The Oneplus 2 has been announced and now everyone has the official specifications. After watching the announcement and perusing the specs we are a little disappointed with the lack of 3 key features. We’ve listed the our three missing features that we feel are the biggest missing features from the phone. Have a read through and see if these are features that would discourage you from buying the Oneplus 2.
CHARGING – No Qi, Turbo Charge, USB 3.1
Oneplus was very happy to announce their new phone’s features and among the announcements was their new charging and data port in the form on USB Type-C connector. We have since found that the connector housing itself is actually USB 2.0 camouflaged as a USB Type-C connector. From the Oneplus One, to the Oneplus 2, we still don’t have Quick Charge 2.0. The LG G Flex 2, Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet, and HTC One M9 all have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SOC that supports the standard, so why not the Oneplus 2 with the same 810 chip?
WIRELESS – No NFC or Band 28
The Oneplus One, which came just over a year before the Oneplus 2, had a full set of features, including NFC and Qi Standard Wireless Charging. With the Oneplus 2, these features have since been lost.
Beta testers and day one reviewers have mentioned that they found contacts that seem to line up with a NFC coil sticker that may be able to be added later. We’ll have to wait for this to be confirmed or denied later on. As the phone ships, these features are not offered.
Another issue is the band support. In Australia we use Bands 3/5/28/40 and not all of those are supported by all carriers (See the Band support post). The Oneplus 2 comes out in two variants (US and EU). These phones only support the 5 and 3/5 in the US and EU (respectively). This will mean that you can either have support for Vodafone 850MHz (Band 5) or Optus and Telstra on Band 3 and Vodafone on Band 3/5 – but with no Band 28 700MHz support on Optus/Telstra, this is a big downer for Aussie LTE fans.
SCREEN – No UHD Display
Both the Oneplus One and the Oneplus 2 have 5.5″ 1080p screens, when most other flagship phones have 2k and 4k screens. This isn’t a deal breaker for most as 1080p is fine at a normal distance, but using the Google Cardboard and the Oneplus One for the Oneplus 2 Launch was very pixelated and hard to fine focus on specifics.
Positives
With all this negative talk, we just have to recap some of the good things included in the Oneplus 2. The fingerprint scanner, the new notification slider (new for Android), the metal frame, the styleswap covers, the Laser Autofocus and the 3300mAh battery. Combined with a starting price of US$329, this all still seems to be a good option for those looking for a new phone. If you already have a flagship or the Oneplus One, you might want to hold off for the Oneplus 3?
There’s just one question left:
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