OnePlus 8T Review Just One Big DOWNFALL By TechTablets

So this is the OnePlus 8t that recently launched here in Europe, and you've, probably seen all the videos YouTube's absolutely flooded with hundreds of reviews. Well, this is my take of this particular flagship phone here that does sell for under 600 euros, and you probably know to speak of it, and that's probably why you're watching this video, so I'm not really into reading spec sheets, but it's the snapdragon 865. It has eight gigabytes of ram 128, gigabytes of storage, a 6.55 inch, AMOLED screen a 4 500-hour battery and superfast 65 watt charging. But let's have a look and see what we get in the box this model. Here I bought myself from OnePlus here in Europe. Now you can actually buy these for a lot cheaper if you import one in from trading Shenzhen, these guys do have the Chinese model in stock right now, and you can get the 256 gigabyte model for less than the 128 gigabyte model.

I happen to have right here and that's because it's an import version now there's no difference whatsoever. The hardware is exactly the same. Apart from the modem in the Chinese version. Doesn't support LTA LTE band 28, which is only really relevant for french users. Everyone else in the world you've got LTE band, 20 got all the bands, but it's just that.

That's the only difference really from them, and they did help sponsor this video. So I could actually end up buying this phone. So we've got our type c to type c cable. We have our charger. Of course, it's not the smallest charger out there, but it's 65 watts, remember, and it does charge this phone really quick and about 42 minutes in my testing, which is not bad.

They claim under 40 minutes, but hey it's close enough, and we've got a CPU case that is included as well, clear, obviously, and a little of paperwork right here and the sim tray tool. But I won't show you that so looking at our build, it is very nice with this phone, so straight out of the box. I just knew that hey. This is quality hardware they've gone here, and really it is at the level of phones that would be closer to a thousand euros and there's been well almost about half of that. So it is excellent flat screen here.

Super AMOLED now easier kind of access to the buttons, but the alert slider, especially with my right hand, I kind of have to move my thumb up to get to. So that's just one minor complaint there, the volume up and down as well, I think, could be a little lower there on the side. So we do have a fingerprint reader, that's in screen, and it is really quick- and I haven't had any issues with this at all. It is just so fast and accurate, which is good to see now back on to the front here with the screen that we've got to cut out. Obviously you probably saw that- and this has a 16 megapixel camera in there.

It is f 2.4, and it's not actually too bad I'll show you later on an in-depth look at the cameras as well with some samples that the stitching with portraits with just the single camera does come out very, very good, and they have really stepped things up there, but the cameras as you'll see later are a bit of a downfall of this phone compared to other flagships. Now this is the lunar silver finish. They call, and I absolutely love it. I think it looks really, really good and what I do really like the most about it isn't actually the color the fact that it's a matte glass finish, and it doesn't pick up fingerprints. You can hardly see any at all, and I have intentionally not actually cleaned this down now.

The camera glass here does have a frame around it. That is metal. So if you drop that it'll probably ding- and it would probably crack the glass as well, so you'll be using that case, most people will. But you can still see this back being a transparent case, that it is now other cameras. Here we've got 60 sorry, a 48 megapixel main sensor, which is the Sony mix 586.

I almost said 64 because I really thought they would have used the mix 686 on this, which is a 64 megapixel camera. So it is a dated sensor, and they have used it now in quite a few of their phones, 16 megapixel ultra-wide, and we do have a 2 megapixel kind of useless camera for depth information. We don't actually need this, because a single camera can produce excellent stitching results without the need of that and a 5 megapixel camera for macros. But, as mentioned samples will be later on in this particular video. So right at the bottom here, you'll see that we do have a type c port.

Now this particular type c port doesn't seem to support video out. I know some websites say it does, but with my adapter to type seed, HDMI and even another one, I can't seem to get any video out of this, so it looks like it doesn't. Have it downed with flying loudspeaker, the earpiece also has a loudspeaker in it and our sim tray. So this sim tray supports two NATO sims, no micro, SD card support, no 3.5 millimeter, headphone jack and up the top just a secondary mic. Here, that's used for noise cancellation and calls and for video, so we have a great screen in this particular phone here.

I would rate it as one of the better phone screens that I have looked at lately, but not the absolute best, but just like this Samsung Galaxy s20 Fe that I reviewed in the channel the same 120 hertz, similar brightness, and it is flat as well, which is great, it doesn't have DC dimming. So I will demonstrate that soon, but just wanted to point out here with blacks. I am not seeing any problems with having like a greenish tint to it at all. You can see with the grays here and the deep blacks, it's looking good, and I'm not editing or color grading. This particular segment of the video to make sure it looks and represents 100 that what you should be able to see their whites look great and the maximum brightness of over 1 000 nits.

That I am measuring means it can be red and is legible, even in bright, direct sunlight, which is great now what happens? What I'm talking about with the DC dimming here is that if I lower the brightness you're going to see this banding come through. So if you're someone that's very sensitive to AMOLED screens at low brightnesses, you sometimes see this flickering, then this could be a unit that may flicker for you now. This is just on camera. I can see it with my eyes: I'm not sensitive to the pulse width, modulation, flicker, I'm not having any problems with this, but some people out there with sensitive eyes may have an issue, and it seems to happen when you get down below about 50 brightness that banding will come through. It happens on a lot of phones out there by the way, not just this phone and again just to confirm it's only on camera here at the moment for me so hands down for me, oxygen OS for some time now has always been the best optimized and most fluid of the skins.

The custom UIs you get with android this one. It's no exception that we're now on oxygen OS 11. We have android 11. Now this is my first phone with android 11, so you notice a couple of things here and there are a little different and that's the software the build version I'm on, which is the latest one. There was a patch that came through just to fix a few little bugs and try to correct that camera white balance, which is still a little off, as you may see in my camera samples later on.

So there's a little of work to do now. I have noticed a couple of bugs, so one of them was chrome and I won't be able to do it on camera here, but it just completely froze up now. I don't know whether this is an issue of chrome itself. It could be chrome that caused this, or it may be oxygen OS. I cannot confirm this okay, but the other thing too.

I did notice that with the camera launching the camera one time without selecting any of the other options, I couldn't change over to the ultra-wide or do two times. Digital zoom. It just didn't give me that option. In fact, this whole part here was missing, and I did double and triple check that I wasn't in some sort of other mode. That would have prevented that.

So it was a little odd, so that was just a minor little bug there. So obviously a few tweaks are needed now in terms of ram management. With this I find quite aggressive that it will be closing things you go into a recent app, so what's something I haven't opened for a very long time uh and to do not a super long time. In fact, I opened this up not that long ago, and I beat you, it was about 10 minutes five minutes even yeah see it has to reload, and this is happening a lot. So you can't really take full advantage of that ram.

They're just closing things down to try and keep things, of course, fluid and fast, freeing up that memory on it. But I just wish that they were a little more lenient with that, but other than that this performance so smooth- and I think most people when they get this phone will just be blown away with how optimized and well it runs. It's just well, it's second to none so fluid. So just to point out. I know this is probably obvious, but I am on the latest firmware.

They did have quite a few fixes coming out, and I believe that OnePlus will have many more over-the-air updates, just to tweak a few things and some of those bugs that I have already experienced in my short time of using this phone and bloatware very good. They don't cram a huge amount of stupid applications in bloat that we probably don't want on this phone. It's quite lenient, there's still a tiny bit of bloat on here that I would classify as bloat, but really not a lot at all, compared to other brands like Samsung and especially Xiaomi, lately over two gigabytes of bloat, that you can often get with their phones and even ads and some of their applications, not here with OnePlus, and I hope they stay this way. I'm crossing my fingers so on first boot. Here with this particular model, the 128 gigabyte version you're going to have approximately 108 107 gigabytes of free storage.

Remember you cannot upgrade it now. The GPS does work really well. It sees a lot of satellites and got one of the better average strengths here that I have seen on a phone recently, which is great normally around 31, and this one's normally about 36. It can depend on the day and what satellites are there? Of course, accuracy will not be any better than three meters, not with a Qualcomm chipset like this one with a snapdragon 865. It also does support your dual frequency, so we get a lot of satellites, and you can even see over the sky.

There picked up a couple of Indian ones and storage, UFS 3.1, very, very quick, and if you take a look at those random reads and writes, they are very good. Don't get me wrong, but they aren't actually the fastest I have seen, but if you get the 256 gigabyte model, this figure should be a little faster, but it doesn't really matter. There are very, very quick speeds here, the fastest so far that I've seen is probably actually the Samsung Galaxy. S20 Fe, which got in the 200s here for random, reads and writes uh really quit that one, but it doesn't matter it's lazing fast anyway, this phone, so we do have wide vine level one support which you'd expect now, of course, hdr10 support as well. With this particular screen, we've got 60hz or 120hz and Netflix in full HD, not stuck on standard definition, not with that DRM cert right there, so camera two API level, three support great maximum support that we want.

So you don't need to have root access in order to install google Guam. Of course, you don't need that anymore. The good thing is, you can find. Hopefully, some ports out there that will really step up the performance of that camera because I think the optimization isn't quite there, especially with white balance with the camera on the rear of this one is one of my complaints, minor complaints of this phone, and we do have very, very good wireless on this. So connected up to my Wi-Fi six routers, I managed to achieve some very good speeds.

In fact, some of the best actually, I have been able to achieve the best on a phone and down in my spot away from the router, which is downstairs quite a distance away, still achieves very good speeds. If I'm getting over 100, I'm happy- and this gets well three times that amount so perfect in terms of signal, strength and 4g as well no problems I can get actually normally about one bar more than some other phones, depending on where I am now the battery life. This is a fixed battery life test. I don't like to do better life tests that I used to do gaming and then apps and everything like that, because there's too many variables what happens if I game for half an hour more in Call of Duty versus another phone, it's simply not fair, then, but this is a fair test, 200 nits of brightness on every single phone I test, and I achieved a very decent score of 10 hours and 28 minutes at 120 hertz. This is excellent.

This translates into approximately seven hours of screen on time at 120, hertz, very, very good there, and what about charge time? Well, that's actually incorrect. There didn't meter it properly charge. Time is about 41 to 42 minutes that I'm getting for some reason. It just bugged out it didn't like the walk charging uh that particular application to measure the time that I normally use and finally, of course, and two to score here. It's very good.

Furthermore, it's right up there with many other phones with the snapdragon 865. As expected, there is a gaming hub with the phone as well. Now this is called game space and what it is a basic menu here to launch your games, but there's also a few settings. You can tweak, so there's some do not disturb one's in there. Also, some various different performance modes when you're a gaming.

Now the gaming performance in general, as expected for this kind of spec, is very, very good. So if you play a title that does support 120 frames per second or an uncapped frame rate, then you will have super smooth gameplay. This title right here is gran villa that does run at 120 frames per second other titles like shadow gun, legends or Call of Duty that I tested out ran very well, but the phone I did notice gets very, very hot. So after one hour of gameplay, I broke out my thermal imaging camera just to check on exactly how hot it was getting, and I was very surprised to see 50 degrees Celsius after one hour and remember this was gaming without the case on it. Ambient temperatures 25 degrees.

So if you live in a hot climate- and you use a case- expect this phone to cook your dinner almost or fry an egg on top of it, because it will get very hot audio performance, so I have placed a couple of voice calls because I'm running my main sim in this phone, as I normally do, when I'm reviewing phones and no problems. Okay, I can't say it's any better than say my Samsung Galaxy s20 that I had before the Fe or the s10. It sounds about the same there so voice quality, recalls, receptions, great, have to use Bluetooth for audio, or you can use a type c to 3.5 mm adapter and the quality using an adapter is fine. It doesn't sound the best. I have probably heard out there, but really no complaints, it's good audio same with the loudspeakers, so very good earpiece right here doubles as a secondary loudspeaker and down the bottom handles more lows and mid.

Really, I would say this is mostly just mid and highs the EP speaker, but here's a sample at 100 volume. So this is front facing video. We have 1080p maximum with electronic image stabilization, which is great, which all flagships should have. So you see, as I walk along here, that it's very nice and steady, good blog quality and the exposure sometimes is a little off, but right now in direct sunlight, not bad. You might hear a little of wind noise coming through there's always wind here on the coast, that's just normal.

The other thing to point out with the audio quality, however, is the bit rate is 96 kilo bits per second, which is on the low side for a flagship. This really should be at least 192 or 320. Like other phones, we don't get too much of a rolling shutter effect with that electronic image stabilization either just jogging here to show you how smooth it is. Let's have a look at the rear, video quality. Now so often, I find the rear.

Video is very nice and sharp, but you see this right now that when I pan around, I took it as smooth as possible. You get a lot of the stutter, it's just not a fluid smooth frame rate and it really kind of ruins. The video, as you can see now from the sample now it doesn't always happen we can also swap over. We can use different lenses on the go, which is great, and I notice it's the ultra-wide and sometimes well actually the main camera that does suffer the most from that stuttering, audio quality from my sample at the beginning there well it's 96 kilo bits per second, and it seems a little scratchy at times. So this is one area I feel, including the auto exposure at time seems to pulse a little here, as you can see again with this example, is just falling behind compared to other flagship phones, so OnePlus they do need to step up here and improve definitely video quality and audio.

So what about our stills for performance takes a good photo? There's, no doubt about that. You can take a really excellent shot from these cameras. Now, if you look at portrait photos, this is one area that I think OnePlus have really improved. Portrait photos are popular and take a look at the stitching, I mean it is perfect that blurred background and the stitching around my face, and even my ears and my hair and everything this I don't think, could be any better on any other phone. So they're really ace this particular shot and portraits in general seem to be pretty good and this one here as well.

I think the dynamic range looking good still capturing the details inside and out the window as well ultra-wide tends to look a little too contrast to me a little too dark. The darker areas are just overdone a bit, and it should look a lot brighter this image. So there is some optimization differently and sometimes the white balance is a little off this ultra white of the castle as well. It shouldn't look that dark the castle, because I took these photos midday. It should look a little like this now and this photo is not too bad either, so it can take a good photo.

Furthermore, it's just really. I feel you've got to take about three or four to get one. That actually looks really, really good. That I'll be happy with now. Photos of flowers do come out pretty good bright colors.

It seems to handle it well and the macro camera five megapixels, it's not too bad, but I wouldn't personally be using it really myself and if you take a look at this HDR shot here, not particularly wonderful, it does blow out the window there a little too bright for it where other cameras, other flagships should be able to actually land this shot and would be able to land the shot low light shots. However, I did find a little disappointing. Often it would have a greenish tint to it. If you've got grass in there often it would be a little overexposed and really there's a lot of work still for OnePlus to do with the low-light and the night shot performance I feel, and just in general, these cameras need quite a bit of tweaking, mostly on the part of the ultra-wide and the night mode. It's just a white balance in general can be off, so this is a really solid offering from OnePlus and honestly, you cannot go wrong if you happen to buy one of these or in your market for a new phone, and you're choosing between say very similarly priced phones with very similar specs, and I'm talking about the Samsung Galaxy s20 Fe.

There is a review of that one in the channel too. By the way, then I would make it simple for you here. If you want the absolute best cameras out of those two phones, I believe the s20 Fe does offer better video quality and photography photo stills. That is low light slightly better. Now, that's not to say that this is bad.

Is this one here it feels like it falls short a little compared to the competitors out there, the other flagships around that the camera they've used on. This is a little dated now, and it doesn't surprise me that OnePlus didn't actually put a better sensor in here. Well, it kind of did in the beginning. I thought they would go for the 686, but they don't want this phone to better or compete with the 8 pro the 8 pro, if you're in the market for a phone- and you still want to have it called oxygen OS, then that's probably one to look at as well, but for the cameras, I would say it's just a slight room for improvement there. Definitely, especially with the video quality audio nitrate needs to be improved there.

Now the portrait photos did look very, very good, and oh overall I mean the performance of this thing is so good. It is so smooth and fluid, and I love the fact that OnePlus, I hope they stay this way. They do not bloat up the phone, and I'm talking about all those rubbishy applications on there. So suddenly you've got like tic TOC Spotify Facebook. All these things crammed on there I mean come on brands.

Let us decide what we want to install on our phones, not just pre-install them all, so we have to spend half an hour going through removing all those crappy applications, at least with this guy. Here you don't actually have to do that, so all up it does get a thumbs up from me. It's not a super exciting phone and if you're in the market for a phone with 120 hertz, you want to experience that smooth great, fast and good screen, and this is definitely it this all or the Samsung s20fa, as I mentioned. So I hope you didn't like this review and if you do want to see more up-and-coming reviews like this. Please do support me and that is by giving me a thumbs up if you liked the video, of course, if you didn't then well, okay, hopefully in the next one and do subscribe for more up and coming content from me, bye for now.

Source : TechTablets