To be honest, the OnePlus 2 (Review) was nothing special, but the company has put an end to that disappointment with the OnePlus 3. We really liked the phone during our review and it is our top pick in our list of phones under Rs 30,000. OnePlus’ decision to upgrade a successful smartphone that was just five months old was surprising. The OnePlus 3T is now available for sale on Amazon for Rs 29,999. There is not much difference in specifications and features between the old and the new phone. And when we first held the new phone in our hands, it felt just like the old one. We already know that this phone is good, but should the new upgraded variant be considered more important than the previous one? Let’s find out.
OnePlus 3T Design and Build
It’s amazing how far smartphone design has come and the OnePlus 3T is another great example of this. The body is made from a single block of aluminium, making it feel like a flagship phone made by Samsung, HTC or Apple. The curved edges make the device comfortable to hold. The buttons are also easy to operate. An alert slider on the left side toggles between silent and do-not-disturb modes, each of which is customizable. However, this physical slider doesn’t allow DNAD to be scheduled to turn on automatically, which we found a bit distasteful.
The 5.5-inch AMOLED display has full HD resolution and Corning Gorilla Glass 4, just like the OnePlus 3. The pixel density is high, which makes text and icons look clear. And the colors of the pictures also look clear. We noticed that the dark theme of neon green color looks best on this type of panel. The color temperature in the phone is fine like the older variant, but it can be fixed by going to the screen calibration settings.
The display on the 3T is brighter than before, and this can be seen when we put the two phones side by side. Apart from the colour calibration, the touch department is one that we found a bit odd. It is more frustrating when typing and the keyboard feels sticky. The phone also sometimes misidentifies some swipe gestures, and we ended up opening Google search on several occasions when we opened the notification shade. OnePlus has acknowledged the issue and it is expected to be fixed with the Android Nougat update.
The fingerprint sensor identifies the fingerprint quickly and can also be used to lock the app. It also has a capacitive home button. And there are two buttons on either side of it which are backlit. The functions of these buttons can be swapped and you can enable onscreen buttons for navigation as per your convenience. There is a speaker at the bottom. The phone has a Type-C port and a 3.5mm headphone socket at the bottom.
The gunmetal coloured rear of the phone adds to the beauty of the phone. The camera is protruding from the front but there is no need to worry about scratches due to the sapphire crystal glass. In the box, you will find a 20 watt power adapter, a Type-C cable, a SIM-ejector and an instruction manual. The packaging and quality of the accessories are excellent and we have no complaints about it. The dimensions of the OnePlus 3T are the same as the older OnePlus 3.
OnePlus 3T Specifications and Features
This phone has a better processor than the previous smartphone. OnePlus 3T has Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 821 chipset. This increases the phone’s processing power, battery savings and user experience by 10 percent. This phone has 6 GB LPDDR4 RAM and 128 GB inbuilt storage. The unit we are reviewing today is the premium variant and its price is Rs 34,999 but the 64 GB variant of OnePlus 3T is priced at Rs 29,999.
Talking about other specifications, this phone has features like Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2, USB OTG, NFC and GPS. The phone does not have FM. This phone supports 4G with VoLTE. OnePlus 3T runs on OxygenOS (3.5.3) which is based on Android Marshmallow 6.0.1. These features are similar to the previous OnePlus 3 and have just been redesigned. ‘Shelf’ can be accessed by swiping to the right on the home screen. This is a customizable screen that creates widgets for quick access. Notification shade and Google search can be accessed by swiping down and up on the home screen respectively.
There are three types of functions that can be performed with the capacitive buttons. For their regular function, long press and double press is required. All the shortcuts can be played from the ‘Gesture’ menu. Talking about the apps, the phone comes pre-installed with OnePlus Community App, Amazon, Kindle, Google Suite and basic apps like File Manager and Voice Recorder.
OnePlus 3T Performance
General app and system performance is definitely great and this is thanks to the 4GB of RAM. Apart from this, you will never face any space issues due to the storage provided in the phone. With the new Qualcomm processor, you can run anything without any problem. Heavy games like Asphalt 8 run smoothly. Even during heavy usage, the phone never heats up too much which is very impressive.
The OnePlus 3T also scored well in benchmarking tests. The display’s excellent colour reproduction makes watching videos on the phone a breeze. The speaker is quite loud and the audio is not very clear even with ambient noise. The display is easily readable even in sunlight and the wide viewing angle lens is also good. The phone also plays 4K videos smoothly. But we have a complaint about the speaker grill on the phone which gets hidden by the palm while playing games or watching videos.
The second major change in the new phone compared to OnePlus 3 is in the front camera. OnePlus 3T has Samsung’s 16 megapixel sensor which is equipped with aperture F/2.0 and fixed focus. Photos taken with the camera come with detailing in good light. And the quality of photos is good even in low light. Some noise is visible in the photos but there is no color noise, so the photos are usable.
The OnePlus 3T has a 16-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization, PDAF and aperture f/2.0, just like the older phone. Landscape and macro photos come with plenty of detail and the color reproduction is also good. The auto HDR mode works well and the phone also gets an HQ mode that reduces noise by combining multiple photos of the same frame.
We liked the photos taken in low light with the camera. The photos are not too noisy and the detailing in them is also good. Shooting modes include slow-motion video, timelapse, manual and panorama. Apart from this, you can shoot videos with the camera at 1080 pixels at 60 frames per second. Full HD and 4K video quality is also very good.
The third notable change in this phone is the 3400mAh battery. In our HD video loop test, the phone lasted for 14 hours and 3 minutes which is decent. With standard use, we were able to easily use the phone for a day and a half. The Dash charging technology works great and the phone gets charged up to 45 percent in just 35 minutes and fully charged in an hour.
Our verdict
Talking about the specifications, there is no major change in OnePlus 3T and it is just an upgraded variant of its previous smartphone OnePlus 3. The phone mainly has a better battery, a higher resolution front camera and a faster CPU. The new firmware also plays an important role in the all-rounder performance of the new phone compared to the previous smartphone.
Considering the current price of the phone, you can ignore the OnePlus 3 and spend an extra Rs 2,000 to buy the OnePlus 3T. However, we feel that it would be better to spend Rs 5,000 more for the premium variant of the OnePlus 3T. Don’t take us wrong, this phone is still good at Rs 34,999 but it would have been better if the phone had a Quad HD display.
It is difficult to find any fault in OnePlus 3T and everything is great in it like the old phone. And it proves to be better than OnePlus 3T. Camera performance is better in low light and we have no complaints about the lack of expandable storage in the phone. If we talk about shortcomings, some people may be disappointed due to the lack of FM radio. On the other hand, the problem of touch during typing may bother people, although OnePlus has promised to solve it during the Nougat update.
If you are on a limited budget and want to enjoy the best Android phone then OnePlus 3T is the only smartphone you can get.
#OnePlus #Review