The OnePlus 8T is an incremental upgrade over the OnePlus 8. For instance, the screen refresh rate gets bumped up from 90Hz to 120Hz, the camera count has gone up by one, and the battery is slightly larger. No big deal, right? But the 8T also packs an amazing, super-fast 65W charger that recharges the phone from zero to 100% in just 39 minutes.

In my testing, this Warp Charge 65 power adapter took around 30 minutes to replenish the 8T's battery from 25% to 100%. If you are in a rush, 8 minutes was all it took to juice up the phone by 25%, which is sufficient to last several hours. In a video playback test, the 8T's battery dropped by 50% after around 6 hours. Generally, you should get around 1 to 1.5 days of mileage out of the OnePlus 8T.

Besides the charger, I was also impressed by the 8T's Amoled screen. This HDR10+ display is plenty bright and vivid. And thanks to its 120Hz refresh rate, it feels very snappy while swiping and scrolling the phone. It probably helps that the 8T runs on OnePlus' OxygenOS, a lean, almost stock version of Android 11. In addition, the 8T is powered by a high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chip. In short, you can expect a smooth fluid experience.

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But the usual downsides of a non-flagship smartphone apply here. For instance, the 8T lacks wireless charging and IP water or dust resistance. The secondary cameras seem to exist just to make up the numbers. After all, I don't see myself using the 5MP macro lens or the 2MP monochrome lens. The main 48MP camera (Sony IMX586 like the OnePlus 8) is capable enough — it produces rather contrasty photos with mostly accurate colours. There is, however, a loss in detail and an increase in noise when using the secondary 16MP ultra-wide camera. Low-light performance is decent, but the flagship phones are much better.

The OnePlus 8T comes in either green or white. Two versions are available: the S$899 model offers 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, while bumping up to 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage costs S$1,099. Compared with other smartphones in this price range, such as the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE and the Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro, the OnePlus 8T has some strengths (lean OS and excellent display) and some weaknesses (camera and lack of microSD card). It all depends on what you are looking for.

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Note: Review set provided by OnePlus.