OnePlus 10T Review: A non-Pro phone with refined performance

After ditching the ‘T’ series last in 2021, OnePlus has revived it back with the launch of the OnePlus 10T. As we exclusively revealed back in July, OnePlus rejigged rear camera placement and made several other tweaks in the phone’s design to clearly demark the difference between the 10T and the OnePlus 10 Pro. Where the OnePlus 10T has an edge over the Pro phone is its Chipset and charging speeds. The OnePlus 10T users get their hands on the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and 150W charging for the first time.

Should you buy the OnePlus 10T? Well, I have been using the OnePlus 10T for almost a month now as a daily driver. Based on my experience as a user, I have penned down my thoughts in this OnePlus 10 review.

OnePlus 10T review: Unboxing

When unboxing, there’s a lot you will find in the retail box although nothing out of the ordinary. There’s the phone (of course), a 160W charging adapter (although US users will get 125W), and some 1+ stickers that are packed in the box as well. You get the well-coiled red-colored USB-C cable as well. Unfortunately, OnePlus hasn’t packed in a case of any sort which means you’ll have to buy one separately. 

OnePlus 10T review: Design

Apple iPhones are well-designed and there’s no second thought about it irrespective of if I am an Android enthusiast or an iPhone geek. Likewise, the OnePlus phones look beautiful although the OnePlus 10T pulls out some other strings too. Just like the OnePlus 10 Pro, the OnePlus 10T also has a rather giant-looking bump housing its triple camera setup along with an LED flash.

The back is glassy with Gorilla Glass 5 which means you get a glossy finish with superb resistance against falls. Of course, the phone can be a fingerprint magnet although the Moonstone Black variant can do some justice to it since it has gone for a textured back panel instead of a glossy one when compared to Jade Green.

The OnePlus 10T uses a plastic mid-frame with Corning Gorilla Glass on both the front and there. There’s no ceramic camera module compared to the OnePlus 10 Pro since the tech juggernaut had to make cuts somewhere. OnePlus should have gone for GG6 or Victus but instead, it went for an older grade GG5 but anywho, it’s there. 

The phone is curved on the edges which makes it easier to hold. Moreover, it allows the side profile to look slim which is something OnePlus does know how to play around with. You get a power button on the right, a volume rocker on the left and yes, there’s no alert slider either.

The top has a mic and a top speaker while the rear has everything from a bottom-firing speaker to a SIM card slot, mic, and USB-C port to get along. As usual, OnePlus hasn’t included any card slot and little do we need it since the base variant sits at a hefty 128GB UFS 3.1 storage paired with Google and OnePlus cloud storage solutions which makes having a card slot obsolete.

The final piece of the puzzle is its IP rating is IP54 which is available in the US whereas it doesn’t have any in India or Europe. The IP rating available in the US is because of carrier requirements whereas OnePlus has decided to keep it at bay as yet another cost-cutting measure.

OnePlus 10T review: Display

The OnePlus 10T uses the same panel as that of the OnePlus 10R which made it to the Indian market only. The phone has a 6.7” OLED panel with 1080×2412 pixels resolution, a punch-hole setup, an aspect ratio of 20.1:9, and a pixel density of 394ppi. It sports a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate although the settings don’t allow for 90Hz instead, you have options to toggle between 120Hz and 60Hz although it toggles automatically based on activities you are performing. As evident, the phone lacks a variable refresh rate unlike its Pro variant so that’s a bummer.

However, it doesn’t mean the OnePlus 10T is a no-go since it still has a pretty flamboyant display. The panel is rated with 10-bit color, HDR10+, and reaches a max brightness of 819 nits with the typical peak being 517. I didn’t find any hassle using the phone under scorching direct sunlight so that’s a relief. The panel is huge so viewing content in HDR is a blessing be it Netflix, Prime, or YouTube. All in all, the OnePlus 10T offers an excellent display with vibrant colors and the option to choose between color profiles. The viewing angles it presents are excellent too.

OnePlus 10T review: Performance

As far as performance is concerned, the OnePlus 10T stands in good light. The phone is backed by Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 with top-notch specs including up to 256GB UFS 3.1 storage and 16GB of RAM options available in the stores. The phone scores 1039 and 3419 points on Geekbench 5 while unlocking its performance mode enabled 1338 and 3996 points on single and multi-core tests, respectively.

On AnTuTu 9, the OnePlus 10T scores were 804426 and 1026809 in normal and high-performance modes, respectively. The scores fared on 3DMark give an overall idea of how the processor is performing. No doubt with the efficiency and performance gains, SD8+Gen1 was able to retain max stability in terms of performance when compared to SD8Gen1.

The OnePlus 10T uses a Cryo-velocity Vapor Cooling System that offers a total surface area of 37038.8mm2 which is way larger than what the OP10Pro has in store. Thus, it helps in better heat dissipation and a higher performance paradigm which I already mentioned in the GeekBench, AnTuTu, and 3DMark scores listed above.

I never had to engage its high-performance mode even when gaming which is because of the prowess that SD8+Gen1 offers as a whole. In real-world tests, the phone can sustain performance for a longer duration keeping the frame rates and temperature consistent. However, I would simply say that it isn’t surprising because OnePlus always has been offering the best performance in its models and OP10T is no different.

On the software side, it runs on OxygenOS 12.1 which is feature-rich, snappy, and offers far better visuals than its ColorOS 12 counterpart. OnePlus offers a sleek always-on display function along with quick launch shortcuts for the fingerprint sensor which works even from the lock screen. There’s only one pre-loaded third-party app – Netflix making it one of the cleanest software interfaces in the market.

You also get three major Android OS upgrades i.e. till Android 15 along with four years of security updates. If you have plans to keep using the phone for a while, the OnePlus 10T won’t discourage you thanks to the unending source of updates.

OnePlus 10T review: Camera

It’s the last thing that I am writing for the review since it tends to matter a lot for people who love photography on their phones. Specs-wise, the phone packs in a 50MP primary cam with OIS, an 8MP ultrawide snapper, and a 2MP macro snapper on the rear. The front has a 16MP snapper but hey, let’s dig deeper into the real-world performance and not just what’s on the paper.

The OnePlus 10T’s cameras are pretty much in the midrange segment and certainly average when compared to any smartphone in the same segment. It is almost the same setup that we saw in the Nord 2T from OnePlus. Although a macro snapper has been added to the mix it performs which delivers results similar to what we have seen in budget phones.

The primary camera does capture a good amount of detail and appealing shorts in daylight. Colors look accurate so is the white balance. Dynamic range is also decent but occasionally highlights supersede shadows.

In low light, the OnePlus 10T camera automatically switches to Night mode where it takes multi-frame exposure shots and stitches them together to ensure better-exposed results in low light. Low light results can be termed decent as the images have a satisfactory amount of details which an aggressive de-nosing filter applied on top.

The ultrawide camera doesn’t correct distortions on the edges perfectly and you can easily notice them. Moreover, the UW camera tends to lose focus and requires multiple shots to get a perfect click as we go forward.

Next up, portrait shots on the OnePlus 10T are a delight and I must admit it. Although you are getting software-generated bokeh shots, these are pretty convincing since the segmentation and edge detection works like a charm. There’s no point in discussing the 2MP macro sensor because it’s just there.

When talking about the front camera, tends to capture decent passable shots maintaining the skin tones and other details. However, as you reduce the surrounding light such as indoors or during the night, the quality will suffer since the noise levels take over quickly. Portrait shots on the front camera are passable yet again although it depends on the lighting conditions since I found out photos during bright daylight are more than average.

OnePlus 10T review: Battery

OnePlus 10T sports a 4,800mAh battery which is among the biggest when compared to other OnePlus flagship phones. It is larger than that of the Xiaomi 12 Pro and Galaxy S22+ (4,300mAh and 4,500mAh, respectively). The charging speed peaks at 150W albeit the charger is rated at 160W. But hey, that’s all about the numbers. Let’s see how it fared in real-world tests after I tried it for a while.

OnePlus phones are optimized for the software or the hardware which means their juice will last longer than you expect. The phone’s battery kept performing at a top-notch degree even with the 120Hz adaptive enabled along with GPS, camera app, music, and much more. In fact, I was able to get anywhere between five to six hours of screen-on time (SoT) which is more than average. Of course, when we are talking about SoT, we aren’t referring to how long the battery will last but how much it will last when used to its extent.

The charging speed is undoubtedly blazing fast thanks to the 150W charger which takes about 19 minutes to reach from zero to a hundred percent. Tagged as Supervooc, the OnePlus 10T is using Oppo’s charging monitor with USB Power Delivery to juice up the two-cell battery faster than ever.

There’s an ongoing dispute around the charging cycles where OnePlus advertised 1600 cycles after which, the battery will still retain 80%. However, the faster you charge the battery, the lower will be the cycles as per the common notion and I don’t think I would deny accepting that fact. With the 150W charging tech, the OnePlus 10T takes a lead compared to Xiaomi 12 Pro (21 minutes), the OnePlus 10 Pro (32 minutes), and the Samsung Galaxy S22+ (1:02 hours) among others.

OnePlus 10T review verdict: Should you buy it or not?

Critic rating: 3.8/5

OnePlus 10T, the phone belonging to the OnePlus 10-series offers a few upgrades and a few missteps and shortcomings altogether. The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC does offer the best-sustained performance, however, the phone does miss out on quite a lot of features ranging from wireless charging, IP rating, a better camera setup, alert slider, influence of Oppo’s ColorOS on its UI among others. It isn’t a proper flagship even with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 but it will surely get any resource-drenching tasks done without any hassle for sure.

Competing against the likes of Samsung Galaxy S22 and Google Pixel 7, the OnePlus 10T is strong enough to take on the challenges although not on every front so that’s there. With exceptional battery life, amazing display tech and support to stereo speakers, and blazing fast charging tech, the phone does have a few bright USPs as well that make it worth checking out at the OnePlus store near you.