Were you one of the lucky 5,000 to get an invite to buy a OnePlus X by tweeting to the Amazon.in handle? This Rs 17,000 phone is a nice enough smartphone that appeals to many straight away. I liked that it was not huge and broad, and that it could fit in my hand snugly. If it were any bigger, it would have been slippery because it's got very smooth metallic edges. And it has some very nice looking (more expensive) variants.

The OnePlus X is a phone that could easily be mistaken for a Sony device, until you spot the OnePlus X logo on the back. It's boxy, but does have a slightly feminine look unlike some phones that look rugged and motorcyle-like. It's quite a different look from the two previous phones from OnePlus with their sandpaper back and large size.

What I love most about the OnePlus X is the hardware notifications button that you can use to silence all alerts, giving yourself some much needed me-time. You can also set it to allow priority notifications.

The OnePlus X has a 1080p AMOLED screen which is nice-ish with strong contrasts and vivid colours. And 3GB RAM to go with its Snapdragon 801 SoC. The phone is running on Oxygen OS, OnePlus' own interface, on top of Android Lollipop. It's pretty smooth and doesn't go about lagging.

You have 16GB storage on board but you can add a memory card, if you don't use up both SIM slots. You can't open the back or get at the 2,500mAh battery. With two SIMs and lots of calls, a nice screen to watch stuff on, FM Radio, and a 13MP so-so camera, the battery didn't hold up the whole day for me.

Would I buy it? Probably not. I didn't think the design was as remarkable as the reaction to it seems to indicate. It's your regular boxy format. If it had a faster processor, more battery power, and great call quality, I might have. But now, the OnePlus X already has more Chinese competition, such as the Qiku Q Terra and Coolpad and a whole lot of Lenovo and Asus phones.

And the X doesn’t quite live up to the expectation these folks had created with the OnePlus One, which was the first brand get us a phone with flagship-class specs (including 64 GB of flash) at the 20k pricepoint, and which was worth the wait for the invite. The OnePlus X isn’t.

(The author is a corporate consultant who likes her gadgets almost more than her shoes. Write to her at [email protected])

Tags : One Plus