Hi guys, it's MTG here, and today I'm going to be reviewing the OnePlus 5T. I've had this
phone for almost 3 weeks now, and with the holiday season approaching, I wanted to share
my thoughts on the device. Is this phone inexpensive for a reason? Or is it really just a solid
phone. Hopefully, this video will help you answer those questions and help you decide
if this phone is the one for you. Let's get right into it.
I'll first go over the design and specifications of this phone, which on paper, look a lot
better than some other flagships right now. Right off the bat, you'll notice that OnePlus
followed the trend of 2017, and created a phone with minimal bezels. The body of the
phone is aluminum, while the front is Corning's Gorilla Glass 5. The 5T has a 6 inch AMOLED
display with a resolution of 1080 x 2160, and a screen to body ratio of 80.5%. This
phone comes in two different versions. One with 64 GB of internal storage and 6GB of
RAM, and another with 128 GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM. Both versions are powered by
Qualcomm's octa-core SnapDragon 835 chipset. Despite the high-end specifications, the OnePlus
5T starts at just $499, and the 8GB of RAM and 128 GB storage option is just $559. With
Apple charging a thousand dollars for their latest flagship, the OnePlus 5T literally
starts at half the price of one of its biggest competitors.
Powering the phone is a 3,300 mAh battery that will last you all day, even on heavy
usage days. You can even forget to plug it in at night, and because it charges so quickly,
you can get it almost full charge again before you have to head out for the day. This gets
me to my next point about feeling appreciated. Some companies, and you all know what company
I'm really talking about, will charge you for something that should come with every
phone, like fast charging adapters and cables. OnePlus includes the fastest wall adapter
and cable available, in the box. Also, it seems to be of very good quality. The case
that you see here was also included in the box. And if you noticed throughout the video
that there was a screen protector on the phone, that is because OnePlus included a pre-installed
screen protector on the phone itself that does not have to be peeled off, and comes
absolutely perfect and bubble-free. It's the little things such as these that make me,
as a consumer, feel appreciated and more inclined to buy more of the company's products, so
good job OnePlus.
The main difference between this phone and all previous OnePlus phones is this new 18:9
aspect ratio AMOLED screen. Although it has a lower resolution than other flagships out
right now at 1080p, the quality of the screen is excellent. Colors pop, text is crisp, and
the screen is bright enough to see even in direct sunlight. Frankly, if you put the 5T
next to the other big name flagships, the screen holds its ground. If you're holding
your phone at a reasonable distance to your face, it will be really difficult to distinguish
between this 1080p panel to other 1440p panels.
While using the phone for the past couple of weeks, I've grown to really like subtle
features that OnePlus has included in their latest flagship. The phone has an alert slider
on its left side that allows you to toggle between its normal settings, whatever you
set for do not disturb, and silent. The slider just makes it really easy to toggle between
notification settings, and adds that third position that even iPhones don't have. In
terms of cool software features, one that stood out to me was the inclusion of gestures.
You can set various gesture to do different tasks from your lock screen. For example,
you can draw an O and open the camera app, or draw a v to turn on and off the flashlight.
You'll be able to use gestures to do other tasks and open any app on your phone. When
looking at the OnePlus 5T's overall software experience, Android purists will be happy
to see that OnePlus's Oxygen OS skin keeps the experience almost stock. This phone ships
with Android Nougat, which also means that it has Google Assistant. The phone may not
initially open some apps as fast as the Pixel 2 XL, but the 8 Gigabytes of RAM means that
you can keep a lot more apps open and ready to use throughout the day. The user experience
is very fluid and snappy. With this phone, stuttering and lag will not be a problem.
The phone has a single, down-firing speaker that does actually get a lot louder than I
expected. And yes, you can also rest assured that this phone, despite it being 2017, ships
with a headphone jack. As I've said in previous videos, there is still a level of ease plugging
in a pair of wired earphones that don't require a charge. In terms of security, the OnePlus
5T gives you multiple ways of unlocking your phone with a fingerprint scanner on the back,
and face unlock. The fingerprint scanner works really fast as OnePlus has gone away with
any sort of unlocking animation. You just go right into your homescreen. The face unlock
on the phone only uses the front camera so it's not as secure and doesn't work when it's
dark or if there is a lot of light behind your face. But in all other scenarios, this
is the fastest facial recognition I have ever seen. Again, there are no animations, so as
soon as I click the power button, it recognizes my face and just puts me right at my home
screen.
Shifting over to the OnePlus 5T's camera, I can say that the phone not only has a great
camera for the price, but a very respectable camera overall disregarding price altogether.
The phone has a dual camera system, where the main lens is 16 Megapixels, and the secondary
lens is 20 Megapixels. They both have an aperture of f/1.7, and interestingly enough, OnePlus
has elected to ditch the telephoto lens and go with a secondary "low-light" camera. OnePlus's
explanation is that in very low-light, the phone will automatically switch to its secondary
camera. Utilizing it's extremely high 20 Megapixels, it will intelligently combine every four pixels
into one to reduce noise. My initial thoughts are that the secondary camera doesn't do enough
better in low-light to justify taking away a telephoto lens. But if we just look at the
main camera, it stands it's ground when put up against other flagships. The camera picks
up a tremendous amount of detail during the day, and does a pretty good job at reducing
noise in low light. I have also taken some pretty good portrait mode pictures from this
camera. In general, the 5T's cameras take really solid pictures in whatever scenario
you throw at them. Colors are accurate, and a tremendous amount of detail is picked up.
Subscribe and stay tuned for my in-depth camera comparisons with the iPhone X and Pixel 2
XL, which should be up a day or two after this video is posted. Watch those videos to
see more shots and to see how the 5T's cameras compare to two of the best smartphone cameras
on the market right now.
There are things that I consider as drawbacks of owning this phone. But keep in mind, none
of these made me think "ah that's why this phone is only $500." They are just things
I wanted to address. This phone doesn't have some features that have been on other flagships
this year, such as expandable storage, wireless charging, and water resistance. The second
lens doesn't have too much functionality outside of taking slightly better night shots in really
dark conditions. The lack of any sort of front-firing speaker makes it easy for you to cover the
phone's speaker as you hold it in a natural position. There is this minor issue that I
have where the power button is too easily pressed. It's odd, but I have accidentally
turned on the screen more times than I have accidentally squeezed the Pixel 2 XL. Another
drawback has to do with service. This isn't a phone that is available at any electronic
stores or through any carriers, you have to order it on their website and all issues and
problems have to go through their website. Repairs won't be as simple as walking into
an Apple Store or visiting your carrier or Best Buy. Also, other big name phone manufacturers
have built a reputation of creating phones that are not only functioning after more than
two years, but are still doing well. With OnePlus, I don't know if I've seen enough
from them to say that these phones will stand the test of time, but by all means they definitely
could.
After using this phone for about three weeks now, I want to give props to OnePlus for not
only making a phone that is one of the best budget options right now, but for someone
who likes a near stock Android experience and a great phone. It's really a great thing
to have a phone this functional and well built at a price that is so relatively low. The
OnePlus 5T shows that great phones can still be made without insane price tags. The OnePlus
5T is not a great phone for its price. It is a great phone, period. It can charge faster
than any phone out there, has more RAM than most of its competitors, and maintains a headphone
jack. The OnePlus 5T is a phone that more people should be looking into, because it
just makes so much sense.
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the description for links to my social media accounts, and as always, thanks for watching,
and I will see you in the next video.