OnePlus 6T: Plans | Pricing | Specs

The OnePlus 6T takes the formula for the OnePlus 6 and juices it up a little with a smaller notch, in-display fingerprint sensor, and of course especially sharp price points.

OnePlus has a pedigree in delivering premium features at a lower price point than most flagships. While the OnePlus 6 already filled that niche nicely, albeit at a slightly higher price than most were expecting for a OnePlus device, the OnePlus 6T takes that design and runs with it, adding improved battery capacity, a refined design and a new in-display fingerprint sensor.

Design

• In-display fingerprint scanner.
• Teardrop notch display.
• No headphone jack.
• You can have it in black... or black.

• Read our full overview of the OnePlus 6T's design

  The OnePlus 6T features a notch, as is the style of 2018, but it's not much of a notch. It features a "teardrop" style notch – as found on some of stablemate Oppo's phones, as well as the Huawei Mate 20 – with minimal screen intrusion on its 6.41-inch 1,080 x 2,340 pixel display.

  Where previous OnePlus designs have included a headphone jack, the OnePlus 6T does away with it, using USB-C only for audio, or Bluetooth if that's more to your taste.

  OnePlus offers facial ID scanning for unlocking, with the promise of it being the world's fastest, but it also incorporates a fingerprint scanner located under the glass of the OnePlus 6T. That's a feature that's becoming common in the Chinese market, but we've really only seen it here to date in the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, a considerably more pricey handset than the OnePlus 6T.

  In style terms, the OnePlus 6T ships in either Mirror Black or Midnight Black colours. Many manufacturers are opting for a wide array of colour schemes for their flagship phones – and OnePlus has done so in the past – but if you want a OnePlus 6T, you're going to have to like black.

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Camera

• Dual 16/20MP cameras.
• New "Nightscape" camera.

• Read our full overview of the OnePlus 6T's camera

  The OnePlus 6T features dual cameras at the rear, with a 16MP f/1.7 primary Sony IMX 519 sensor matched up to a secondary 20MP f/1.7 Sony IMX 376K sensor.

  That should give the OnePlus 6T good overall camera performance, although the bar on premium performance has been seriously shifted upwards recently with phones like the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, Apple iPhone XS Max and Google Pixel 3XL putting serious effort into pleasing photography.

  OnePlus is putting particular stress on the low-light level muscle of the OnePlus 6T with what it's calling its "Nightscape" camera with improved focus and less overall image noise. We'll have to wait until we can fully test out the OnePlus 6T to see how it performs.

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Performance

• Snapdragon 845 with 6GB or 8GB of RAM.
• Android Pie with OxygenOS.
• Fixed storage.

• Read our full overview of the OnePlus 6T's performance

  OnePlus has often matched up the latest processors with a serious quantity of RAM and in 2018, that should point to a combination of the Snapdragon 845 and either 6GB or 8GB of RAM. That's precisely what OnePlus offers with the OnePlus 6T, with the RAM varying depending on which internal storage combination you choose.

  Disappointingly, it's a fixed storage phone, sold with either 128GB or 256GB of storage onboard. The 128GB model is sold at 2 price points with either 6GB of RAM or 8GB, while the 128GB model is 8GB only.

  The OnePlus 6T is an Android 9 ("Pie") phone, but as with previous OnePlus devices, it's using OnePlus' highly modified "OxygenOS" environment over the top. If you like your Google phones to be pure Google this may be a limiting factor, but it does make the Android experience a little easier, especially for anyone switching over from Apple's iOS.

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Battery life

• 3,700mAh battery with fast charging.
• Wireless charging is notably missing.

• Read our full overview of the OnePlus 6T's battery life

  The battery in the OnePlus 6T sees a slight bump upwards from the vanilla OnePlus 6 and it includes support for OnePlus' own fast charging standard, as long as you use the supplied adaptor.

  Where the OnePlus 6T does miss out on a premium feature, it's in wireless charging, which isn't supported at all.

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Verdict

• Sharp pricing, but we'll have to pay an import tax on top.

• Read our full OnePlus 6T verdict

  The OnePlus 6T has an interesting feature set that pitches towards what we'd call the bottom tier of current premium flagship phones. It should more or less match the power of those flagships thanks to the commonality of the Snapdragon 845 processor running it, but it's not without its compromises. The lack of wireless charging, expandable storage or a headphone jack is an issue for some users, and you'd also have to deal with overseas support if anything went wrong.

  OnePlus did release the OnePlus 5 in Australia in very limited quantities and supports that handset here, but not any of its follow-up phones.

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Pricing and availability

• US pricing starts at US$549.
• Quite likely we won't see an official release in Australia.

OnePlus has brand recognition among smartphone fans, but largely within the realm of offering really affordable flagship phones. The OnePlus 6 saw it shift that focus slightly upwards and it's much the same story with the OnePlus 6T, which will sell in the US for US$549 (128GB ROM/6GB RAM), US$579 (128GB/8GB) and US$629 (256GB/8GB) respectively.

That should equate out to (very roughly) around $780, $820 and $890 respectively, but that doesn't take GST into account, or the fact that OnePlus has only ever soft-launched a single phone in Australia. That was the OnePlus 5 and since then we've seen no official OnePlus handsets in Australia.

That does mean if you want a OnePlus 6T, you'll have to pay a direct importer to get one, which will add a little more again to the likely cost. We'd expect to see the OnePlus 6T start in Australia at around $850–$900 for the entry level model and go upwards from there.