The OnePlus 5T is now official and it's just what
all the rumors said it would be: a phone with a nearly bezel-less, 6"
display and a new dual camera system on the back that will help it take better
pictures in low light.
For all else, it looks and feels almost exactly like
the OnePlus 5: it has that exquisite seamless aluminum build with a
sand-blasted back featuring a lush, black finish and it sports a very ergonomic
curved back that makes the phone feel thinner than it is and lay in the hand
very comfortably. OnePlus calls this version Midnight Black and this time
around, it's the only available color.
In terms of size the 5T is practically the same size
as the OnePlus 5 (it's a hair taller and wider, but it's really hard to tell).
What's gone is the home button in the front. The button has moved to the back
and is now a circle, but it's still ceramic so it's harder to scratch it and it
still unlocks the phone in under 0.2 seconds. What this also means, though, is
that now you have on-screen navigation buttons up front that take up some of
that 6" display.
The new display is the big star of the show with the
OnePlus 5T. It's a 6.01" OLED screen that takes up 80.5% of the phone's
front. Bezels are stripped to a bare minimum on the top and bottom, and are
almost invisible on the sides. It is a taller screen as well, with a new 18:9
aspect ratio and a 1080 x 2160 pixel resolution.
OnePlus provides a few different color modes to
choose from: you have the sRGB standard for more balanced colors, as well as
DCI-P3 for more vibrant colors, and you have an adaptive, "Sunlight"
mode where the screen will adjust its brightness and contrast outdoors to be
easier to see.
The other big change in the OnePlus 5T comes in the
camera. The OnePlus 5 was the first from the company to have a dual camera
system on its back, with a wide-angle main lens and a "telephoto"
secondary lens. This setup changes in the OnePlus 5T, which has the same
wide-angle main camera, but the secondary camera is actually one with the same
27mm field of view, but a higher 20MP resolution and the capability to combine
4 pixels into one in order to reduce noise in low-light pictures. Both these
new cameras have a wide, f/1.7 aperture. OnePlus says that the phone will
detect low-light situations and will switch to the secondary camera when it
gets dark.
And Portrait Mode - the one where the background of
a picture is blurred, while the subject remains in sharp focus - will still be
available on the OnePlus 5T, using clever algorithms and software to do its
trick. It will also benefit from the secondary camera as Portrait pictures will
come with better noise reduction.
The OnePlus 5T will also be the first OnePlus phone
to support Face Unlock. This method uses the front camera that scans your face
and looks for some 100 identifiers. It's nowhere near as secure as the 3D
mapping tech in the iPhone X, but it is one more option that you may want to
use. You need to first turn on the display and only then you can use Face
Unlock on the 5T.
In the United States, the OnePlus 5T release date is
set for Tuesday, November 21st, and the phone will also lauch in most of
Europe, Canada, as well as in China, Hong Kong and India. The OnePlus 5T price
has gone ever so slightly in the United States: the base 64GB model costs US$ 500
(the OnePlus 5 price was set at US$ 480). In Europe and the rest of the world, the
price remains at € 500 for the same 64 gig version of the phone.
