The best way to describe the company’s latest flagship smartphone – the OnePlus 10T – as controversial, would be appropriate. I’ve seen people from two different extremes of the spectrum being very vocal about it. One end says that the new OnePlus 10T went back to its roots by focusing on pure performance by being a speed demon, and another end says that this phone has lost all of its identity.
For me though, I don’t have any headcanon about OnePlus. I’ve only recently reviewed the OnePlus Nord 2T and the only OnePlus phone that I’ve used before that was the OnePlus One from years ago.
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So, in today’s review, I’ll try my best to objectively look at the OnePlus 10T. Let’s begin.
Design
Let’s start off by the design of this phone. Our particular unit of the OnePlus 10T comes in the Jade Green color – which is similar to the OnePlus Nord 2T that we have.
It is also available in the Moonstone Black color – but OnePlus Malaysia doesn’t seem to acknowledge its existence in the website. Maybe it’s because the Moonstone Black isn’t going to be available here – I don’t know since, at the time of this recording, the OnePlus 10T isn’t officially available in the Malaysian market yet.
Either way, the Jade Green color, while it is around my personal favorite hue – is covered by a super glossy and slippery glass. I truly wished that it is made out of a matte finish.
OnePlus did send us the media box or reviewer’s box – I don’t know what I should call this – and inside, we have two cases.
The first case is the OnePlus 10T Bumper Case which isn’t a bumper case at all – but it does imitate the original OnePlus One’s sandstone finish with that extremely rough texture.
The second case is the OnePlus 10T Glacier Mat which is surely a funky design and the reason why it’s called the Glacier Mat is because of that red colored material. According to OnePlus, it “evaporates to remove heat when the phone becomes hot, and automatically rehydrating from the air when the phone cools down.” Even if this case is made to be a utility, it’s unfortunate that the beautiful Jade Green color will be completely covered by the case.
The only thing exposed is the iconic camera cutout.
Cameras
Speaking of the cameras, we do have triple cameras on the OnePlus 10T but this is where I was disappointed. For some reason, this phone has a 2MP fixed focus macro camera. I mean, for a phone that’s supposed to be “premium”, at least give us an autofocusing macro camera lens.
To have a look at all the pictures taken with the OnePlus 10T, take a look at our video at the top of this review.
Performance
Now, the performance is obviously the main key highlight. Powered by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset and 16GB of RAM for our particular unit here, 256GB of storage – this phone seems to be a speed demon, at least on paper, right?
That’s kinda true. When we tried out the gaming performance of the OnePlus 10T, I realized that even using the “pro gamer” mode, the performance of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is pretty lackluster when compared to the ROG Phone 6 that is also using the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. I don’t know why this happens, but if I am to take a wild guess – it could be due to the power profile of the firmware not allowing the chipset to flex its muscles.
We say this is because the surface temperature reported by our thermal camera is extremely low. There is still a lot of headroom to further push its performance to a higher level.
We do think that this can be optimized easily through a software update.
Also, given that this is a 120Hz screen, we expect some games with unlocked frame rate like Temple Run 2 and Subway Surfers to be able to run at 120fps too – but unfortunately, it can’t. The phone seems to have a weird whitelist as COD Mobile is able to run at 90fps with its Ultra mode.
We reached out to OnePlus to ask about this – but I guess OnePlus has their own whitelist of games that can run more than 60fps? Here are the games that OnePlus said that can run beyond 60fps:
- PUBG Mobile (update on mid-September)
- League of Legends
- Brawl Stars
Screen
Let’s talk about the screen then. This is a simple one as it is using a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2412×1080 and 120Hz refresh rate. The screen does look nice and our colorimeter says so too.
This screen covers virtually 100% of both sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts, but the maximum Delta E number is relatively high at 2.77.
The maximum brightness of the screen is also not that good since it can only go up to 500 nits. Definitely not bright enough to be used under direct sunlight on a sunny day.
One quick complaint – the under display fingerprint scanner is waaaaaaay too low, and it is not ergonomic to use.
Battery life
The battery life is something that I think is fairly decent. It has a 4,800mAh battery and is tested at 100 nits of brightness using the PCMark battery life test, it lasts for about 16 hours or so. It’s supremely good but we can’t get the exact number because the app decided to crash itself at the end of the test. 😭
Charging speed
As for the charging speed, this is where things get funky. By reading the tiny texts printed on the charger, this charger is actually capable of outputting 160W but the OnePlus 10T only takes in 150W maximum.
Also, we Malaysians are able to take advantage of the full 150W since our electrical plugs fall under the latter category of 220-240V at 50-60Hz. Other regions that uses 100-120V 50-60Hz will only get 125W maximum.
We charged the OnePlus 10T from about 12% to 100% in less than 20 minutes – which is the fastest we’ve seen in terms of smartphone fast charging.
Software
In terms of the software, it’s pretty much identical to the OnePlus Nord 2T that we reviewed earlier. The software is pretty much identical to OPPO’s ColorOS but with the addition of the OnePlus Shelf. Whether you like this feature or not, that’s up to your personal preference. For me, I think the Shelf could be useful in certain scenarios but I think it needs third-party app widget support.
Also, the OxygenOS 12.1 here is extremely clean as there is no bloatware.
However, those two are the only differentiation points when compared to its OPPO cousins. The iconic and supremely useful alert slider on OnePlus phones had been removed, and I think that is why this OnePlus 10T feels… very generic in the sea of smartphones. There’s just nothing particularly outstanding about it.
OnePlus did mention that the notification slider could come back in future OnePlus phones.
Some other things to mention
There are a few more things to mention about the OnePlus 10T too. This phone is technically IP54-rated but only in certain regions – don’t ask me why because I have no idea as well
The OnePlus 10T still uses a USB 2.0 port at the bottom of the phone which is sad since OnePlus boasts so much about its speed.
And since it is using USB 2.0, we do not have HDMI output over USB-C.
Should you buy the OnePlus 10T?
I think the OnePlus 10T is a rather good phone. There are two counterarguments – the first one is the useless 2MP macro camera, and another one is the missing iconic OnePlus alert slider feature. But if you don’t use that slider, then yeah, this is a fine phone.
As for the price – we have that information at the time of publishing this article. It’s at RM3,199 which I think is rather high.
Where to buy? (Affiliate links)
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