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OnePlus 5T Featuring 6-inch AMOLED Display, 3.5mm Headphone Jack Launched (wired.com)
Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus, which has been lauded by consumers for offering phones with top-of-the-line specs at a reasonably affordable price range, on Thursday at an event in New York announced its newest flagship smartphone. Called the OnePlus 5T, the handset sports a 6.01-inch AMOLED screen (screen resolution 1080 x 2160) manufactured by Samsung in a body that is roughly of the same size as the 5.5-inch display-clad predecessor OnePlus 5. The secret sauce is, much like Samsung, LG and Apple, OnePlus has moved to a near bezel-less design. The company is not getting rid of the fingerprint scanner though, which it has pushed to the back side. The front-facing camera, additionally, OnePlus says, can be used to unlock the device. Other features include a 3,300mAh battery with the company's proprietary Dash Charge fast-charging tech (no wireless charging support -- the company says at present wireless charging doesn't really add much value to the device), top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with Adreno 540, 6GB of RAM with 64GB of storage (there is another variant of the phone which offers 8GB of RAM with 128GB of space). As for camera, we are looking at a dual 16-megapixel and 20-megapixel setup in the back. One more thing: the phone has a headphone jack and it runs Android 7.1 out of the box. The OnePlus 5T will go on sale in Europe, India, and the United States starting November 21st, with the base model priced at Euro 499, INR 32,999, and $499, respectively. The high-end variant is priced at Euro 559, INR 37,999, and $559. Wired has more details.
(Circa 2014)
Manufacturer - "Our phone comes with a headphone jack."
Customer - "Uhhh, no shit. Why are you even telling me this?"
(Circa 2017)
Manufacturer - "Our phone comes with a headphone jack."
Customer - "Ballsy move man. I'm impressed by your courage."
There is no denying that Oneplus 5T is a good value considering you get top shelf hardware spec for 500-something USD. However, this is no longer a budget "flagship killer" phone the way the original 300/350USD Oneplus One (16/64GB) used to be in 2014. At this +500 price, you can find mainstream brand phones, such as LG G6. I was able to score a Galaxy S8 for under 500USD with a trade-in phone. Other things being equal, I still prefer Oneplus to LG, but a lot of brand loyal who were originally attracted by low pricing will start wondering what happened.
There are pros/cons to all the fingerprint scanner locations. I think on the whole, I'd prefer it on the front with a physical home button, so it could be accessed when the phone is sitting on a desk, but my current device has it on the back and it's not that bad. I'm also a weird one that would like all the navigation keys to be physical, so I'm an outlier. I also completely agree with SD, headphone jack, and removable battery. I bought a Nexus 6 with neither SD nor removable battery. After a couple years the battery holds about 50% charge and as apps and such keep getting bigger, I get low on space. With SD, I can move my media over there and leave the internal for the apps etc.. And as I don't mind my phone being a few mm thicker, I can install an extended battery and have power for days.
I wish someone would make a device targeting enthusiast users. Those features, a 6" class screen, 1080p is good enough. Say, $500, and release a working AOSP build tree from the start. It doesn't have to include any extra features for the OS, just the base AOSP with all the hardware working properly would do fine. For real bonus points, a working standard Linux kernel would be great. Break off the proprietary bits with source stubs like the Nvidia drivers so we can update the kernel. I'd love full open source, but for some reason that's a big ask. So how about meet us in the middle?