OnePlus 8T review: Solid performance and a great screen make this 5G sub-flagship a delight
- Reference: 1603448887
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/23/oneplus_8t_review_solid_performance/
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The 8T has premium specs without the pocket-pummelling usually demanded by a top-drawer phone.
OnePlus's schtick has always been about value, and it manages to deliver that in abundance here, bringing with it nimble Snapdragon 865 silicon, oodles of RAM, and blazing-fast 65W charging which can fully refill the phone’s 4,500mAh battery in roughly 30 minutes.
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It also has one of the best displays I’ve experienced on a device in its price point, giving fantastic brightness and a hugely responsive 120Hz refresh rate, which makes UI elements feel slickly smooth.
The OnePlus 8T comes in two flavours: a £549 model with 8GB RAM and 128GB of storage, and a £649 variant with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage. OnePlus seeded El Reg with the latter.
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At the risk of sounding a bit like Bill Gates in 1981*, there’s no real need for such huge amounts of RAM. There are devices that cope admirably with half of that. And while you could make the argument that having 12GB RAM offers some extent of future-proofing, that’s only really true if you dabble in games and high-intensity content creating.
Still, with that throat-clearing out of the way, the OnePlus 8T performed admirably. You’d expect as much. It chewed through casual tasks — like browsing, checking emails and social media, and so on. Meanwhile, high-intensity mobile game titles like Call of Duty: Mobile simply screamed on this device, thanks to the over-the-top specs and highly fluid display.
Specs
Battery life is so-so, and we were able to last a full day of usage before having to run to the mains. The biggest hit to longevity comes from the phone’s high-refresh rate display, which is to battery life what the Hummer is to fuel efficiency. Still, the phone’s rapid charging meant I wasn’t tethered for long — although the absence of wireless charging is a bummer.
OnePlus, like Oppo, thinks 65W fast charging can replace slower wireless charging. I’m not convinced. There’s a certain convenience found in being able to plonk your device on a mat and have it slowly spring back to life. Plus, wireless charging surfaces are present in more places than ever, from restaurants and living room furniture, to high-end cars. Speaking as someone who tends to prioritise functionality over form, I would have been content to sacrifice a bit extra girth in favour of having Qi compatibility.
The display measures 6.5 inches and uses an AMOLED panel, which is a major upgrade on the LED fare typically found south of the £500 watermark. Colours look simply vibrant, while blacks are fantastically dark. The display uses a tall (and increasingly standard) 20:9 aspect ratio, which makes it ideal for productive busy-work, like reading emails. Embedded in the bottom of the screen is a fast and responsive fingerprint reader, which performs nearly as well as some of the physical readers we’ve used in the past.
Towards the back is a quad-camera setup. The primary sensor is a 48MP Sony IMX586 affair. Accompanying are a 16MP ultra-wide, a 5MP macro lens, and a 2MP monochrome. These produced shots that were good, but not quite outstanding, and the absence of a telephoto lens makes long-distance image capturing less fun.
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The OnePlus 8T runs Android 11 — which, by itself, is remarkable considering the sluggish pace of Android upgrades. Devices are still shipping with Android 10, and will likely do so for some time.
Running on top is OxygenOS, which is a fairly minimalist take on Android, with many of the stock UI features (like the app drawer) remaining in place. Still, OnePlus has made the effort where it matters, and I’m a big fan of the optional OnePlus Serif font, which looks classy and distinguished.
All things considered, the OnePlus 8T is a value-focused powerhouse that gets the fundamentals right: from its blazing-fast charging tech, to its outstanding screen. The camera isn’t quite flagship material, and the absence of wireless charging is a shame.
This device should be considered alongside the [4]Samsung Galaxy S20 Fan Edition (FE) . While the FE has wireless charging, the OnePlus 8T manages to pip it in several key areas, from core specs to the 65W USB-C charging. It also sits in the same neighbourhood, price wise, as the Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G, although this is arguably a better phone, touting a far superior processor. ®
* Undermining the joke a bit, there's [5]no actual evidence he said 640kB would be enough RAM for anyone.
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[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/10/22/oneplus8thero.jpg
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/10/22/oneplus8tb.jpg
[3] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/10/22/oneplus8tc.jpg
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/02/first_look_samsung_galaxy_s20_fan_edition/
[5] https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCWorld/story?id=5214635
[6] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
It's only 2.9" wide - because of the aspect ratio, the 6.5" screen doesn't result in a phone that is wide as 16:9 6.5" screened phone.
If that's too wide, consider looking at Sony's range - I believe they make a smaller phone with top spec internals.
Oh - I'm a big fan of Sony's 'compact' phones, however even those are growing beyond 5 inches now.
> You can never have too much RAM.
I'd argue that you can.
For better or worse, where PCs and laptops seem to have gone for "the RAM and CPU are the only places where we can cut costs", mobile phones seem to have gone for "Moar RAMs and Moar CPU for the marketing checklist!"
I mean, I'm on a Samsung S10+, with 8GB of ram. And it gets used reasonably heavily - while I don't play games on it, I've got about 30 tabs open in the browser, Slack, Facebook, yadda yadda running.
And that's currently chewing up 5.1GB, with an extra 700mb "reserved" - and with an option to press a button and reclaim 3.9GB of RAM from "background" apps.
So as far as I can see, at present, 6GB of RAM is generally more than sufficient for day to day handset usage; 8GB of RAM gives it a nice bit of headroom, but 12GB is just ridiculous, since at least half of that RAM is just sitting there and twiddling it's metaphorical thumbs.
After all, while it twiddles set thumbs, not only is it sipping your electrons, but it also bumps up the materials cost for your handset.
As far as I can see, 8GB is more than enough RAM for the foreseeable future; any more than that is pointless, and may well indicate that the company is cutting corners elsewhere (e.g. the RAM speed) in an effort to make the marketing checklist look good...
It's a bit disappointing that the battery barely lasts you through the day. My 7 Pro still normally lasts 36 hours between charges and when new often did me for 48 hours. The 7 Pro's screen is good; the 8T would have to be a *lot* better to justify cutting the battery life by that much, in my view.
But did you turn off the high refresh rate?
I did and I think that's how I get 1.5-2 days out of my 7 pro.
Re: But did you turn off the high refresh rate?
[checks quickly] No.
Questions...
You may have shown the answers in photos, but since I'm blind & can't see them I'll ask.
Does it have a headphone jack? An SD card slot? A Taser or Laser weapon? Inquiring (and insane) minds want to know. =-)
Re: Questions...
Consider the XKCD Phone IV - it has twelve headphone jacks!
https://xkcd.com/1707/
Re: Questions...
Dave 126,
I'd not seen the XKCD Phone IV before, so thank you.
Personally I will find the Gregorian / Julian calendar switch particularly useful.
However the best feature is clearly the SpaceX Impact Protection: When dropped, phone lands on barge.
The SpaceX system carefully guides falling phones down to the surface, a process which the phones increasingly often survive without exploding.
Re: Questions...
> However the best feature is clearly the SpaceX Impact Protection: When dropped, phone lands on barge.
Make sure you have the latest firmware update to accommodate SpaceX's new barge: 'A Shortfall of Gravitas'
- https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1312760295228547073
Re: Questions...
No headphone jack. OnePlus canned the 3.5mm jack as of the OnePlus 6T. I've spent the intervening two years acquiring USB-C to 3.5mm adapters every six months or so when I've forgotten to pack one of the bloody things.
More annoyingly, none of the phones come with a dedicated adapter to allow you to charge the phone as well as listen to music on wired headphones at the same time. OnePlus doesn't make such an adapter, and the third party adapters are very much hit and miss.
"... Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G... touting a far superior processor... there's no actual evidence... "
https://www.androidauthority.com/snapdragon-765g-vs-snapdragon-865-1112843/
Bottom, 765G is absolutely fine and dandy, people messing around with games and fancy camera features might benefit from the 865.
"Running on top is OxygenOS"
I thought OxygenOS was an actual fork of Android rather than something that ran on top of Android?
Or am I getting confused with the older CyanogenOS that OnePlus phones used to run, and which was a variant of CyanogenMod?
non premium
"The 8T has premium specs without the pocket-pummelling usually demanded by a top-drawer phone."
Those prices would certainly pummel my pocket.
Re: non premium
That's more than I paid for a new iPad Air at Christmas. Which is last year's iPad Pro with an updated processor.
Fast charging vs wireless
> OnePlus, like Oppo, thinks 65W fast charging can replace slower wireless charging. I’m not convinced
Ditto.
I mean, it's nice being able to fast-charge my phone - it'd be great when travelling (pre/post lockdown), as I tend to heavily use both GPS and the camera when wandering around remote climes. Being able to pause for a swift half in a local drinking hole and then emerge with a fully charged phone is definitely good!
OTOH, on a day-to-day basis, the nice thing about wireless charging is that I can use a "painters easel" stand to stick my phone on. Which means that it's easy to see the screen (no glare from sunlight, or awkward viewing angles) - and as a double bonus, since my phone has an always-on display, it doubles up quite nicely as a bedside clock.
Plus, I can easily pick it up and/or drop it back, whenever I wander out of my office-study downstairs to make a cuppa.
Or when I'm reading an ebook before falling asleep, I can paw over to the bedside cabinet and drop the phone onto the stand, with the lights off, and without having to wake back up enough to faff around with finding and plugging in the cable.
And for an added bonus, it reduces wear and tear on the socket, and means I don't have to mutter darkly whenever my phone decides to loudly announce "moisture detected in USB socket" and refuses to charge via cable until it's spent at least a week soaking up the rays in the Sahara desert.
Wireless charging may be slower and less efficient, but for me, that's entirely outweighed by the conveniences it brings!
You can never have too much RAM.
I certainly don't need so much screen-space though - any chance of something that will actually fit in the average trouser pocket, or, come that, the average hand?