OnePlus 10T – A midrange phone killer? (review)

The OnePlus 10T is the company’s less pricey follow-up to the flagship OnePlus 10 Pro from earlier this year. The Chinese company has performed a few nips and tucks in certain areas to get the 10T to a more aggressive price point while improving in other aspects. Namely, performance has been given a boost thanks to the inclusion of the ‘plus’ version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 while charging speeds have been reduced to just 20 minutes thanks to the inclusion of a 150W power brick in the box. 

Question is, has OnePlus made cuts in the right places to make the 10T worthy of consideration for more budget-conscious buyers?

Design

The OnePlus 10T looks virtually identical to the 10 Pro with two key differences. The 6.7-inch display is completely flat as opposed to the curved display sides of the 10 Pro. Secondly, the 10T is the first OnePlus handset to omit the physical 3-way alert slider which is likely to anger a number of long-time OnePlus fans. The alert slider has been a unique feature of OnePlus handsets dating back to the OnePlus 2 and its absence here is just another reminder that the brand is becoming increasingly diluted by Oppo which it recently merged with. 

Other cost-cutting measures include the frame which is now made of plastic as opposed to the aluminium found on the 10 Pro. 

On the upside, the moonstone black colour has a nice grippy textured feel to it on the back, making it less likely to fall out of your hands should you decide to go caseless. 

Display 

The 6.7-inch OLED display on the 10T supports HDR10+ and native 10-bit colour. Technically, the 1080 x 2412 resolution display isn’t quite as sharp as the QHD resolution found on the 10 Pro. However, unless you’re pixel-peeping at the panels side by side, you’re unlikely to notice the difference in clarity so I wouldn’t count this as a notable loss. 

While the 10T has an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz, it can only drop to 90Hz or 60Hz depending on what you’re viewing. This means that while the display looks smooth when scrolling through social media feeds and web pages, it won’t save as much battery when viewing static images on the screen as the 10 Pro can, which can drop down to as low as 1Hz. 

With that said, the display still looks great in day-to-day use while maintaining excellent screen visibility when outdoors. Viewing movies and tv shows, particularly ones that support HDR, looked great and delivered that added pop. 

Battery life 

The OnePlus 10T comes equipped with a 4800mAh battery, but the battery life was mostly inconsistent under regular use. Some days I would get through a full day with enough in the tank while others it would hit dead flat before the evening with less than five hours of screen-on time. OnePlus does include a spate of tools to improve battery performance but out of the box, battery life is average at best. 

Thankfully, the included 150W charging brick can take the phone from empty to full charge in just 20 minutes, making the underwhelming battery life less of an inconvenience than on other handsets. Sadly, there’s no wireless charging on the 10T.

Performance

OnePlus ships the 10T with OxygenOS 12.1, with three years of full updates and four years of security updates promised. That’s still below the four years of full OS updates that Samsung offers, and the five years of security updates you get with Google. 

OnePlus says OxygenOS 13 (based on Android 13) will be out later this year which means there aren’t any noteworthy new software features that we didn’t already cover off in our 10 Pro review. Visually, it looks and functions similarly to ColorOS though there’s less bloatware with OxygenOS 12.

One new feature that I found particularly convenient is the Quick Launch feature which lets you open an app or execute a task directly from the lock screen when you keep your finger on the scanner momentarily. There are up to five shortcut slots you can use to occupy and they can be swiftly cycled through by simply holding your thumb and swiping left or right. I assigned one of them to a new note and the other to the video camera which worked really well. 

Under the hood, OnePlus is using a new vapour cooling system that the company says is twice as efficient at dissipating heat than the cooling system found on the 10 Pro. The ‘Plus’ variant of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 also delivers a 10 per cent boost in CPU and GPU performance over the vanilla version found on the 10 Pro which was consistent with benchmark scores. 

The OnePlus 10T maintained excellent temperatures throughout testing, never getting too warm to the touch even after rounds of benchmarking. I also didn’t experience any crashes in more demanding titles like Genshin Impact with settings maxed out after 30 minutes of play which isn’t something I can say about some other flagship devices I’ve tested.

The OnePlus 10T would make for an excellent gaming phone had it not been for the company’s refusal to unlock frame rates. This means that Android games won’t be able to take advantage of the handset’s 120Hz refresh rate display due to the 60fps cap, which isn’t an issue on dedicated gaming phones and other flagships like the Pixel 7 Pro. Its stance is puzzling given that the company went to the effort of engineering a new cooling solution that keeps the top-tier Snapdragon chip performing at its best under prolonged use with demanding applications. 

Cameras 

The 10T triple camera array isn’t going to challenge other smartphones within its price range with its 50MP primary sensor, 8MP ultrawide and 2MP macro camera. The shots with the primary sensor are fine enough in both ideal lighting and in low light conditions but the ultrawide lacks the clarity and dynamic range needed for landscape shots. The OnePlus 10T HDR mode is also wildly inconsistent with stills appearing overexposed and oversaturated more often than not. 

Meanwhile, the 2MP macro mode is as bad as it sounds with image quality that rarely produces passable results even under ideal lighting conditions. 

The lack of telephoto means you’re relying on digital zoom and while shots look sharp enough at 2x range, the results drop off dramatically from there. 

GadgetGuy’s take 

With the 10T, OnePlus set out to appeal to gamers and performance enthusiasts at a $US650 ($1024) price point that is a bit more affordable than its flagship 10 Pro. While the 10T’s superior internal cooling solution delivers top-tier sustained performance on even the most demanding mobile games and apps, the potential is wasted with an fps cap that limits games to 60Hz. As such, anyone looking for a smartphone with gaming chops will be better off with a dedicated gaming phone. 

The 10T is also tough to recommend to anyone looking for a premium mid-ranger thanks to its average camera system, lack of IP68 rating, no wireless charging and underwhelming battery life. While you won’t get the bleeding edge performance and blisteringly fast charging speeds, Google’s $999 Pixel 7 offers a better-rounded experience.