Unboxing the One Plus X

I had heard about the OnePlus phone brand from a friend at work, they call their phones 'flagship killers' because the intention is that they are as good as, if not better, then the high-end phones by Samsung and Apple (the Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6S respectively.

The Unboxing

The phone itself comes in an extremely simple, but very nice white box.

Outer packing - front

Outer packing - side

Opening the box

Phone

Case and key behind phone

Guide inside the divider 

Charger and cable under the divider

Unique charger and cable

 Getting started

Setting up the phone was very straight forward using OnePlus's own setup. When sorting out the WiFi, I did find that it hung (I have a BT HomeHub3), so in the end I skipped this after a while. The phone threatened that I wouldn't be online but it was.

I then went into the settings to add my Google Account.

Version 2.1.3 of the OxygenOS was available once my phone was running, I had to install this prior to doing app updates via the Google Play Store (the update process just held at the progress bars, no downloading or installing). The update was only 40 MB, it took nearly 10 minutes for the patch to be fully applied but once it was, I could then successfully start updating via the Google Play Store, over updates were available so the next 20 minutes was spent letting them download and install themselves.

From this point onwards it was a case of setting up my account with Google. The interface is refreshingly simple and uncluttered. All my previous smartphones have been Samsung which have a heavily modified interface and come with lots of Samsung bloatware which cannot be uninstalled unless you root your phone.

The 3GB of RAM means multitasking and jumping between apps is a dream. Previous phones such as the Samsung S3 just didn't have as much processing horse power as you want for a mobile workstation, but enough for doing whatever you need.

For me, I have a small business that I'm trying to launch so being able to work pretty much anywhere is important to me and this lets me get work done.

The dual SIM card slot means you could have two SIM cards to have a personal and work number. Or you can use one to host a micro-SD card. I've never found that I've ran out of room on the phone apart from when I started vlogging - if this is a big part of your lifestyle then I would recommend the extra memory. For normal working (once I switched to a DSLR for vlogging) I've never run out of space since - that is partly because I have everything cloud-based for example OneNote and Google Docs with very little stored locally on the phone (this is so that I'm never tied down to or dependant on a particular device - if a device fails or is stolen, it is merely an inconvenience and not an actual problem to the business or myself).

Overall I'm very impressed with the OnePlus X. Unfortunately it is no longer available. OnePlus have now changed their target market - the OnePlus 1, X and 2 all targeted the sub-£250 market and did a Stirling job of it. 

The OnePlus 3 and 3T are now £3-350 and the OnePlus 5 is nearly £500.

I've not used these phones personally but I'm sure that they will be exceptional against the competition from Samsung, Sony, Apple and Motorola because that's what OnePlus does best.