OnePlus 6T Review: Revised Formula, Same Results



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OnePlus is like an endless Kickstarter campaign. It's a community-driven product development creed that makes every OnePlus phone buyer feel like the owner of the brand's fortune. Of course, as with Kickstarter, it's more of a marketing half-truth than a reality. The new OnePlus 6T represents a company ready to challenge and disappoint its most ardent fans.

A year ago, Pete Lau, CEO of OnePlus, wrote that 80% of OnePlus users still used the headphone jack. Today, Lau is launching a phone without a headphone jack. More recently, co-founder Carl Pei told me that the notification light was so important to OnePlus users that its inclusion even affected the size of the OnePlus 6 screen. Today, Pei and his company launch a phone without a notification light.

The compromises OnePlus has created are easily visible: the 3.5mm jack leaves room for a larger battery, while the absent LED allows a smaller notch at the top of the screen. Both decisions bring OnePlus closer to the mass market and move it away from its origins as a tech – savvy alien wishing to create a dedicated phone to the needs and desires of an enthusiastic audience. With extensive worldwide mobile operator offerings, sales at T-Mobile stores and Verizon's support in the United States, OnePlus, as a company, announces a stronger willingness to compete in the market General public.

OnePlus has integrated the fingerprint reader directly into the OnePlus 6T display – a feature that is already familiar in China, but has never been experienced in the United States. OnePlus pricing is also atypical for the US market. It starts at $ 549 for 128 GB of storage and 6 GB of RAM, making the OnePlus 6T the most affordable flagship product.

8

Verge Score

Good product

  • Perfect cut and finish
  • Good ergonomics for a big phone
  • Smooth butter
  • Nice screen
  • Strong battery life

Bad things

  • The camera remains mediocre
  • The fingerprint reader displayed is inconsistent
  • Lack of wireless charge
  • Still not completely waterproof
  • Silent speaker

With a larger 6.4-inch screen and a slightly thicker profile due to the larger 3,700 mAh battery, the OnePlus 6T is simply the OnePlus 6's jumbo phone. Quite counter-intuitive, I find that the new 6T is easier to handle because of its greater weight and thickness. It is more natural to adhere than the 6 flatter and flatter. That said, you still have to deal with a big phone, consistent with the dimensions of Google Pixel 3 XL and iPhone XS Max. If you do not like the ergonomics of these devices, which is full of slippery (and fragile) windows at the front and back, OnePlus does not really offer you any other solution.

The fit and finish of the OnePlus 6T are almost perfect. Unpacking this phone and inspecting its fitness, I'm not less impressed than when opening an iPhone. OnePlus even adds a touch of customer service by pre-applying a discreet and discreet screen protector to its phone. The design of OnePlus has improved at the same pace as the entire mobile phone industry, to the point that it is difficult to find flagship phones that do not look like precision electronic jewelry. The only minor complaint I would make is that the 6T's headset – located on the top edge of the phone, pushed out of the ultra-minimalist notch – tends to accumulate dust and debris a little too easily.

The latest addition to the OnePlus 6T over the previous OnePlus 6 is a built-in fingerprint sensor. OnePlus said it has tested the new biometric reader so that it can run up to 300,000 unlockings without showing any deterioration in accuracy or speed. It also works in wet weather and through screen protectors. The company is convinced that this fingerprint reader will not lose precision over time, but I am not impressed by the precision or consistency it has when it is brand new.

I recorded my two thumbprints with the OnePlus 6T and I got an extremely disappointing success rate by unlocking the phone the first time. Sometimes it would be a simple unlocking experience, although significantly slower than the previous discrete fingerprint reader that OnePlus had before. Most of the time, however, I had to reposition my finger several times before the phone identified me. And yes, I made sure to re-register my thumb analysis more than once in case the original identity information would not be sufficient.


The brightness of the fingerprint identification graphic at the bottom of the screen is also not ideal. It does not adhere to the brightness setting of the overall display (nor are ambient screen notifications, but they are easier to forgive because I want to read them), so they look extremely bright in environments dark. OnePlus accompanies the unlocking process with a huge animated electric sphere around my finger. This is partly to dress up the bright green light needed to brighten my finger to get a clear reading, but I find it still shocking. It would be a cool unlocking process for something that I only have access to a few times a day – there is a certain sense of opportunity with all this fuss – but it quickly becomes tiring when you unlock your phone a hundred times a day . The fingerprint readers in display are undeniably cool, but they must be very well implemented, and OnePlus has not done it yet with its latest flagship product.

The display of the 6T impresses me more and more I use it. At first, I noticed the characteristic color change of the OLEDs when I tilted the phone: the whites were starting to present red and green hues. But as I began to use the phone (instead of examining it in too much detail), I really had to appreciate the colors, contrast and sharpness of this screen. This is an extra-large 1080p screen (19.5: 9 aspect ratio) that does not match the extreme pixel density of a Huawei Mate 20 Pro or Samsung Galaxy Note 9, but it's not not necessary. Whatever the case may be, these two devices intelligently reduce their resolution to preserve battery life.


One thing I've seen both with the OnePlus 6T in its adaptive mode and the Mate 20 Pro in its Natural Tone mode is that they seem to exhibit darker shadows and darker areas. than the Google Pixel 3 XL or the Samsung Note 9. Now, I think the pixel and the note are the most accurate and faithful representations, but in practice, I find the level of visibility of the shadows more important than OnePlus and Huawei give me more useful. They always produce black of a splendid depth, like all OLED screens, if any. But it is these last shades before absolute black that are a little brighter with these two phones.

OnePlus offers the sRGB and DCI-P3 color modes on the OnePlus 6T, the first one saturating and the second seeming to have exactly the same amount. I do not quite understand how the adaptive mode differs, it seems very close to the P3 profile, but whatever you do, make sure to immediately escape the default mode. The default setting on the 6T is the visibly over-saturated assault on the eyes for which OLED displays are traditionally known. It is also worth mentioning here the mode of reading of OnePlus, which, as far as I know, remains a unique characteristic of the telephones of this company. It makes the screen a monochrome optimized for playback and can be assigned to activate when you are in certain applications. I find this particularly useful with Twitter because its dull appearance helps me get out of the application faster than usual.


Regarding this drop-shaped notch, I do not think it's an asset (being smaller than the competition) or a burden (existing). At first, I thought it was small enough for me to tolerate it, but over time I found it more important than a flatter, wider notch. I've therefore switched to the notch hiding option and got a reasonably sized top executive that allowed me to view my notifications and status icons. No, it does not fit the curvature of the bottom of the screen, but I'm not pedantic enough to notice that.


However, I am very pedantic about the camera's performance on phones, and that's where OnePlus lets me down again. A year ago, I wrote that the OnePlus 5T is the best phone without a great camera, and nothing has changed about this situation. In fact, a year in which Apple, Google and Huawei have all made significant progress in image processing, OnePlus has decided to leave the hardware of its OnePlus 6 camera fully unchanged in the OnePlus 6T. The company has tweaked and optimized some software: new noise reduction algorithms, better contour detection in portrait mode, and improved scene detection. 6T will apply treatment images differently depending on whether it detects content in text, food, night scenes, or photos filled with greenery. This is a rudimentary form of advanced AI calculations used by Huawei and Google's camera systems.

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OnePlus 6T with and without night mode enabled.

OnePlus adds a new night mode with its latest camera software, which aims to emulate the company's biggest competitors, without however impressing. The 6T night mode opens the shutter for a fifth of a second, getting more light than a normal shot and helping to restore some detail in the most contrasted areas. I was trying to try the experience on a street at night because it was able to recover the highlights of illuminated road signs. But if the best of what I can say about a night mode is that it best handles the highlights, then you can rest assured that this is a disappointing feature. The camera, more than anything else, will allow you to take advantage of the price delta between the OnePlus 6T and the more expensive flagship products that precede it.




Shot at 3200 ISO.


Portrait mode at ISO 1000

With Android 9 Pie preloaded on the 6T, OnePlus made amends for last year when he shipped the 5T without the latest version of Android on board. Better yet, the implementation of Android 9 on the OnePlus 6T is a flawless and enjoyable experience. OnePlus' OxygenOS adds really interesting and desirable elements without taking anything away from the Android experience.

I love the fact that OnePlus does not impose the new multitasking based on Google's gestures to users, featured on Pixel 3 devices. Instead, it relies on its own copy of the iPhone X system. (Let's be honest, the iPhone is the absolute standard in this category). Google's current system is inconsistent and seemingly reluctant to engage in gestures as a universal interface model. OnePlus, on the other hand, has a very simple and easy configuration.



A quick swipe from the bottom of the screen takes you to the home screen, where a middle glide leads to the drawer of your application. A swipe up and directly in an app instantly takes you back to the application previously used – the animation is particularly satisfying – and to access multitasking, you just have to slide your finger for a while. The Back button is replaced by upward slips from the bottom left and right corners of the screen. In use, these are quick, intuitive and natural gestures.

There is only one conflict that spoils the party here and it's the on-screen keyboard. Since Gboard accepts drag-and-drop input, every time my keyboard is installed in an application and I want to go somewhere else, the drag-up that I use for multitasking is inevitably recorded by the keyboard. I therefore tend to leave a bunch of applications with a "par" or a "CV" inserted. The workaround is that I have to lower the keyboard each time I want to leave an application, which is not a requirement. had the habit of having with a dedicated home button (nor one that Apple users, pecking at each touch individually, have to face). I find this simply suboptimal rather than a decisive factor, but OnePlus gives you the option to go back to the old trio of Android navigation buttons, if you wish.


The generally fast performance of OnePlus is evident with the OnePlus 6T – at least for the 8GB variant I tested – but the company has significantly improved the level of finish. Where the previous OnePlus phones were stupidly fast but lacked finesse in their animations, the 6T gives a feeling of speed and comfort. The fluidity of the user experience is not just comparable to that of the most expensive smartphones in the world, it surpasses most, thanks to the good design decisions of OnePlus. Here, you will not find a stupid Bixby button, no null spam that Oppo or Huawei would have sent you, and no tedious theme store that asks you to create an account just to be able to change the interface of your phone.

The use of a phone OnePlus, for all those who must undergo the frictions of the software of other Android manufacturers, frees frankly. If the privacy issues that OnePlus caused last year do not resurface, I'd probably say it's the best Android experience available to date. Speed ​​at every turn, easy and flexible customization of the interface and application icons, valuable inconvenience. I did not stumble on a crash or a bug during my tests with the 6T.


Personally, I have never been a big fan of LED notification, so I do not miss this omission of OnePlus, which is offset by the ability to display minimum on-screen notifications when messages or alerts arrive. I can not cry either. the absence of the headphone jack now dead, which I would not have said six months ago. But Google's release of very affordable and very good Pixel USB-C headphones and the launch by OnePlus of the cheap USB-C Bullets have made USB-C audio accessible and desirable. If we take for granted the disappearance of the dedicated headphone jack, I would say that OnePlus determined the right moment to make the change. I also like USB-C bullets and I'd like OnePlus to find a way to bundle them into the box with the phone. Instead, you get an adapter dongle, which OnePlus knows how to recognize, because its small, stocky cable has the characteristic red color of the company.

The loss of headphones, says OnePlus, opens up more space for the battery, which is the biggest OnePlus has ever installed in its phones. The bigger the batteries, the better it is, and I think it is the most reliable OnePlus phone I have used to date. The 6T lasts a little longer than the 6, propelling it from good to almost full range. I would say that it's on a par with the Pixel 3 XL, but not quite in the same category as Huawei's eternal Mate 20 Pro, which has the same size screen , but can last much longer because of Huawei's more efficient 7nm processor. larger battery cell and ultra-aggressive power optimizations.


For the regular user, the OnePlus 6T will spend a day of intensive use without any problem, whether it's playing, following Robert Sapolsky's lectures on YouTube or not being able to escape the social media debates about the coming apocalypse. And you will get smooth and fast performance across all these tasks.

I have some complaints about the OnePlus 6T that tend to demonstrate the (rare) nooks that OnePlus has cut. First, the speaker, which sounds great on this phone, but is unfortunately insufficient in terms of volume. Even at maximum volume, it is only really useful in a quiet environment. A longstanding defect of this type of bottom-firing speaker is also that you can very easily obstruct their opening, especially when you hold your phone in landscape mode to play. Then there is the issue of wireless charging and the appropriate certification of water resistance, two problems that are lacking in OnePlus 6T. These quickly become stakes table for flagship smartphones and their omission in the offer of OnePlus will only worsen over time.


The OnePlus 6T is another very good OnePlus phone. Even with some forced modifications, this might not please everyone in the OnePlus community, I think it's a device that shows progress and improvements. But how big is this progress?

Without an excellent camera, no wireless charging and a title function that disappoints, the OnePlus 6T is not the clear winner it could have been. It's just a good phone at a great price. For most people, this will suffice.

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