[Smartphones] | OnePlus 5T | Is this the ONE?

New and improved?!

So, the amazing OnePlus 5 is discontinued, again. OnePlus has pulled another one of their "holiday season release" cards and have already put out the new and improved 5T in the market. But I'm a bit sad for the Oneplus 5 users, because the 5T is everything that was missing from the 5. Here's why I think it is the phone you were waiting for.

Design: The 5T is the 2017 version of the 5. The taller aspect ratio, the face unlock feature (more on that later) make it slightly more appealing than the original 5.

Build quality remains the same, with the slippery aluminum back and extremely well crafted buttons. They make that rigid,   satisfying click on every press. It's actually very underrated but is am important aspect of a phone's overall feel. And the OnePlus 5T nails it, just like the 5 did.

                                    
Display: Last year, OnePlus made a cheap excuse of why they didn't include a full view display on the OnePlus 5, stating that they are still a small company without access to high end resources. And less than 6 months later, what do you know! They suddenly have access to an 18:9 display panel, which should've been on the OP5 to begin with.

But keeping the past gripes aside,  the display is just beautiful. Though it's still "only" 1080p, I couldn't tell a whole lot of difference from the Pixel 2 XL. Speaking of the pixel, the OP5T has a "problem free" AMOLED panel. No ugly color tints at extreme angles, which is good.

The brightness seems pretty much the same as the OP5, which is to say great. Expect the same comfortable outdoor viewing experience with the 5T as well.

Same Awesome performance!

Performance: Well, there is no notable difference in speed, as both phones have the exact same internals. So don't buy the 5T solely for it's performance. Get the 5 if you don't care about the classy looks but want a screaming fast phone at a slightly lower price.

Cameras: The camera sensors are seemingly identical, but the approach here is actually a lot different. As you might be already heard, the 5T does not have a telephoto focal length on the second 20 mp camera. It uses an f/1.9 aperture and the same focal length as the primary f/1.7 aperture 16 mp module.

Newer cameras!

Here's where it gets weird. OnePlus says that on the 20 mp sensor, they are using some kind of "pixel merging" technology to merge 4 pixels into one, and hence produce better lowlight images. But in reality, it doesn't really work like that. The primary 16 mp camera still does a little bit better than the secondary camera,  as expected.

Low light suffers due to higher megapixels. More pixels usually means more grain in your shots. And that is inevitably true here as well. The portrait mode on the other hand, seems a little bit better than the 5. Images are not as cropped in as on the OnePlus 5, and the edge detection has slightly matured. I still wouldn't call it a "feature" though. It still produces some half baked bokeh blur sometimes.

The front camera has another purpose on the 5T, and it's facial recognition! OnePlus's face unlock is, without a doubt,  the FASTEST face unlock I've ever seen on a phone. But it's not super secure though, as it is only using the front camera without any depth info.

But it works surprisingly well in all buy the darkest environments. There too,  it your display brightness is all the way up, and the camera can see your face, it will still unlock! It does not unlock when you have your eyes closed though, so that's pretty cool.

But if you're still not sold on the whole gave unlock thing, you can still use the ultra fast fingerprint sensor, now placed on the back. You can have face and fingerprint unlock on at the same time. That's convenient!

Battery: The 5T doesn't get any better or worse than the 5 in battery run time. You get the same 5.5 hours of screen-on time along with that incredible dash charge capability to boot.

Conclusion: That was my take on OnePlus's latest flagship killer. What are your thoughts? Do you have it or planning to get one? Or are you one of those angry OnePlus 5 users? Unleash your rage in the comments or you could hit me up at Twitter, Facebook or Instagram too.

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