Intro
The OnePlus 5 has been out for five months and it already has a successor: the OnePlus 5T. This quick release cycle shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with OnePlus, but it’s still a bit of a kick in the teeth to anyone who recently picked up a OnePlus 5.
Timing aside, the OnePlus 5T is a great phone as you already probably knew. That’s because it takes everything that made the OnePlus 5 one of my favourites of 2017 and adds in an 18:9 display, reduced bezel and slightly improved secondary camera.
The OnePlus 5T is one of the best phones you can buy right now, made even better by the seriously competitive price. Initially it was only available in a fairly standard black hue, but that’s not the case anymore.
OnePlus has just announced a ‘Sandstone White’ version of the 5T, and it’s quite nice. Not only is the white back a lovely contrast to the still black front, but the ‘Sandstone’ texture adds a hit more grip to a phone that could be quite slippery to hold.
The texture isn’t as coarse as the older OnePlus One and 2, but it’s still noticeable and certainly welcome. Other differences include a splash of colour in the form of a red alert-slider, and black volume and power buttons.
OnePlus mentioned that this is the most expensive phone they have ever produced, but it’ll still retail for the same price as the black version. It’ll only come in the 128GB storage/8GB RAM variety, though, so will set you back £499.
Design
Turning to design, the OnePlus 5T is essentially the same as its predecessor, but still recognizably new. The new 6-inch screen occupies a much larger amount of the front of the device, which is a welcome change for 2017. Because of this, the fingerprint reader has now been moved to the back. This will almost certainly be a controversial move, but it was necessary in order to maintain the form factor OnePlus wanted to utilize.
Even though OnePlus is packing a huge display in a body that isn’t much larger than the display itself, the device doesn’t feel too big. Everything in Oxygen OS scales nicely to the new 18:9 aspect ratio, and you probably wouldn’t notice a difference in content unless you booted up a video and saw the option to expand it to cover the whole display.
The camera bump is now slightly more pronounced, since the company no longer had room to fit all the components behind the top bezel. While this change is definitely noticeable, it isn’t a deterrent by any means, and the edges are now rounded as opposed to the sharper angles housing the OnePlus 5 camera.
While the rest of the specs might make you think this camera is exactly the same as before, it’s actually one of the major changes in this iteration. OnePlus has replaced the 1.6x optical telephoto lens with a 1x 20 MP shooter that uses groups of four pixels to capture more light and apparently do better in low light circumstances.
Besides these changes, the body is almost exactly the same. It uses the same aluminum alloy shell and has the same antenna lines as the 5, but the body is just a tiny bit bigger. You’ve still got the same tactile power button and volume rockers, and the hardware-based notification switch returns with the same satisfying clicky feel.
If you haven’t held a OnePlus 5 or OnePlus 5T before, I really suggest you do. While most affordable phones are made of plastic housings and cheap materials, the OnePlus 5T feels every bit if not more premium than other flagships on the market. The 5T retains the ultra-slim and polished chassis of the OnePlus 5 as well as the 3,300 mAh battery that fared well in the OnePlus 5.
Specs
As mentioned, the specs are pretty much the same as the OnePlus 5 from earlier this year, because Qualcomm still has not announced their new flagship mobile processor. Nevertheless, the Snapdragon 835 and 6-8 GB of RAM tear through just about anything you can throw at them.
The biggest selling point of this device over the OnePlus 5 is obviously the display, so it only seems fair that we cover that in a bit more detail.
The OnePlus 5T is using a 6″ 1080p Optic AMOLED panel from Samsung with a Diamond Pentile arrangement, and I have had very few problems with it.
In case you’re in need of a reminder, the OnePlus 5T is packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, 6/8 GB of RAM, and 64/128 GB of storage. These are still top of the line components, even six months after the release of the OnePlus 5, so you’re not missing out on the cutting edge this time around either. Naturally, the OnePlus 5T is incredibly snappy for a phone in this price range, and is possibly the best bang-for-your-buck available.
Conclusion
Overall, the 5T is a healthy addition to the OnePlus family. It takes what we already loved about the OnePlus 5 and refines the design and software a bit, while maintaining a similar sub-$500 price point. The 6-inch 18:9 display really does make for a richer experience, and for those looking to get a premium Android device on a budget, the 5T may just be the phone to beat, even if its new camera promise doesn’t quite pan out.
