OnePlus 6T Complete Walkthrough: A Worthy Successor

Well after a bit of a wait, I finally got my hands on a OnePlus 6T that OnePlus was kind enough to get to me and I have to admit, usually I think of the OnePlus T version of their device as sort of the S model of the iPhone line up–something with just a few more features but nothing excited. This time however they managed to put some exciting features in, is it enough for Oneplus 6 owners to upgrade, well let’s see in the complete walkthrough of the OnePlus 6T.

If you aren’t familiar, a complete walkthrough on my channel is where I try and go through every feature I can on a new device so you guys are better prepared should you be in the market to buy one.

Styling

With that said, there’s a lot to go through so let’s get started with the styling.

We have a Gorilla Glass 6 front and back with an aluminum frame, similar to the OnePlus 6’s Gorilla Glass 5 layout, and it comes in midnight black (a matte black) and mirror black, also just like the OnePlus 6.

One thing you will notice that is different about the back of the 6T versus the 6 however, is the missing fingerprint sensor.

That’s because OnePlus is now using an in-display fingerprint sensor (similar to the Huawei Mate 20 Pro I just did a video on). It works by taking a photo of your fingerprint through the glass essentially and is actually the fastest one I’ve ever used.

That display is also now a 6.41″ 2340×1080 resolution 19.5:9 aspect ratio AMOLED screen that yes, has a notch. But it’s this much more subtle teardrop shape compared to some other devices we’ve seen.

In the notch, we have the same 16MP f2.0 aperture front-facing camera that can also be used for Face Unlock (albeit not quite the same as IR-enabled ones from Huawei and Apple but the one built-in to Android now which is still pretty snappy just doesn’t work as well in low light is all).

That front camera can do 1080P video recording and you can see the video above for what that looks and sounds like.

At the bottom of the screen, we have a slightly smaller chin than the OnePlus 6 which is nice.

On the left, we have our volume buttons and our Dual SIM/MicroSD card slot combo.

On the right, we have our physical profile switcher that lets you slide it to go from ring to vibrate to silent quickly (as well as customize each of these profiles if you want in settings), and our power button.

 

At the top, we have nothing.

At the bottom, we have our USB-C port, no headphone jack to a lot of people’s dismay, and dual stereo speakers.

Speaking of the speakers, we are using the same Dirac HD dual speakers as the OnePlus 6 and you can see the video above again for what they sound like.

Under the hood of the OnePlus 6T, we have the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor and we have a 128GBs of storage option with the choice of 6 or 8GBs of RAM, and a 256GB storage option with 8GBs of RAM only.

Powering all of this we have a 400mah larger battery than the OnePlus 6 for a total of 3700mahs.

We also have Bluetooth 5.0, AptX HD for better audio streaming over Bluetooth, WiFi 802.11ac, NFC, and Gigabit LTE.

Software

For software, we have OnePlus’s skin called Oxygen OS on top of Android 9.0 Pie that aims to be “stock, but better” and frankly that’s pretty much accurate. The device is super snappy as they usually are and is further optimized to have apps open faster than even Pixel devices do (see my video here on that). Also, the look and feel is very much similar to a stock or Pixel-like version of Android but there are a few noteworthy additions.

Firstly, here are the apps that OnePlus did add:

• Community: This is an app for their forum basically that allows you to chat with other OnePlus members as well as a section for tips and tricks.
• OnePlus Switch: An app to transfer all your data from another Android phone to the new device (or vice versa)

Then we have a gesture system you can use for system navigation instead of the normal three Android buttons. It’s very similar to the iPhone X series in that you can swipe up from off the bottom of the screen to go home, swipe up and hold to get to multitasking, but to go back you swipe up from the bottom right or left and you can also swipe up and to the right to jump back to the last app.

OnePlus has also added some useful software feature additions, too, in addition to a ton of customization options so let’s go through some of those really quickly.

You can swipe to the far left home screen to get OnePlus’ version of the Google Now page with similar recent apps, cards for things they think are important, a place to add widgets to, etc.

We also have a hidden drawer in the app drawer you can get to by swiping from the left side of the screen that will show any hidden apps (you can add more to this secret drawer using the plus button at the top).

We have a night mode to adjust the blue light as the sun goes down to help you sleep, reading mode that turns everything black and white (and can be enabled to automatically turn on for specific apps), we have various screen calibration modes, an option to hide the notch by turning the notification bar black, and an ambient display which is there always on display.

Then we have some utilities like gaming mode that stops notifications from interrupting your game, lets you answer calls via the speakerphone automatically, limit other app network usage for less lag in the game, disable automatic brightness, etc.

A particularly clever feature I found was the quick launch which makes use of the in-display fingerprint sensor by giving you the ability to hold down when using the fingerprint sensor on the lock screen to bring up a set of customizable shortcuts (you can then swipe down to exit this and get to the home screen like normal).

Parallel Apps which lets you have two of the same app on the device to allow for two separate logins (think two Snapchat or Whatsapp accounts on the same device). This is similar to app twin and other features on other manufacturers phones but nice to see it added here.

There is also an app locker which lets you block access to apps without using a pin code or fingerprint sensor, scheduled power on and off, and a feature they mentioned during the launch called Smart Boost that uses your daily usage to decide what apps to keep in RAM longer than others thereby making them launch a lot faster.

And finally, you can double tap the power button to get to the camera (which I always appreciate), as well as tap and hold it for about a second to bring up Google Assistant (handy if you are using the system navigation gestures since there’s no more holding down on the home button to bring it up in that case), or tap and hold it for three seconds to get to the power and reboot options.

Camera

Speaking of the camera, let’s go through that next.

We have the same camera as the OnePlus 6 honestly so that means a dual camera setup that is comprised of a 16MP f1.7 with 1.22-micron pixels with optical stabilization and dual phase auto autofocus and a 20MP f1.7 camera also with dual phase autofocus but with 1-micron pixels.

These are paired with a dual-LED flash.

The camera UI has the following modes and options.

We have options for a timer, flash options, and the choice of 4:3, 19.5:9, and 1:1 aspect ratio with no option for different resolutions.

We also have Google Lens integration which allows you to translate things using the camera, shop for items, search by image, etc.

For video, it can shoot in 720P30, 1080P30, 1080P60, 4K30 and 4K60 (which are all accessible from inside the camera UI interestingly enough. And we have slow-motion video that can shoot in 1080P at 240fps or 720P at 480fps.

Also, we have a portrait mode that creates a more blurred background and is apparently tuned by a new photographer partner of theirs along with their new Studio Lighting effect. The idea here is that it uses face detection to automatically not just blur the background but adjust shadows and highlights on the subject’s face to more mimic a professional lighting situation.

In addition to this, the camera can use scene detection to automatically adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation. This is something it does automatically that cannot be turned off, but it’s a lot more subtle thankfully than the “AI Scene Detection” features we’re used to seeing.

We have Nightscape mode as OnePlus is calling it. And while it sounds like a long exposure shot like Huawei has been doing with Night Mode on their newer devices (that I personally love) and a similar feature coming soon officially to Pixel 3 and 3 XL, we were told it isn’t. Instead of using a long exposure it apparently does something different. What? They won’t say, they just made a point to say it’s not the same as the other two.

We have a Pro Mode which allows you to adjust things like ISO, shutter speed, etc. manually.

A time-lapse mode which allows you to create sped up videos.

And a panorama mode that allows you to stitch photos together to create one panoramic shot (like we’re used to).

Going through the camera settings we have settings for:

• Location data storing as metadata in the image for organizational reasons
• Shutter sound controls
• Quick capture that takes a photo automatically when the camera is launched by double tapping the power button (this always seems like a bad idea to me but maybe for someone)
• Grid options
• Manual HDR controls which allow you to maunally turn HDR on or off (personally you should probably just leave this off so the phone uses it whenever needed)
• Auto Night Scene detection will turn on the Nightscape mode automatically if the scene is dark enough (instead of having to switch to it manually as a mode, which is useful)
• Watermark
• Smile capture will make the phone automatically take a photo if it detects a smile in the frame for the front camera
• Invert photo flips the front camera horizontal orientation to have it more mimic a mirror
• Histogram controls whether a histogram is visible when using pro mode
• Horizontal reference line gives you a line to show you if the image is properly level during pro mode

Here are some sample photos for you guys to check out below:

And that’s that! Hope that was useful for some people and you found some features you didn’t know about or answered some questions you had. Let me know in the comments below what you think and as for the question I posed at the beginning. I definitely think this is the most upgrades they’ve added in a T model but the fact but still don’t think you should upgrade from a 6 unless you can get a good price for your 6 online selling it used, the issue with that is that since this came out and is only a bit more than the OnePlus 6 (starting at $549 but with more storage at 128GBs compared to the $529 with 64GBs of storage) I’m not sure why anyone who didn’t have a OnePlus 6 would buy it instead of just going for the 6T. Unless they really couldn’t live without the headphone jack. Which means, you’ll have a hard time getting too much for the 6.

Let me know though what you guys think and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel for more tips and tricks, walkthroughs, and explainer videos and tap the bell to make sure you don’t miss new ones. As always thouhg, regardless, thanks for reading.