OnePlus 3 vs. Galaxy S7 Edge vs. LG G5: Which Smartphone Should You Buy?

OnePlus has just announced and released the OnePlus 3, a midrange handset that's built to punch above its weight class. And OnePlus thinks this phone is ready to compete with the best handsets in the market now.

Shoppers looking for handsets that make few compromises may find more satisfaction in laying claim to one of Samsung's Galaxy S7 edge handsets or LG's modular G5 phones.

All three phones are the standard bearers for their manufacturers, serving as flagships of innovation and engineering. But at $400 off contract, OnePlus' OnePlus 3 isn't exactly meant to go head to head with the likes of the G5 and Galaxy S7.

The One Plus 3 is priced and spec'd to tear into its respective shares of the market from below, courting the consumers who could comfortably pickup a $700 G5 but are open to saving a few hundred dollars if it comes at the cost of features they care little about.

Built by and for tech enthusiasts, "the OnePlus 3 competes with today's best smartphones on the market," says OnePlus. And the company is looking to support that boast by finally ridding itself of its invite system, adding free shipping and releasing the OnePlus 3.

"Before we can start kicking serious ***, it's about time that OnePlus catches up to the competition," adds OnePlus.

As far as GPU and CPU go, all three phones are on an even playing field; they all include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and an Adreno 530 GPU. Customer user interfaces and widgets could cause some performance hits, however.

The OnePlus 3, with its 6 GB of RAM, actually beats the G5 and Galaxy S7 in RAM capacity. But most users may rarely if ever need or notice a necessity for more than the 4 GB of RAM offered by the other two handsets.

It has a display as big as the Galaxy S7 edge, though it's not nearly as brilliant. The OnePlus handset has a standard HD resolution of 1,080 x 1,920 and a pixel density of 401 pixels per inch (ppi), while the G5's 5.3-inch Ultra HD display has a ppi of 554 and the 5.5-inch Super AMOLED Galaxy S7 edge has a ppi of 534.

The OnePlus 3, on paper, fails behind the other two handsets in the camera department. While it has a 16-megapixel rear shooter, just like the G5, it's all those extras that likely make the Galaxy S7 and LG phone's camera more capable.

With its larger 1.4 µm pixels, bigger than the OnePlus 3's 1.12 µm pixels, the Galaxy S7's camera has been wowing the reviewers. KnowYourMobile declared that the Galaxy S7, which trades pixel count for pixel size, has the best camera phone the news outlet has ever seen.

"Even if you are a stickler for detail, the trade-off is more than worthwhile; it's stunning how well the phone performs in dull locations," the outlet writes. "The option to save images as lossless RAW files is another boon for seasoned snappers."

Elsewhere, the three phones are much alike. They include many of the same sensors and features, from fingerprint readers and fast charging to Android Marshmallow and their own recipes for the OS.

So for those who are just fine with a standard HD display and what appears to be a solid camera, not the greatest, then the OnePlus 3 just might allow them to spend $300 or so for it.