The OnePlus 3T Review
by Brandon Chester on November 28, 2016 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- OnePlus
- OnePlus 3T
Final Words
The OnePlus 3 was certainly the best Android phone at the $400 price point, and it arguably had the best value for your money of any smartphone in general. The OnePlus 3T is a successor to the OnePlus 3, being better in some ways and equally good in all others. Normally that would make it a natural replacement for the OnePlus 3, and OnePlus seems to think so as they've discontinued the OnePlus 3 and replaced it with the 3T. However, these upgrades do not come for free, and the price of the phone has increased by a significant amount to accommodate the upgrades.
For the components that are shared between the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T, the experience and level of quality provided are equivalent between the two. The build quality is just as good, with the only change being the removal of the silver color and the introduction of gunmetal grey and gold finishes in its place. The display is essentially the same, although in my case I did see an even higher level of accuracy in the sRGB mode than I did on the OnePlus 3T, but it's impossible to say whether this is true of all units or if mine was just exceptionally good. The rear-facing camera quality is unchanged, although OnePlus advertises improved EIS during video recording. This is something that could easily be brought to the OnePlus 3 in a software update, so I'm unsure if it's really something that can be considered an advantage of the 3T. I also feel that the poor video quality on Snapdragon 820 devices means that it's not even worth discussing which ones have slightly better video quality than others.
The three aspects that have changed are the battery, the SoC, and the front-facing camera. For the battery the improvement is fairly obvious, with the 13% increase in capacity essentially giving you a corresponding 13% increase in battery life. Moving the SoC from MSM8996 to MSM8996 Pro makes the phone roughly 10% faster for CPU-bound tasks and 5% faster for GPU-bound tasks. These are fairly modest improvements, but it's important to also note that this is a high level perspective that doesn't take into account improvements in efficiency and fixes for errata that have been bundled into Snapdragon 821. Finally, you have the new front-facing camera which moves from an 8MP Sony sensor with 1.4µm pixels to a 16MP Samsung sensor with 1.0µm pixels.
With all these upgrades comes an increase in price from $399 to $439 in the United States, with corresponding increases in other currencies. $40 doesn't sound like an enormous amount of money on its own, but when a phone is initially priced at $399 it represents a price increase of 10%, which is not insignificant. The question is whether the improvements made in the OnePlus 3T are worth this 10% increase in price. This really comes down to the user and what they value in a device. For example, I didn't really touch on the front-facing camera because I think increasing the price of a phone to inflate the pixel count on the front-camera is not a good decision. I find myself asking how much cheaper the phone would be if it had retained the perfectly adequate 8MP camera from the OnePlus 3. The same is true for the SoC; Snapdragon 821 doesn't provide enough of an improvement in performance to justify increasing the price of the phone. The only change that actually does impact the user in a visible and meaningful way is the improved battery life.
All of that being said, I don't think the OnePlus 3T provides a poor value for the money. What's really in question here is whether the OnePlus 3 provided better value for its price. As I've used the phone and thought about the price I've been leaning toward that conclusion, as neither the SoC change nor the new front camera have meaningfully improved my experience, and the 13% larger battery is not worth $40 on its own. If you truly value having the best SoC and having more pixels in your selfies then the improvements may be worth a 10% increase in price for you, but for me I think it just pushes the price closer to the realm of flagship devices without much to show for it.
Ultimately, I still believe that the OnePlus 3T is a very good phone for the price, and it is a better phone than the OnePlus 3. However, if you were to offer me the OnePlus 3 and 3T at their original prices, I think I would just opt to get the OnePlus 3. I would definitely miss the longer battery life, but for me personally, the other changes don't add up to enough to justify the increase in price.
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leexgx - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
i just wish they keep most of the buttons near the top left and right side of the phone (some phones have the buttons to low so can use them in phone holder as it presses them)leexgx - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
""can't use phone holder when are all on one side (power button right side, volume on left side is the preferable way, might not be ideal for left handed people but this is how they are norm setup)Pino - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
ZTE Axon 7 for $ 349 on cyber Monday, with a free Bluetooth beats phone is a much better deal.JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
I prefer having the ability to load the most common and popular open-source Android-based OS, Cyanogenmod. Cyanogenmod continues to issue updates to my (apparently ancient, despite only being 2 years old and still very functional) Nexus 4, which Google no longer provides updates for.ZTE Axon 7 has no Cyanogenmod support, and like many other Android phones, it will cease to have manufacturer support (planned obsolescence) after a year, if you're lucky.
I'm looking into a Oneplus 3T now, as Google no longer provides affordable Nexus phones, but mostly because my current Nexus 4 has a degraded battery life over 2 years of charge cycles. Despite lowering the brightness, barely using it, and blocking many applications, my Nexus 4 only tends to last me 12 hours of very light use, and sometimes it fails to last the work day, from when I remove the phone from the charger in the morning, by the time I get back home to charge it again. The upgraded 3400 mAh battery on the OnePlus 3T is a solid selling point, as I'm looking for better longevity of battery life 2 ~ 3 years down the line.
negusp - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
The Axon 7 has a CM13 port, and everything seems to work so far.For the price the Axon is unbeatable.
And the Nexus 4 always had sh*t battery life. No way around it. Replacing the battery isn't too difficult either.
JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
I'll have to concede, there does appear to be a port, but apparently you have to get it directly from XDA forums, and it's an unofficial port; it's not listed on the CyanogenMod website at all.http://forum.xda-developers.com/axon-7/development...
The following are the only official ZTE Cyanogenmod builds listed on Cyanogenmod's site:
https://download.cyanogenmod.org/
ZTE
Blade (blade)
Nubia Z9 Max (nx510j)
Skate (skate)
V9 (v9)
Meanwhile OnePlus's section includes every major phone they've released thus far, save for the 3T which was just released (and sure to get official support in the coming weeks).
OnePlus
2 (oneplus2)
3 (oneplus3)
One (bacon)
X (onyx)
Given ZTE's poor support record on CyanogenMod, I hope that changes for the better in the future. It's the poot CyanogenMod support for manufacturers like Xiaomi, Honor, and Huawei (and now ZTE) that prevent me from buying into the platform. When I buy a phone, a buy something sensibly priced and I intend for it to last me longer than even typical 2 year upgrade plans.
negusp - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
Your last point is the most important. People who value a Nexus-like phone should get an Axon 7. In that way, we drive demand for ports and releases of custom ROMs.The 3T also won't get very much support, and hasn't been received kindly by the dev community. One of the most notable was flar2 who has said he won't be porting his elementalx kernel to it.
FlyBri - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
It has already changed for the better ZTE has already confirmed it is working with Cyanogen mod as we speak, and so the Axon 7 is getting official CyanogenMod support. So while the ROM isn't out yet, one will be coming. Looks like your concern about poor support from ZTE regarding Cyangenmod has been eliminated.pierrot - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link
CM support official or not is a huge feature. It even makes that cheapo Amazon Fire halfway usablerealbabilu - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link
I disagree. CM support or Rom continuity always needed. Software bug , and security hole always there. There are not plenty mobile phone that keep it run long enough to patch every bug, as far i owned and experiences, those one with cm support like oneplus, those one with iOS, and those one with miui rom for Xiaomi phones, that updated regularly.And one thing others is availability hardware spare part, especially the battery and the screen replacement as those are fast moving sparepart for mobilephones. It can be replaced by third party repairman. iPhone always have a big numbers spare part availability on market, Xiaomi phones also have a lot. Oneplus not so many, ZTE even little.