OnePlus 5T
A brilliant upgrade to the 5, with better cameras, a larger screen and compact chassis, all for the same price
SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE 64GB, £374 (£449 inc VAT) from oneplus.net
OnePlus churns out brilliant quality phones with such regularity that the excellence of the OnePlus 5T shouldn’t come as a shock. Yet still I’m surprised by how good this phone is. Not only has OnePlus improved on the already excellent 5, it’s done so without raising the price or significantly increasing the size of the phone.
Big screen, same chassis
The big change this time around is to the display, which at 6in is a significant half-inch larger than its predecessor. It’s one of those funky, 18:9 aspect ratio, chassis-filling edge-to-edge displays, so there’s barely any bezel to the left and right, and little bezel above and below the display – a half centimetre or so.
This bezel shrinkage isn’t just about keeping up with the Joneses; it keeps the size down, too. In fact, despite its 20% bigger screen, the OnePlus 5T is only a fraction bigger – 2mm taller, 1mm wider – than the OnePlus 5. It’s still a slender 7.3mm thick.
And, just as with the OnePlus 5, this is an AMOLED screen. That means it has perfect contrast and punchy colours, and the good news is that you can tweak the way it looks to suit your preferences. If you like your colours muted and accurate, pick the sRGB profile in the display settings; if you prefer a brighter, more vivid look, choose DCI-P3.
One word of warning: it isn’t the brightest display I’ve come across. In our technical tests, the OnePlus 5T hit a maximum of only 420cd/m2 at maximum brightness, with no way to boost this to aid readability in bright ambient light. It can’t match the best Samsung has to offer in this regard, with the Note 8 and Galaxy S8 phones peaking at above 900cd/m2 in auto-brightness mode.
Critics will point out that its resolution is 1080p rather than the 1440p of the Pixel 2 XL and Galaxy S8 (to be precise, the 5T has a 1,080 x 2,160 resolution compared to the 1,440 x 2,880 of the Pixel 2 XL) but in action you’d be hard pressed to tell. And more importantly, there are no horrible problems with viewing angles and discolouration as there are with the Google Pixel 2 XL’s display. As with the 2 XL, the OnePlus 5T’s screen uses a polarising layer, but here it doesn’t interfere with the colours or general visibility, even if you’re wearing a pair of polarising sunglasses.
Design déjà vu
The design of the chassis is so similar to the OnePlus 5 that, unless you sit the two phones right next to each other, it’s difficult to tell the difference. The corners and rear panel are curved in the same way, with only added girth – 162g versus 153g – giving it away. Moreover, all the buttons are in the same places, including OnePlus’ ultra-handy three-position do-not-disturb switch on the phone’s left edge. Even the camera housing, which does look slightly different, is in the same place, as is the USB Type-C port on the bottom edge and the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Yes, the OnePlus 5T still has a headphone jack. Rejoice!
Not everything is perfect, however. The OnePlus 5T still doesn’t have a microSD slot for storage expansion, so you may feel compelled to buy the 128GB version for £499, and there’s still no dust- or water-resistance IP rating. With almost all the 5T’s rivals now providing this feature, it’s about time OnePlus joined in.
Turn of speed
What is does have is performance to match any phone on the market, and that’s because the internal components are all top of the line. You get a 2.45GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip with either 6GB or 8GB of RAM; the amount is dictated by whether you choose the 64GB or 128GB model.
I’ve seen little variation in performance between phones with this type of configuration, so it’s no surprise to see the OnePlus 5 delivering similar results to every other Snapdragon 835 handset. The only phones that benchmark faster, in
“Not everything is perfect: the OnePlus 5T still doesn’t have a microSD slot or an IP rating for dust- and water-resistance”