OnePlus 5T Price in India, Specification and More

If you aren’t willing to spend a handsome amount on premium Android flagships such as Google Pixel 2, Samsung Galaxy 8 or Note 8 then the OnePlus 5T is the best bet and a bang for your buck. Though the device misses certain aspects but manages to offer the premium ingredients of a flagship at a significantly lesser price tag. Besides the stunning 18:9 display and modern design, the 5T excel in terms of powerful performance, well-optimized software, fast charging and good cameras if not the best. Above that, its new Face Unlock is something worth praising. However, if you already own a OnePlus 5 then it doesn't make any sense to upgrade but those looking for a feature-packed Android in a budget should definitely consider the OnePlus 5T which comes at the same pricing, starting at Rs. 33,000 in India.

A few months back, we witnessed the launch of OnePlus 5. Despite being a 2017 flagship, the OnePlus 5 didn’t look so exciting and was missing that ‘wow’ factor that everyone expected. That’s mainly because the device lacked the trendy bezel-less display, similar to the Galaxy S8. Besides, the OnePlus 5 was well perceived but soon meet its fate when the company announced its successor, the OnePlus 5T just after five months. This certainly left OnePlus 5 users furious but the incremental upgrade to 5T didn’t come as a surprise as the company adopted a similar practice in the past with OnePlus 3.

Above that, OnePlus 5 has been discontinued and replaced by the OnePlus 5T with the exact same pricing as its predecessor. That said, nothing much has changed as the 5T features a similar design language and internal hardware. The only visible change is the bigger 18:9 screen with minimal bezels and an improved secondary camera. Without further ado, let’s dive into its review and find out if the OnePlus 5T is worth the hype?

The OnePlus 5T looks highly identical to its predecessor unless you look at its front which now flaunts a 6-inch 18:9 screen as opposed to 5.5-inch 16:9 screen on the OnePlus 5. The bezels around the display have been chopped off to give the 5T an edge-to-edge design which is a welcome addition and looks stunning. Despite having a bigger display than OnePlus 5, the 5T is slightly taller and bit heavier at 162g but retains the same 7.3mm of thickness. To make room for an 18:9 display, the fingerprint sensor has been moved to the back and the device now uses on-screen keys for navigation. Thankfully, the fingerprint sensor is perfectly positioned and easy to reach with the index finger. The sensor features the same ceramic coating that OnePlus uses, thus making it tough and scratch-resistant.

As usual, the OnePlus 5T packs an aluminium unibody construction with nicely curved edges and rounded corners across the body. This makes it very nice to hold and the smooth matte finish feels simply premium. Unlike OnePlus 5, the camera bump at the back is now improved with rounded edges, similar to iPhone 7 Plus. Unfortunately, the device still lacks an official IP67 certification but various tests have shown that the 5T can survive immersion in water up to an extent. Moreover, the 5T is only available in Midnight Black though we expect OnePlus to introduce new colour options soon.

Besides that, most of the physical aspects remain same as the OnePlus 5. The top front houses the notification LED, front camera, earpiece and sensors. The dual nano-SIM tray along with power button is on the right whereas the textured alert slider along with volume rocker is on the left. It’s worth mentioning that all these physical buttons offer a good tactile feedback. The top is bare while there is a speaker grille followed by USB Type-C port and 3.5mm audio jack at the bottom. Sadly, there is no support for storage expansion via microSD card. Moving to the back, there are subtle antenna lines and OnePlus logo flaunts right in the middle.

It’s interesting to see that OnePlus 5T comes with a pre-applied screen protector and a clear protective case is included in the box. Overall, the phone looks aesthetically beautiful and is a peach to hold.

Considering the price, OnePlus 5T offers one of the best display which is a 6-inch Full HD Optic AMOLED panel from Samsung with a resolution of 1080 x 2160 pixels. There is Gorilla Glass 5 protection on top. Talking about quality, the display looks very bright, sharp and vivid. The colours look punchy with deeper blacks and whiter whites, thus making for an immersive viewing experience. The display can reach a brightness level of up to 440 nits and lowest at 2 nits. The sunlight legibility is also good and so are the viewing angles. While the default colour profile looks great, users who prefer more accurate and less saturated colours can switch to either sRGB or DCI-P3 colour profile. Besides, there is an Adaptive mode and one can optionally adjust the colour temperature to warmer or cooler.

Other worthy options in Oxygen OS to enhance the display functionality include a Reading mode, Night mode, and Ambient display. We’ll cover them in the software section. That said, the display certainly makes for an enjoyable experience while watching videos and playing high-end games. Personally, we’re happy with the 1080p display over 2K as it helps in cost-cutting and aids in battery life.

The internal processing package on OnePlus 5T is basically the same as on OnePlus 5. The device is powered by a Snapdragon 835 processor with Adreno 540 GPU, 6/8GB of RAM, and 64/128GB of storage. For those unaware, this same chipset is found on certain 2017 flagships such as the likes of Galaxy S8, HTC U11, and Pixel 2/2 XL. On paper, the 5T certainly offers the best in class hardware given its price. The variant we reviewed is one with 6GB RAM.

Talking about actual performance, the OnePlus 5T is well optimized both in terms of hardware and software, thus making for a super snappy performance. During our test, we never noticed any slowdowns or lags, plus apps launch instantly and multitasking is a joy with an adequate amount of RAM. Thankfully, the 5T doesn’t suffer from ‘jelly-scrolling’ issue as seen on OnePlus 5. Graphics performance is top-notch as graphics-intensive titles run perfectly without any stutters or frame drops. Moreover, there are no heating issues. In synthetic benchmark tests, the 5T scored around 178000 points in Antutu and 6650 in Geekbench 4 multi-core test.

Just like OnePlus 5, the fingerprint sensor here is extremely fast and reliable. The signal reception and voice call quality are also great. Connectivity options include 4G with VoLTE (Dual SIM), dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, and USB OTG. In a nutshell, the OnePlus 5T delivers a great performance.

While the dual camera setup on the OnePlus 5 and 5T might look similar but changes have been made internally. The secondary telephoto lens with a longer focal length on OnePlus 5 has been replaced with a sensor that focuses on improved low-light performance. The primary camera is still the same 16MP sensor accompanied by a secondary 20MP sensor with the same f/1.7 aperture and 27mm focal length. 2X optical zoom isn’t there anymore but OnePlus claims that same focal length would make for better portrait shots.

The camera app features a minimal and sleek UI. A swipe up from bottom offers access to different shooting modes, including Slow motion, Pro mode, Time-lapse, and Portrait. The Pro mode lets you capture in RAW and manually adjust the ISO, white balance, and exposure. Options to enable beauty mode, switch aspect ratio and toggle flash are accessible from the main camera interface itself.

Speaking of quality, photos taken in broad daylight possessed plenty of details with accurate and vivid colours. Even indoor shots taken in artificial lighting exhibited reasonable details with very good colour reproduction and little noise. The Auto HDR mode works well and quick-jump 2x zoom is still there but now uses digital zoom instead. Coming to Portrait mode, it does a pretty good job but overall the results tend to be a hit or miss depending on the subject. At times, portrait shots look fairly accurate with a nice bokeh effect while sometimes the camera fails to precisely blur certain areas like hair, hence making them appear completely artificial.

Coming to low-light photos, this is where the secondary 20-megapixel sensor comes into action. According to OnePlus, it combines four pixels into one for noise reduction and improved clarity. That said, shots taken in low-light look pretty good with decent level of details and reduced noise. However, the results aren’t any close to Pixel 2.

The 5T supports 4K videos at 30fps, 1080p at 60fps and 720p slo-mo videos at 120fps. Though the phone lacks OIS, EIS helps in capturing smooth and better-stabilized videos with less shakiness. The videos look clear with adequate details, plus we found the audio quality to be loud and clear with reduced background noise.

The front 16MP f/2.0 camera is the same as on OnePlus 5. Selfies taken in daylight and well-lit indoors look good enough for social media usage. Low-light selfies aren’t slouch either, thanks to the screen flash that produces uniform light to take natural looking selfies.

Despite packing in promising cameras, the 5T leaves quite a lot to be desired especially in low-light and when compared to the likes of iPhone 8 Plus and Google Pixel 2. Though the 5T camera isn’t disappointing, there is definitely a room for improvement.

The bottom-facing speaker on the 5T is loud enough but little distortion may be noticed at the highest volume. The sound quality is good with clear audio such that we never felt disappointed. The only downside is the speaker placement which gets easily blocked while playing games and watching videos in landscape. Thankfully, there is a headphone jack but a headset doesn’t come bundled. While using headphones, users can make audio enhancements and customise the equaliser settings using ‘Audio Tuner’.

Moreover, the 6-inch 18:9 Optic AMOLED display is a delight for watching movies, videos and playing high-graphic games. However, you won’t find most videos utilising full-screen estate as they would normally play in 16:9 aspect ratio, including content from YouTube. Also, the default video player offers no option to stretch or scale the video to fit the entire display.

The battery life is another area where the 5T doesn’t fail to impress and OnePlus Dash Charging acts as an icing on the cake. Just like OnePlus 5, the 5T packs a 3300mAh battery which thankfully delivers a similar battery backup despite featuring a bigger display. The 5T easily manages to run through a day under normal to heavy usage with some charge still left during night time. During our test, we got over 5.5hrs of screen-on time on an average and were able to get a 7hrs SOT on a certain day involving low to moderate usage. Apparently, there are no custom battery saving modes except for the ones on stock Android.

Thanks to the proprietary Dash charging technology, the OnePlus 5T is perhaps the fastest charging smartphone that also surpasses the charging speed of iPhone X and Pixel 2. With the bundled charger and cable, the device can charge from 0 to 30% in just 15 minutes and up to 59% in 30 minutes. Charging from 0 to 100%, however, takes as much as 80 minutes. All this applies while the device is in powered on state.

The OnePlus 5T runs on Android 7.1.1 Nougat based on its custom Oxygen OS but it’s disappointing that it doesn’t ship with Android 8.0, though an official update to Oreo is planned for Q1, 2018. However, the fact that Oxygen OS takes Stock Android experience to another level by adding noteworthy features and additional customisation options, make it a perfect and also our favourite custom OS.

The first and foremost new feature is ‘Face Unlock’ which is certainly the best addition to 5T. Face Unlock is similar to Face ID on iPhone X but isn’t as secure as the latter as it uses the front camera instead of sensors for facial recognition but still works surprisingly good. During our review period, we found Face Unlock on 5T to be incredibly fast and accurate, such that we rarely found the need to use the fingerprint sensor. Moreover, the feature also works well in dim light and we weren’t able to unlock the phone by fooling it with our photo. That said, OnePlus states that Face Unlock isn’t as secure as the fingerprint sensor, hence one needs to use a code or fingerprint for banking apps and authorising purchases.

Another new feature is Parallel Apps which isn’t new though and is already present in several custom ROMs. This allows users to clone and simultaneously run secondary accounts of apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This way one can easily manage their personal and work profiles without the need to explicitly switch between different accounts.

Other nifty additions include a Reading mode that enhances the reading experience for certain apps like Amazon Kindle by automatically optimising the screen colour temperature depending on the ambient lighting. Users can either activate it manually or set it to automatically turn on for the desired apps. Similarly, there is a Night mode that filters out blue light to prevent strain on eyes during the night and help you sleep better. Users can either enable it manually or schedule it to turn on automatically at a selected time interval. Above that, there is an Ambient display that shows notification prompts in standby mode and without lighting up the entire panel. Similar to Samsung’s Always-On display, the 5T has a 'Lift up display' setting that beautifully displays the time, date, and pending notification icons when you lift up the phone.

Considering the tall form-factor, OnePlus has added nice gestures like swiping up and down on the homescreen opens up the app drawer and notification panel, respectively. Optionally, users can swap the order of on-screen keys and add a button to hide or show the navigation bar. Other customisations include App locker, Light and dark theme, Fingerprint gestures, Flip to mute, Double tap to wake, and Pocket mode.