OnePlus 3T review
Why pay more when this exists?
OnePlus, the mavericks of the smartphone world, bucked industry trends once again by releasing an improved version of their super-popular OnePlus 3 just five months later in the form of the OnePlus 3T.
As the geek's own tech brand, it has a strong and committed fanbase - possibly even more devoted than Apple's - and they took pains to listen to what those fans wanted to change about the OnePlus 3. Then they went away and did it, and now we have the OnePlus 3T.
As you might expect given that we awarded the original OnePlus 3 a full five-star rating, we've been very impressed with its successor. It's essentially the same phone with some incremental upgrades, most significantly in the performance, power and selfie sectors.
Folks who bought the original OP3 might be vexed that the new version has essentially made theirs obsolete (OnePlus stopped selling the older device pretty much immediately), but for everyone else, the subtle tweaks have perfected what was already a very strong contender.
Indeed, this phone makes it hard to justify the price of competitors like the Google Pixel - to find out why, read on for our full OnePlus 3T review.
Design
OnePlus phones have a recognisable look, to the point that you can usually distinguish one by sight (proof: all the people who come up to me on public transport excitedly asking "is that a OnePlus?"). This is mostly down to the range of official cases, which have been offering a stylish wooden look since all the way back to the OnePlus One.
The cases available for the OnePlus 3 also fit the 3T, as the shape and size of the phone is identical at 152.7 x 74.7 x 7.35 mm and 158g. This means in addition to the Gunmetal grey and Soft Gold handset colours, you can style up your 3T with a Sandstone, Bamboo, Black Apricot, Ebony Wood, Rosewood or ‘Karbon' (carbon fibre pattern) aesthetic. Cases snap on and off easily, and add a little extra protection to the edges of the phone.
The default Gunmetal shade of the 3T is a little darker than the Graphite of the 3, but they're otherwise different souls in the same body. The back of the phone reminds us very much of an HTC, with the clean curves of the aluminium unibody combining with darker antenna lines and a rounded square camera lens (how has no one made a Minion case for this yet?).
Button-wise, you'll find the etched iPhone-like Do Not Disturb switch on the top left with the volume rocker below. The right side holds the dual SIM tray (no microSD) and the power key. The bottom edge houses the six drilled speaker holes, 3.5mm headphone jack (take that, Apple/HTC/Motorola) and the USB C port for the included Dash charger.
On the fairly spacious bottom bezel below the screen sits the oval recessed fingerprint sensor. Like the ones found on current HTC phones, it doesn't press in like a button, but it does vibrate. On either side of that are capacitive ‘soft' back and apps keys, with the fingerprint sensor doubling as a home key.
Fingerprint unlocking is hyper-fast and the phone remembers up to five different digits. The speaker offers decent sound quality but it's nothing special, with the holes easily muffled by the heel of your hand when holding the phone. Sound does go decently loud but loses clarity at higher volumes. Still, it's plenty good enough for most people's needs - cat videos aren't particularly bass-heavy.
Next page: Hardware, storage and performance
OnePlus 3T review
Why pay more when this exists?
Hardware, storage and performance
Considering this is priced for the mid-range at around £400, the hardware under the hood of the OnePlus 3T is truly impressive. The Snapdragon 820 of the OnePlus 3 has received an upgrade to the top-end Snapdragon 821, offering two 2.35 GHz and two 1.6 GHz cores. You still get the staggering 6GB of DDR4 RAM and the Adreno 530 GPU.
Together, these components combine to make a blisteringly fast and butter-smooth experience. Multitasking, app-switching, intensive activity and gaming offer no challenge, and you get the feeling the 3T could handle anything you throw at it with one hand tied behind its back. Our benchmark testing bears this out, with the OnePlus 3T scoring 161596 on the AnTuTu test (a similar score to the average that landed the 3T an amazing third place in AnTuTu's best smartphones of 2016, behind only the two iPhone 7s. The OnePlus 3 was three places lower at sixth).
Meanwhile, the Geekbench 4 CPU test gave a single-core score of 1886 and 4321 for multi-core, the latter of which puts it below only Samsung flagships (Note 7, S7 and S7 Edge). The original OnePlus 3 scored 4015 on the same test. Finally, the PCMark Work 2.0 performance test threw up an excellent result of 5641 for the OnePlus 3T, comfortably above flagships including the Galaxy S7 Edge (5239), HTC 10 (5034) and Google Pixel (4624).
Storage-wise, OnePlus have added a 128GB option if the original 64GB isn't enough for you (and that might be wise considering the aforementioned lack of microSD - if you're a big videographer, you might want the extra space). However, if you're after the Soft Gold version, you're stuck with 64GB.
Thankfully, both versions include NFC, which was bafflingly dropped on the OnePlus 2 just as Android Pay was beginning to gather speed. I've had a few issues with the NFC on my 3T, strangely - usually I can just hold an Android over the Oyster card barriers and Android Pay activates, but the OnePlus has failed me a few times.
Sometimes it works if I open the Android Pay app myself, but not always. That might just be a fault of my handset, though - it doesn't seem to be a widely-reported issue.
Software
Being nerd phones, OnePlus handsets run a custom version of Android known as OxygenOS. This replaced Cyanogen on earlier OP phones because the company wanted more control, but the resulting software experience should be fairly familiar to anyone who's used Cyanogen or vanilla Android.
While the name OxygenOS implies a radical overhaul of Android, it's actually more little tweaks to make the base operating system more useful and customisable. For the most part, these tweaks really work, creating an experience that tinkerers will love. If you're more of a PC than a Mac person, you'll more than likely appreciate the opportunity to customise everything from the order of the buttons to the colour of your LED notifications. Pretty much everything on this phone can be adjusted to your exact tastes, and while some people prefer to leave the defaults on, choice can only ever be a good thing.
OnePlus also has its own app launcher, which offers a ‘Shelf' to the left of the home screen for recent apps, performance stats, and a host of other widgets you might want. Again, it's not for everyone, but it will make some people very happy.
Less pleasing is the decision to include the version of OxygenOS based on Android Marshmallow rather than the newer version, Nougat, out of the box. However, at the time of writing, updates to the Nougat version of OxygenOS are already rolling out and if your handset doesn't have it yet (ours doesn't), it will soon. It's not ideal, since OnePlus fans are likely to be the type of people who want the new version instantly, but in fairness the company's rolled the Nougat update out faster than many manufacturers who don't even have to create their own version.
Next page: Battery and display
OnePlus 3T review
Why pay more when this exists?
Battery
This is one of the areas where the 3T gained a significant upgrade from the 3. Some users of the earlier model complained about battery stamina, and it's probably not a coincidence that the notoriously battery-sapping Pokémon Go was released shortly after the original phone. All smartphone users want more juice, and OnePlus were happy to comply, whacking an extra 400 mAh into the power pack to make a total of 3400 (an increase of just over 13 per cent, fact fans).
Consequently, this phone is a beast. As a heavy phone user, I always have to charge my handset before the day is out, and this is the only phone I've had in a long while to last until bedtime. I took it to the Nintendo Switch launch with a spare phone and a power pack, and despite lots of filming, didn't need either.
The PCMark Work 2.0 battery benchmark figure for this phone is 6 hours 48 minutes, which means that's roughly how long it takes to get from 100% charged to 5% with heavy use (it runs the performance test until the phone dips below 20%). That's pretty good - not the best out there, but again above phones that cost significantly more, and coincidentally the exact same score the Google Pixel received (the Pixel XL lasted 7 hours 19 minutes, though). The original OnePlus 3 scored 5 hours 44 minutes, which means the improved battery capacity adds an hour of life.
As you'd expect from a flagship, the phone uses USB C (the newer any-way-up style) and comes with a Dash Charger - OnePlus's version of Quick Charge. That gives the 3T its strapline: "A day's power in half an hour," and while as ever that might be slightly over-egging it, it's definitely accurate to say that the Dash Charger powers the phone up impressively quickly and running it down again takes longer than you'd expect. I haven't had a phone that gave me pleasant surprises from the battery percentage since the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, and frankly, it's about time.
Display
It may not be curved and it may not have the slimmest bezels, but the OnePlus 3T's display is bright and beautiful. Sadly, the screen protector that comes pre-fitted to the screen dulls its beauty, and dear lord does the protector pick up finger grease. It can be removed, but obviously that leaves your screen at risk. Your call.
The 5.5-inch, full HD display offers 1920 x 1080 pixels, which comes out to 401 pixels per inch. It might not rival the quad-HD screens that are becoming commonplace on flagships, but you're unlikely to notice the difference unless you put them side-by-side, and honestly OnePlus would have been well within their rights to slap on a smaller or lower-resolution screen at this price point.
As it is, the Gorilla Glass 4-coated display offers wide viewing angles, is highly touch-responsive and really does photos and videos technicolour justice. It's not the best out there, but you couldn't ask for more at this price.
Next page: Cameras, price and verdict
OnePlus 3T review
Why pay more when this exists?
Cameras
Taken on the OnePlus 3T
The main camera on the 3T remains unchanged from the 3, which is a 16-megapixel Sony job with an LED flash below the slightly-protruding rounded square lens. It's a good camera but not great - it doesn't compare to the likes of the Pixel XL, for instance, but in fairness that's the highest-rated smartphone camera of all time.
The OnePlus camera app is similar to Google Camera: basic but useful. It's not stuffed with useless modes that you'll never use (voice notes, anyone?), and while we've found the auto mode perfectly satisfactory, there's also Manual (with RAW) if you'd like more control. Time-lapse, slow-mo and panorama are in there, too, and blessedly there's Beauty Mode for selfies. It has a slider to decide how fast and loose you want to play with the truth, but it never goes into Uncanny Valley mode (unlike similar modes on Samsung and HTC apps).
Taken on the OnePlus 3T
The selfie camera's had an upgrade from the OnePlus 3, doubling the megapixel count from 8 to 16. That's a good decision when it seems more people are interested in photographing themselves than anything else (and why not?), and the selfie cam delivers well-rounded results that are easily profile-picture worthy.
Overall, the two cameras deliver solid performance in most lighting conditions, with a slight tendency towards darker images. A little editing sorts that out where it occurs. The double-tap launch is super-quick and has helped me capture some shots I'd have missed otherwise (amazing how much you miss that on phones without it), and the camera feels accurate and reliable. It's not the best on the market, but many budget phones are let down by the camera, and that's definitely not the case here.
Price and availability
The OnePlus 3T is available now, either directly from OnePlus for £399 (64GB) or £439 (128GB) or from O2, the only UK network to carry it at the moment. It starts from £9.99 upfront and £31 a month for contract (64GB), or £417.99 for 64GB on PAYG. That's more expensive than just buying the handset outright from OnePlus, so you might prefer to do that and just pop a PAYG SIM in once it arrives.
Thankfully, OnePlus dropped the dreaded invite system with the OnePlus 3, so providing it hasn't sold out, you can just buy the 3T from the website when you're ready to pull the trigger. Phew.
Verdict
The OnePlus 3T is a powerhouse of a phone that would make an excellent main handset for all but the most demanding Android fan. Price-wise, OnePlus is really delivering on its "Never settle" philosophy by making more expensive phones look vastly overpriced - particularly the Google Pixel XL, which may have a better camera but is otherwise a very similar experience despite costing half as much again.
If you're into phone photography, get a Pixel. For everyone else, the OnePlus 3T is the phone to beat.