Oneplus 6T – Leading from the front! [Review]

Oneplus 6T, a mobile everyone knew about, even when the Oneplus 6 was launched. Even the customers who purchased the Oneplus 6 knew that it would be soon followed by the Oneplus 6T. But they had faith in the brand and went ahead with the purchase which they would never regret. Oneplus 6 is no doubt a good flagship mobile to buy in 2018. Is the Oneplus 6T any better? What has changed and is it worth the price tag? Let us find out in this review.

In the Box

• Oneplus 6T Mobile
• TPU Gel back case
• Manual
• SIM Eject tool
• Dash Charger
• USB C – 3.5mm adapter
• USB C Cable

Design

Oneplus 6T has glass body sandwiched between metal with seamless smooth curves. The mobile feels solid in the hand. It is slippery, by the nature of glass but it is a sturdy mobile. I have dropped it naked, twice on the concrete floor accidentally. The glass body survived with a few scuffs on the metal rim. The mobile is thin and flat. The weight distribution is even. Holding and handling the mobile is very comfortable. The bottom has USB C port, mono speaker and mic inside the grill. The top has noise canceling mic. The right side has the alert slider and power button. The left has volume buttons and SIM card tray. It can take in dual SIM card and it does not support memory expansion. It does not have 3.5 mm audio jack and notification LED. The mobile has a teardrop notch and this notch style is pleasing and non-intrusive to the viewing experience. The back has a dual camera setup with a single LED flash and the holds the selfie camera. The area between the display and the bezel at the top has the ear-piece tucked in.

The fingerprint display is beneath the display. It is an optical sensor and it is not as fast as a physical fingerprint sensor. But it is considerably faster than other first-generation in-display fingerprint sensors in the market. Oneplus 6T has face ID unlock and it is one of the fastest in the industry. With these both in action, I can live without a conventional fingerprint sensor. The speakers on the mobile are loud and the sound is of good quality for media consumption and gaming at close quarters.

Display

Oneplus 6T has a massive 6.46-inch display with full HD plus resolution. The display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 6. It is an AMOLED screen and is very bright. The display has accurate color reproduction. The viewing angles are wide and it has very good direct sunlight readabiilty. The notch can be hidden. Apart from night mode, the reading mode can be enabled for certain specific apps. Apart from the default screen calibration, it can be tuned to sRGB, DCI-P3, Adaptive mode or user defined custom mode. It has full screen gestures which has been redefined to include gesture to swapping previously open app. As the mobile does not have notification LED, the screen has ambient always on display to show notification and key information on-demand in lock screen as well.

Camera

Oneplus 6T camera, under the hood is not different from the Oneplus 6 Camera. The rear camera is a dual camera setup with 16 MP, f/1.7, 25mm (wide) lens and OIS as the primary lens. The secondary camera is a 20 MP f/1.7, 25mm (wide) lens for depth sensing. The camera also has gyro-EIS for video shooting and it is enabled even for 4k videos. It can shoot 1080p and 4K videos at 30 or 60 fps. It also has slow motion and time lapse modes. The front camera is a 16 MP, f/2.0, 25mm lens arrangement. It does not have flash on the front. The quality of images out of the rear camera has high dynamic range. The PDAF focusing is very fast and accurate. The images are sharp and detailed. Exposure, brightness, color saturation and dynamic range is perfect under most lighting conditions. The portrait shot has one of the best edge detection and background blurring algorithms, only next to Pixel mobiles. New to the Oneplus 6T is the nightscape mode and this mode is supposed to click better shots at night. But in my experience, the processing is a bit too much and the images in nightscape mode is not sharp and unevenly exposed. Pixel mobile night camera has better performance. But for this price range, the Oneplus 6T has the best camera experience.

Camera Samples

Hardware

Oneplus 6T runs on the best processor out there: Snapdragon 845. It has 6 / 8 GB of DDR4 RAM and the base variant has 128 GB internal storage. The maximum storage is 256 GB. It has all the sensors including gyro and magnetic compass. It has NFC and Bluetooth 5.0. This is the best hardware configuration in the price range. This is a beast of a mobile and gives the best performance. I have filled the memory to the brim and installed almost 50 apps including some heavy games. Resource intensive games like PUBG and Asphalt 9 were smooth to play with no glitches or lags. The mobile does not heat up a bit even after 60 minutes of intensive gaming. Even if I try really hard, it is not an easy task to find fault with the hardware performance of Oneplus 6T.

Software

Oneplus 6 was one of the first mobiles to be upgraded to Android pie and the Oneplus 6T runs on Android 9.0 out of the box. It has Oxygen OS skinned on top, but the user experience is close to stock android. It has a bunch of useful features like parallel apps. gestures, app locker, game suite etc… It does not have any bloatware. It has a few apps from Oneplus, but these apps are light and some of them like the Oneplus community can be uninstalled as well. The user interactions are smooth and the mobile handles native and downloaded apps with ease.

Battery

Oneplus 6T has a 3700 mAh battery which is significantly larger than the capacity of Oneplus 6. The Dash charger can charge the mobile from 0 to 60% in under 30 minutes and full charge takes less than 1 hour 30 min. A fully charged Oneplus 6T gives you a screen on time of 6 o 7 hours. On moderate usage, it can last for more than 1 day and on minimal usage, the mobile can last easily for 2 days. I use the mobile for GPS tracking my sports apps every day for about 30 min, I check for notifications frequently and I end up watching a few youtube clips and some movies on narcos for about 2 hours. My calls add up to about 30 to 40 min a day and at the end of the day, the mobile still has about 30% of juice left.

Verdict

Without any doubt, Oneplus 6T is the best mobile to buy in 2018. It is no more a flagship killer, but this is the flagship by itself. It faces a good competition from Poco F1 and Zenfone 5Z. But in terms of performance, stability and overall user experience, I would recommend the Oneplus 6T. The starting price of Oneplus 6T is Rs 35999 which was the same price of the Oneplus 6. For this price you give a premium looking mobile with brilliant display, camera, performance and reliable battery life. What more can you ask for? Oneplus 6T is indeed the mobile of the year, without an iota of doubt.