In the US, people have finally just had their first real taste of a OnePlus device, thanks to the carriers taking it up. There’s no shortage of enthusiasm over what seem like unbelievable features for the price. But here in India, we’re a lot more spoilt. We’ve seen the very first OnePlus phone and by now the country has a strong community of users — a community that the Shenzhen-based OnePlus is doing all it can to nurture. So, we’re more blasé about a “T” upgrade, which seems more like icing on the cake when the cake is pretty good to begin with.

My red OnePlus 6 was actually doing pretty good, performing every bit as fast as it did on Day One and with only a fraction of the space available on it used.There’s little reason to upgrade. But to new customers, the OnePlus 6 won’t be available and will give way to the 6T. Having used it for a few weeks now, here’s how it feels, remembering that the differences between the 6 and the 6T matter more to reviewers and those ardent fans that must upgrade with each new iteration. To everyone else, what really counts is whether it’s a good phone to buy from among the sea of smartphones available.

Press here for fingerprint

OnePlus phones have had one of the fastest fingerprint readers around. But now, moving on to update to a newer technology, OnePlus has put the sensor under the display. With the screen off, you can’t tell it’s there. But as soon as you tap it or pick it up, the sensor lights up in green.

Touch it, and the phone unlocks. If you’ve used the older method of fingerprint unlocking on home buttons and if every millisecond matters to you, you may find there’s a blink of a difference with the new one. The device gets to learn your fingerprint better and sensing failures are gone after a few days of usage. But if you have wet or dirty fingers, you’ll have to resort to entering your pin. It’s best to register several fingerprints.

Notch gets smaller

The display of the 6T feels just as nice as on the 6. The difference is now that the notch is just a curvy blob in the centre. I forget it’s there, only remembering it when I have to write something about it. It certainly does give more screen space but I found it to be a non-issue. It certainly isn’t a reason to switch from a perfectly good OnePlus that you’re happy with — that will only happen when the notch and the bezels disappear altogether. One day.

The notch has however killed off the LED notification light. That may matter to some. I think notifications come through enough and life has all but changed because of the distractions they cause, so I’m not missing it at all. In any case, even if you breathe too close to the phone, the screen will wake up and show you the all important things you’ve been missing.

But what you may not be so delighted to see the back of is the 3.5 mm headphone port. An adapter is provided in the box, so you can straight away use your existing headphones, but these are easily misplaced. It won’t matter to those who like to use Bluetooth audio, of course. It’s the trade-off for the new features that need space inside the device, which the 3.5 mm jack would interfere with.

The battery life on OnePlus phones has been really good, especially in recent models, but the 6.4-inch size of the display, ever so slightly bigger, allows for a 3,700 mAh battery. You certainly never need to charge during the day. If you did, you will that find a 10-minute charge will keep you going for some hours. There are some complaints here and there that OnePlus doesn’t support wireless charging, but that isn’t as fast and more of a novelty, really, and users do just fine with the current wired set-up.

Camera tweaks

The OnePlus 6’s camera was already far better than average and frequently compared to the top few that are known for their cameras.

Often, the results are comparable, but the camera kings still do better on closer examination. The 6T’s camera is the same as its predecessor’s but OnePlus says there are new Studio Lighting skills that work in the background and improve things that are messed up with shadows. The 6T’s night mode takes a photo and then optimises it in ways that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. When it does, you’ll see better colours and details; it lights up photos that are almost totally dark.

It isn’t time for a processor change yet, so the OnePlus 6T sticks with the Snapdragon 845 and has either 6 GB or 8 GB of RAM depending on the variant you buy.

To go with that is either 128 GB or 256 GB of storage. Performance is fast and snappy with OnePlus having worked at their OxygenOS and its optimisation on top of Android 9 Pie. It feels as fast as the OnePlus 6 did, though gamers might see an improvement in app loading speeds — not a feature I tested.

The 6T has sneaked up the price ladder a little but even so is an easily-recommended smartphone for those who want most features of the top tier phones that cost twice as much.

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