This is the OnePlus 5T. I know I’m a little late to the game here, this phone has been out for a couple weeks but I wanted to get my hands on it, I wanted to check it out, use it and review it mostly because this is really the last major flagship release of the year, and honestly I think with OnePlus they really saved the best for the last here. It seems like OnePlus is now on a 2 phone per year cycle, the OnePlus 5 only just came out in June, and if you picked up that phone you might be a little envious with this device launching only a few months later, fortunately The 5T isn’t a major or drastic upgrade but OnePlus made some changes, refreshed the look and feel a bit and generally just brought the OnePlus brand up to 2017-specs. I’m not going to say that the 5T is a necessary upgrade from its predecessor, but if you’ve been waiting to pick up a new smartphone for the holidays, or maybe the $1000 flagships from the big name companies this year are just out of the question, OnePlus obviously has a really solid device here that’s worth considering.
OnePlus 5T 8GB RAM + 128GB (GearBest Link)
coupon : oneplusgp
OnePlus 5T 6GB RAM + 64GB (GearBest Link)
coupon ：oneplus5y
Tearing off the plastic wrap and digging into the box for the very first time we’re immediately greeted by the OnePlus 5t in all its glass and aluminum glory and that’s one thing you’ll notice right away, the overall look and feel of this device is very similar to the OnePlus 5. Digging a little deeper in the box, we also get the usual bright red USB C cable along with the dash charging brick which still allows the 5T to charger faster than any other phone on the market. There’s also some included paperwork and a QuickStart guide along with a sim ejector tool, and OnePlus even throws in a semi-clear case to protect that shiny new device which is a nice little bonus.
While the rear aluminum housing is very familiar, one of the biggest changes to the 5T is that much bigger 6 inch display which gives the device an 80% screen to body ratio. While OnePlus doesn’t exactly take anything to the extreme or offer any curved edges, the 18:9 aspect ratio and super slim bezels keeps this device inline with many of this years flagship devices. The screen itself in an AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2160 by 1080 pushing about 401 pixels per inch, so yes it’s still a 1080p screen but you have to keep in mind that while you’re not pushing the limits on the display, that allows the 5T to be priced competitively starting at $499 while also retaining excellent battery life as well. It would be nice to have OnePlus up there sporting a quad HD display, but personally I care more about battery life and price and the display still looks excellent by itself anyway, especially now that it takes up the entire front of the phone with really minimal bezels.
Because the screen grew and the bezels shrunk, that means the fingerprint sensor has been moved to the rear of the device and OnePlus did a great job with the placement, it’s right in that sweet spot just about the center and it’s also just as fast and accurate. It just functions as the fingerprint sensor, it isn’t a power button like you might find an the LG G6 or V30, you still get a power button on the side of the device, but if a rear fingerprint sensor isn’t really your thing, OnePlus brought some Face Unlock functionality to the 5T as well. So my initial impressions with this were kind of mixed unfortunately, for whatever reason I had trouble setting this up at first, not really sure why but once it did get my face scanned in and I started using it, holy crap is this fast. Like scary fast. Like you don’t get a chance to see your lock screen at all. You can adjust some settings to enable a swipe to unlock after it recognizes you which is nice, and don’t get me wrong, I’m very impressed with just how quick face unlock is, but I’m a little hesitant about the technology behind it and the security it might offer or lack and I’ll definitely have to do some more testing before I’m ready to say anything more.
Besides all that though, hardware-wise there isn’t too much else to say as far as changes or upgrades. The front facing camera is a regular old 16mp shooter and even though this is what’s used for face unlock, there doesn’t appear to be any fancy tech behind it like you might see on the iPhone X, down at the bottom you’ve got the speaker, USB C port and a headphone jack, and props to OnePlus for keeping that headphone jack alive.
Around back we once again have a dual camera setup, but OnePlus did make some changes here too. You’ve got 16 and 20 megapixel shooters like we saw with the 5, but rather than have a telephoto lens, the secondary 20 megapixel camera now is just supposed to support some better results in low light. I’ll have to put that to the test obviously, but even though the telephoto lens is no more, The 5T does still support portrait mode through software like we see on the Google Pixel.
The 5T ships with android 7.1.1 and Oxygen OS, the model I have is the 64GB storage 6GB of RAM version but you can also opt for 128GB of storage and 8GB of Ram. Either way you go though, the software experience like always is going to be lightning fast and buttery smooth and really the user experience on the software side is sort of the main reason I’ll chose OnePlus over a lot of other android devices, it’s just so hard to compete with that beat stock android feel and OnePlus optimizes everything so nicely that using any other device just isn’t quite the same.
So I’m really excited to use this device over the next few days and put it through its paces, but for my fully review I want to do something a little different. I’d like it to be sort of a Q and A style of video where I answer all of the questions you guys still have about this phone, so if there’s anything at all you want to know about the OnePlus 5T still, let me know down below in the comments and I’ll probably feature in the video.
