The OnePlus T series is a strange thing to happen in the tech world. This is OnePlus’s second big release of the year. The OnePlus 10T comes after the premium OnePlus 10 Pro, which came out in April.
The new OnePlus 10T looks a lot like the old one and has a top-of-the-line chip, but it costs a lot less than the old one, so some cuts must have been made.
After having the phone for a while, we found that the camera was one of the things that let it down. The 10T doesn’t have the zoom camera that the 10 Pro does; instead, it has a 2MP closeup camera that is mostly useless. Other features, like wireless charging, have also been taken away.
As we said, the T series is a bit strange. This is because the 10T is cheaper than the flagship model but has a few features that make it better than the flagship model: The newer version of the top-level Snapdragon processor heats up less and is great for games.
It also has 150W charging speeds, which are as crazy as they sound. Do you like the sound of this phone? If so, should you buy one when it comes out in September? Let’s look more closely and find out!
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OnePlus 10T Box Content
- OnePlus 10T 5G Smartphone
- SUPERVOOC Power Adapter
- USB-C Cable
- USB Dongle (Type-A to Type-C)
- SIM Tray Ejector
- User Manual
OnePlus 10T Full Specification
| LAUNCH | |
| Announced | August 03, 2022 |
| First Release | August 06, 2022 |
| NETWORK | GSM / HSPA / LTE / 5G |
| BODY | |
| Dimensions | 163 x 75.4 x 8.8 mm |
| Weight | 204 g |
| Build | Glass front (Gorilla Glass 5) Glass back (Gorilla Glass 5) Plastic frame |
| SIM | Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by) |
| DISPLAY | |
| Type | Fluid AMOLED, 1B colors |
| Size | 6.7 inches, 108.0 cm2 (~87.9% screen-to-body ratio) |
| Resolution | 1080 x 2412 pixels |
| Protection | Corning Gorilla Glass 5 |
| PLATFORM | |
| Operating System | Android 12, OxygenOS 13 |
| Chipset | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 (4 nm) |
| CPU | Octa-core |
| GPU | Adreno 730 |
| MEMORY | |
| Card Slot | No |
| Internal | 128GB/ 8GB RAM 256GB/ 12GB RAM 256GB/ 16GB RAM |
| MAIN CAMERA | |
| Triple | 50 MP, f/1.8, 24mm (wide) 8 MP, f/2.2, 120˚ (ultrawide) 2 MP, f/2.4, (macro) |
| Features | Dual LED flash, HDR, panorama |
| Video | 4K@30/60fps, gyro-EIS |
| SELFIE CAMERA | |
| Single | 16 MP, f/2.4, 24mm (wide) |
| Features | HDR |
| Video | 1080p@30fps |
| SOUND | |
| Loudspeaker | Yes, with stereo speakers |
| 3.5mm jack | No |
| COMMS | |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct |
| Bluetooth | 5.2, A2DP, LE, aptX HD |
| Positioning | GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, QZSS |
| NFC | Yes |
| Radio | No |
| USB | USB Type-C 2.0 |
| FEATURES | |
| Sensors | Fingerprint (under display, optical) |
| BATTERY | |
| Type | Li-Po 4800 mAh, non-removable |
| Charging | 150W wired (125W for 110V sockets) |
| MISC | |
| Colors | Moonstone Black, Jade Green |
| Models | CPH2415, CPH2413, CPH2417 |
| TEST | |
| Display | Contrast ratio: 1544:1 (nominal) |
| Camera | Photo / Video |
| Loudspeaker | -24.7 LUFS (Very good) |
| Battery life | Endurance rating 96h |
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OnePlus 10T Key Feature
- Fast charge with 150W SuperVOOC.
- Alert Slider is gone.
- It seems like the OnePlus 10 Pro.
- The new Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip makes things run faster.
- In some countries, it comes with an impressive 16GB RAM version.
- A new way for users to cool down.
OnePlus 10T Release Date and Price
The 8GB RAM and 128GB storage model of the OnePlus 10T costs $649 / £629, and there is also a 12GB model offered in India. The 16GB/256GB model costs $749 / £729. The 10 Pro costs $799 / £799 with 8GB RAM and 128GB of storage space and $869 / £899 with 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage space.
There isn’t a big difference in price between this mid-range version of the 10 Pro and the 10 Pro. That way, people who buy the 10T won’t think they’re getting a phone that is much worse than the 10 Pro. The OnePlus Nord line is for people who want to save even more money.
It’s better to compare this phone to the Google Pixel 6, which has 128GB of storage and costs $599, £599, or AU$999. It charges faster, has a bigger screen, and a more powerful chipset, but the camera and apps aren’t as good.
The OnePlus 10T went on sale on August 25, which was a few weeks after its launch on August 3. In the US, however, you’ll have to wait longer; the movie doesn’t come out until September 29.
Remember to check to see if there are any OnePlus coupon codes that can be used to save money.
OnePlus 10T 5G Design
One of the most talked-about things about the OnePlus 10T 5G is that it doesn’t have a warning slider. Let’s start with that. Over the past few years, most Android phones have been pretty much the same.
The slider has been one thing that has set OnePlus apart from other brands since its very first model. It’s easy to see why we’d lose it over some of Nord’s value-focused models, but this shows that the company is ready to give up on something that longtime customers really like.
Like on iPhones and BlackBerrys in the past, the slider lets you quickly switch between alert settings. You’ll miss it if you use it a lot. But I keep my phone on quiet almost all the time, so I’ve never had much need for it.
OnePlus says that the switch had to be taken out to make room for better antennas and the 150W charging circuits, but this explanation doesn’t make much sense when you think about how small a surface-mount switch is.
The company even admits that this choice will upset some people and says that the slider won’t be gone forever.
There are some other things to talk about. Moonstone Black and Jade Green are the two very different finishes you can get on the 10T. The rough surface of the first one was reportedly modeled after volcanic rock.
It’s easy to hold on to and looks pretty cool from far away. The Jade Green version, on the other hand, is fully smooth and very reflective. It’s not too slippery, but you can see fingers on it.
Camera Section
The camera section looks a lot like the one on the OnePlus 10 Pro (Review), but it’s not built the same way. The metal frame on this phone doesn’t stick out and wraps around the back like a finger. Instead, the camera module is part of the glass back panel and is raised and shaped a bit.
You won’t be able to feel the joint if you run your finger across it. The black spot on my Jade Green review unit looks like it’s rising from a calm body of water.
These are a bit above the norm for high-end phones: the 10T 5G is 8.75 mm thick and weighs 203 g. Even though this isn’t the easiest phone to use, the smooth edges and curved back make it easy to hold. Glass 5 from Corning is used for both the front and back. The box comes with a matte rubber case and a screen cover that is already on the phone.
A small power button is on the right, and there’s a volume rocker on the left. On the bottom, there is a speaker, a USB Type-C port, and two Nano-SIM slots.
There is a speaker cutout and a mic hole on top. There is no 3.5mm jack. The fingerprint reader and front camera are built into the screen. OnePlus was able to make the edges of the screen very thin. It doesn’t have smooth edges like the 10 Pro, but that’s not a bad thing at all.
OnePlus 10T Display
The OnePlus 10T has an FHD AMOLED screen that is 6.7 inches and has HDR 10+ and 10-bit color. The 10T’s screen is the same size as the Pixel 6 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max, but it feels much smaller because it is thinner and the back is curved.
The screen looked just as bright and sharp for its size as the Galaxy S22 Ultra as I watched the trailer for Netflix’s Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde. The trailer quickly switched between scenes from Monroe’s life. But the OnePlus’s brightest setting was pretty weak, so it was hard to use the screen outside in full sunlight.
The fastest the monitor can go is 120Hz, but it can slow down to 60Hz or 90Hz to save power. The fully adjustable LTPO 2.0 system on the OnePlus 10 Pro can drop all the way down to 1Hz, which is more advanced. However, this system should still help save power.
There are numbers in the table above that back up the claim that the OnePlus screen is pretty dim. When the phone is set to the usual Vivid profile, however, the color gamut tests show that images and videos look their best. This is because the 10T supports a detailed 10-bit color.
OnePlus 10T has the highest Delta-E score (lower numbers are better) compared to the other phones we’re looking at. This means that the colors on its screen aren’t as accurate as those on competing phones.
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OnePlus 10T Camera
The main camera on the OnePlus 10T is 50MP and takes 12MP pictures. It also has an ultra-wide camera (8MP) and a closeup camera (2MP). There isn’t a zoom lens in this group, which is a big letdown, but to be fair, that 2MP macro camera is also hard to understand.
The main camera takes pretty good pictures. If you have good photography skills, you can use this camera to take great pictures, but it’s not a flagship-level camera by itself.
Images are often a bit too exposed, with colors that are way too bright and burned out. The colors are way too bright, and the OnePlus is even better than phones like the Galaxy S22 series, which are known for taking photos with bright colors. The colors also seem a bit flat as a whole. That’s still one month for OnePlus to fix those problems before the phone comes out, and we really hope that they do.
Telephoto Camera
Additionally, this phone does not have a telephoto camera at all, which means the quality of the zoom is significantly reduced. Digital zoom can go as high as 10X, but even at 3X, you can tell the difference between it and the competition.
Another strange thing about it is the 2MP macro camera that comes with it. The main camera and the ultra-wide camera can’t take pictures of things that are closer than 4 cm (1.6 in), but you still get 2MP shots that are very flat. It would have made a lot more sense to include a real ultra-wide camera that could shoot macros, like most of the competition. But instead, you get… this.
Ultra-Wide Camera
It’s also not great to use the 8MP ultra-wide camera. While an 8MP camera doesn’t give you much trust because the level of detail is low, you can also see that there is some very noticeable over-sharpening that makes the edges of objects in a photo look bad.
As compared to other phones, this one only has one bigger view. This is good for group shots because of the wide view, but not so good for one-person shots because the close-up view is too close.
The OnePlus 10T can only record videos in 4K/60fps quality at its best. Video quality problems are less common than photo quality problems, and we really like how well the video is stabilized. However, don’t get the wrong idea: this is still not a flagship-level experience.
One annoying thing about the 8MP ultra-wide camera is that it can’t record 4K video at all because the quality isn’t high enough. But you can use the ultra-wide camera in 1080p mode.
The video from the main camera is well-stabilized, but the colors are still too bright, and there is a strange color change when the camera moves.
After all is said and done, the OnePlus 10T feels like OnePlus purposely pulled its photography team from making this phone so that the camera would be so bad that it wouldn’t hurt sales of the top OnePlus 10 Pro. We guess there’s a reason why some features should only be on the top phone, but the camera on the OnePlus 10T feels way too basic.
OnePlus 10T Performance
The 10T has either 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage ($649) or 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage ($749). It runs on the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 technology. The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip’s prime core is a little faster than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip’s (3.2GHz vs. 3.0GHz), but its main benefits are in how it handles power and heat.
The phone starts out in a mode called “Balanced performance,” just like the OnePlus 10 Pro. In this setting, it gets the same PCMark Work score (11,066) as the Pixel 6 (10,602), but both phones are much worse than other flagships in this area. This mode is helpful because it keeps the phone from ever getting hot or slowing down.
That’s why, when I used the CPU Throttling Test app, the phone never really slowed down. Pete Lau, CEO of OnePlus, says the phone has the “largest and most advanced cooling system” of the company. At first glance, though, the biggest cooling improvement seems to be that it doesn’t overclock the CPU.
Even so, the phone still has enough power for games when it’s in Balanced mode. We used the PerfDog performance tool to see how well it runs the Genshin Impact, which has a lot of graphics.
With medium graphics settings and a 60fps frame rate cap, the phone consistently got 53fps. This phone performs a lot like the Asus ROG Phone 6, which is designed to be used for games.
You can put the phone into a speed mode that kills battery life OnePlus says if you want more power. As you can see in the chart below, once we moved, the 10T started to perform like other flagships.
OnePlus 10T Battery Life & Charging
I’ve had the OnePlus 10T as my main phone for about five days now. That’s not quite long enough for Android’s built-in Adaptive Battery improvements to take effect, but the phone still held up with my daily use.
Even though I used GPS a lot through Google Maps, took a lot of pictures, and streamed music. The battery still lasted until the end of the day without having to be charged again. Based on how I use the phone, the screen has been on for an average of five to six hours so far. I expect it to get better once all the improvements take effect.
The cool thing about it is the 150W peak charging speed. In our tests, the 4,800mAh battery went from 0% to 100% in 19 minutes. Which is exactly what OnePlus says it will do. Users should expect some differences based on the temperature outside. But the most important thing to know is that this phone charges very quickly.
The “SuperVOOC” charger that comes with it is interesting because it can charge up to 160W and works with USB Power Delivery. This means that it might be the only charger you need for your phone, laptop, and other USB-C devices. Because voltage standards are different in the US and other countries, buyers will only be able to charge at 125W. If you take the same charger abroad, it will work at 150W.
Battery Test
We tested OnePlus 10T units in both India and the US. There wasn’t much of a change in the time it took to charge, with the 125W charging taking only one minute longer. OnePlus is also making big claims about how long the battery will last because it is split.
The company says that after 1,600 cycles, or about four years of use, the battery should still have at least 80% of its original power. You can read more about it on the boards for OnePlus users.
According to OnePlus, it had to get rid of the warning slider to make room for the charging tech. I’m not sure I agree with that decision. In real life, the OnePlus 10 Pro’s 65W charging takes about 15 minutes longer to fully charge than the OnePlus 10T’s 125W charging. However, this kind of power is meant for quick top-ups, and both phones can be charged very quickly in an emergency.
Also, the fact that it doesn’t allow wireless charging is a letdown, and some might think that this was done on purpose to sell more of the OnePlus 10 Pro.
OnePlus 10T Availability and Network
For $650, you can get the OnePlus 10T with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage in the US. That’s an amazing $80 less than what the OnePlus 9 cost when it first came out. While it’s still not as cheap as some other phones. The fact that it’s less expensive than older models is great.
For $750, you can get one with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage if you need more room or power. On September 1, you can pre-order the phone from OnePlus, Amazon, and Best Buy. It won’t go on sale until September 29, though.
Strangely, the date is so late for people in the US. So, in the UK, you can already pre-order the phone, and you’ll be able to get it on August 25. That’s before people in the US can even order their phones ahead of time. In the UK, the 128GB model costs £629 and the 256GB model costs £729.
Some features on the OnePlus 10T are meant to make it easy to connect to Wi-Fi networks. The “360° antenna system” is meant to keep your hands from blocking the wireless signal, and the “Smart Link” feature “works to improve upload signals and speed by acting as an advanced signal navigation system that proactively finds the best way to avoid network congestion.”
OnePlus wouldn’t say anything about carrier certification. But the 10T’s hardware works well with 4G and the sub-6 5G bands that all the big US carriers use. It doesn’t work with mmWave connectivity, though.
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OnePlus 10T Verdict
Like the brave OnePlus of a few years ago, the OnePlus 10T is a top phone that doesn’t break the bank. Its price and specs are just right. It skimps on most of the right things to make a phone with cutting-edge specs that cost less than the more expensive OnePlus 10 Pro, making it easy for customers to decide which one to buy.
The price is almost lower than the 10 Pro and other Android phones that compete with it, which is why the 10T exists. The 10T will save you money if you don’t need an e-ink screen or wireless charging.
Want to save money on a good phone? You might want to look into getting a OnePlus Nord model.
