The OnePlus 3T Review
by Brandon Chester on November 28, 2016 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- OnePlus
- OnePlus 3T
GPU Performance
Along with the 10% increase in peak CPU clock speeds, the version of Snapdragon 821 in the OnePlus 3T also increases the peak GPU frequency to 653MHz, up from 624MHz in the OnePlus 3. This is a relatively modest improvement, so the corresponding increase in performance will also be rather modest as well. In the interest of merely verifying that performance has improved as expected, I've run 3DMark Sling Shot and GFXBench Car Chase on the OnePlus 3T.
The 3DMark graphics test actually doesn't see much of an improvement on the OnePlus 3T. It may be that I simply got an exceptionally good score on the OnePlus 3, but it is interesting to see such a large gap in the physics test, which should favor the OnePlus 3T with its higher-clocked CPU cores.
In GFXBench Car Chase the OnePlus 3T shows a performance uplift of around 10% compared to the OnePlus 3. This is slightly higher than expected, but due to the truncation of results in the latest GFXBench this may be slightly exaggerated, which tends to happen when comparing devices that differ in performance by only one or two frames per second.
NAND Performance
In our recent review of the Pixel XL one of the problems we ran into was that AndroBench had been broken by the adoption of file-based encryption (FBE) in Android Nougat. AndroBench is the benchmark we use to measure storage performance, and since that time it has been updated with a new version that works on devices that use FBE. However, the results are not comparable to results from AndroBench 4, so going forward we will be using the AndroBench 5 test with a new data set for device results.
As always, our storage test examines the performance for random reads and writes using a 4KB transfer size, and sequential reads and writes using a 256KB transfer size. These settings are chosen to match what actually occurs when an application performs IO operations. Only one IO thread is used, which again mirrors how applications are actually designed in order to reflect the performance that will be seen in real usage instead of reflecting potentially higher speeds that the hardware may be capable of, but that will almost never be encountered in an actual use case.
In Androbench 5 the OnePlus 3T tops the charts. 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. With flash memory, assuming that you have some density for a chip, increasing capacity is accomplished by increasing the number of chips. Because SSDs and other flash memory devices utilize parallel writes to improve performance, increasing the number of dies can allow for greater performance by increasing the number of writes that can happen in parallel.
In addition to the larger amount of internal storage, OnePlus has also adopted F2FS for the filesystem, which is another source of performance improvements, particularly in the case of random write speeds.
With that in mind, the results from AndroBench actually aren't that shocking. In the write tests the 128GB model of the OnePlus 3T is well ahead of every other device, including the 64GB OnePlus 3. Read performance is also improved compared to the OnePlus 3, but not to the same extent.
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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.