Following up on the OnePlus 10 Pro, OnePlus has finally announced the OnePlus 10T. It’s a follow-up to the OnePlus 10 Pro and a cheaper model of what turned out to be a well-received phone. For folks who didn’t like the Oppo-ification of OnePlus, there is no reprieve here from that yet. OnePlus takes further steps, including ditching the alert sider and keeping the divisive OxygenOS 12 software. But if those things don’t bother you, the 10T is an interesting choice in a market not devoid of handsets to choose from.
Here’s everything you need to know about it!
Review
If you’re eager to learn more about the OnePlus 10T, we recommend you first check out our full review. We put the OnePlus 10T to the test, and while it’s not an outright bad smartphone, it also finds itself in an awkward spot. The blazing performance of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and 125W charging are both outstanding — especially for a phone that costs $649. But beyond that, the 10T leaves much to be desired.
Camera quality is nothing to write home about, which is especially disappointing after OnePlus made good progress here with the 10 Pro. There’s also no alert slider, the design isn’t quite as premium as we’d like, and the absence of wireless charging is a considerable annoyance. Folks who really want a OnePlus smartphone in 2022 are better off getting the OnePlus 10 Pro. And if you’re OK going beyond the OnePlus family, there are even better options from Google, Samsung, and others.
Design
OnePlus has settled on a very distinctive design with the OnePlus 10-series, and the 10T is derivative of that. It’s a device that looks a lot like a 10 Pro with a few changes. As you can see from the photo above, the OnePlus 10T is your typical big-slab smartphone with a full-screen display interrupted only by a hole punch. A distinctive camera bump at the rear promises substantial photography credentials. It looks a little more like an Oppo phone than previous OnePlus iterations, and the absence of an alert slider just rubs that in. It comes in either Moonstone Black or Jade Green.
As for materials, it is all plastic and glass. It’s covered in the slightly older Gorilla Glass 5 on both sides — not quite the Victus we’re used to in modern flagships, but a sign of small changes made to hit a lower price point while keeping a baseline of good enough quality. You also get a plastic frame instead of metal like OnePlus used on the 10 Pro, further reminding you of the 10T’s lower price.
Cameras
In regard to cameras, the OnePlus 10T has a 50-megapixel Sony IMX766 main camera with an 8MP ultrawide lens and a 2MP macro shooter with a hole-punch 16MP selfie camera. While OnePlus sometimes struggles with its camera prowess, the company really doubled down on its camera ambitions with the OnePlus 10 Pro. We found the 10 Pro to have a reasonably good camera system, partly thanks to the tuning by Hasselblad.
The problem here is that the OnePlus 10T does not have a Hasselblad-tuned camera. T-branded phones are sometimes lesser versions of their non-T models, and the camera is one place where corners are cut to keep costs scant. We can look to the OnePlus Nord 2 or 8T for what OnePlus can accomplish on its own. They’re capable camera phones, though they lack the refinement offered by OnePlus devices with the Hasselblad partnership.
That’s really what the camera experience on the OnePlus 10T comes down to. The main camera sensor can take good shots, but they don’t look quite as good as what you’ll find from the 10 Pro. The 8MP wide-angle lens is also just fine, and the 2MP macro camera is really just there for looks.
Specs
The OnePlus 10T, as expected, comes with flagship tier specs in nigh every category. We’ve already gone over the camera, but the rest of it is just as competitive. The 10T ships with a 6.7-inch Full HD display. As is the norm, it has a 120Hz refresh rate, and it adapts between 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz depending on what’s being shown on the screen. It’s not as variable as the LTPO-toting Pixel 6 Pro or iPhone 13 Pro Max, which let them go down to 1Hz, but it does come with an impressive brightness of up to 950 nits.
The OnePlus 10T is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chip combined with up to 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. If you don’t need that much memory and storage, there’s also a version available with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
A 4,800mAh battery and OnePlus’s touted 125W super-fast charging keeps things chugging along — making the 10T faster than the 65W charging offered by the OnePlus 10 Pro in the U.S. Unlike recent flagship smartphones, the OnePlus 10T does come with a charger in the box. In our testing, the OnePlus 10T should last about a day and a half with normal app usage and some light gaming. It won’t last two full days on a charge, but it should get you through more than a single one.
As with all Android phones launching in late 2022, the 10T has Android 12 onboard, though covered with OnePlus’s OxygenOS 12.1 overlay. An update to Android 13 should be here within the year, though, also bumping the phone up to OxygenOS 13.
Price and release date
OnePlus is launching the 10T with a starting price of $649 in the U.S. and 799 British pounds in the U.K. Sales begin in the U.K earlier than the U.S., with pre-orders opening on August 3 and shipping on August 25. In the U.S., pre-orders begin on September 1, and sales ship on September 29. Of course, the 10T won’t be limited to just the U.S. and the U.K. It’ll also be available in Canada, most of Europe, the Middle East, and select parts of Asia — including India and Mainland China.
