The OnePlus 3T is a relatively light, internal-only revision of the impressive OnePlus 3. It brings the phone right up to date, putting it head-to-head with the Google Pixel.
A Google Pixel will cost you $650, but the OnePlus 3T is $440. That’s a massive savings, and although OnePlus bumped the price of the 3T up by $40 over the OnePlus 3’s $400 price tag, it’s still way cheaper than the Galaxy S8, the LG G6, or any other big-brand flagship Android phone on sale today. The insanely low price is low enough to make you wonder.
The OnePlus 3 was the best phone OnePlus had made, and one we highly recommended. Can a revision that adds newer hardware to a winning package do anything other than improve on the original? We’ve been finding out, and have revisited the OnePlus 3T on release of the midnight black model.
Put the OnePlus 3 next to the OnePlus 3T and unless you are familiar with the colors — the OnePlus 3T ditches silver for a stylish gunmetal finish, and also comes in a stunning, limited edition black finish — it’s absolutely impossible to tell them apart. There was no sense in changing the OnePlus 3’s design after just six months, because it was solid to start with.The fingerprint sensor always recognized my print with astonishing speed, and there’s NFC in the OnePlus 3T, so the phone supports Android Pay. Mobile payments are hit or miss, but Android Pay’s problems are hardly unique to the 3T.
The OnePlus 3T has a 5.5-inch Optic AMOLED screen with a 1, 920 x 1, 080 pixel resolution. What’s Optic AMOLED? According to OnePlus CEO Carl Pei, the Samsung-supplied screens feature a dual-polarizing layer that’s tuned for improved color temperature and contrast. On the OnePlus 3, it was always a pain to “tune” using the basic controls, but that’s changed on the OnePlus 3T. Out of the box, it looks amazing, and the true whites really shine through in a way that was difficult to achieve on the 3. If it’s too stark, under a Screen Calibration setting, there’s an eye-pleasing sRGB option, and a custom setting with a warm-to-cool slider.