OnePlus 5 Revealed: $479 Starting Price, Snapdragon 835 With 8GB Of RAM Confirmed

The OnePlus 5 officially debuted Tuesday and is available for preorder for $479. The OnePlus 5 will be available worldwide on June 27.

The OnePlus 5 carries over most of the overall look of the OnePlus 3/3T, with the same 5.5-inch AMOLED display with a screen resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 full HD. The fingerprint sensor/home button is still up front, and the upcoming handset is available in midnight black and slate gray color options.

Although the OnePlus 5 doesn’t really look all too different than its predecessors, its dual cameras do stand out — but more on that later.

The OnePlus 5 appears to resemble Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus and Oppo’s R11 in terms of the location of its dual cameras. However, the OnePlus 5 offers some minute details that make it unique.

At only 7.25mm thin, the handset is the company’s thinnest smartphone. The OnePlus 5’s edges feature very subtle curves that help in making the device as thin as it is. The rounded look also compliments the new antenna lines on the back, which are around the top and bottom of the device.

We’ve seen plenty of leaks about the OnePlus 5’s specs, and it looks like most of them have been accurate. The OnePlus 5 features a 2.45GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, an Adreno 540 GPU along with 6GB/8GB of RAM and 64GB/128GB of storage.

The OnePlus 5 now uses two-lane UFS 2.1 storage, which should deliver more fluid and faster usage when playing games or installing apps. The company is also now using LPDDR4 RAM, which also should provide faster and more efficient performance.

The device is powered by a 3,300 mAh battery with Dash Charge support through its USB Type-C port. Fans of the headphone jack can let out a sigh of relief as the OnePlus 5 hasn’t ditched the 3.5mm headphone jack.

The OnePlus 5 features a 16MP front-facing camera that’s capable of taking videos in 1080p and 720p resolution. The front camera also supports time-lapse videos, screen flash, HDR and smile capture.

The most important thing that’s on the OnePlus 5 is its dual-camera setup. One is equipped with Sony’s IMX 398 16MP image sensor with a wide angle f/1.7 lens while the other comes with the IMX 350 20MP sensor with a telephoto lens.

The OnePlus 5 dual cameras come with two main settings: Portrait Mode and Pro Mode. In Portrait Mode, the dual cameras are able to produce sharper images with improved depth of field (background blur/bokeh). OnePlus says the phone uses algorithms that can separate the subject from the background to produce the background blur.

In Pro Mode, users have full control of their camera settings. Users will be able to adjust ISO, white balance, focus and shutter speed. There’s also a real-time histogram present in the upper right corner of the screen, and the option to shoot in RAW.

OnePlus said it’s using Smart Focus software for the OP 5’s dual cameras. The company said this allows the camera to calculate focus 40 percent faster than the OnePlus 3/3T. It also delivers improved HDR.

OnePlus says it has a database of more than 1,000 photos to which its algorithm is able to refer to know what kind of photo the user is taking. This produces better-lit photos with better HDR and improved focus.

For videos, the OnePlus 5’s dual cameras can shoot 4K videos at 30 fps. There are 1080p and 720p options as well, and there’s support for slow motion videos at 120 fps. Unfortunately, there’s still no optical image stabilization. OnePlus 5 still relies on electronic image stabilization. EIS wasn’t that great with the OnePlus 3/3T, but it’s possible that OnePlus has improved it for its latest phone.

On the software side of things, OnePlus 5 still runs OxygenOS on top of Android 7.1.1 Nougat, but now comes with two new features and some refinements. The new OxygenOS comes with a new Reading Mode that is able automatically to adjust the color temperature of the display depending on the lighting conditions in the room. Reading Mode can be applied to the entire OnePlus 5 interface, or can be turned on in specific apps. Users can also simply turn this feature off.

The second new feature on OxygenOS is expanded support for taking screenshots. Users will simply have to swipe up with three fingers to take a screenshot. They can save that screenshot, or they could keep scrolling to continue taking a longer screenshot on their phone.

There’s also a new feature called App Priority, which keeps the user’s most-used apps active in the background so it will be ready when the phone is turned on. The new app launcher on OxygenOS is now pretty similar to the Pixel app launcher. There’s also a new Secure Box feature, which seems to be the company’s version of Samsung’s Secure Folders, 9To5Google reported.

The OnePlus 5’s 6GB RAM/64GB configuration is priced at $479, while its 8GB RAM/128GB storage version is $539. Sales will start on June 27 right on the OnePlus website, but the handset is now available to buy in the company’s pop-up stores in New York, London, Berlin and Paris.