OnePlus is probably one of the most all-around best bang for you buck smartphones you can
buy these days.
But, it only comes in two colors which are black.
It's time to spice things up a bit and see what a clear OnePlus 6T would look like.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
OnePlus, in the past, has been the phone for tech minded individuals who want a lot of
functionality and power at a realistic price.
And with an outspoken OnePlus community that actually gets listened to, OnePlus has pumped
out some pretty solid phones.
This year, OnePlus has added water resistance, but it's not IP specific and has no official
rating.
The glue around the back panel is pretty similar to the Pixel's and the Samsung's I've taken
apart previously though, requiring quite a bit of heat and gentle persuasion from my
pry tool.
Each of the 4 sides on the OnePlus 6T are curved, which present an additional challenge
when removing the back panel because too much pressure at any point from my metal pry tool
will cause the whole panel to break, and we don't want that.
OnePlus used to include an iconic bright red battery in their phones, but stopped with
the OnePlus 3.
If you want a blast from the past, go check out my old OnePlus 2 teardown.
Finally lifting open the OnePlus 6T reveals no red battery, but they did add a red pull
tab instead of a green one this year.
That's got to add at least 3 horsepower.
Thumbs up for that.
I'll take what I can get.
Other than that though, with no wireless charging or external fingerprint scanner, and with
all the circuit boards covered in black plastic, this phone has a more simple, minimalist vibe.
I'll remove the bottom plastics to see if we can modify it at all.
OnePlus has included red loctite on their screws.
Not sure if that's on purpose or not, but we can pretend they did it for aesthetics,
even though you guys on my channel are the only ones who ever get to see it.
Underneath the charging port plastics, we find that the loud speaker and vibrator are
both molded into the plastic itself, making any trimming or modifying to reveal the circuit
boards unrealistic.
So I'll close it back up and replace the screws.
It is what it is.
I'm going to make the battery red again though.
Unscrewing the one screw holding down the metal bracket and unplugging the battery like
a little Lego, and then the whole 3700 milliamp hour battery can come away from the phone.
Another one of the waterproofing barriers OnePlus has added is a secondary plastic layer
beneath the battery.
Since my phone has been opened up and isn't really water resistant anymore, I can just
get rid of it.
I have got a spare red carbon fiber skin left over from a previous project, so I'll just
plop it down over the top half of the battery, making sure to keep the plugin free.
And I'll wrap the skin around the sides and bottom of the battery.
Without any copper wireless charging like we saw in the clear Pixel 3, hopefully this
red will spice things up a bit once we get the back glass cleared.
With the silver bracket back in place, now we can start removing the camera lens.
A little bit of heat goes a long way with this black adhesive.
Heat makes it easier to loosen up and remove the metal dual lens bracket from the glass.
The plastic flash also comes away with the bracket.
So OnePlus comes in black and black, and both blacks should have the same color removing
process.
This is the Midnight Black, so when the color is peeled off, we should be left with a slightly
matte or a frosted finish on the glass.
Luckily the color removal is pretty easy this time around and the whole panel is coming
off in one piece.
This doesn't leave me much time for any super good cellphone jokes though, but I do have
one:
What kind of music do phones like to listen to?
SIM-phonies.
I'd say it's looking pretty good.
One last strip of laminate at the bottom and we can start putting the whole thing back
together.
I'll lay down some clear double sided tape along the sides of the phone.
I'll link this in the description.
And I'll put a bit more clear adhesive on the camera lens.
Then I can set the camera lens into the glass, along with the little plastic flash diffuser.
And the whole frosty transparent piece of glass can be set down gently over the phone,
which kind of takes the normal black OnePlus 6T to a whole new level.
I think it turned out pretty sweet.
I didn't think I would like the carbon as much, but it's growing on me.
The way it reflects in the light is strangely appealing, especially with the simple black
NFC and the minimalist black plastic is has going on.
Even if the circuits aren't showing, I think this one's a win.
What do you think?
The OnePlus 6 earlier this year had the unique golden fingerprint cable which added some
sass, along with the silver metal over the loud speaker.
So it's a tough choice.
Either way, OnePlus should start implementing this themselves, especially once they get
the wireless charging added into their phones.
I'll be completely tearing down the OnePlus 6T in my next video, so hit the subscribe
button.
We'll get an inside look at that in-display fingerprint scanner.
Thanks a ton for watching.
I'll see you around.