OnePlus 3T review: A satisfying update to a fairly new phone

Remember the OnePlus 3? It came out barely six months ago and was the best phone you could get for $400. Well, it's about to be replaced by a faster, slightly more expensive version of itself that the company is calling the OnePlus 3T. (The T doesn't stand for anything; it's a cheeky take on the typical "S" suffix denoting many flagship sequels.) The new $439 device uses the latest Snapdragon 821 processor to achieve even faster speeds, and packs a beefier battery and sharper front camera -- improvements in areas where the original sort of fell short. I say "sort of" because other than battery life, the OnePlus 3 didn't need much improving. But OnePlus made it better anyway, and now it's one of the best phones on the market, especially at this price.

Hardware

There isn't much of a difference, at least externally, between the OnePlus 3T and its predecessor. Indeed, a lot of what I'm going to describe here was covered in greater detail in our review of the original. The most obvious physical change is the new "gunmetal" color, which is a slightly darker shade of gray-silver than the OnePlus 3. A "soft gold" option is also available, just like with the original.

Color aside, the 3T looks exactly the same as its predecessor, which itself is impressive, given that it has a larger battery. It sports the same 5.5-inch full HD Optic AMOLED display, which was sharp and bright enough to watch videos on indoors and outdoors. It also has the same single speaker at the bottom that was loud enough to fill my living room with sound, although it got tinny at top volume.

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You'll find the same fingerprint sensor, USB-C charging port and physical mute switch here as on the OnePlus 3. Just like the previous version, the OnePlus 3T has a dual nano SIM card slot, but no room for a microSD reader. Those who want more storage will have to opt for a new 128GB option, which costs $479. Neither phone meets widely accepted water-resistance standards, though the company says the handsets will survive wet weather. It didn't rain during my review period, so I unfortunately wasn't able to test that claim.

Software

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You probably won't notice many differences between the OnePlus 3's version of OxygenOS and its successor's; the changes here are very subtle. The company resized its app icons so they're consistent across the home, all apps and Shelf pages, and added some new gestures, such as three-finger screenshots and flip-to-mute, to make the phone more convenient to use.

The OnePlus 3T also gets new apps for weather and voice recording, and allows you to lock specific apps with your fingerprint. It also features a quick-settings panel that's more similar to what you'll find on Android Nougat. The changes here aren't major, but they do make getting around the system slightly easier.

Cameras

I don't generally need an excuse to go on a selfie-taking binge, but I did appreciate having "testing the OnePlus 3T's 16-megapixel front camera" as a reason to do so. The new setup is much sharper than the one on the OnePlus 3, which the company says makes for better low-light performance.

This was indeed true when I casually snapped dozens of portraits while traipsing around Manhattan one night, and the camera delivered several crisp images, despite all the motion. Not only were they sharp, but the pictures were also bright and relatively noise-free. I had to take a picture in a dark, poorly lit warehouse before I started to see any graininess. The one thing I wish the OnePlus 3T's front camera had was some form of flash, for taking clear shots in near-darkness.

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Just because they have the same megapixel count, though, doesn't mean that the front and rear cameras are the same. They differ quite vastly on color quality, thanks to their different sensors and pixel size. The same scenes shot with the front camera looked washed-out and pale compared with those taken with the rear camera, which generally captured vibrant, richly colored images. OnePlus 3T also added a layer of sapphire glass to the back camera to protect it from scratches that could forever mar your shots.

As we mentioned in our review of the OnePlus 3, the rear camera is capable in most lighting conditions, but won't impress the way the iPhone 7 Plus or many other smartphone cameras would. It delivered sharp, accurately colored exterior shots on sunny days, and rendered a respectable amount of detail in low light, but images looked flat indoors. Still, it's perfectly adequate, and that front camera will please selfie fans like myself.

Performance and battery life

Most flagship phones released this year use the Snapdragon 820 processor, rather than the newer 821 chip that Qualcomm started offering later in the year. So, only the Google Pixel and LeEco Le Pro3 have it, which makes the OnePlus 3 slightly less competitive on specs (the LePro 3 costs the same as the OnePlus 3). I imagine this is one of the biggest reasons OnePlus decided to drop a new flagship so soon after unveiling its previous one, but still, it's a smart move.

The Snapdragon 821 processor makes the OnePlus 3T faster than the original, which was already pretty speedy. It's hard to tell the difference in day-to-day performance, because I'm not a robot and can't detect minute differences in app-launch times, but overall the 3T was very responsive. Its Vellamo score of 6,144 beat the OnePlus 3, the Samsung Galaxy S7, the HTC 10 and the Google Pixel and Pixel XL, while its AndEBench result trumped the OnePlus 3 and the Galaxy S7 but fell short of the Pixel phones and HTC 10. The OnePlus 3T also bested the field in graphics-performance tests.

This means you're mostly going to see similar speeds across these phones. Considering the Pixels use the same chip (albeit with less RAM) but cost hundreds of dollars more, the OnePlus 3T really delivers on value here.

The OnePlus 3T has the same 6GB of RAM as the original, which makes for swift multitasking. OnePlus says it also improved the launch speed for large apps and games, so you won't have to wait quite as long to open these programs. I also found call quality to be perfectly adequate. I called a friend who was in Queens (on T-Mobile's network), and he was able to accurately repeat a string of numbers that I recited, despite his dog barking in the background, which I heard as well. Unfortunately, as with previous OnePlus handsets, the 3T works only on GSM carriers such as AT&T and T-Mobile.

One area where the company says it received the most negative feedback about the OnePlus 3 was battery life. In addition to simply bumping up the battery capacity to 3,400mAh from 3,000mAh, OnePlus tuned the power efficiency of the CPU so that despite its faster speed, it sips power at the same rate as the previous handset.

I was expecting a slight increment on endurance and wasn't quite prepared for the 3T's epic stamina. It lasted 16 hours and seven minutes on Engadget's battery test, which involves looping an HD video with the screen set to 50 percent brightness until the device conks out. That's almost six hours more than the OnePlus 3's runtime, and two hours longer than the Google Pixel XL, which has a 3,450mAh bank.

When the phone does eventually run out of juice, it charges back up to offer what the company says is a day's worth of power in 30 minutes. After the OnePlus 3T finally died on Engadget's battery test, I plugged it in and was able to take it on a quick video shoot just 15 minutes after, because it already got back up to 20 percent in that time. Not only is this fast, but that's enough juice to last at least two hours.

The competition

The OnePlus 3T faces direct competition from the LeEco Le Pro3, which uses the same processor with less RAM for $400. But the Le Pro3 suffers from unintuitive software, has a less vibrant display and doesn't last as long as the 3T.

Google's Pixel phones also use the same processors, offering similar (if not better) performance in a premium frame. These handsets have better cameras and run the latest version of Android (7.0 Nougat), offering a cleaner interface and helpful new features like Google Assistant. But the Pixel lineup starts at $800, which is nearly twice the OnePlus 3T's asking price. Indeed, the latest OnePlus handset is probably the best handset you're going to find for around $440.

Wrap-up

The OnePlus 3T improves things about the original that were slightly lacking, such as battery life, and amps up on performance and software, making it a strong option for power users. I particularly love the sharper front camera for its solid performance in low light. I'd also argue that the boost in endurance alone is worth the $39 price hike, but the previous iteration offered enough stamina for the average user who may not want to shell out for a few extra hours of juice. As a replacement for an existing flagship, the OnePlus 3T is a refinement that not only feels timely, but also well-planned and executed. You'd have a hard time finding a better phone for the price.