- This is the One Plus 6, it's the latest

in a line of Android phones that

have steadily gotten better year over year.

Now before we get into this, we see you guys

have been commenting, we know you've been asking

for it for a long time, so we're shooting this in 4K.

So, if you want the best video quality,

maybe bump your resolution up to 4K, cool?

(jazz music)

Okay, so, if you're familiar with One Plus,

then most of what comes with the One Plus 6

is probably a known quantity.

But if you're not, here's what that quantity is.

A One Plus phone has high-end specs,

a big screen, a clean Android software experience

and it comes with a price that's considerably less

than other high-end Android phones

with similar specs and features.

Now nothing about that changes with the One Plus 6,

but it also means, on the other side of the coin,

that nothing changes about the other things

that are known quantities with a One Plus either.

It still isn't gonna work with Verizon or Sprint,

it still doesn't have the best camera you can get

and it's still not completely water resistant.

Overall, the One Plus 6 is a lot like

the last few One Plus phones.

It offers a great experience for a price

that's hundreds of dollars less

than a similar size Samsung or Pixel.

(upbeat jazz music)

Here's the headline info you're looking for,

for a starting price of $529,

you get a 6.3 inch edge-to-edge screen,

a Snapdragon E45 processor,

a glass and metal design,

extremely fast, fast charging,

6 gigabytes of RAM and 64 gigs of storage,

Android 8.1 with some thoughtful,

not annoying additions, and a dual camera system

that's capable of all the latest portrait effects

and slow motion video trends.

You can also spend more to upgrade the RAM and storage

but you'll still be spending substantially less

than you would on say, a Pixel 2 XL.

Now the most noticeable change from older One Plus phones

is a switch to a design with glass on the front and the back

which makes the One Plus 6 look like basically

every other phone to come out this year.

Now I think it looks great, until I touch it

and then it becomes a fingerprint magnet,

especially on the glossy version.

There's a matte finish model that is much nicer looking

and helps hide those fingerprints,

but at the same time it's much more slippery

to hold than the already pretty slippery glossy phone,

which might lead to a shattered glass phone

sooner rather than later.

Then the other big change is the screen

is even larger than the six inch display

on One Plus' last phone.

(jazz music)

Now that's mostly because the screen now reaches

the very top of the phone's frame,

except for a cutout in the middle

that houses the earpiece, front camera,

proximity sensor and notification light.

So yeah, it has a notch, but frankly,

I don't really care and I don't have a problem with it.

The notch means that I have more vertical space

to read something on my phone whether

that's email or messages or tweets,

or use split screen multitasking

or whatever else I want to do with the phone.

And One Plus is able to make this bigger screen fit

in here without making the phone any bigger

than it was last year which means that I get

more screen in the same size phone,

that's a trade-off I'm willing to make any day of the week.

Now there are a couple of things to be aware of

with the One Plus 6's notch.

I have yet to encounter an app that didn't work

as I expected because of it being there,

but it does mean that the battery percentage

is hidden until you swipe down

to see your notifications.

It also means that if you have a lot of icons

for Wifi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb, NFC or whatever,

it can get pretty crowded pretty quickly up there.

But One Plus does let you toggle a lot of these off

if you don't want them to display.

And if you really hate that full lead look,

you can opt to black out the background of the notch

so all of your apps just fill just out below it.

Honestly, I think this mode looks worse

and I've never really felt a need to obscure

the notch's existence.

Now other than it's larger size,

this year's panel isn't much different than before.

It's 1080p pixels wide, it's oled,

it's got deep colors and vibrant blacks.

It doesn't get as bright and it doesn't have

as many pixels as a Samsung screen

but it's still easy to read outdoors

and I haven't seen any major

color shifting problems or issues.

(upbeat music)

Now handling the One Plus 6 is a lot like holding

other similar size, mostly glass phones.

And most of the times, it feels like it's too big,

especially if I'm trying to do something with one hand.

Now most of the premium phones give you a choice

of sizes, whether that's the S9 or the iPhone 8

or the Pixel 2, you can choose between a small

or a large version which let's you decide

between having a big screen or having a phone

that fits more comfortably in your hand.

But with the One Plus 6, it's only available

in one size and that size is big.

Now performance-wise, the One Plus 6 is really fast

which isn't a huge surprise considering

it's got a top of the line processor and lots of RAM.

But One Plus has done a number of things under the hood

to make it feel even faster than other phones,

whether that's optimizing background processes

or just kinda speeding up animation

so everything happens a millisecond or two faster.

The result is that the phone feels like it's really fast

and it just powers through everything

without really feeling like it's ever running out of steam.

For stamina, the big 3300 Milli-Ampere Hour power battery

in the One Plus 6 means it's able

to keep going for a full day of use

for me without much of an issue.

Now it doesn't have wireless charging

even though it has that glass back now,

but One Plus' dash charger is basically

the fastest wired charging option you can get

so topping up the battery is never really

a chore or a hassle.

(soothing music)

So let's talk about this camera

because traditionally that's where One Plus phones

can't quite match up to the bigger players.

Now on paper, the One Plus 6 has

an upgraded camera, it's got bigger pixels

and it has optical image stabilization.

There's a 16 mega pixel main sensor

that handles most of the heavy lifting,

and then there's a 20 megapixel secondary sensor

that adds more detail and enables portrait-style effects.

Now if you compare the One Plus 6 versus the One Plus 5

or 5T from last year, it's definitely an improvement.

There's more detail and less noise

and images are brighter especially in low light.

And the portrait mode is just as gimmicky as before

and even though it's nice to have slow motion

in the video recording now,

I don't really see myself ever using it.

But if you stack the One Plus 6 camera

against the newer phone like the Samsung S9

or the Pixel 2XL or even the Huawei P20 Pro

unfortunately it doesn't hold up.

And none of this is to say that the camera is bad,

it's actually pretty good, especially for the price you pay.

But it's definitely the thing where you see

the biggest difference between the One Plus 6

and more expensive phones.

(techno music)

Now for software, the One Plus 6 is running Oxygen OS

which is One Plus' take on Android

and it's running 8.1 Oreo in this case.

Mostly, it looks really similar to what

you find on a Google Pixel phone.

It's clean and it's easy to use

without a bunch of gimmicky things getting in the way.

But there's a couple of neat things that I wanna point out.

First is a gesture control system that you can use

in place of the standard Android onscreen buttons.

I really like this idea because it lets

my content make full use of the display

and stretch all the way to the bottom,

but unfortunately the gestures are not

as smooth or as fluid as on an iPhone 10

and they could use a good amount of work.

I really hope One Plus keeps working on this.

A second is a reading mode which shifts

the display to a monochrome appearance

and it mimics an eReader or Kindle.

It makes reading long articles or eBooks much nicer

and you can even have it turned on or off automatically

depending on what app you're using.

There are some other hardware features

worth mentioning, too.

The One Plus 6 has something that you won't find

on any other Android phone.

It has a physical switch to move between ring,

vibrate and fully silent modes.

It's something I wish more phone makers would adopt.

And there's two easy ways to unlock the One Plus 6.

You can use your finger or your face.

The face unlock is not as secure,

but it's super convenient and fast.

And then for some reason, One Plus removed

the swipe gestures on the fingerprint scanner

that reveal the notification shake,

which seems like a minor thing,

but honestly it's annoyed me the entire time

I've used the phone.

The One Plus 6 also still has a headphone jack

which is great if you don't want to deal

with wireless headphones or Bluetooth in your car.

And for speakers, it has a loud and clear

single speaker at the bottom.

But it doesn't have the even better dual speaker set-ups

that many other phones offer at this point.

And while One Plus claims that the 6 is splash resistant,

it doesn't have any proper water resistant ratings,

so it can't be fully submerged or truly get wet.

It's okay if you're out in the rain,

but don't go dropping it in a pool.

(drumming music)

So that's a One Plus 6, it's everything we've come

to expect from a One Plus phone,

but it doesn't really change the conversation.

Now it's still a great value and it still has most

all the features you'd want on a high-end 2018 Android phone

and it doesn't have any annoying things

like AI everywhere or dedicated buttons

for a virtual assistant you don't wanna use

or weird squeezing interfaces that just

are kind of gimmicky and get in the way.

But at the same time, if you're on Verizon or Sprint

or maybe you want the best camera you can get,

or maybe you want a phone that you don't have

to worry about if you drop it in the sink,

or maybe you just want something that isn't enormous,

then the One Plus 6 probably isn't for you.

But for everyone else, the One Plus 6 is pretty great.

Hey, thanks for watching and a special shout-out

to Ernesto Alonso who made this really cool wallpaper

you saw in this video.

You can download it at the link below and be sure

to check out our new Verge Art Instagram page.