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Review | OnePlus 6T full review: probably the best upper mid-range phone you can buy

  • Fingerprint scanner under screen, bigger display and more powerful battery make handset an improvement on its already excellent predecessor the OnePlus 6
  • However, audio output is still relatively weak, there is no wireless charging and display could be brighter

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Why you can trust SCMP
The OnePlus 6T with its 6.4-inch OLED display with a smaller notch than the previous generation. Photo: Ben Sin
Ben Sin

Smartphones in 2018 seemed to have gone in one of two extreme directions.

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Some have introduced radical designs – the pop-up top on the Oppo Find X, the second screen on the back of the Nubia X, Honor and Xiaomi’s slider phones – that immediately grab the attention, but may not be practical.

Others are such iterative updates – such as the iPhone XS and Samsung Galaxy Note 9 – that they almost feel like the same phone as before at first (or even second) glance.

The OnePlus 6T is in the latter camp. With the exact same processor, camera hardware, and overall design language as the barely six-month-old 6, the 6T is a very minor upgrade on what was already an excellent handset.

The OnePlus 6T uses an in-display fingerprint reader, making it the first phone to hit the US market with this feature. Photo: Ben Sin
The OnePlus 6T uses an in-display fingerprint reader, making it the first phone to hit the US market with this feature. Photo: Ben Sin
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Design and hardware

Here’s what’s new with the 6T. It has a smaller notch than the one on the 6; the display and battery got bumped up to 6.4 inches and 3,700mAh (from 6.3 inches and 3,300mAh); and the fingerprint reader is now embedded underneath the screen instead of residing on the back. That is about it. Everything else is the same: Snapdragon 845 with 8GB of RAM; glass front and back; and a unique-to-Android slider button for toggling between normal, silent or vibrate.

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