OnePlus, a Chinese smartphone maker has been shipping mobile phones worldwide since April 2014. Its devices have been called flagship killers, mainly for their high specifications matched with inexpensive buying cost. This year, the Oppo subsidiary is releasing another flagship called the OnePlus 5.
Will the upcoming smartphone from the Chinese manufacturer be another flagship killer? If so, how would it stand against the highly-touted latest flagship handset from Samsung, the Galaxy S8?
Design
Galaxy S8 has been called the most beautiful smartphone there is owing to its design. Forbes writes that the South Korean electronics firm set the stage for the future designs of mobile devices. It has slimmer bezels, giving more room to a 5.8-inch AMOLED display. It's not that heavy, too, and it also fits well in the user's hand. Plus, the device is slim with well-tapered edges.
Meanwhile, there are no official images for OnePlus 5 yet. However, leaks point to a slim design and a fan-made concept churned out a bezel-less phone. If what the video maker imagined turns out to be true, then the phone would become the first flagship to entirely eschew bezels.
When it comes to the display, Vivo's sister company's fifth flagship is rumored to come up with a 5.5-inch panel with a 2K resolution. It will shorter than Samsung's top-tier smartphone, but still tall enough to offer more in the display department.
Camera
Samsung's latest flagship's camera has made iPhone 7 users want to own the device. The Galaxy S8 is equipped with an 8MP front camera and wide lenses for easier selfie taking. At the rear, it has a dual-lens 12MP shooter coupled with optical image stabilization (OIS). It does a good job at taking photos under bright light circumstances but it shines more under low light.
As for OnePlus 5, it is rumored to have a rear camera hardware only. The upside of that is it will be a 23MP dual-lens shooter, also complemented with OIS, as per Christian Post. In this regard, it will be quite formidable as the smartphone could likely capture higher resolution images.
Performance
All the fantastic specs of a smartphone will be for naught if it is slow to respond to users' touch commands. Which is why it is fantastic news for many spec addicts that OnePlus 5 is expected to run on Qualcomm's latest chipset, Snapdragon 835. It is the same processor that completes the Samsung Galaxy S8 package, enabling the device to run apps smoothly. However, the Korean-made flagship has cough ups in that department: dropped animation frames and swiping stutters. But it is more of a coding problem than a hardware one.
Furthermore, the anticipated Chinese flagship should have an 8GB RAM inside it. This is considerably bigger than Samsung's flagship's RAM and it means that it could be a much smoother operator.
It would be much easier to say that OnePlus 5 takes home the bacon. However, as of now, it is still largely an imagined phone while Samsung Galaxy S8 is very real. But when the official specifications from the Chinese phone maker come, then everyone will know if it is indeed another flagship killer.
