OnePlus 8T 5G Review – Solid Upgrade To Flagship

OnePlus 8T is the latest addition in the OnePlus flagship smartphones and the fourth device from the company to launch this year. It brings way too many features including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset, a 120Hz Fluid AMOLED display, an official IP68 rating, and a blazing-fast 65W Warp Charge all in one package. It runs on the latest Android 11-based OxygenOS 11 and has a huge 4500 mAh battery under the hood making it a perfect deal if you are looking to upgrade to OnePlus. It is the successor to OnePlus 8 with a few increments that make it a must-try.

OnePlus 8T is available in India on both Amazon India and OnePlus India among other avenues. The phone is available in two colour variants i.e. Lunar Silver and Aquamarine Green. It is available in two storage configurations i.e. 8GB+128GB available at Rs 42,999/- while the higher 12GB+256GB variant is available at Rs 45,999/-. Amazon India is offering up to Rs 16,400/- off on exchange along with a tonne of other deals & discounts. It includes No cost EMI, 10% instant discount on Axis, Citi, and ICICI Credit Cards and EMIs on Credit Card among other deals. It usually takes a few days for the product to be delivered but Prime members get priority.

OnePlus 8T comes in similar packaging as we have seen before in other OnePlus devices. The box contents also do not differ much and include:

• OnePlus 8T
• Warp Charger 65W adapter
• USB Type C to Type C cable
• Clear back case
• Documents
• Red Cable membership card

Before talking about the device in a bit more depth, let’s look at on-paper specifications of OnePlus 8T first.

• Display: 6.55 inch ( 16.63 centimetres) 120 Hz Fluid AMOLED Display with 2400 X 1080 Pixels resolution, 402 PPI density
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Octa-core Processor + Adreno 650 GPU
• Memory & storage: 12GB RAM, 256GB storage
• Software: Oxygen OS based on Android 11
• Rear cameras: 48 MP Sony IMX586 Sensor, 16 MP Ultra Wide Angle, 5 MP macro lens and 2 MP monochrome lens,
• Selfie camera: 16 MP Sony IMX471 Sensor
• Battery: 4500 mAH Lithium-ion battery with 65W Warp charge
• Build: Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus (or Corning Gorilla Glass 7) on the front and back
• Weight: 188 gram
• Dimensions: 160.70 x 74.10 x 8.40mm

Let’s see what makes the OnePlus 8T an actual flagship killer at the price.

OnePlus is known for its out-of-the-box colour choices and designs that stand out. The OnePlus 8T sports an aluminium frame with a sandwich design with glass on both front and back. The front display has a punch-hole cutout for the camera and very thin bezels around the edges including a tiny chin. The Aquamarine Green and Lunar Silver colour options aren’t just names but rather express the excellent colour finishes. The glass back is frosted from inside giving you a reminiscent of the Maldives with its Aquamarine Green and space when it comes to its Lunar Silver colour variants.

A super nice grille sits flush with the top bezel hiding the earpiece while the bottom-firing loudspeaker combines to create stereo speakers. Unfortunately, you will have to say goodbye to the headphone jack as it is not there just like its predecessors. The display is 2.5D around the edges while the back panel also curves on the edges which increases the grip and comfort whilst using it.

Turn to the back and you’ll see a quad-camera setup raising just a bit above the back panel. It looks compact and compelling rather than taking all the space just like any Samsung Galaxy Note 20 devices. The camera bump has six symmetrical pieces with four cameras and a dual-LED flash along with a colour temperature sensor. The back panel is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 so you don’t have to worry about it slipping from your hands. But hey, there’s no fingerprints and smudges on the back panel.

Moving on, the alert slider is to the right side on top with a power button. On the left, you’ll get a volume rocker that has excellent tactile feedback with it. The top has a mic and so does the bottom with a secondary mic onboard. There’s a USB Type C 3.1 with a loudspeaker and a dual SIM Card slot at the bottom as well. The phone has an IP68 water and dust rating officially so at least you can claim your warranty if it is water damaged.

Technically, the OnePlus 8T sports a 6.55-inch Fluid AMOLED panel with a resolution of 1080×2400 pixels. A punch-hole to the top-left relieves the display from any notches and instead replaces it with a tiny cut-out. It is secured with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 which is tested to withstand several drops even from 1.5 meters or so. A 402 PPI density ensures a rich display.

Coming to its practical use, the display is flat with tiny bezels and chin. It has a 120Hz refresh rate which means the display will replace 120 times every second which is 200% than any regular smartphone. Moreover, it has two modes i.e. dynamic and auto for better refresh rate as per the situation. The display sports a 240Hz touch sampling rate which is higher than OnePlus 8 (180Hz).

OnePlus 8T sports a Fluid AMOLED display which is among the best. It supports HGL, HDR10, and HDR10+ content and also L1 DRM for HDR playback. The display gets extremely bright at 500 nits of manual and 800 nits of auto-brightness that makes it easier to view the screen even under bright daylight. Its JNCD rating is 0.55 which is another great trait as the display can produce colour accurately.

The display is huge at 6.55” and enjoys an aspect ratio of 20:9 which is great for watching movies, videos, playing games, and so on. Though the display isn’t perfect as you can still see dark grey bends when viewing HDR content when it should be black but it vanishes when viewing SDR content. The display also conforms with DCI-P3 colour space on Vivid mode and has a max deltaE of 6.2.

With Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, you can anticipate sheer performance like no other. The OnePlus 8T doesn’t fail to impress with its buttery-smooth performance thanks to the combination of LPDDR4X RAM, UFS 3.1 storage, a powerful CPU & GPU on-board, and last but not the least, the OxygenOS 11 which is highly optimized and works flawlessly.

The device performed exceptionally well when compared to OnePlus 7T Pro, Xiaomi Mi 10 Lite,  Poco X3, and few others to the dust. It compared well with bigwigs like Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro, OnePlus 8 Pro, and so on. I can assure playing even the most graphics-intensive games like COD or PUBGM for hours wouldn’t cause the phone to break a sweat. We tried everything from Asphalt 9: Legends to Battle Prime to PUBGM and the phone managed to keep frame rates consistent without any hassle. The display is HDR that adds to the USP further and vividly enough for excellent gameplay and user experience.

OnePlus 8T comes pre-loaded with Android 11-powdered OxygenOS 11. This brings way too many features on the OnePlus 8T even when compared to the OnePlus 7 & 7T series while the OnePlus 8 series is already getting Android 11.

The OxygenOS 11 brings one-handed usage to the next level with apps and functions built to ease the use. OnePlus has overhauled each and every aspect of its custom UI including the Weather, Recorder, Calculator, Contacts, Phone, Messages, and so on. One of the major features to add to the mix is the Always-On Display with multiple versions and options available at your disposal.

OnePlus 8T is also up for three years of major Android OS upgrades so you are pretty much covered with Android 12, Android 13, and even Android 14-based OxygenOS without any doubt. All the animations are snappy, OnePlus has changed the typeface to accommodate the overhauled UI as well.

OnePlus 8T sports a single front camera with a 16MP sensor and a quad-camera setup at the back boosting a 48MP primary cam (OIS, PDAF, f/1.7 aperture), a 16MP ultrawide sensor (123° FoV, f/2.2 aperture, 1.0micron pixel size), 5MP macro and a 2MP depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture each. This is on paper and now let’s see how it performs in practical usage.

As usual, the camera app on the OnePlus 8T is powerful with a handful of upgrades. It has a photo, video, time-lapse, slow-motion, pro, portrait, nightscape, and other modes on-board. Talking about the photo quality, the primary sensor captured binned photos at 12MP with pinchy colours, excellent contrast, and dynamic range. The details on the shoots are on-point although the sharpness could have been better. Overall, the processing could be better on the OnePlus’ part.

OnePlus 8T captured a 2x digital zoom lossless that looks pretty convincing. It reserves the right level of dynamic range and contrast as normal shots. The ultrawide sensor takes shots with a 123° field of view which is a bit higher than other devices. You will notice a bit of noise in the ultrawide-angle sensor compared to the primary sensor. Luckily, the automatic distortion correction takes care of the ultrawide shots although you can turn it off.

The primary sensor works with the 2MP depth sensor for pleasing and excellent portrait shots that look life-like with better edge detection. Finally, the 5MP macro snapper does a pretty good job of snapping macroscopic shots with great details. The 16MP selfie shooter takes excellent selfies too with HDR and portraits effect. The phone takes great 12MP low-light photos thanks to its commendable Nightscape mode although it could get better.

The OnePlus 8T can capture videos up to 4K resolution at 30/60fps and yanking it up to 240fps at 1080p resolution. The front is capped at 1080p@30fps with gyro-EIS.

OnePlus 8T is equipped with a huge 4,500 mAh Li-Po battery which is a 5% increment over its predecessor OnePlus 8. This gives OnePlus 8T 30:52 hours of talk time, 16:03 hours of video playback, and an endurance rating of 104 hours. For comparison, it lasts 2 hours more on calls compared to the OnePlus 8 but 4 hours less on video playback. It comes with an ultrafast Warp Charge 65W. This allows the adapter to charge the battery to its max capacity in just 39 minutes.

When compared on a 30 minutes charging test, the OnePlus 8T charges to 94% leaving the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro way behind at 69% and 63% respectively.

One of the best things about the OnePlus 8T is that it sports a stereo speaker setup. The bottom-firing loudspeaker and the earpiece produces exceptional audio quality in a hybrid setting. OnePlus 8T managed to score -24.0 LUFS on the loudness test with a “Very Good” remark while the OnePlus 8 had “Excellent” but it isn’t that noticeable, to be honest.

It has all the connectivity features you would need. It includes a USB Type-C 3.1, Wi-Fi 6 dual-band with DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 5.1 with aptX HD, LE, and A2DP as well. It supports dual-band GPS including systems such as SBAS, Galileo, BDS, Glonass, and A-GPS. It also has NFC for contactless payments. It has all the sensors needed and more.

As usual, you can stick to its PIN or Pattern or Password or try its uber-fast under-the-display fingerprint scanner. In fact, the FPS is blazing fast and unlocks the phone even before you blink your eye. Smudges on the area above the FPS might prompt you to clean the surface before unlocking the phone. With it, you get a facial recognition system that is flagship-grade as well and unlocks the phone in a snap.

Pros