The OnePlus 6T is out and currently doing very brisk business. OnePlus is a brand that goes great lengths to pack unique features into every flagship that they launch, the OnePlus 6T is no exception and their loyal community seems to love it. Wherever I go these days, there are questions about the OP6T, the most frequent one is where people want to know what are the key standout features of this phone that make it worth a buy. Here are my answers to that question
The tech community in India has matured over time and has now come to a stage where brands cannot just keep releasing devices and expect them to blindly go and buy the “new”device in the market. The buyer is now aware of hardware, specifications, software and a whole lot more. So whenever a new device hits the market, the onus is on the brand to deliver value addition in terms of key features that the device brings to the table. The market has now matured beyond the usual buzzwords and PR waves, they know the difference between real and just fluff words. This puts heavy pressure on brands to perform and deliver. Some brands are up to the challenge and some brands just cannot handle the sustained pressure.
OnePlus has historically been a brand that delivers on the innovation and value addition front very consistently and kept exceeding the expectations of their loyalists. One of the biggest drivers of brand value for them in India has been incredible word of mouth buzz from the community that keeps them going. Given that fact, there was tremendous expectation around the OnePlus 6T and I must say that the brand has delivered. So without much more ado, here are the three key features that make the OnePlus 6T stand out in the flagship segment.
Oxygen OS
I know that most tech reviewers never bring Oxygen OS as the top thing that stands out in the OnePlus 6T, but to me, Oxygen OS actually is the main reason why the OnePlus 6T is the fastest android flagship of the year. The reason for that starts with the main philosophy behind Oxygen OS – it is there but stays out of the way. The OnePlus developers have done a great job of adding nifty additions to android that make life immensely easy and yet, they have managed to keep the script so tight that you don’t even feel like it is a custom skin, it is the closest you will get to stock android. In my books, it is way better than stock android. With the OnePlus 6T, the brand has even managed to keep the device better updated that most androidone devices that I know. Coming to the customization, a full blog post on them will do more justice. But off hand, nifty additions like Smart Boost for upping the performance and the thoughtful Night mode on the camera with a generous smattering of more than 500 little changes like no empty search result will be without a graphic among other things. The Shelf is a key feature of Oxygen OS that gives you fast access to the things you do most often with your phone. There is also the fact that the phone learns about your app usage patterns and adjusts memory usage based on that. So for me, the primary contributor to the blazing fast experience on the OnePlus 6T is Oxygen OS
Battery
This time, OnePlus has gone with a 3700mAH battery on the OnePlus 6T. At the outset, this may not sound like a massive number, but believe me, in my usage of the OnePlus 6T this makes a big difference. The OnePlus 6 is one of the best phones of the year, but it had a very okay battery back up, not saying that there was anything wrong with it, but a better battery would have taken it into another league. That is what OnePlus has fixed with the OnePlus 6T this time. I generally wake up pretty early in the morning and begin work. So, most of the days, I charge my phone at 4 am in the morning and get going. With the OnePlus 6T after a full charge at 4 am I am able to get more than a full day of juice. I am a heavy user of my phone and rely on it through the day to get a lot of my work done. It is generally a heavy mix of WiFi and 4G with a lot of social media and streaming thrown in. There are times when I do my blogging also from the phone. I have my music library that lives on my phone and I hear it all the time. So that should give you an estimate of the daily usage of my phone. In the evening when I check the phone at around 8 pm, I can see that there is 60% of the battery left. This is a big plus in my book.
Smart Optimizations
There are many things that OnePlus has put into the OnePlus 6T without using the usual buzz words or making a big fuss about them. The camera has added support for nigh time images and when you take portrait pictures from the rear camera the software kicks in to make facial features look good and well-defined. The battery optimization options now include support for learning when you are sleeping and smartly turning of notifications and other battery gobblers. The new Oxygen OS gestures are very easy to use and give you the much needed screen real estate when you stop using the navigation buttons. There are many other like these, you just have to start looking and they are everywhere. Again, listing them out will take a whole blog post in itself.
In summary, the OnePlus 6T is one good upgrade as a whole package that adds immense value to your day to day life as a device that can augment your productivity and improve your media consumption also without having to run to a charger through the day. In my books, the OnePlus 6T is a solid upgrade.
