Now, compromising on quality of life extras like ingress protection or stereo speakers is one thing, but an inferior display is something central to a phone's experience, which will definitely drag it down. Thankfully, OnePlus has its priorities straight in this regard. Aside from the questionable notch, the 6.4-inch AMOLED panel on the OnePlus 6T has little faults to speak of.
At 6.41 inches in diagonal, it is definitely a step up in size from its predecessor. Of course, not all of that screen real estate is created equal or universally usable, due to the "skinny" 19.5:9 aspect ratio. For most vertically scrolling UI components, like lists and web pages it works pretty well. Multimedia is a bit of a different story.
Resolution is still set at an ultra-wide FullHD of 2340 x 1080 pixels, in this particular case. This is both a cost-saving measure and potentially a small battery-conserving one. Frankly, at 402 ppi, we still find the picture on screen perfectly sharp.
Display test | 100% brightness | ||
Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | ||
0 | 660 | ∞ | |
0 | 658 | ∞ | |
0.002 | 624 | 312000 | |
0 | 582 | ∞ | |
0.314 | 461 | 1468 | |
0 | 458 | ∞ | |
0 | 456 | ∞ | |
0 | 455 | ∞ | |
0 | 453 | ∞ | |
0 | 442 | ∞ | |
0 | 426 | ∞ | |
0 | 420 | ∞ | |
0 | 412 | ∞ | |
0 | 370 | ∞ |
It's an excellent panel, even if not one that exactly manages to live up to OnePuls' claims of "one of the brightest in the industry." 453 nits are really good on an OLED. Plus, thanks to the perfect blacks, you get that all-important infinite contrast. Under direct sunlight, the OnePlus 6T does consistently manage to shine a couple of nits brighter, but for all intents and purposes, it lacks a brightness boost mode as other makers do.
Judging by the "Optic OLED" moniker, used by OnePlus, we can only assume the panel comes courtesy of Samsung as their previous screens. The lack of HDR certification hints that it's probably not a top-of-the-line model. Still, it excels when it comes to color accuracy. The OnePlus 6T offers quite a few color profile tweaks.
In the default mode most colors tend to get over-saturated a bit. It makes for a punchier AMOLED-y look, but the particular profile does introduce a fair bit of blue tint. If you like looking at a bit brighter colors, you can use the custom color profile slider and just warm the pallet up a bit to your liking. For an even more comfortable everyday experience, the Adaptive mode does a pretty good job of recognizing the ambient light temperature and adjusting the panel accordingly.
For more precise color control, both the DCI-P3 and sRGB profiles test well within what can be considered color-calibrated territory. The latter produced an average deltaE of just 2.4, with a maximum of 5 in cyan.
Rounding off the additional display options, there is a Night Mode, that's simply a fancy name for a blue light filter. It does come with an intensity slider and a scheduler.
Then there is Reading mode, which simply makes the display monochrome. In can be set to auto-trigger on a per-app basis.
Night mode • Reading mode • Ambient display
Ambient display has a few extras hidden under the hood as well. You can set a couple of different triggers for it, like tapping the screen or picking up your phone and there are a few watch style to choose from. There is no always-on mode, as a pre-emptive battery conservation measure.
Looking at a quick specs comparison between the OnePlus 6T and its predecessor, one thing almost instantly sticks out - the 400mAh or so, bump up in battery capacity. The handset now rocks a 3,700mAh pack, which is only natural, considering its bigger display and bigger body, all around.
The OnePlus 6T scored a great 90 hour total endurance rating in our battery test. Looking back at the OnePlus 6 and its endurance rating, the variance in individual on-screen tests, namely web browsing and video playback mostly falls in line well with the increase in battery capacity.
However, it is also clear that OnePlus has been keeping busy with software optimization, as well, since a few mAh of battery aren't nearly enough to explain the massive network standby time improvement we observed on the OnePlus 6T, compared to its predecessor. Whatever network issue OnePlus had, it appears to be all cleared up now. Hopefully, the fix is already available across existing OnePlus 6 devices as well.
Our endurance rating denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the OnePlus 6T for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern, so our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritties. You can also check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.
Now, we've already established that you don't get any fancy new ultra-fast charging tech with the OnePlus 6T, a la Oppo's new 50W standard. Still, the trusty old 20W technology (even if they've dropped the Dash name) is still speedy and efficient and safe in its "divide and conquer" approach to charging two halves of the battery simultaneously. With the included wall charger, the OnePlus 6T managed to get from 0% to 55% in 30 minutes, and a full charge was completed in just over an hour.
Since OnePlus is yet to make the jump to a Type-C to Type-C cable, the Fast Charge still relies on a custom Type-A to Type-C USB connector, with extra pins on one side. That means you do need to hold on to your custom cables, but it also means that any previous editions of the OP accessories you already happen to own are still compatible. Fans will surely appreciate that.
The OnePlus 6T only has a single, bottom-firing speaker at its disposal. Still, it gets quite loud and produces clean sound.
Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overall score | |
66.2 | 70.4 | 78.2 | Good | |
70.2 | 74.7 | 70.0 | Good | |
68.9 | 74.0 | 76.2 | Very Good | |
68.1 | 72.3 | 82.2 | Very Good | |
68.5 | 74.3 | 81.1 | Very Good | |
71.5 | 75.7 | 78.9 | Very Good | |
67.2 | 72.5 | 84.5 | Very Good | |
68.0 | 75.3 | 84.0 | Very Good | |
71.0 | 75.4 | 82.9 | Excellent | |
71.8 | 69.2 | 91.0 | Excellent | |
72.8 | 74.7 | 86.6 | Excellent |
Looking at the individual scores, we can see that the new phone ranks lower than the OnePlus 6 in the Music and Voice loudness tests, but scores a lot higher in the high-pitched Old phone ringing test.
This shows that the two phones have differently tuned speakers. The OnePlus 6T does distort high-pitched sounds a bit but less so than the OP6.
The move away from a 3.5mm audio jack has cost the OnePlus 6T a bit regarding loudness - the OnePlus 6 was above average both with an active external amplifier and with headphones, whereas its successor is average and below average respectively.
Yet, when it comes to clarity of the output, the two are virtually indistinguishable. You get perfectly accurate output without headphones and a moderate amount of stereo crosstalk when you plug them in. Some minor intermodulation distortion and frequency response shakiness also appear, but those are impossible to detect without dedicated equipment.
Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
+0.03, -0.05 | -93.4 | 93.3 | 0.0010 | 0.0070 | -93.8 | |
+0.17, -0.15 | -93.2 | 93.1 | 0.0056 | 0.245 | -61.1 | |
+0.02, -0.09 | -87.7 | 87.0 | 0.0024 | 0.012 | -87.8 | |
+0.15, -0.07 | -92.1 | 92.0 | 0.0029 | 0.149 | -82.2 | |
+0.01, -0.02 | -91.2 | 93.2 | 0.0024 | 0.0080 | -88.7 | |
+0.38, -0.21 | -93.1 | 92.5 | 0.0049 | 0.233 | -61.7 | |
+0.01, -0.02 | -91.0 | 93.4 | 0.0026 | 0.0082 | -87.6 | |
+0.40, -0.20 | -92.9 | 91.2 | 0.0049 | 0.236 | -61.7 | |
+0.01, -0.03 | -93.7 | 93.7 | 0.0017 | 0.0074 | -94.1 | |
+0.03, -0.02 | -93.6 | 93.5 | 0.0033 | 0.046 | -93.2 | |
+0.03, -0.07 | -93.4 | 93.9 | 0.0012 | 0.0063 | -89.3 | |
+0.01, -0.58 | -92.2 | 93.5 | 0.0088 | 0.330 | -55.7 | |
+0.02, -0.15 | -94.3 | 94.3 | 0.0021 | 0.0069 | -94.3 | |
+0.18, -0.13 | -93.7 | 93.6 | 0.0024 | 0.104 | -52.7 |
You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.
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