The high price was always one of the reasons to settle for an ordinary phone rather than buying a smartphone. Well, that won’t be a reason from now on, because “the flagship killer” is here. Called OnePlus One, the smartphone surprised everyone with its low price and its high-end features, commonly found among smartphones representing giants as Samsung, LG, HTC or Apple. The OnePlus One has great features, good looks and a reasonable price allowing you to enjoy a smartphone experience while paying less than a half. Meanwhile, some would say that cheap could never compete with expensive, because in most cases what’s expensive is also better. The Galaxy S5 costs more, but it’s also one of the flagships of the market. The question is, will the One “kill” the flagship? Let’s have a look.
Design and Build
The OnePlus One surprises us with a minimalistic look and its chrome frame that gives it a premium feel. Its smooth, hard plastic back comes in four different colors, bamboo, wood, denim and Kevlar, while its front it’s entirely black. The device gives you the choice to use the on-screen keys, or the capacitive buttons from the front, considering it’s quite big, you’ll have to decide how to handle it. It measures 152,9 x 75,9 x 8,9 mm with 4,6 mm edges, so as you can see, it’s a smaller phablet.
Samsung’s Galaxy S5 is probably the most elegant looking smartphone on the market due to its soft textured plastic back. The Samsung branding stands proudly on the front along with a home button and two capacitive keys on each side and, instead of the usual menu key, it has a new app key. Visibly smaller than the One, it measures 142 x 72,5 x 8,1 mm but it has some features that make it more desirable, namely the PayPal, meaning it has fingerprint sensor and the IP 67, which means the device is both water and dust proof.
Display
The One features a 5,5-inches display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, which is quite acceptable, if we may say so, and a pixel resolution of 401ppi, so there’s not a chance seeing individual pixels from an average distance. The IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen comes with TOL tech, which means it eliminates the distance between the touch sensors and the display panel. The 16 M colors are very well protected by the Corning Gorilla Glass 3, so you can enjoy clear and bright colors without the risk of seeing them among scratches.
The S5 features a smaller display, measuring 5,1 inches, but in this case a smaller display comes with a higher pixel density. The Super AMOLED 1080 display has a 432ppi, meaning clearer and brighter images, all protected by the Corning Gorilla Glass 3.
Hardware and Software
Regarding its hardware, the One is not far from a high-end smartphone. It comes with a Snapdragon 801 processor, quad-core 2,5 GHz krait 400 CPU, an Adreno 330 GPU and 3GB RAM. There are three internal storage options, namely a 16GB, a 32GB and a version that comes with a massive 64GB on-board. All sounds good until now, but as perfection is rarely achieved, the One has a flaw some would consider unforgivable. We’re talking about the non-removable Li-Ion 3100 mAh battery. Even if the battery has a long life, you’ll never be able to change it with a new one in case it eventually dies. It’s OS has been optimized for the hardware, the OnePlus One runs a version of the Android OS v4.4.2 KitKat.
The S5 has the same Snapdragon 801 processor, quad-core 2,5 GHZ krait 400 CPU and the Adreno 330 GPU, but it has only 2GB RAM, less than the One, which is rather surprising. Regarding its internal storage, it comes with two options, 16GB and 32 GB, also less that its competitor whose 64GB is truly astonishing considering it’s not as famous and appreciated. This should not be a problem though, because the Galaxy S5 features microSD card slot for memory expansion, feature the One doesn’t have and if we think about it, doesn’t need. What is even more surprising is the S5’s smaller battery, only 2800mAh, but it’s removable and this is a bonus, mostly because it also comes with a power-saving mode. The Galaxy S5 runs Android OS v4.4.2 KitKat and features the well known TouchWiz UI and some upgrades like the MyMagazine, which is like a second screen working as a news aggregating app.
Camera
The OnePlus One has a 13MP main camera with a resolution of 4128 x 3095 pixels. It has a great Sony Exmor RS sensor combined with a 6 parts lens with a f/2,0 aperture dual LED flash and other features like Geo-tagging touch focus, face detection panorama and HDR. Video recordings are also of great quality, thanks to the 2160@30fps, 1080@60fps, 720@120fps, video stabilization and HDR. It also has a 5MP secondary camera with 1080@30fps.
Galaxy S5 comes with a better ISOSCEL 16MP main camera with a 5312 x 2988 resolution and LED flash. It features a 1/2,6” sensor, Dual Shot, Simultaneous HD video and image recording, Geo-tagging, touch focus. face and smile detection, image stabilization and HDR. The secondary camera has only 2MP, less than the One’s, but the same 1080@30fps.
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Verdict
Taking a closer look on both smartphones, the verdict can only be one. Even if Samsung is a great company that’s known for its amazing devises, in this case, many buyers would think “too much is too much”. Perhaps the Galaxy S5 is better, we know it has good features, but so does the OnePlus One, which is quite surprising. A cheap smartphone that allows you to enjoy almost each and every smartphone-like feature is a dream came true for many of us. Yes, it does not have a removable battery, but it’s more powerful, it does not have a SD card slot, but 64GB of internal storage is more than enough. It has almost the same hardware as the Galaxy S5 and an acceptable software, all costing about $299 or less. So wouldn’t you say it’s better?