to meet the challenge. Best of all, that pain-in-the-ass invite system is finally gone. Suffice to say, this year’s launch is a big deal for OnePlus, and it’s only fitting that the OnePlus 3 mostly represents this young company at its best. Indeed, right now you’d be hard-pressed to find any other phone this good for this price.
Hardware
There’s no denying that last year’s OnePlus 2 was a well-constructed device, but it now looks like the days of sandstone polycarbonate are over. This year’s version is milled from a single block of “space-grade” aluminum, and the 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED display up front is swathed in a very slightly curved pane of Gorilla Glass 4. It’s beautiful. More than that, its trim waistline — 7.35 mm — makes the OnePlus 3 feel sleeker and more elegant than you might expect from a phone with this big a screen. Think of it as a larger, much better OnePlus X and you’re on the right track. Oh, and in case you were worried, you can still purchase a sandstone case or an authentic bamboo case for old time’s sake; or you can go for the fancy black apricot version, rosewood version (both using real wood veneers) or Kevlar version.
The move might have been an obvious one — OnePlus wanted a cohesive design across its devices — but who cares? The result is a handsome, impeccably well-built smartphone. A few of my colleagues even mistook it for an HTC device, which I took as a compliment, considering how insanely devoted that Taiwanese company is to build quality. (Obviously, that statement is open to interpretation.) Anyway, yes, OnePlus has really upped its game this year. By the way, our review unit was attractive graphite gray, but a “soft gold” option will follow not long after launch. Seriously, does every company need to make a gold phone?
What’s inside the OnePlus 3 is pretty impressive, too. Just about every flagship Android phone released this year packs one of Qualcomm’s quad-core Snapdragon 820 chipsets and an Adreno 530 GPU. The OnePlus 3 does too, but there’s a twist here: It also comes with 6GB of RAM. In fairness, the OnePlus 3 isn’t the first smartphone we’ve seen that packs that much RAM — that would be the ZTE Axon 7 — but it’s still nice to see a scrappy startup go somewhere most major manufacturers haven’t.
Speaking of, the OnePlus 3 also accepts two nano-SIM cards for multiple lines of service. It’s rare to see dual-SIM phones in the US, and the feature makes the OP3 a lovely travel companion, but that second SIM card takes up the space one might expect a microSD card to occupy. I’m not sure whether the team specifically gave up on expandable memory to accommodate another SIM; either way, you’re stuck with 64GB of storage. I’m a bit of a digital pack rat, though, so having more storage options would’ve been nice. Oh, and the physical alert slider is back, making it easy to manage your notification sounds without mashing on the volume buttons. I loved that little thing when it debuted on the OnePlus 2, and I love it just as much this year.
The rest of the spec sheet is pretty typical of modern flagship phones. There’s a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer on the bottom, a 3,000mAh battery inside, a snappy and accurate fingerprint sensor that doubles as a home button and a pair of capacitive navigation buttons on either side of it. Above the screen sits an 8-megapixel camera for selfies, paired with a 16-megapixel main camera around the back. Oh, and unlike last year, the OnePlus 3 has an NFC radio for all those sweet, sweet Android Pay transactions.
Display and sound
I was half-hoping this was the year OnePlus would trick its flagship out with a Quad HD display, but that just wasn’t meant to be. After all, building a phone like this for just $399 (£309) means trade-offs were inevitable. That doesn’t mean the screen hasn’t been improved. Rather than use an IPS LCD like it did last year, the company went with a 5.5-inch, 1080p Optic AMOLED display (the better to see VR content with a Loop headset, my dear). The switch leaves us with the same pixel density (401 ppi) and thus the same sharpness, but also punchier, more vivid colors. Blacks are especially deep, and whites are pretty crisp by default, but you have the option to make the display warmer or cooler depending on your preference.
Not enough? You can also turn on a proximity wake feature similar to what Motorola offers, where you can wave your hand over the screen to activate parts of it to display the time and notifications. Too bad it’s not as accurate or as elegant as what Motorola has built; the feature works best with slow, deliberate waves, while a Moto X will wake up with even quick waves.
Alas, the OnePlus 3’s single bottom-mounted speaker doesn’t fare much better than the one we got last year. Audio is generally pretty clean, and you can crank up the volume surprisingly high, but things can get a little muddy if you do. The MaxxAudio equalizer we got with the OnePlus 2 is conspicuously absent, so you can’t tweak audio levels right out of the box, but I can’t imagine too many people used it in the first place.
Software
If you spent only a few minutes with a OnePlus phone, you’d be forgiven for thinking it ran a stock build of Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. Well, not quite. The OnePlus 3 again runs OxygenOS, a modified version of Android I like to refer to as “stock plus”; there are plenty of additional features that don’t cross the line into bloat. The overall effect is more subtle than other companies’ approaches, and I think it’s more valuable as a result.
The most obvious addition is the so-called Shelf, and you’ll catch wind of it first because you’re asked if you want it during initial setup. When you swipe right from your home screen, you’re treated to the date, local weather, recently used apps and contacts you’ve been in touch with lately. There’s a memo function too, for leaving yourself quick notes (with the option to create reminders from them), and the space serves as a neat place to add widgets without cluttering up your home screens. The Shelf first appeared on the OnePlus 2, and I’ve mostly ignored it since then, but some will certainly find it handy. Throw in some perfectly adequate Gallery and Music apps and you’ve got the most obvious additions to the usual Android formula.
The fun stuff, however, can require a keener eye. There’s an option to invert colors and enable a Night mode in the quick-settings tray; the latter is meant to reduce eyestrain and preserve the sanctity of your sleep cycle by giving the display an orangey cast. It’s a good idea in theory, but the execution leaves much to be desired. You’re supposed to be able to tweak how warm you want the Night mode display to be from the device’s settings, but sometimes that doesn’t work and the phone does whatever it wants. Bummer. By the way, if your eyes just don’t like light colors, you can toggle a Dark mode that replaces Marshmallow’s bone-white menu and app-launcher backgrounds with stark black.
Customization options go even further: You can modify Android’s accent color, icons packs, the notification LED’s color, what the home and capacitive buttons do when long-pressed and double-tapped. And if you don’t like those capacitive buttons, you can turn them off completely and use on-screen buttons instead. Drawing gestures on the screen while it’s off works the same this year; when the function is enabled, tracing a circle launches the camera, and doodling a V fires up the flashlight. I’ll admit it: I totally forget about them at first, but it wasn’t long before I was whipping the OnePlus 3 out of my pocket and launching the camera with a swipe of my thumb.
Ultimately, that’s what I really dig about OxygenOS: if you want a more traditional, stock Android experience, it’s there for the taking. But if you’re a power user, or just want a little extra control over your phone, there’s plenty of extra functionality waiting for you.
Camera
Smartphone makers agonize over their cameras, and with good reason — chances are it’s going to get plenty of use, and it’s easy to let people down. OnePlus was limited by cost, so it went with a 16-megapixel sensor with an f/2.0 aperture lens from Sony, and you know what? It’s perfectly adequate. Colors were bright and mostly well saturated (they occasionally came out a little weak), with a more than respectable amount of detail. You can get a little more nuance out of shots if you use an included HD mode, or output them as unprocessed RAW files.
I was concerned at first that the OnePlus 3 would fare worse than last year’s model in low light because the size of the sensor’s pixels has shrunk from 1.3 microns to 1.12 microns, but it’s basically a wash. In the end, the OnePlus 3’s main camera is a solid utility player; it’s pretty good in every situation, but it certainly won’t open your eyes the way other smartphone cameras can.
That said, a few additions make shooting photo a pleasant than before. In addition to having optical image stabilization, the OnePlus 3’s camera also has phase-detection autofocus (like the OnePlus X), which makes locking on to subjects nearly instantaneous. It’s too bad, though, that OnePlus did away with the laser autofocus module from the OnePlus 2 — the cost of the 3’s other components probably made the team cut it. The phone also ships with a manual mode that offers access to ISO, shutter speed, exposure and focus settings. Thankfully, shooting in full auto is just about always good enough.
The same can be said for the 8-megapixel front-facing camera, which consistently produced handsome selfies. Even better, there’s an option for a smile detection mode that usually does a fine job detecting grins on your face and initiating a selfie countdown. It’s not as good at noticing subdued, coy smiles, so just grin and bear it for a moment until the countdown begins.
Performance and battery life
As you’d expect from a phone with a first-rate list of specs, the OnePlus 3 just flies. My week of testing involved putting the phone through my usual workday routine, plus lots of extracurricular time playing Real Racing 3, Mortal Kombat X and Hearthstone. None of that stuff managed to faze the OnePlus 3 — not even the sort of frenzied multitasking that only ever happens when I’m trying to break a phone.
Really, the best compliment I can pay the OnePlus 3 is that after a while, I stopped noticing how fast it was; everything just worked. It’s still not the quickest-feeling phone I’ve used recently, though. That honor goes to HTC’s 10 because of its super-low-latency touchscreen; it’s so good, it feels like you’re pushing the pixels around yourself. By comparison, there’s just the faintest hint of latency when swiping around the OnePlus 3’s interface, though I’m probably being a little picky here. After all, that’s the sort of distinction that’s apparent only if you’ve spent time playing with loads of new phones; few will take issue with what OnePlus brought to the table.
HTC 10
Samsung Galaxy S7
OnePlus 2
AndEBench Pro
13,841
16,673
14,168
9,945
Vellamo 3.0
5,202
4,876
4,285
3,025
3DMark IS Unlimited
30,058
26,747
28,529
23,598
SunSpider 1.0.2 (ms)
699
608
1547
1,516
GFXBench 3.0 1080p Manhattan Offscreen (fps)
48
48
45
25
CF-Bench
41,653
49,891
51,227
N/A
SunSpider 1.0.2: Android devices tested in Chrome; lower scores are better.
Same goes for the battery, mostly. It’s never fun to see a company use a smaller battery in the next iteration of its flagship device, but that’s exactly what happened here: There’s a 3,000mAh cell in the OnePlus 3, down from 3,300mAh in the OnePlus 2. Normally that’d be cause for much wailing and gnashing of teeth, at least in my house. Fortunately, the shift hasn’t really changed much here. In our standard video rundown test (looping a video with the screen brightness set to 50 percent and WiFi connected), the OnePlus 3 stuck around for nine hours and 56 minutes, or about 50 minutes more than what its predecessor could muster. That’s not much less than the HTC 10 and LG G5, but flagships like the Galaxy S7 siblings pack enormous batteries that last more than 13 hours in the same test.
Day-to-day use is a different story, though. The OnePlus 3 typically finished a 12-hour workday with about 25 percent charge left, and even if I forgot to charge it, I could usually count on it to see me through an early lunch the next day. On the occasions you’ll need to charge the OnePlus 3 mid-slog, be sure to use the included Dash charger and cable — the company says they can take the device from bone-dry to about 60 percent full within 30 minutes.
In fact, Dash is actually Oppo’s VOOC tech rebranded. In this case, it uses a fast 4A current but with the regular 5V voltage, which keeps the device cooler than those based on other fast-charge technologies that use higher voltages; plus VOOC’s charging speed remains the same when the device is being used, unlike others which require lowering the voltage then. The downside of this is you need to use the bundled 7-pin USB cable to make full use of the Dash charger. As I write this, I have the OP3 connected to its original charger with a Nextbit USB Type-C cable, and it’s not charging even close to the advertised speed.
The competition
I’ve spent a decent chunk of this review comparing the OnePlus 3 with the HTC 10 and the Galaxy S7 siblings, but that’s not terribly fair. While they all share the same flagship ambitions, don’t forget that the OnePlus 3 only costs $399 (£309). That’s both a huge selling point and a hindrance; the former doesn’t need much explaining, but component and feature restrictions because of price mean the OP3’s competitors can bring more to the table. Ultimately, here’s how I’d break it down: If money is no object and you need a tremendous camera, get a Galaxy S7. If money still isn’t an object and you’re a sucker for great multimedia chops and build quality, get an HTC 10.
If you want an experience that gets awfully close to what those two devices can offer, and can live with a few trade-offs, the OnePlus 3 is a tantalizing choice for the price. The performance gap between these phones basically doesn’t exist, which frankly is sort of crazy when you think about it. The lone, seemingly direct competitor to the OnePlus 3 is ZTE’s Axon 7, with the same Snapdragon chipset paired with a Quad HD screen and 4GB of RAM for $449. That’s not a bad premium to pay for a higher-res screen, but it’s unclear whether the Pro version with 6GB of RAM will even make it to the States. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to see how these two devices stack up soon.
Wrap-up
At the end of the day, no phone is perfect, and the OnePlus 3 doesn’t try to be. What it does try to do is capture the essence of a flagship smartphone — impeccable performance, smart software and top-notch build quality — and squeeze it all into an affordable package. Guess what? The company succeeded. You can certainly do better if you’re fine with spending more money, and there are better deals to be found if you’re not a stickler for high-end performance. The careful balance OnePlus has struck here is impressive, though, and while the OnePlus 3 isn’t for everyone, anyone looking for high quality without the corresponding price should start their search here.
Richard Lai contributed to this story.
Phonebloks creator isn’t entirely happy with Project Ara
Dave Hakkens, the brains behind the Phonebloks modular phone concept, thinks Google could do better when it comes to Project Ara. In a blog post, Hakkens said he wasn’t happy that the modular phone’s latest version puts its processor, battery, antenna, sensors and screen in a single skeleton and that only add-ons like the camera, speakers and projector are available as swappable modules. When Hakkens dreamed up Phonebloks, he envisioned each component as a module you can replace. The Dutch designer announced the concept in September 2013 not knowing that Motorola was cooking up a similar project. The two later collaborated on Project Ara.
Hakkens thought up his concept as a way to reduce e-waste, but if all the important components are in one skeleton, then users will still end up tossing their phones out after a while. Further, he believes that Google should work with other companies to create an ecosystem of modules instead of doing everything on its own.
The Dutch designer’s vision, as you can imagine, wouldn’t be easy to execute. Nevertheless, he thinks Google has the resources as one of the most powerful companies in the world to cook up a better modular device. He does seem to be happy with one aspect of the new model, though: its blocky design, which is reminiscent of the original concept’s looks.
Source: Dave Hakkens
Motorola’s legendary RAZR flip phone is making a comeback
The year was 2004, and Motorola had just announced what was then an insanely thin flip phone, the RAZR V3. It was — and still is — a head-turner, and eventually over 130 million units were sold in total. Such were the glorious days of Motorola. Twelve years later, the now Lenovo-owned brand appears to be prepping a relaunch of this legendary model, according to its teaser video of a nostalgic walkthrough at a high school. “Flip back to the Razr days of yesteryear and get ready for the future.” Well, our money’s on an Android refresh of the RAZR flip phone, and we’re already quite stoked about that. The big unveil will take place at Lenovo Tech World on June 9th, and we have a feeling that this new RAZR may overshadow the new Moto X devices that are also expected there.
Via: T3
Source: Motorola (YouTube)
AIVAnet 