HIGHLIGHTS
- OnePlus' new flagship brings support for 65W fast charging.
- The new OnePlus 8T is powered by a Snapdragon 865 SoC.
- The OnePlus 8T also gets a quad camera set-up.
It's that time of the year when we have with us a new OnePlus smartphone to review, and no matter how frequent this occurrence becomes, it still does not stop feeling special. We're in the second week of October, and in for review today is the latest upper-midrange warrior from the phone maker, the OnePlus 8T.
Over the past few years, OnePlus has made a habit of launching two new smartphones during its second big launch event of the year. But this time around there is only one. OnePlus says there is not much to upgrade in OnePlus 8 Pro because that is already so good. So, only OnePlus 8T this year.
As a mid-year upgrade, the OnePlus 8T improves on the OnePlus 8 in a number of ways. And since it's the only phone being launched right now, it also brings in a few features that are an upgrade on the more premium OnePlus 8 Pro as well, helping the phone slot nicely between the two phones that OnePlus launched earlier in the year.
Launched at an aggressive price of Rs 42,999 for the entry variant, the OnePlus 8T looks like a great deal and is likely to be one of the most sought after phones in the coming weeks and months.
OnePlus 8T: Design and display
Despite being an upper-midrange product in definition, the OnePlus 8T is no less than a premium flagship in terms of its design and appearance. Machined out of glass and a lightweight metal frame in the middle, the OnePlus 8T weighs a fairly reasonable 188 grams and because of its curved edges fits snuggly into the hand.
Because of the nature of the glass used on the device's back and the front, the OnePlus 8T feels secure in the palm and as a consequence of its evenly spread weight the device is an absolute delight to hold in the hand.
Talking about the back of the device, we have OnePlus' signature minimalistic design scheme in play, with only OnePlus' logo, and its name plastered on the rear panel. Apart from this, the only other element here is the device's rectangular quad-camera module which does protrude a little, but not enough to negatively impact the design of the device.
The OnePlus 8T is offered in two new colours: Aquamarine Green and Lunar Silver. The unit in this review is Green, a finish OnePlus has created using a special process called diffuse reflection, which not only gives the device a fancy look but also helps minimise the effects of fingerprints and smudges. As we found during our review, this is true to an extent as the phone does manage to keep in check the effects of smudges and fingerprints considering it flaunts a glossy finish. However, to say, it handles it extremely well would be a stretch as the device's back is still prone to picking up smudges here and there.
Moving to the front, we have a gorgeous 6.55-inch AMOLED display which is surrounded by very little bezels. The panel appears to be crafted for multimedia consumption and only has a single punch-hole towards the upper-left corner.
Talking about the display, it is definitely amongst the best ones fitted on a phone right now. Putting out 2400 x 1080 pixels, the display can get crisp while reading text or watching videos on it because of its high pixel density of 402ppi.
The display can also get plenty bright and we found it completely usable even under harsh sunlight. The panel also offers good viewing angles, which again makes it great for binge-watching shows on the go. However, much like the OnePlus 8 series of devices, the biggest talking point of the display is the 120Hz fast refresh rate which not only makes the OnePlus 8T capable of playing games like Call of Duty: Mobile at high frame rates, but in general, a brilliant device to endlessly browse the web on.
While this feature may not be a wow factor as it was in the previous OnePlus phones, it cannot be ignored that having a phone with a display capable of refreshing at super-fast rates is still a convenience that needs to be experienced to be understood.
OnePlus 8T: Specifications and features
The OnePlus 8T brings almost the most powerful hardware that can be found on an Android smartphone at the moment. Before we say any further, it needs to be noted that this indeed feels like a very strange thing to say about a new OnePlus smartphone.
The reason for this is that the company decided to equip the phone with the Snapdragon 865 chipset instead of the Snapdragon 865+ chipset. While the difference in benchmarks between the two chipsets may be academic in nature, it still takes the OnePlus 8T out of the select list of phones with Snapdragon 865+
With up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of fast UFS 3.1 storage, this is a fast phone, one which can effectively take everything you throw at it. Away from the realm of synthetic benchmarks, the OnePlus 8T feels as fast as anything out there. Its core configuration paired with the phone's clean Android 11 based Oxygen OS, proves good enough to handle not only social media and other apps of daily use, but also multi-tasking and heavy-duty games such as Call of Duty: Mobile which runs flawlessly at high graphics settings and with toggles for high frame rate and texture smoothing technologies such as anti-aliasing turned on.
Talking about gaming, the OnePlus 8T also offers both hardware and software solutions to improve the gaming experience on the device. While on the hardware front it promises to keep the phone running cool, and stutter-free by using a custom cooling system with a large vapour chamber that uses graphite to effectively dissipate heat across the device, it also offers software solutions in the form of the Fnatic mode which optimises resources such as CPU, GPU, and RAM among other things to improve the overall stability of even the most demanding of games.
The chipset also brings with itself the latest in connectivity standards, as it offers the promise of latching on to 5G networks the moment they become available to us for use in the country.
OnePlus 8T: Cameras
The other big highlight of the OnePlus 8T is its camera system. Unlike its predecessor, the OnePlus 8T has improved ever so slightly on its low-light performance to make this a more well-rounded device. While it offers the same kind of versatility as we've seen on the previous generation OnePlus 8, the real difference is arguably the upgrade in low light performance of the primary cameras -- possibly because of refinements brought in on the software side of things.
The main camera uses Sony IMX586, a 48-megapixel sensor. The lens has an aperture of F/1.7. The lens also supports OIS and EIS which works as advertised and helps the camera maintain a high level of stability while shooting images. OnePlus has done a good job in making sure the shutter speed of the phone is quick which ensures that there is very little chance of blurry or unusable pictures.
When fed with a good amount of light, this lens truly shines as it clicks some really well-detailed pictures. While definitely great for the price segment, an argument can be made for OnePlus doing more to improve dynamic range and colour accuracy to put the phone in the same breath as some of the more impressive phone cameras we've previously seen on more expensive phones. However, considering the price of the device, there's very little competition in the market for the OnePlus 8T with only a few devices such as the Vivo X50 Pro giving it a run for its money.
IMAGE SAMPLES
Low-light performance is marginally better. While the Nightscape mode's performance appears to have gone up quite a bit, with the computational photography mode turned off, photography in low-light is average. Having said that, the Nightscape mode is there in the first place for a reason, and it does its job quite well, thereby bringing the overall low-light performance of the OnePlus to a more than satisfactory level.
Apart from the primary camera, the OnePlus 8T offers a lot in terms of versatility. Its new ultra-wide-angle lens has a 123-degree field of view. This 16-megapixel Sony IMX 481 sensor is also good at its job. However, the overall quality of pictures taken using this lens is still a shade below what we get from the primary lens, especially in low light conditions.
Additionally, the OnePlus 8T gets two more lenses. The first of these is an improved 5-megapixel macro lens which again is a definite upgrade on the OnePlus 8, while the other appears to be the same 2-megapixel monochrome lens we had earlier seen on the previous generation phone. Overall, these two lenses, and in reality the entire camera set-up works as advertised and clicks above par -- if not the best -- shots in all lighting conditions.
OnePlus 8T: Battery
The battery is the biggest area of upgrade on the OnePlus 8T. Compared to its predecessor, the OnePlus 8T brings a slightly bigger 4500mAh battery which can be charged at almost double the speed compared to the OnePlus 8 battery.
With the OnePlus 8T, the company has now migrated to a new charging standard that it calls the Warp Charge 65. This new standard brings a lot of interesting things with itself, prime among which is definitely the support for up to 65W fast charging. For this, the phone uses a twin battery solution which as we found out could be charged to the brim in about 40-45 minutes when connected with the new power delivery compatible charging brick that OnePlus is shipping with the OnePlus 8T.
Interestingly, since the charger supports power delivery, it can now also charge compatible phones -- essentially most phones from other brands -- and even laptops at their peak supported speeds. We tested the charger with a variety of Samsung, Vivo and Xiaomi phones, and found that the charging brick worked well with all the tested phones. This is a big convenience.
The OnePlus 8T uses a more power-efficient display than the OnePlus 8 and this paired with the slightly bigger battery gives it more run-time on a single charge. While we did not count down hours and minutes, we did notice that the phone gave us over a day's charge on moderate to heavy use with some gaming and a lot of usage of social media apps involved in the mix.
OnePlus 8T: Should you buy it?
As a phone, the OnePlus 8T is very much a complete package. And as such, if you're looking at the phone from the perspective of a daily driver -- and not one on which to run benchmarks -- there's precious little you can fault it for.
Design, display, cameras and performance, on all the OnePlus 8T scores well. Yes, there might be some better phones out there, but they are phones like the OnePlus 8 Pro that cost more. As a well-balanced phone, with good pricing, the OnePlus 8T is another phone from OnePlus that will delight users.
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