The OnePlus 3T Review
by Brandon Chester on November 28, 2016 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- OnePlus
- OnePlus 3T
System Performance
One of the key internal changes that the OnePlus 3T brings to the table is a move from Snapdragon 820 to 821. At a high level, Snapdragon 821 is very similar to 820, and in the case of the OnePlus 3T it's really differentiated by its higher peak frequencies for the CPU and the GPU. Both have four of Qualcomm's Kryo cores in a 2 + 2 cluster configuration, and both use Qualcomm's Adreno 530 GPU. In the OnePlus 3 the performance cluster on the CPU had a peak frequency of 2.15GHz, which is brought up to 2.35GHz on the OnePlus 3T. On paper, this gives a performance improvement of roughly 10%, which is also what Qualcomm states in their marketing materials.
PCMark is a test that the OnePlus 3 performed exceptionally well in. This was due not only to the use of Snapdragon 820, but to software optimizations that OnePlus had made to the OS and the Android Runtime as well. The OnePlus 3T continues this trend, and provides performance improvements across the board. The writing and photo editing tests are the most interesting of the group, as these are tests where software optimizations helped the OnePlus 3 to pull ahead of other competing devices, and the OnePlus 3T pulls ahead even further. It bests the Huawei Mate 8 in the writing test to become the fastest device on record, and the photo editing test improves over the OnePlus 3 which was still the fastest device in the test up until now.
The OnePlus 3T's JavaScript performance benefits from improvements that Google has made in Chrome 54, as well as the increase in peak CPU frequency compared to the OnePlus 3. In the interest of having a fair comparison, I've updated the OnePlus 3's results using the latest version of Chrome so it can also take advantage of optimizations that have been made.
Kraken and WebXPRT 2015 both demonstrate the OnePlus 3T's improved JavaScript performance. The gap is actually a bit larger than one might expect from a 10% increase in CPU frequency, and this could simply be the result of other changes made to the operating system in the newer version of OxygenOS, or changes to the DVFS settings that have been made alongside the change in SoC. Jetstream shows a smaller improvement, but it's in line with what you'd expect to see from the CPU bump.
Ultimately, Snapdragon 821 doesn't come with any mind-blowing performance improvements for CPU-bound applications, but the update does keep OnePlus on par with the competition, and allows them to take advantage of improvements in efficiency and errata fixes in addition to a modest performance uplift. Certain parts of the PCMark test also indicate that the 3T comes with additional improvements at the software level, which will hopefully make their way to the OnePlus 3 with the next major update to OxygenOS, but for now are something you only get on the OnePlus 3T.
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ithehappy - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link
I guess I am the lucky one but it has never happened to me. I used Note 2 for 10+ months, Note 3 for almost a year, S2 for 15 months, S4 for 9-10 months, and in none of them there was any sign of any sort of burn in. Now I know that Samsung uses the very best panels when its about their own flagship but still.zepi - Wednesday, November 30, 2016 - link
If you lose 10-20% of max brigtness and your color balance shifts a bit because one sub-pixel loses a fraction of more color than others, you will never see it with naked eye when the change happeng over 12-15 month-period.Actual burn-in... I don't know how easy it is to see that in regular phone. I've seen many samsung phones and tablets (tab s2) with severe burn-in, but those have been on display in stores where they run 24/7 screen in short loops and lots of static images.
ithehappy - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
Well took a good 20 minutes to read the review in full, thanks a lot for upping this pretty fast.I am just so excited to see the sRGB mode got even more improved than before, that is excellent. Though like you mentioned 1080p Pentile is not particularly good, especially for text rendering.
The camera, that was the main thing they could have changed, I mean the OP3's camera performance isn't really good to my eyes, so they could have tweaked it a bit or something, rather than changing something as stupid as the selfie camera, jeez!
I am still torn between this and Pixel though, damn it.
PS: There is a small typo there by the way, when you said, "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...."
I am sure you meant OnePlus 3 there.
ikjadoon - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
"However, it's important to recognize why this is, particularly where write speeds are concerned. Most smartphones we review have either 16GB or 32GB of internal memory. The OnePlus 3 has 64GB, and this OnePlus 3T unit is the flagship 128GB model."Maybe one way to alleviate this issue and to have better informed readers (most of us have read SSD reviews here) is to list the device's capacity in the chart? So that when we compare the speeds, we know we're comparing apples-to-apples, at least in terms of capacity?
mobutu - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
40bucks for 10-15% more battery life? I'm game.ahtoh - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link
How is the camera?Mikad - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link
The camera in on level with Lumia 920. I've changed my phone from Lumia 920 -> LG G3 -> Lumia 950XL -> Nexus 5x -> OnePlus 3 and unfortunately OP3's camera ranks the lowest, equaling 920.In every other way OP3 is the best phone I've used but the camera is a big let down. Especially compared to the 950XL and Nexus 5x.
You can get good pictures if everything is still. But if there is even little movement happening, the pictures are blurry.
solnyshok - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link
I am in the market for a new phone. Op3T is good, but S7 Edge 64gb has dropped to 500 Euro in my country. Camera and display are significantly better, CPU perf is on par, and battery life is epic. Considering small price difference, I will probably take S7 Edge.solnyshok - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link
oops, I meant 32gb variant. Still, with microsd slot, it is good enough10basetom - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - link
I've read that they also upgraded the rear lens to Sapphire, which is added to the cost as well.