If this device already looks familiar to you, you’re either comparing it to the OnePlus 5 or you have come across the countless leaks regarding the OnePlus 5T. But nevertheless, this the latest flagship offered by OnePlus, carrying on the tradition of launching two phones in a year since 2015. What’s different compared to the OnePlus 5? Not much.
First of all, the OnePlus 5T sports the same form factor as the OnePlus 5, with the same sleek curved metal design. This is despite the fact that the OnePlus 5T has a larger 6-inch display to the 5.5-inch screen on the OnePlus 5. The former phone’s display is of 18:9 aspect ratio at Full HD+ resolution, flanked by very slim bezels. There’s no longer room for a front fingerprint sensor, which the company has shifted to the rear panel instead. Speaking of the “bezel-less” display, it is a flat screen without curved sides, unlike the one on the Samsung Galaxy S8.
Underneath the hood, the OnePlus 5T packs the same Snapdragon 835 processor, along with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which are the exact same specs on the OnePlus 5. Another key highlight of the OnePlus 5T is the improved dual rear camera setup. OnePlus has ditched the telephoto lens to make way for a larger aperture sensor, which now makes a 20MP + 16MP setup with the same f/1.7 aperture. With the improved cameras, OnePlus claims to have better low light performance by merging 4 pixels into 1 for better clarity, plus more impressive Portrait Mode images without the sacrifice of cropping.
The front facing camera remains the same at 16 megapixels, but is used for a new feature of the phone – Face Unlock. By the looks of it, it won’t be as secure or accurate as the Face ID on the iPhone X, but it is certainly faster, being able to unlock the screen in 0.4 seconds. Time will tell whether Face Unlock will be reliable or not, but OnePlus isn’t allowing the feature on purchase authentications.
The OnePlus 5T still packs the same 3,300mAh battery with its own highly praised Dash Charge technology. One thing to note is that the company has decided to retain the 3.5mm headphone jack. The OnePlus 5T still won’t support wireless charging due as part of the company’s decision, and also does not feature any water resistance on paper.
On the software side apart from Face Unlock, the OnePlus 5T unfortunately ships with Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box, but beta software for Android Oreo will be rolled out in December. Regardless, the new features of Oxygen OS include Parallel Apps, which allows users to clone apps to run multiple accounts, and OnePlus Switch for easier transferring of data from previous OnePlus, Android or iOS smartphones.
As far as pricing goes, we see a slight increase from the OnePlus 5 to the OnePlus 5T. OnePlus co-founder even took the opportunity to have a jab at Apple by claiming that some phones even cost more than $1,000. The OnePlus 5T starts off at $499 for the 6GB RAM/64GB storage model and $559 for the 8GB RAM/128GB storage model. The phone will go on sale on November 21 at select regions. If the Malaysian availability is as fast as the OnePlus 5 from its date of launch, the OnePlus 5T should make it to our shores by the end of 2017.