Ok, so I recently got my hands on the Sandstone Black 64GB OnePlus One. I have been using it for a few weeks and thought I would write a review about it. I'm not even going to try to be objective in this review, if you want one of them, just Google it. It's probably the most reviewed phone at the moment.
First thing I must say about this phone is that there is nothing that special about it. Beside the price, it has pretty much the same specs as any other flagship phone. There are not really any neat tricks that it can do that you can show off to your friends that most other phones can't do.
I'm going to write this review in three parts, because it feels like a natural way to do it. The parts will be: Hardware, Design & Software. And I will try to give my opinions on all the subjects, I don't really feel like I have enough experience with other phones to do an objective comparison.
Hardware
This will be the most straight forward of all sections. The phone uses a Snapdragon 801 SoC. This is basically what all the flagship phones use. Some of the newer ones (Nexus 6, LG G3) are using the 64bit 805, but the differences are not that big. You can consider the hardware top of the line. It's sporting a 1080p 5.5 inch IPS display with 401 ppi, quite enough in my book. The display is of good quality, and has very good viewing angles.
It has 3GB of RAM, and as the name states 64GB of flash storage. This is one thing that sets the phone apart. In my opinion 16GB is too little storage. 32GB is enough for pretty much all uses, but 64GB just means that unless you are planning to record a 4K movie with it, you pretty much never have to worry about it. It will not run out in normal use.
Another thing that sets it apart from all my previous Android phones is the battery life. It has a 3100 mAh battery that lasts you all day. I have gotten used to charging my phone every night like everybody else, but it always annoyed my immensely when you where out partying or something, and the battery would run out sometime during the evening. I have had this phone for a few weeks now, and I play with it all the time. I usually have a screen on time of 4-5 hours, and the battery has not run out once before going to bed.
Design
This was the most surprising part of the phone. I really loved the design of my previous phone, the HTC One X+. It was super solid, good looking and just generally felt really good in the hand. I've had a bit of experience with Chinese "design" on cheaper phones, and they can be good, but never quite reach the last few percent to that really high end design.
So I was expecting something quite ok, like the Huawei Ascend P6, or something plasicy like the Samsung S4. What I got was this exquisitely designed flat box, containing this totally beautifully designed piece of black glass, and a nice looking tangle free USB cable. I'm not usually one to put much stock in the unpacking experience, but this was something else entirely. I have unpacked some Apple stuff (for other people), and this was way better. It's impossible to open the packaging for this phone and not get a really good feeling about it. I don't know what kind of hard hitter designers they employ at that company, but this is not something you expect from a small start-up from China selling a budget phone. It's definitely up there with the HTC One (M8).
The phone is big, it has very little bezel on the side, but quite a bit on the top and bottom. Compared to the "standard" 4,7 inch form-factor, this thing is massive. In use this is a bonus, the button placements are very good and I have no trouble using it with one hand. At the same time it's big enough not be annoying when you use it to surf the web or using spreadsheets or such things. It's the first phone I've owned where I feel like the screen size is not a compromise. Watching movies, or reading on it is not a pain. Even browsing PDF:s is an ok experience.
The only thing that bothers me somewhat on it, is that I don't like to have the charging port on the bottom. I find it to be in the way when reading on it in bed. I much prefer to have it on the side, but I know that peoples opinions differ on this.
Software
Beside the cheap price, the thing that stands out on this phone is the software. It uses a version on CyanogenMod called 11S. It's basically a commercial version of the open CM11. It uses a different (better) camera app and gallery, as well as some other small changes. The differences to the normal CM11 is not the important part, however. The important part is that OnePlus has not tried to develop their own stuff, like all the other manufacturers, but instead used a third party, and just given the users the best experience they know how to.
And this is indeed a really good version of Android. The Google Play edition stuff is quite good, but Cyanogen is all that, and then some. The stock Android is missing quite a few configuration options in the name of making the experience more "user friendly". The added options in Cyanogen really makes a difference, this is a power users phone. And almost all of the modifications are "reversible", if you don't like the Cyanogen lock screen, just switch it back to the stock one.
As I said, this is purely my opinion, and written from my point of view. But I haven't seen a version of Android that is quite this good pre installed on any phone.
Summary
I was very hesitant to get this phone, it sounded a bit too good to be true. And there is of course quite a lot of strangeness in getting your hands on it. You need to get an invite, or wait for one of OnePlus' sales to even be able to buy it. And of course you can't get any sort of contract or payment plans on it. But this is a really, really good phone. I'm sure it will have a big impact on the flagship market. Signs point to that the OnePlus Two will be a more "standard" flagship device, with a more "normal" ~500€ price tag, but the fact is, that even at 500€, in normal distribution, the OnePlus One would probably still be one of the best devices on the market.
I have owned a few revolutionary Android devices, like the HTC Hero, that was the first properly usable Android, or the Galaxy Nexus, that was one of the first Android phones that wasn't painful to use in some little way. I really feel that this might be one of those revolutionary devices.
If you are looking for a new phone, and can get your hands on it, this is the best phone you can buy, unless money is no object, and you are looking for something specific. It is almost ridiculous how good a deal it is.