OnePlus 5T Review: Generally An Improvement

OnePlus is a relatively new yet highly accomplished smartphone manufacturer, with its namesake Android smartphones generally remaining a benchmark for quality. The OnePlus 5 was a strong phone even if it didn’t quite deliver up to that par, so how does its revision, the OnePlus 5T, fare?

ONEPLUS 5T REVIEW

Announced on November 16, the OnePlus 5T has become the company’s flagship Android smartphone. It is currently purchasable, supplanting the OnePlus 5 in their portfolio (OnePlus isn’t selling the 5 anymore). Fittingly, the OnePlus 5’s design serves as the base for the 5T, and the two are discernibly alike in many ways. Unfortunately, the 5T doesn’t seem to be waterproof either.

The biggest divergence between them would be the 5T’s larger screen size. The 5T offers a six-inch screen with an 18:9 aspect ratio, whereas its predecessor’s display was 5.5 inches and supplied a 16:9 ratio. Thankfully, the 5T isn’t much larger or heavier than the OnePlus 5 in spite of these advances.

OnePlus 5T affixes a face unlock feature into its design, allowing you a hand-free way to unlock your phone. The software utilizes “over 100 identifiers” to determine if it’s really you, although it’s still imperfect and lacks the bonuses of Apple’s counterpart. Additionally, the fingerprint sensor used to unlock the device, the one OnePlus boasts works in under 0.2 seconds, has been moved to the machine’s backside.

Those who use their OnePlus 5’s bulit-in cameras a lot will notice the 5T’s were tweaked; while the primary 6-megapixel camera remains, the 20-megapixel telephoto lens has been replaced by a specialized lens for low-light pictures. This change means there will no longer be any auto-cropping when taking snapshots, but it will take clearer pictures during your low-light travels. However, it does come at the expense of an optical zoom, meaning all zooming in will be achieved digitally.

The OnePlus 5T, much like the phone it succeeds, is a fine phone, even if it still needs to avoid the water. The 5T comes in two models, one offering 64GB worth of storage and 6GB of RAM, whereas its peer comes with 128GB of memory and 8GB of RAM. They respectively cost $499 and $559.