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OnePlus 5T goes official: 6" bezel-less design, better low-light camera, great price

By Victor Hristov

Published: Nov 16, 2017, 10:58 AM

29comments

Android OnePlus

The OnePlus 5T is now official and it's just what all the rumors said it would be: a phone with a nearly bezel-less, 6" display and a new dual camera system on the back that will help it take better pictures in low light.

OnePlus 5T goes official: 6" bezel-less design, better low-light camera, great price

For all else, it looks and feels almost exactly like the OnePlus 5: it has that exquisite seamless aluminum build with a sand-blasted back featuring a lush, black finish and it sports a very ergonomic curved back that makes the phone feel thinner than it is and lay in the hand very comfortably. OnePlus calls this version Midnight Black and this time around, it's the only available color.

In terms of size the 5T is practically the same size as the OnePlus 5 (it's a hair taller and wider, but it's really hard to tell). What's gone is the home button in the front. The button has moved to the back and is now a circle, but it's still ceramic so it's harder to scratch it and it still unlocks the phone in under 0.2 seconds. What this also means, though, is that now you have on-screen navigation buttons up front that take up some of that 6" display.

The new display is the big star of the show with the OnePlus 5T. It's a 6.01" OLED screen that takes up 80.5% of the phone's front. Bezels are stripped to a bare minimum on the top and bottom, and are almost invisible on the sides. It is a taller screen as well, with a new 18:9 aspect ratio and a 1080 x 2160 pixel resolution.

A 6-inch "Full Optic AMOLED Display"

OnePlus provides a few different color modes to choose from: you have the sRGB standard for more balanced colors, as well as DCI-P3 for more vibrant colors, and you have an adaptive, "Sunlight" mode where the screen will adjust its brightness and contrast outdoors to be easier to see.

Camera

The other big change in the OnePlus 5T comes in the camera. The OnePlus 5 was the first from the company to have a dual camera system on its back, with a wide-angle main lens and a "telephoto" secondary lens. This setup changes in the OnePlus 5T, which has the same wide-angle main camera, but the secondary camera is actually one with the same 27mm field of view, but a higher 20MP resolution and the capability to combine 4 pixels into one in order to reduce noise in low-light pictures. Both these new cameras have a wide, f/1.7 aperture. OnePlus says that the phone will detect low-light situations and will switch to the secondary camera when it gets dark.

And Portrait Mode - the one where the background of a picture is blurred, while the subject remains in sharp focus - will still be available on the OnePlus 5T, using clever algorithms and software to do its trick. It will also benefit from the secondary camera as Portrait pictures will come with better noise reduction.

The OnePlus 5T will also be the first OnePlus phone to support Face Unlock. This method uses the front camera that scans your face and looks for some 100 identifiers. It's nowhere near as secure as the 3D mapping tech in the iPhone X, but it is one more option that you may want to use. You need to first turn on the display and only then you can use Face Unlock on the 5T.

Face Unlock on OnePlus 5T

Other minor changes include improvements to the OxygenOS interface:

Parallel Apps - allows you to clone apps, so you can use two social accounts (works with apps like Facebook, Instagram and more)
New Gallery - with more refined visual style and a map that shows you the location of your photos
Customization Options - you can use custom icons with the built-in launcher, swap the place of the recents and the back navigation keys, and more

Features like the dark mode, the reading mode (turns your screen to look like an e-reader), the night mode (a blue light filter), gaming do not disturb and others from previous OnePlus phones are also available here.

Price and Release date

In the United States, the OnePlus 5T release date is set for Tuesday, November 21st, and the phone will also lauch in most of Europe, Canada, as well as in China, Hong Kong and India.

The OnePlus 5T price has gone ever so slightly in the United States: the base 64GB model costs $500 (the OnePlus 5 price was set at $480).

In Europe and the rest of the world, the price remains at €500 for the same 64 gig version of the phone.

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Victor, a seasoned mobile technology expert, has spent over a decade at PhoneArena, exploring the depths of mobile photography and reviewing hundreds of smartphones across Android and iOS ecosystems. His passion for technology, coupled with his extensive knowledge of smartphone cameras and battery life, has positioned him as a leading voice in the mobile tech industry.