The OnePlus 5T, OnePlus’ mid-cycle flagship, is here and while it should come as no surprise to the fans of the brand, the short lifespan that the much-vaunted OnePlus 5 enjoyed – five months to be precise – strikes us a bit odd.
Are the changes enough to justify an upgrade, especially for those who already have the original? We dive deep into what separates OnePlus’ 2017 flagships.
Design
It may be viewed as a cosmetic update – unlike the 3T, there’s no change under the hood – but with the move to the sprawling 6.01-inch 18:9 aspect ratio display, OnePlus has made some seemingly small but significant design changes. The 5T is marginally taller, wider, thicker and heavier, but by insignificant margins if you factor in the bigger display.
The taller display in a largely-similar form factor means thinner bezels on the side, and just the hint of a forehead and chin above and below the display.
Of course, a natural consequence of the barely-there bezels is that OnePlus has ditched the physical home button with the embedded fingerprint scanner in the front, moving the fingerprint scanner to the rear panel, albeit in a familiar position that is easily reached by the index finger (I’m looking at you, Samsung!).
The fingerprint reader is, as expected, blazing fast, and also lets you perform a few new functions, like bringing down the notification shade, and triggering the shutter when shooting a selfie.
If you’re a OnePlus aficionado, a bigger change may be the lack of hardware buttons, and this change may be a bit more divisive than you think, at least for folks looking to upgrade from another OnePlus device.
Not only from the ability to touch real capacitive buttons (instead of virtual ones on screen), but also from the fact that the added visual real estate has to be sacrificed to accommodate the navigation buttons.
For what it’s worth, the 5T is available only in just one color (Midnight Black) as compared to the three color options on the 5. And it’s still slippery as heck – just get a case with the purchase, you won’t regret it. No waterproofing either.
Display
The new display is significantly more immersive on a day-to-day-basis, particularly when you’re watching videos or playing games, and even though it doesn't deviate significantly from the 5 in terms of resolution (upping the resolution only to accommodate the 18:9 aspect ratio), the additional real estimate without the increase in footprint is certainly welcome.
Oxygen OS’s own font (Slate) scales well so that the lower pixel density on the large 6.01-inch screen doesn’t impact the overall experience of using the 5T.
The larger screen does impact the battery life, but the 5T still saw the end of the day with about 15-20 percent to spare, and with Dash Charging, I’ve stopped worrying about charging time on OnePlus devices.
Software
The 5T packs in all the stuff I loved in the 5, the Reading Mode for instance, and adds in some new tweaks to this device. Parallel Apps, for instance, lets you run two instances of social media apps, there’s finally a Game do-not-disturb mode, and there’s a sprinkling of small but handy features all around.
That said, I’m patently disappointed OnePlus is shipping this phone in November 2017 on Android 7.1.1 – an update to an Android 8.0-based Oxygen OS will come something early in 2018.
The big news though is that the 5T adds in Face Unlock, OnePlus’ homegrown facial recognition security that uses the 16MP front camera to log you into the device. It works in all but the lowest light settings, which is just as well since you really wouldn’t want the screen to be hitting you with full brightness when you check something in the middle of the night.
And man, is it fast! Most times, simply clicking the power button while you’re looking at the phone gets you straight to the home screen…it’s so fast, I can unhesitatingly say this it is the fastest face unlock around, one that is comparable to the speed of a fingerprint reader. Is it the most secure though?
No, but I haven’t been able to fool it with the regular suspects (photos, videos of myself), so I suspect it will pass muster for most folks. Plus, you do have the fingerprint sensor as backup.
Camera
Now, instead of the dedicated zoom lens setup that the 5 sported, OnePlus has instead tacked on a 20MP f/1.7 shooter alongside the 16MP f/1.7 rear camera, with both cameras at a 27.22mm focal length.
It is initially perplexing – why would you want to swap out a zoom lens for a second lens at the same focal length?
The camera interface still retains the zoom button, which is relying on digital zoom instead of the conventional optical zoom.
What OnePlus has done is that they automatically use the second 20MP shooter in low-light conditions, performing some fancy pixel grouping to capture more light. We’ll cover this in our full review, but from what we’ve seen so far, it seems to work… and low light results are, without a doubt, far better than the OnePlus 5.
In favorable conditions though, there isn’t a lot to tell OnePlus’ 2017 siblings apart, although portrait mode shots do benefit from the wider angle of view, but I’ll chalk that down to personal preference.
Final Say
Despite all these changes, the 5T is powered by the same raw power and software finesse that made the OnePlus 5 so likeable – the Snapdragon 835 with 6/8GB of RAM and 64/128GB of storage is still the top-shelf pick for flagship smartphones.
So, you get a larger screen, a Face Unlock that works (and how!), and a camera that performs better in low light. If you’ve bought a OnePlus 5 recently, you may wonder if it was worth waiting a little longer? Not really.
While the benefits are marginal at best, the OnePlus 5 is in no way a pushover and there is zero reason to regret your choice.
Your OnePlus 5 may not be the phone OnePlus wants to sell you (well, not anymore, at least!), but it is still among the best phones of 2017.
(Tushar Kanwar is a technology columnist and commentator and has been contributing for the past 15 years to India’s leading newspapers and magazines. He can be reached on Twitter: @2shar.)
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