ZUK Z1 vs OnePlus 2: Battle of the newbies!

ZUK and OnePlus both are pretty new brands in the highly competitive smartphone industry. While OnePlus made a name for itself with their legendary OnePlus One a year back, ZUK is a totally new to this industry. Most might be unaware that the ZUK is in fact an online only sub-brand of Lenovo.

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Facing stiff competition from Chinese counterpart like Gionee, OnePlus, Xiaomi; Smartphone and PC maker Lenovo decided to expand their portfolio by starting a new venture under the name ZUK. The brand ZUK will solely produce a number of top end devices at darn cheap price - yes they are going to follow the Xiaomi's marketing strategy!

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The company's had also announced that it will launch their first smartphone dubbed the Z1 a few months back. Numerous rumours of the device had been floating in an around the web for quite a while now. But it wasn't till yesterday that the company officially announced the final specification of the device. With Fingerprint sensor, USB Type C port and OIS camera this newbie aims to provide stiff competition to the recently launched OnePlus 2. Here's a one on one specs comparison between the two devices and hopefully by the end you will be able to decide which device is for you!

Build and Design:

The ZUK Z1 comes with a pretty basic design. It is no looker by any means. Z1 sports a glossy plastic back cover with a metal frame on the sides. On the front is a OnePlus 2 like home button with a fingerprint sensor. The devices sports quite a large bezels though. Especially on the top and the bottom of the display.

The OnePlus One the other hand features a slim metal profile with the same Sandstone finished back cover which came with the first gen of the device, albeit an improved one. The camera has been now brought down from the top of the device to the centre of the devices, thereby giving it a look of those camera centric Lumia devices. OnePlus will also provide the opportunity to enhance the looks of the device thanks to the StyleSwap back covers.

Display:

Both the device feature a 5.5 inch Full HD IPS LCD display. The OnePlus 2 boasts of a significantly better display than its predecessor. The displays have excellent color reproduction with decent viewing angles. The OnePlus Two's display is marginally better though.

Most users would have loved to see a Quad HD display on the OnePlus. But despite featuring a Full HD panel the display doesn't disappoint by any angle..

Under Hood:

This is an area where OnePlus wins hands down, at least on paper. It features a Qualcomm octacore 810 SoC with an Adreno 430 GPU as compared with the 2.5 GHz quadcore Snapdragon 801 in the ZUK Z1. Despite the fact that Qualcomm 810 has been severely criticized before, OnePlus claims to have used an improved 2nd gen of the chip which curbs down the heating issues. The first gen chip had severe throttling issues too. So we are quite hopeful that the new gen SoC will perform better.

The RAM on the inside is lower on the ZUK Z1 though. It features 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM as compared to the 4GB on the OnePlus 2 (Rs 24,999). The lower variant of the OnePlus at Rs 22,999 comes with 3GB of RAM.

Camera:

The camera department of both the devices are closely matched. Both sport a 13MP f2.0 rear camera with dual LED flash. The sensor used is also the same - Sony IMX214. Hence there won't be much of a difference between the images shoot by both the devices.

However you may be aware that the image quality is not always solely related to the hardware. The software has a big role to play in it. In this department though, the OnePlus has a clear advantage. Their software development team had got the camera software right on the money and with the OnePlus 2 things won't be much different. Lenovo on the other hand is pretty inconsistent with their camera software.

The cameras come with OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation) but the OnePlus features an extra PDAF or Laser Autofocus Technology for faster focusing times.

The ZUK has a clear advantage in the selfie department though, featuring a 8MP snapper as compared to the 5MP on the OnePlus 2.

Battery:

Here, the ZUK Z1 beats the ‘Flagship Killer of 2015' by leaps and bound! It comes with a huge 4100mAh battery as compared to the 3300mAh on the OnePlus One. Add to that, the ZUK Z1 features a SD801 which is pretty light on the battery as compared to the SD810. So expect a phenomenal battery life.

Others:

Both the devices features 4G LTE support. ZUK hasn't announced any plans to bring their device in India, so we are yet to know which LTE Bands will it support.

Verdict:

OnePlus 2 is clearly a winner in this comparison - but do note that it costs Rs 4,000 more! To put it in a simple way the ZUK Z1 is basically an improved Xiaomi Mi4! It shares most the Mi4's internals except the Fingerprint Sensor, USB Type C port and an OIS camera. It comes at a premium though i.e. Rs 18,000 (expected) over the Rs 14,999 of the Mi4. The battery life is also a big leap.