June 14, 2016. The OnePlus 3 is available today for $399 in open sale, no invites required, and it is the phone OnePlus has been trying to make since the One. Snapdragon 820. 6GB of RAM when 4GB is the flagship standard. 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED. Dash Charge. $399. I have been using a review unit for the past week and this is not “good for the price.” This is genuinely the best Android phone I have held, at any price.

The open sale deserves comment before the hardware. No invites. Anyone who wants to buy a OnePlus 3 can go to oneplus.net right now and buy one. After two years of invite-system friction that has cost OnePlus community goodwill at every product launch, the 3 is simply on sale. The decision is correct and should have happened sooner, but it is here now and the community is responding accordingly.

Dash Charge and why it matters for the brand

Dash Charge is the feature that tells me OnePlus is back to thinking correctly about differentiation. Every major smartphone manufacturer is racing toward faster charging on higher voltage. OnePlus looked at the problem differently: the issue is not watts, it is heat. High-voltage fast charging generates heat in the battery, which degrades capacity over time and limits sustained charge rates. Dash Charge moves the conversion circuitry from the phone into the charger brick, delivering 5V/4A at low voltage into the phone, generating heat in the charger rather than in the battery. The result: the phone can charge at full speed while being used without getting hot. Zero to 64% in 30 minutes. Phone stays cool. This is smarter than what everyone else is doing, and the community is reacting to it with the kind of enthusiasm that OnePlus’s best features have always generated.

The French community at peak engagement

The OnePlus 3 era is the best I have seen the European community in. I am part of the French OnePlus community and the forums feel genuinely collaborative right now: users identifying bugs, developers responding in thread, software updates releasing within days of issues being raised. The feedback loop between the company and its community is working at a level I have not seen from any major manufacturer. Carl Pei is still posting. The team is still listening. The OnePlus 3 is the product that results from that relationship being healthy. I am hopeful this is what the brand becomes rather than a moment it passes through.

Part of OnePlus: The Complete Story, my full history of OnePlus from founding to the Realme merger.