The new OnePlus 6 is not only an amazing bargain considering the powerful specifications that you get for the price, but it’s also a stylish phone with a very good camera that is a joy to use. For everyone who does not want to spend a fortune on a phone, yet still wants a flagship-grade experience, the OnePlus 6 is one of the first names that comes to mind.
Yet still, the OnePlus 6 is not a perfect phone. We’ve lived with the 6 for about two weeks now and have found some little things that could use an improvement to make this an even better experience.
So here are the 6 things that would make the OnePlus 6 even better.
Better gesture navigation
Wireless charging
Compatibility with Verizon Wireless and Sprint
Fingerprint scanner gestures
Better loudspeaker quality
Telephoto camera for portraits
1. Better gesture navigation
The biggest new feature in the OnePlus 6 software is without a doubt the option to use gestures to navigate your way around. Gestures are not the default option – you have the good old on-screen buttons – but if you want to make the most of that screen and if you are ready to try a new and different approach to navigation, you should head into Settings > Buttons > Navigation bar & gestures, and select the Navigation gestures option.
Currently, here is how gestures work: you swipe up from the bottom to go to the home screen, swipe and pause for multitasking and swipe up from the edge to go back. In reality, this method is far from ideal: the multitasking gesture requires you to pause for too long and is hard to get right, and the back gesture is done at the bottom of the screen where many apps have their own buttons and you can accidentally press that buttons instead of using the gestures. You get used to all of those things, but the experience is never quite smooth and perfectly fluid, and we definitely wish OnePlus refined the gesture navigation in the future. Good idea, but not great implementation.
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2. Wireless charging
With most high-end phones in 2018 switching to a glass back, a material that allows for wireless charging technology, we are seeing more and more phones that don’t need to be plugged in to get a charge. And we have just gotten used to that convenience. That’s why we were disappointed to see that the OnePlus 6 – despite featuring a glass back and despite there being no obstacles preventing it from implementing wireless charging – does not have this useful feature.
And yes, the fast charging technology that OnePlus uses is indeed very neat, but nothing beats the convenience of not having to deal with wires, so wireless charging… it would have definitely made the OnePlus 6 better.
3. Compatibility with Verizon Wireless and Sprint
Verizon Wireless and Sprint are two of the four biggest carriers in the United States. Unfortunately, they still rely on CDMA technology and the OnePlus 6 still does not have proper support for these two carriers. And this is a shame: as cool as the OnePlus 6 is and as great of a bargain as it is, half the people in the US would not be able to get it simply because their carrier is not compatible. We wish OnePlus ironed these issues out and added support for these two carriers, but if that happens, it obviously won’t be in the OnePlus 6.
4. Fingerprint scanner gestures
What happened to fingerprint scanner gestures, OnePlus? The features was merrily available before, but is strangely missing from the OnePlus 6. To clarify, when we say fingerprint gestures, we refer to the most common swiping down on the fingerprint scanner that you get on other phones and that brings down the notification shade. Sure, it’s not a deal-breaker in and of itself, but it’s a convenience that you get used to so easily and that you then miss big time. Hopefully, it can be added via a software update in the future and OnePlus listens to our hopes and wishes.
5. Better loudspeaker quality
The OnePlus 6 has a single loudspeaker located on the bottom of the phone and it does a decent job, but yeah… decent, it’s not cutting edge level of performance and definitely not a “never settle” level of performance. While Apple, Samsung, LG and others have pushed the quality of their phone loudspeaker to a new level in 2018, OnePlus does not quite reach that highly raised bar. We don’t necessarily ask for a dual loudspeaker system (although we certainly don’t mind), what we want is better quality: louder, punchier sound with more definition and a richer output.
6. Telephoto camera for portraits
Yes, the OnePlus 6 features a dual camera system and yes again, it has “portrait mode” where it can blur the background and have your object stand out in the foreground. Unfortunately, though, the secondary camera on the OnePlus 6 does not have a “telephoto” lens, like on Apple and Samsung phones. Okay, we don’t want the same camera setup everywhere, but here are the advantages of a telephoto camera: it optically captures the features of a face in a more flattering manner, the nose of the person does not look as big as when you shoot on your typical wide-angle phone camera and the overall look of portrait shots is more appealing. So yes, even though you can shoot portraits with the OnePlus 6, they look best when they are not head shots, but maybe when the distance you took the photo from is a little further. And we do wish we had a telephoto lens. To be honest, in a perfect world, we dream of a triple camera setup with two additional lenses, a super-wide one and a telephoto one, and maybe we’ll get it one day, just not today.
Final words
And this wraps the 6 things that we feel would make the OnePlus 6 an even better phone.
Victor, a seasoned mobile technology expert, has spent over a decade at PhoneArena, exploring the depths of mobile photography and reviewing hundreds of smartphones across Android and iOS ecosystems. His passion for technology, coupled with his extensive knowledge of smartphone cameras and battery life, has positioned him as a leading voice in the mobile tech industry.
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