How does the Nexus 5 stand against OnePlus One.

After a lot of fanfare and teasers, OnePlus finally launched their flagship killer phone One yesterday (Do not mistake this for the HTC One).. Now we all knew it was going to be packed with good specs with a sub $400 price tag but what we got was even better than that. Not only are the specs great but the build quality of the phone and the user experience of the CyanogenMod rom designed specially for the One is phenomenal. And yes, How can we forget that its priced at just $300 for 16GB .



Up until now, there was just a handful of phones like the Nexus 5 in the sub $400 price range but all of those did cut some of the areas to reduce prices. But with the One, OnePlus promises to give the best User Experience, something as good as we can expect from a flagship priced almost double.



Comparing the specs alone, we find that the One is more powerful than the Nexus 5. Just like the Nexus 5, it supports all the major network bands along with full LTE support. The One has a 0.5" larger screen than the 5" screen than the Nexus 5 albeit the same resolution. The One stands at about 401 ppi display.



In terms of storage, the One does not support expandable storage, but it does come with option of 16 GB and an additional $50 could get your hands on the 64 GB model. We cant figure out why was the 32 GB version missed while the base version is 16 GB. A base model of 32 GB would be more suitable. Other specs include a 13 mp rear camera, 5 mp front shooter, 3 gigs of RAM, Android 4.4.2 KitKat out of the box and a 2.5 GHz Snapdragon 801 processor running under the hood. Also there is a much bigger 3100 mAh battery powering the phone compared to a 2300 mAh in the Nexus 5. As far as the specs go, we're sure that the One beats the Nexus 5 easily. But what about the User Experience. It is the key feature to building a brand name. Something that OnePlus needs to do quickly in order to not get crushed by other OEMs that have more resources. Both financial and technical. The OnePlus One is shipped with CyanogenMod 11S specially designed for this phone. It does run Android KitKat but with lot of feature additions from the CyanogenMod Inc. The User Interface of the One has been kept at it minimum and thus the phone operates smooth like butter.



The first of the CyanogenMod enhancements that you'll notice is the LockScreen. There isn't just one. You can get a bevy of custom lock screens from the theme settigns. Yes, It has got a lot of theming options, After all thats what you would expect from CyanogenMod. Heading to the settigns menu, you'll notice that the customisation is not limited to just the lock screen. You can even customise the Home Screen and the General UI of the phone. Even the notification bar can be customised pretty well. You can add, remove or re-arrange the settings in the Quick Settings panel. It has also got some cool gesture features like the ones in the Oppo Find 7. Performing a gesture while on the lock screen can take you directly to a specific app assigned to the gesture. Also the KnockOn feature from the LG G2 is mimicked here which is a welcome addition.



Now for all these hefty specs and cool features, you can expect the phone to be priced pretty hefty too. But you're wrong. The 16 GB "Silk White" is priced at $300 while an additional $50 can get you the 64 GB "SandStone Black" version.

Images courtesy of the TechRadar.

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