Skip to main content

OnePlus 8T Concept uses mmWave to track your breathing, and looks good doing it

OnePlus is getting a little more … experimental. With the new OnePlus 8T Concept, the company is showing off a number of new features that might eventually make it into OnePlus phones. The new device is essentially a OnePlus 8T, with a few features that OnePlus thinks push the boundaries of current smartphone technology — though whether or not those features end up being used in actual phones in the future is up for debate.

According to OnePlus, the 8T Concept uses a combination of “natural design inspiration and advanced technologies to create a more natural interaction between users and the device.”

For starters, the device once again features OnePlus’ color-changing glass, which was first shown off in the OnePlus Concept One earlier this year. The tech essentially uses a film that contains a metal oxide and changes color from dark blue to light silver when that metal oxide is activated.

OnePlus 8T Concept

But OnePlus is taking that a step further by integrating that tech with mmWave. According to OnePlus, when this device receives and transmits mmWave electromagnetic waves, the device can use a combination of digital signal processing and the CPU to perceive and locate objects in 3D around the phone. Note that this doesn’t necessarily occur during 5G use — the device just uses the ultra-high-frequency radio waves that are similar to and also used in 5G transmission.

The actual uses for this tech, of course, may be a bit limited — but OnePlus has a few ideas. For example, your device could flash different colors for an incoming call, and the call could be accepted or rejected with a gesture, similar to the Pixel 4’s gesture controls, enabled by Soli. Or, OnePlus says that it could be used to register a user’s breathing, and even change color in sync with your breathing.

This kind of tech seems interesting, but how accurate it is, and whether or not people adopt it, remains to be seen. Of course, there’s also the fact that OnePlus has yet to include it in a phone that it’s actually selling — and until then, we can’t really try it out for ourselves.

It is cool to see companies experimenting with new kinds of technology, and it looks like that may continue at OnePlus, too. The company is also announcing OnePlus Gaudi, which is a new team within OnePlus that’s dedicated to integrating technology and art. Safe to say, we should see more of this kind of tech from OnePlus in the future.

Editors' Recommendations

Christian de Looper
Christian’s interest in technology began as a child in Australia, when he stumbled upon a computer at a garage sale that he…
Using the OnePlus 10 Pro again made me worried about the OnePlus 11
Holding The OnePlus 10 Pro.

It's hard to believe, but we're quickly inching toward the OnePlus 11. The phone is already available if you live in China, but for the rest of the world, we only have to wait until February 7 for OnePlus to host its big 'Cloud 11' launch event in India.

In anticipation of the OnePlus 11, I decided to bust out my OnePlus 10 Pro and see how it's holding up in early 2023. In short, there are a lot of things I still love about the phone, and it's admirable how great it feels a year later. But even more than that, using the OnePlus 10 Pro in 2023 reminded me of how some key things have changed. As a result, I'm more nervous than excited about what we'll get with the OnePlus 11. Let me explain.
Taking a step back with the design

Read more
Using the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 showed me that 2023 phones will be monsters
Iqoo 11 held in a person's hand.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is the processor that’s almost certainly going to be inside the top smartphones in 2023, and it’s sure to be a great performer, particularly given the success of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. We’ve been using the Iqoo 11, one of the very first phones to feature the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, to try and understand just what effect it will have on next year’s phones. Will it have more power, better efficiency? That's we want to find out.

Rather than rely on anecdotes or a single comparative benchmark, we put the Iqoo 11 through a series of tests over a single day alongside the OnePlus 10T with a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip to get an idea of what to expect from the new processor on a daily basis. Here’s what happened.
Meet the Iqoo 11

Read more
The Pixel 7 accidentally killed the OnePlus 10T — and it isn’t pretty
The OnePlus 10T and Google Pixel 7's camera modules.

The OnePlus 10T is a strange phone, and I didn’t really take to it when I first reviewed it at the end of September. As I prepared to revisit the 10T to see if time had been kind to it, I had to swap my SIM card from a phone that’s going to cause the OnePlus phone more problems: The Google Pixel 7.

After using them sid by side for a day, the question becomes is there anything about the OnePlus 10T that should convince you to buy it over the Pixel 7?
The importance of good design

Read more