You win a little, you lose a little

OnePlus has a largely consistent main launch strategy at this point: a flagship launch earlier in the year, followed by another update later in the year. Recently, the “T” variants of the company’s phones have lowered it a bit from their previous flagship counterparts but have brought to the table some interesting improvements as well. The OnePlus 10T follows this pattern, as while it lowers a few things like the screen and build, it does offer 150W charging and Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1.

Is OnePlus 10T Worth Your Money? In my opinion, it’s a great device that I like a lot more than I thought. Much of that is due to the chipset, but the rest of the phone is also perfectly fine. There are cuts that make it a little weird compared to the OnePlus 10 Pro launched earlier this year, but since it’s a bit cheaper, it makes sense.

Basically, the OnePlus 10T is a good phone, and that’s all you need in a phone for it to be usable. While this isn’t our full review (which will come later), these are our first impressions of the OnePlus 10T after using it for about a week. As it stands, I’m really happy with this phone and I love it, and there isn’t much for me to complain about at all yet.

OnePlus 10T: Specifications

About this review: I received a OnePlus 10T in Jade Green from OnePlus UK on July 26, 2022. While the company provided us with a review unit, they had no input on the contents of this article.

OnePlus 10T: Pricing and Availability

OnePlus 10T will go on sale in the US starting from X. It will be available in three RAM / storage configurations at the following prices:

• 8GB + 128GB: $649/€699/£629/CAD$849/$49999
• 12 GB + 256 GB: INR 54,999
• 16GB + 256GB: $749/€799/£729/CAD$999/$55999

The device will be available in two colors – Moonstone Black and Jade Green. All variants will ship with a 160W charging brick in the box, so you don’t have to buy one separately.

OnePlus 10T: Design

• Same design as OnePlus 10 Pro with some ‘Oppo-fication’
• No alert slider
• The hole hole is centered

The OnePlus 10T has a very similar design to the OnePlus 10 Pro, although there are some subtle differences. It’s squared off the edge to house three cameras and curves outward to the body of the device rather than suddenly snapping apart, however, the camera island in the phone’s back glass does. It’s somewhat similar to the OPPO Find X3 Pro or Find X5 Pro in this respect, and I’m sure that’s no accident either. You’ll also notice that the Hasselblad camera inscription is missing, despite OnePlus telling me it will be reserved for the company’s flagship phones, not the mid-cycle “T” update.

The front of the phone is a little different from the last time, too. It’s an AMOLED screen with a frequency of 120 Hz, but the similarities stop there. It is flat, Full HD, and does not support LTPO technology. There’s a punch-hole camera just like last time, except this time, it’s centered instead of skewed to the left. It still looks good, but the screen also isn’t noticeably close to the OnePlus 10 Pro’s brightness. It beats out at 950 nits here, which was good enough for my use, overall.

The top of the phone has a speaker grille that acts as the earpiece and a second speaker, although it’s not as loud as the bottom speaker. It looks as good as the OnePlus 10 Pro, too. The phone is rather thick and heavy in hand, although the one-handed mode in OxygenOS 12.1 helps when trying to use the phone with one hand. The back is pretty much a fingerprint magnet, especially on our Jade Green unit, and there’s no case in the box with the OnePlus 10T either (in the US and EU), which is a surprising omission from OnePlus. You can get a case in the box in India though.

Touchwise, I really enjoy the OnePlus 10T and find it does a good job. Vibrations can be noticed in your pocket and it’s also not very loud when the phone is on the table and it vibrates as well. It’s nice to write knowing when I get a notification, and that’s the most important thing.

Not all is well, and I have some complaints. For starters, removing the alert slider seems like an odd move, as it’s something that was so iconic for OnePlus and helped the company’s phones stand out with their own identity. I don’t really think it’s the death knell for OnePlus people seem to think it is, but nonetheless, I find it individual. Another complaint I have is that the frame of the phone is plastic. It’s basically the build of the OnePlus Nord 2T and feels very similar to it too. I like the phone and it’s a functional design, but there are some final cuts here.

OnePlus 10T: Camera

• Discounts in all areas

Remember how I mentioned the OnePlus 10 Pro as the company’s “flagship camera” of the year? Yes, the OnePlus 10T is taking a big drop in the camera department. It goes from a Sony IMX789 primary sensor to an IMX766, a 50MP Samsung JN1 to an 8MP ultrawide, and a 2MP macro camera instead of the 3.3x zoom from last.

Although we’ll reserve judgment on the full review, it has slipped significantly. If you care about your phone for the camera and really want a OnePlus phone, you’ll want to look at the OnePlus 10 Pro instead. This isn’t the company’s flagship camera, and that’s pretty clear from my experience with it.

OnePlus 10T: Performance

• great performance
• Great efficiency
• Amazing heat

The OnePlus 10T may not be the company’s flagship camera, but OnePlus tells me it is Leading in performance. It has the best chipset, a large amount of RAM, and fast storage which makes this a complete package when it comes to anything intensive. Thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, that will definitely be the case. There is still a toggle in the phone’s battery settings that will enable High Performance mode (which is off by default), so we ran tests with it turned on and off. I ran a CPU and Geekbench 5 throttle test, and the results are below.

No matter which mode you’re using, performance appears to be basically the same on most tasks. I don’t notice any significant difference apart from the phone heating up more when high performance mode is enabled. With the switch off, the throttle test determined the throttle only 93% of maximum performance in a half-hour test, one of the best results I’ve seen from a flagship chipset in a long time. The difference between turning the switch on or off is also minimal.

It’s very likely that a lot of this is due to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, as this phone is very similar to the OnePlus 10 Pro otherwise. Besides these efficiency improvements, we also discovered some clear battery gains in the screen on time and overall device usage. The Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 features a Qualcomm Kryo-optimized CPU, with a Cortex-X2 core clocked at 3.2GHz, three Cortex A710 performance cores clocked at 2.8GHz, and four Cortex A510 cores clocked at 2.0GHz. Qualcomm claims that the upgraded CPU is 10 percent faster than that of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and delivers 30 percent better CPU power efficiency. We got similar results in our test of the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 reference device we shared earlier. So far, every device we’ve tested with this chip has been compatible with those results, like the ROG Phone 6 Pro and Zenfone 9.

We’ll have plenty of performance tests to share in our full OnePlus 10T review.

OnePlus 10T: Battery and Charging

• Super fast charging
• Support 45W USB PD brick charging again
• Good battery life

OnePlus has always been known for its ultra-fast charging, and the OnePlus 10T is no different. This time around the company is charging 150W in the box, with promises that it can charge your phone from 1% to 100% in just 19 minutes — and we hit that number around that time, so their claims are fine.

If you live in the US, only 125W will be charged. Furthermore, the power unit again supports USB power delivery up to only 45W and not 65W or higher, similar to the situation that was with the 80W charger included with the OnePlus 10 Pro. OnePlus 10T also lacks wireless charging; It’s not something I care about, but you probably do.

Also during the early days, I had excellent battery life since using this device as my daily driver. Anywhere from five to six hours of screen on time is pretty much par for the course, which is an improvement over the OnePlus 10 Pro.

Of course, we’ll need to know how the phone moves over a longer period of time as a daily driver to make sure it’s as good as it currently looks, but it’s a good idea to actually do it. Ultra-fast charging combined with great battery life is something that many people will appreciate. For example, I was going out last night with some friends and I forgot to charge my phone before leaving. I was able to charge it a hefty amount in just ten minutes on the charger, something I haven’t been able to experience since the Xiaomi 11T Pro. Great battery life with fast charging is a great combination.

OnePlus 10T: Should you buy it?

While this isn’t our full review, I feel confident saying this is a great OnePlus phone. It obviously misses a few things like the premium design and alert slider, but it makes up for that in some ways with much better battery life and performance. You basically need to balance this phone against the OnePlus 10 Pro (or any of the other best Android phones) to see which one you want more, but no matter what, you can’t go wrong with either.

For what it’s worth, the OnePlus 10 Pro is definitely the best overall buy, but if you really want fast charging and great battery life above all else, this is the phone to get. We’ll be sure to update with our full review soon, but as it stands, this is a really great phone.