My Thoughts on OnePlus 6T
Let me begin by saying that this is not an exhaustive review of the OnePlus 6T, nor it is trying to be. I will just say my personal thoughts on the 6T, which is my new smartphone purchase. I shall delve into the unboxing experience (yes, this is a thing — OnePlus is generous enough to include so much more than the basics for using their products on the get-go), my first impression of it, the hardware, and of course, the software.
Some Background
Earlier this year, I wrote in a blog that I was looking for a new smartphone. My daily driver before purchasing a new one was the iPhone 4S … and honestly, it was a pain to use. To begin, it was painfully slow — apps would load for mere 5 seconds before I can actually use one of them. Even the simple task of texting become a burden since the text appears late when I type something, resulting in grammatical errors here and there. Worse, it was running iOS 9.3.5, which was not only buggy for this iPhone, but also outdated for today’s standard (we’re now at iOS 12). The camera churns out acceptable photos (though it maybe not since seeing the images produced by the 6T), but not up to par with the photos taken with today’s flagship. And, the battery life … is super disappointing and infuriating, with one full charge cycle lasting me only an hour before completely shutting down (I regularly browse the web, play some music, and that’s about it).
That is why I’m hyped up to buy a new smartphone (preferably, a flagship one). Coming from an iPhone 4S, I can definitely say that my expectation for a new smartphone is arguably high, considering the things that I wanted: fluid and responsive experience, good camera, and great battery life.
There are many smartphones this year that exactly cross out what I wanted from a new smartphone. Yet, as a tech-savvy guy, I also wanted the best software experience to match a good hardware configuration.
First, I checked out the iPhone models available at Apple. Since I’m coming from an iPhone, why not replace it with another iPhone? Officially, the cheapest model that I can get here in the Philippines is the iPhone 7 with base configuration (32GB), starting at PhP 28,990. It maxes out at PhP 35,490 (for the 128GB), which is a lot for a two-years old smartphone. Buying out the iPhone 8 64GB, which is a year old now, will cost me a whopping PhP 39,490 — a bit overkill for a 4.7" smartphone that has a low-res screen (yet to be fair, it has better color accuracy than other FHD smartphones). As much as I wanted to buy a new iPhone, the cost and the lack of options are so limiting that I began to look on the other side.
Android smartphones, like the case with the rest of the world, are numerous here in the Philippines. There are exciting options to choose from in the Android camp, but not all of them are created equal. Like I said above, I’m searching for the best hardware and software experience in a smartphone. As much as Samsung, Huawei or other manufacturers are likable for providing us with smartphones that offer excellent hardware, their heavily-skinned software that comes on their smartphones are not to my liking. I only wanted near-stock or stock Android smartphones, so I began searching for them.
Here in the Philippines though, searching for near-stock or stock Android smartphone severely limits your option. You’ve got the Motorola … and the Nokia. That’s pretty much it. Well, Xiaomi offers the Mi A2 and A2 Lite here, but I just don’t like their design. Honestly, the A2 feels like a downgrade from the one-hit wonder that is A1.
Nokia offers the 7 Plus, but it runs the now outdated Oreo (although it is upgradeable to Pie, I prefer my Pie served out of the box). I didn’t felt compelled to look for any Motorola, since there are no compelling options to begin with. They also compromise on one or two things which had a great impact on my daily usage — it’s either they compromised on performance, camera, battery, or etc. My point is, they don’t just offer pretty compelling devices here in the country that prioritizes near-stock or stock Android.
Google Pixels are not officially available in the country, and I have to get a Pixel through an online store which I don’t 100% fully trust. So it is down to one thing: OnePlus.
Even though they don’t have any official retail store in the Philippines, Digital Walker officially manages the retail of OnePlus products (thank you, Digital Walker). The only downside is that they bring a limited number of OnePlus models in the country, and they sell it in a first-come, first-serve basis.
Luckily, I was able to get mine on the day that they restocked. The demand was high, considering the fact that they sold almost 300 models with first batch of the new 6T. Along with the 6T, I decided to get a USB-C OTG adapter for future use.
After purchasing it, I decided to unbox it right after getting home.
Fun fact: I brought and unboxed my phone on December 16, 2018 which was exactly five years since OnePlus was founded by Pete Lau and Carl Pei. A coincidence, to be exact — since then, I put on my calendar “happy phonesary” to mark the day I brought a 6T.
My Unboxing Experience
I know, I know. This is actually a thing. Well, I can’t discount the unboxing experience for one glaring reason: OnePlus provides the best and the modest packaging for a smartphone this 2018. Reading the unboxing from other smartphone, you can infer that they all pack the same thing under the box: the smartphone (obviously), the manuals (obviously), the charger and its connector (obviously). What differs from manufacturer to manufacturer are the additional bundles that come with a new smartphone purchase.
Apple, for instance, bundles stickers with every new iPhones but removes the dongle that let people connect their favorite headset. This, for me, is completely unnecessary and user-hostile: if manufacturers are going to remove the jack, at least bundle a dongle so people wouldn’t be burdened by costs from buying additional accessories — it’s not like these manufacturers can’t afford producing and bundling these dongles to their smartphones. Anyhow, OnePlus bundles stickers and includes a dongle —yes, their latest and greatest loses the jack (sadly).
And surprise, surprise: there is a a lovely letter from the CEO of OnePlus, Pete Lau. I don’t know, but the letter seems terribly handwritten and conveys the message that buying their smartphones make a difference in a world saturated by smartphones that all look the same (blame the notch trend).
I appreciate this letter though — it is as if Pete was directly communicating to me for the reason that I’m a special someone who bought their special product. A letter might sound cheesy (it is), but it is this kind of thing that subtly affects a consumer’s perception towards a brand. And I might say, OnePlus does a terrific job of impressing me as a consumer-friendly device dedicated to listening to their fan base.
There is one obvious thing I still forgot to talk about: the charger. Coming from the iPhone 4S, this charger is simply humongous! Yes, that is how I described it, and for a good reason: this is after all, their proprietary Fast Charger (RIP, that good old Dash Charger name) which can fully charge a phone in an hour. I tested it out, and the result is pretty impressive. Check out my battery section for that.
How about the 6T itself? Well, my first impression was just wow. It’s huge, and covered in glass. I got the Midnight Black version, and to be fair, it’s lovely. The back of the 6T in this version looks and feels like a metal with a black color on it. The camera placement is oddly satisfying. I love the fact that OnePlus included a mute switch just like what Apple does on iPhones — I hope that other manufacturers follow them on this regard, for it is very convenient (and satisfying) to have a mute switch especially during class hours and work sessions.
Display
Personally, I like AMOLED display over LCD. I owned a low-end Samsung Galaxy J2 (as a back-up phone) until recently when its battery started to die out suddenly. Comparing this to my ancient 4S, the 6T’s AMOLED screen reproduces true-to-life colors better than the LCD, and has richer blacks which I truly appreciate.
Furthermore, I found out the display to be pretty large and impressive. I’ve never owned a smartphone with display size reaching 6" and above until 6T happened. One-hand use was hard for long periods of time, so I was forced to always use my two hands (coming from a 4S which was designed for one-hand use made me relearn everything that I do with my smartphone).
The big display meant immersive viewing experience, and I enjoyed watching FHD videos from the get-go. Seriously, I don’t mind the absence of a QHD resolution when you’ve got a display this big with spot-on color accuracy and popping saturation.
In terms of calibration, there were many screen calibration modes to choose from, but I won’t be explaining what these modes mean in this article. Right from the beginning, I only chose the default mode — maybe I will tinker with other modes in the future.
I found out that in brightly-lit environments, I have to crank up the brightness to 100% to fully view contents on the 6T. Before sleeping, I set the brightness to 0% to adjust to the darkness of my room (I turn off the lights before sleeping). I never turned on the auto-brightness, for it is just tad inaccurate: it always set the brightness to 50%, which I can barely see in well-lit environments.
Now, about that notch. The notch doesn’t me bother at all, since it is small compared to the notch of its predecessor, the 6. The presence of such small notch doesn’t bother me at all, even when watching YouTube videos in full screen. I also liked what OnePlus did with the notch by gently curving it to give an impression of a teardrop.
Telephony and Messaging
What is the killer app that any smartphone have? Why, of course, it’s the app that enables telephony and SMS messaging! Even though most communications now took place in social media, SMS and voice calls remain an integral part in any smartphone. The 6T handles voice calls very well (like any smartphone should be). The messaging experience is pretty forward — though OnePlus bundled their own app instead of Google Messages. There is no delay with receiving or sending messages whatsoever. That is expected, since the 6T is just a phone, with added smarts to improve the user experience.
Bundled Apps
OnePlus also has their own share of bundled apps — but for a good reason. These bundled apps are Calculator, Clock, Contacts, File Manager, and Gallery. Plus, there is a Notes app bundled too. And the Weather, which displays eccentric animations that goes along with the current weather. Personally, OnePlus’ apps bundling is really commendable, for the number of apps bundled are kept to a minimum and these apps include extra functionality that I really appreciate.
The OnePlus Launcher may be the odd bunch for me, though. There is the Shelf, which displays widget in a single page that scrolls vertically. I was perplexed the first time I used it, but learned to appreciate it somehow in my few days of using it. If there is one thing I don’t like about the launcher though, it will be the fact that I can’t configure the number of rows and columns on my app drawer. Luckily, Nova Launcher is just around the corner.
I appreciate the fact that OnePlus made a custom navigation gestures for their 6T. I tested it out and was satisfied with the fluidity of the navigation. In many ways, it mirrors the iPhone gestures. This is a good thing, since it was a lot easier going with their custom navigation gestures than sticking with the default option Google baked in Android. Using the default Android navigation gestures is odd, complicated, and feels half-baked most of the time. Perhaps Google will improve it next time? (Android Q, perhaps?)
Performance
I ran a Geekbench on this device and I got this result:
In terms of real-world performance, I found that the 6T handles tasks easily and quickly unlike my 4S. There is no lag whatsoever, so I can’t complain with the performance. This is to be expected in a smartphone with 8GB of RAM running a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset.
What has really blown me out of the water was its WiFi performance. I noticed that webpages do load faster (even faster than my laptop) since this is a device that supports the WiFi 802.11 ac standard (my laptop doesn’t).
Camera
So how good is the camera of the 6T? Let me begin with daytime shots:
I’m not a photographer or something, but damn, the camera is good. It captures a lot of detail in daylight shots, and has minimal noise throughout. Color rendition is mostly accurate. Dynamic range is also good — though I later found out that HDR mode triggers automatically by default (the option to manually toggle HDR is buried in the app settings; personally, I would recommend anyone owning a 6T to leave the auto-HDR turned on automatically by default — the camera is good at detecting when HDR mode should trigger). Even without the HDR turned on, it still captures great images.
Moving over to the nighttime shots, I found out that 6T’s camera captures impressive photos as it was in daytime. So impressive that I had second thoughts on the photos taken — normally, I would capture serious nighttime images with a DSLR. But with the 6T, I feel confident in using my smartphone to capture nighttime images for the first time. (Of course, I’m coming from an iPhone 4S which is way behind in smartphone photography.)
At night, the camera is still able to render colors accurately. Noise is not clearly noticeable, however, in exchange of an “oil painting” effect. This effect smears some of the detail in these photos.
I tried the Nightscape mode which was first introduced with the 6T. Here are the results:
For my fellow 6T users, I would honestly recommend shooting two versions of an image at night to see what is better: the first, from a normal photo mode; and the second, from the Nightscape mode. Honestly, it looks like a gimmick for now, as it produces some hit-or-miss images.
I was still slightly disappointed with the front camera of the 6T. The photos produced are way behind the quality produced by the rear camera. Whenever I take a selfie, my face would be smoothed out, and some fine details would be smeared. I checked if any beautification mode is turned on by default, and alas, it is turned off by default. Turning it on and cranking it up to the max produces a very unrealistic selfie. Nonetheless, I never take a lot of selfies, so this issue should not bother me much.
I tested filming a video, and was honestly satisfied by the end result: smoothly stabilized video and good audio capture. I don’t film a lot of videos, so I’m not really bothered by the video quality that the 6T produces.
Photo and video quality, though, is only half of the picture. The Camera app is integral to taking photos and videos (how will I even take pictures and videos without a built-in Camera app?). It is pretty straightforward, and takes a lot of cues from the built-in Camera app in iOS. There is even a slow-motion mode and a time-lapse mode. What is different though, is the existence of Pro mode. It allows tinkering of the ISO, white balance, shutter speed, focal point, and exposure. Then, I realize how stupid I am expecting an adjustable aperture (nope, the 6T doesn’t have an adjustable aperture, like most smartphones).
I have never tested a GCam port on my 6T, and will never test one out in the foreseeable future. I’m satisfied with the default Camera app, and the photos and videos taken by my 6T. Overall, this is a huge thumbs-up for the camera.
Multimedia
The impressive 6.4" display of the 6T warrants a nice audio experience to bolster the multimedia experience. Coming from a 4S, I can safely say that its bottom-firing speakers were louder. I can hear the music playing across my own room.
Is it enough for casual listening? Yes, but don’t expect it to perform better than smartphones with stereo speakers (since the 6T speakers’ are not stereo). I’m not an audiophile, but I’m really sure that the bass is lacking, and the sound is quite muffled when cranked up to the highest volume.
What if I wanted to listen to headsets or earphones? Ha, I just plug a headset … wait, where is the headphone jack? Oh, the 6T doesn’t have one. So, I tested my own Pioneer Bluetooth headset and boom! It plays music well, and the volume limit still allows me to experience music without deafening my ears. Still, if I wanted to listen to wired headset, the bundled dongle got me covered. Like I said, I’m no audiophile, but the dongle does its job at reproducing music over my speaker which uses the jack for audio.
Battery
Any smartphone purchase has to factor in a smartphone’s battery life. What good is a smartphone if it has terrible battery life? Luckily, the 6T has good battery life — if I’m to be asked. Of course, I don’t play any games in my smartphone (yet), so my daily usage is a juggle between browsing with Firefox, reading feeds on Inoreader, streaming songs on Spotify, and watching YouTube videos.
From time to time, I check my email on Gmail, and to-dos with Microsoft To-Do, so I can be classified as a “light” user. (Truth be told, I rarely catch up on Facebook and Twitter, and rarely replies on Messenger and SMS.) For me, a single charge (up to 80–90%) gets me through a day or two.
I wanted to talk about the elephant in the room: OnePlus’ Fast Charge (RIP, Dash Charge). It is a proprietary charging standard, unfortunately. Luckily, I can still charge my phone with other chargers lying around, albeit slowly and excruciatingly. Likewise, I’m blown out of the water with the ridiculously fast charging time: an hour of charging from 10-20% battery reaps me 90–100% battery. I tested it once, so here it is:
In comparison, my 4S fully charges in an hour, and also dies out in an hour with the usage pattern I just described above.
Some Miscellaneous Stuffs
There is one bug that I discovered within the OnePlus Switch app — a grammatical bug, to be exact. Instead of correctly spelling out “calendar”, the developers had managed to overlook this one embarrassing bug:
Android, in general, is a very customizable OS unlike iOS. I can change the launcher, the wallpaper and it even has its own file manager. Yup, the presence of a file manager makes a huge difference, especially when I want my data not to be tied down to a particular ecosystem. Notifications are 101% more enjoyable with Android than iOS, and I still don’t get the fact that iOS separate the Control Center and Notifications. Android is also open-source! As much as possible, I use open-source software. I just like the fact that I can view the code of any open-source software and know that it is crafted with care by their developers.
However, what I particularly regret is the fact that Android without Google is very much bonkers. I hate the fact that I need to enable web and app activity, voice recognition, location history, and anything that Google uses to learn more about you to be able to use Android at a functional level. Google has an iron grip over Android, and I’m slightly concerned with so much data that it collects over me.
A week of using my 6T and myactivity.google.com is pretty much populated with data that reveals too much about me. Nonetheless, some of the benefits reaped with integrating Google pays off — perhaps, since I primarily use Google apps on the web to handle my email; view my upcoming events; store my contacts, files, and pictures; see where something is located; and of course, watch YouTube videos.
Most Android phones rarely go beyond 3 years of software support. Many factors are involved as to why they never go beyond 3 years, but it makes me jealous and sad especially when compared to the support Apple gives to its iPhones. It would be unfair — as some would argue — to compare the software support since Apple has an iron-grip control over iPhones.
However, there should be no excuse for Android manufacturers at all to abandon their devices especially when launched one to two years ago — after all, many people nowadays are keeping their smartphones for longer (considering the rising cost + no compelling reason to upgrade at all). Luckily for me, OnePlus has promised to support their devices for at least 3 years by publishing a software update timeline. Plus, the active developer community working on custom ROMs for OnePlus devices means that I can tinker with my 6T to make it last longer.
Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with my 6T.
