It’s not the whats but the whys that are important when discussing the new phone from OnePlus — the 6T (its internal codename is fajita!). Most — if not all — the features on the phone have been known for weeks as the company’s founders Pete Lau and Carl Pei have discussed them with the media. The most important milestone the Shenzhen, China-based company has achieved with the launch is a firm toehold in the flagship-focused US market. This comes amid a US-China trade war. “I don’t know if it is a good time for anybody else. It is a good time for us,” Pei has told Reuters.
OnePlus is unique among Chinese companies. The five-year-old firm only sells premium phones almost exclusively online (except in India) and earns much of its revenue from outside China. But the US focus doesn’t mean the company’s Indian fans can’t celebrate.
In-display fingerprint scanner
Huawei Mate 20 Pro and Vivo Nex have already highlighted the feature, but OnePlus has beaten tech giants Apple and Samsung to this technology which is at its most helpful when it comes to authenticating payments. According to The Guardian, the optical fingerprint scanner can be used 150 times a day for 10 years without any problem and that it will unlock the phone in around 350 milliseconds.
OnePlus will surely push other companies to follow suit because at the moment most new phones are coming with the fingerprint scanner at the back. So, what does one do when the phone is lying around and you don’t want to pick it up to read mails or turn an application on? The 6T’s fingerprint scanner is perfectly placed, an inch up from the bottom.
The camera gets better
Like with the OnePlus 6, a rear dual-lens setup (the 16MP camera comes with f/1.7 aperture and optical image stabilisation, and the 20MP sensor comes with the same wide-open aperture and slightly lower pixel count) is present but most of the improvements come in the software department. There’s a new “Nightscape” feature for better low-light shots of cityscapes, and a studio-lighting feature designed to provide better and even lighting for faces in portrait-mode shots.
Keeping costs down
The phone is not as water resistant as those from Apple or Samsung, but the reason behind that deserves a hearing. “The costs are particularly high for the IP67 testing and certification. And those are all costs that we pass along to the consumers. Our rationale is that the person who wants to take the device swimming shouldn’t be able to raise the cost of the device for everyone; that’s our OnePlus way of looking at it,” Lau has told USA Today.
A tiny Notch
The wide Notch has been reduced to one in the shape of a teardrop, which is the home to a front-facing 16MP f/2 camera while the earpiece has been shifted up into the frame of the device in the form of a thin slit.
Is it time to upgrade?
Frankly, if you have the OnePlus 6, the company doesn’t expect you to upgrade. But from a 3T, 5 or 5T? Yes, of course. Rock the 6T to make your friends and colleagues jealous. It has slightly improved battery life and the screen surface is a little bigger, which are added bonuses.
Yes, the 3.5mm headphone jack has been done away with, but the phone will come bundled with a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter. The move has helped engineers put in a bigger battery.
How much and when?
The OnePlus 6T starts at Rs 37,999 for the 6GB RAM/128GB storage model. It will go on sale on Amazon.in on November 1 and in offline stores from November 3.
The Telegraph
