OnePlus 8T unboxing and first impressions By Neowin

Hey guys I'm Richard Edwin, and today we're unboxing the OnePlus 8t, which is OnePlus's newest flagship phone. It was recently announced, and so it is the successor to the eight, and it's called t, because that's what OnePlus calls their second half of the year phones and um. There's no pro remember it's a successor to the eight and the eight pro, and they had a 17, a 7t pro and a 7 and a 7 pro. So they what OnePlus said is like look. We make the pro. It's meant to be so good that it doesn't need a second half of the year refresh and I kind of get that actually because, honestly, the seven they did.

Some weird things and they've done some weird things in the past were like, like the OnePlus, 7 and seven pro, I believe only the seven pro came to the United States at first and then, when they did the seven t only the non-pro came to the United States and then, of course, this CT pro McLaren came later when T-Mobile launched 5g. But that's another story, so they kind of do this stuff. And so I think they just kind of said, like you know, we're just going to launch one phone in the second half and I totally get it because when we look at this phone there's not even that much that's new over the OnePlus 8. , the big things that are new we've got 65 watt, wired charging, and we've got a 120 hertz display. Now the 120 hertz display you can already find on the OnePlus 8 pro um, and you can see.

I have several phones here out on my little table because there are um. This is, I feel like this is kind of a mix of phones, and so this is the press kit that OnePlus sends and OnePlus always sends these lovely press kits, which are just like no joke. You know um. So, let's see what's in here, we said it says hello, and we'll see, there's going to be a big reviewer's guide, which is no joke in itself that, like there's some serious production value in this reviewer's guide, okay, so we're going to have some cases here. We've got the um.

This is the sandstone uh, the teal sandstone bumper case cyan right so um. I have one of those for the one plus eight, it's its cool. You know. Sometimes it feels like it's a little bright. You know um and then this case here.

What's this cool, this is the quantum bumper case which I think I'm going to be rocking this one for a little while that looks pretty cool okay. So this is the OnePlus t if I can get it out of the box, all right and this model is going to be lunar silver 12, gauge ram, 256, gigs of storage, all right now, if we can just get this box open, we're going to have the OnePlus 8t this by the way, should not be the retail box that I know of um. We got some more stuff in here invitation letter for uh, probably an invitation to never settle, but we can just get into that later. Uh there's also a sim uh tool. Here you know I miss, I miss the old ones that they used to ship used to actually come a little rubber sleeve, with a keychain on it and uh.

That thing was nice anyway, let's get to the phone, because that's why we're all here right, uh, we also have oh, this is an oh. Oh, this is a type c to type c: cable, that's new! For OnePlus! All their warp charging in the past has been type a to type c. So previously we had warp charge 30t, that was the 30 watt charging uh the cable looked the same, but obviously USB type, a cable. Let's take a look at the 65 watt charger. Oh, and this has been redesigned as well.

Of course, it had to be somewhat redesigned because it has to have an USB type-c port in it and um yeah. It's got a smoother edge, uh, the other one had a flat back with uh sharper, corners and stuff like that. Now, if you take a look at the design, it's part one plus part everything else. I mean this. Camera hasn't the whole rectangle with rounded corners' thing.

Like we've. Seen that from Huawei and Samsung, specifically and um, you know the square with rounded rectangles right with rounded corners we've seen from apple and google as well. So um like, I feel, like that's kind of a tired design, and that's that's part of the reason that I brought out some of these older phones here right. This is the 6t that I, actually. This is the first phone that I reviewed from them, but you know it is like it was.

It was definitively one plus they've they've had that look for a while, because remember, like this kind of carries over right to the eight pro here. Okay and well, but also let's see this- this is the seven pro, and you know uh. No, I'm sorry! This is the seven pro. This is a seven pro 5g, and this is the eight right so for last year's 7t. They did something a little different.

They used a round camera housing or circular, I should say- and it's beautiful, I love it. It's unique um, because very few companies are doing this Huawei did it with the mate 30. Uh. Nokia did it with some old Windows phones, but it's not the common design for smartphone cameras, so I thought they were going to stick with this for a little while at least on, like the non-pro, because the 7t pro still had this look and then now this year, they're on to this, it's kind of disappointing uh, the the part about it. That feels very one plus, is that the lunar silver color and the matte glass, I should say a frosted glass back like it's still a very pretty phone.

It's still very slippery, but I mean I also miss. I mean this was the most beautiful color that I've ever seen on a smartphone. It's called interstellar glow um. I said it when I reviewed the 8 series that it felt like they um made a mistake not including this color in the 8 pro where the 8 pro we got this you know, and there was a blue one as well. I mean it's pretty, but I mean this.

This is like a work of art. You know, so I was a little disappointed, not just a little disappointed that um, I feel like the design, doesn't quite stand out as much. You know so, but we do get 120 hertz display, which is super cool and um. We do get a flat display, which is also super cool, because um, that's one thing that we don't have from the 8 and the 8 pro, because these are had curved displays where the um, the 8 is 90 hertz and the 8 pro is 120 hertz all right. So this is it.

This is the OnePlus 8t. Now this is a lovely device. It starts at 749. Um. The only problem is that this, the OnePlus 8 it starts at like 5.99 now so um, and then you could get a OnePlus 8 pro for not much more than this. So I mean it's, it's not the first of its kind right.

We've seen that story a few times when the new one comes along, and it's just an iterative improvement in the end the old one you know has been discounted so many times since then that you know it only makes sense to get the old one or something like that, and so, so like that's a problem, that'll work itself out so like I said we have 120 hertz, um OLED, display here, and we'll see. If we have there, the nice smooth animation, which uh is something that that one plus debuted with the um OnePlus 7 pro that was the first one where they actually had the um the 90 hertz screen. That's where they started working on the refresh rate and to me that's when one plus started to grow up a little like if we look over here. This is the 7t, and we're looking for updates there. This one had a 90 hertz display so that that was all about bringing that flagship feature down to the non-pro model.

So we're seeing that again this year, where the 8 pro had the 120 hertz screen and the eight um, the regular eight had a 90 hertz screen now the 8t uh has 120 hertz screen. So that's not like one of the key features of this device because um like I said not that much has changed, but also that the screen is flat. If you like flat screens, that's definitely a value proposition for you. I know that the curved screens have gotten a lot of hate over the years. I remember the 7t had a flat screen too.

So that was cool one thing I love about OnePlus devices, and I'm going to give you a couple of things that I love. But one is this little switch right here. This little switch right here is only otherwise seen on iPhones. To be honest, um you switch it see. I just switched all the way to the top now everything's on silent in the middle everything's vibrate, and then, if you put it on ring uh everything is all sounds are turned on, which is awesome.

It's an easy way to silence your phone when you, maybe you want to get notifications, you don't want to put it on, do not disturb you know so um. So that's one thing. I love another thing. I love. Oh, okay, not pop-ups, but um.

One thing that I love. It's called zen mode. If we find if it's going to be around to there, it is so zen mode is a feature where it says: phone down enjoy life, and so it started out. I think this started out on the 6t, and you turned it on, and it was just 20 minutes way to put your phone down for 20 minutes. What is this create a room join a room.

I don't know what that is, but um yeah startup is just 20 minutes, and basically you just can't use your phone for 20 minutes and there's a timer shown on the screen. You can access the camera and I think you can make emergency calls, and you can receive calls and that's it, but that's so now you can set it up to 120 minutes. I think the last I saw was 60 minutes and 120 minutes is new, so that that's cool to me, because two hours is a movie, so you can sit down and watch a movie, and you could get that. You know you won't be able to use your phone in that time, and let me tell you when I say you can't use your phone. You can't use your phone.

Furthermore, you can't even restart to get zen mode to turn off. It's just not going to happen. So there's once you start, there is no way out of it, and it's pretty cool, because when you go, and you try to check Facebook or something you just can't do it, which I really like that so a couple other things about this device. Let's see no headphone jack as you'd expect um USB type c port sim slot on the cameras right. So we got a few lenses here.

The main sensor is 48 megapixels the exact same sensor as the OnePlus 8 had the main sensor, the exact same main sensor. I should say um and well most of the same actually because it's got an ultra-wide. There are four sensors, but not one of them is a telephoto lens, so um what you're getting is a main, an ultra-wide again, a five megapixel macro lens, which I don't think is particularly useful, but at least it's not two megapixels any more right, those two megapixel uh macro or depth, sensors, they're useless, and it's just a way for companies to say, like hey, we have an extra sensor, but there's a fourth sensor here and that's a monochrome lens, and no one really knows why that's there at all um. So there's that but yeah, the key thing is the display, and I love OnePlus phones in general. That's why I pointed out a couple of the features that I just like about: OnePlus, because um they have some just good common sense features.

They be usually known for a very stock version of android and that's not really the case anymore. Oh, we do have an update over here that I'm going to have to install eventually but um. Yes, this should be running oxygen. Os 11, which means that I can turn on an always on display. That's one thing: that's totally new is um the ability to have an always-on display, and it's not new with this device, it's new with oxygen OS 11.

So if you have like a one plus eight or something that that is getting oxygen, OS 11, you can still do that. A couple other things you go in here, um, you can by the way ambient display because they always on um display but um I have. I turned just turned it on there's. Also, you can go in. You could change the refresh rate.

It's still only 60 and 120 hertz. So there's one thing I really wanted from the eight pro was a 90 hertz option. You know because uh personally, I there's not as big of a difference between 90 and 120 hertz as there is from 60 to 90. And obviously the higher the refresh rate, the um, the lower your battery is going to be so um. If you like, you might want that 90 hertz refresh rate just um, so you still get those smooth animations but then at the same time you're not using as much battery as you would at 120 hertz, so to customize the always on display.

You don't actually go through the display option like you go to display, and then you go to um. Where did I find ambient display that was on here, and then you go to always on display? You would think that those always on display settings are in there somewhere or somewhere in this path, but no not at all. Actually you have to go to customizations okay, so you can go to um clock style, and now we have uh insight here. So we could choose that, and now that is nope, maybe not uh. Is there an apply button somewhere, save okay? So now it's going to come on, there's our always on display that I just chose okay, so we have there's uh fingerprint animations as well, which have always been there, but um yeah.

That always on display is just something: that's um! It's its new for oxygen! Os! 11 we just didn't have that before so um pretty cool. So I really don't think there are gonna, be any surprises here, right um. This is OnePlus 8t right get a little yeah. You can see it! It's there um! I like I've, I've reviewed enough, one plus device, I'm familiar with oxygen, OS um, and it's really um like I reviewed the eight. I reviewed the eight pro and I keep referring to these devices and I brought these devices out for a reason because um like this isn't offering other than the 65 watt wired charging.

This isn't offering anything that we haven't seen from other OnePlus devices right so like that 120 hertz display we got from the pro. However, there is still no wireless charging, so what you have to decide between is the wireless charging that you get in the pro along with uh warp charge, 30t or warp charge.65. and remember: OnePlus does offer uh 30 watt wireless charging with this, so it charges fast. I personally would prefer the wireless charging pro well personally. Wireless charging is a staple, it's a must-have for me with any device.

So that's important, but 65 watts is gonna, be superfast. I can't wait to try it out so anyway. That's it um. I don't expect to be blown away by anything. I don't expect to be surprised by anything.

I actually, I expect to know exactly what I'm getting into when I get into it so um. That's it guys I'll review on this. In a few weeks, I'm reviewing several other phones at the moment like the um, google, pixel, 5 and um the lg wings, so uh some fun stuff coming up so stay tuned. I'm Richard Edwin have a great night.

Source : Neowin