OnePlus 10T hands-on review

Software

The OnePlus 10T runs on OxygenOS 12.1 on top of Android 12. Our review unit was running build A.03 at the time of testing. OnePlus has promised three major Android version updates and four years of security updates.

We are quite familiar with OxygenOS 12.1 at this point, not just because we have seen it on multiple OnePlus phones this year but also because we have used it on several other Oppo and Realme phones. This is, after all, just thinly veiled ColorOS 12.

The launcher, plucked out of ColorOS, is reasonably feature-rich, with support for customizable icons and third-party icon packs. OnePlus continues to use the same heavyset typeface for the icon labels, which look overly chunky and often run out of space before displaying the entire app name. You can choose to hide the app names from the homescreen but then they also get removed from the app drawer.

OxygenOS 12.1 Launcher

The homescreen supports the usual gestures of swiping down to bring down the notifications and double tap to lock the phone. You can also optionally swipe down from the right side to bring down the OnePlus Shelf, which is just another place to keep your widgets and access them from anywhere. You can also swipe right from the homescreen to access your Google feed. This, however, cannot be disabled and the Google feed always just exists there whether you use it or not.

The app drawer lets you change the sorting order and mark multiple apps to move them or delete them at once. You can't create folders here, though, and for some reason it still lists apps with numeric or non-alphabetical names at the bottom of the list rather than the top. There is also no easy way to hide apps anymore to a separate screen.

Settings and features

OnePlus, like other BBK companies, now also sets the default display scaling too low with respect to the size of the display. This makes everything appear far too large and also reduces the usable display area by pushing things out of view. You have to manually reduce it to make it look appropriate for this display size.

More settings

Aside from customizing the icons, OxygenOS 12.1 also features full theme support. To that effect, there is now also a theme store built-in, where users can download free and premium themes, wallpapers, and fonts. You can also manually customize parts of the UI, such as the quick settings icon, fingerprint animation, always-on display, and UI colors.

Theme store

There are plenty of features to explore, although most of them are buried within the Settings app and may not be explored by your average user at all. Some of them, such as Quick launch and Screen-off gestures are quite useful. The OnePlus 10T also adds Air Gestures, a first for a OnePlus phone, which lets you do things like dismissing calls by waving your hand in front of the screen.

Overall, the software experience of OxygenOS 12.1 on the OnePlus 10T is a little rough around the edges but usable. The major issue with it, however, is how little it is like the OxygenOS versions that came before it and how little of an effort it makes to hide the fact that it is ColorOS with a slightly different skin on top.

Hopefully, the upcoming OxygenOS 13 doesn't just bring some design improvements but makes OxygenOS look more like what long term OnePlus users expect it to look like.

Performance

The OnePlus 10T comes with the latest generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. There is a choice of 8/12/16GB of LPDDR5 memory and 128/256GB UFS 3.1 storage, although not all variants are available in every region.

Synthetic benchmark performance was close to the best but not quite there. This is due to the fact that the 4x Kryo Silver cores max out at 1.8GHz on the OnePlus 10T as opposed to 2.0GHz on the other Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 devices we have tested. This is most easily seen in the multi-core score in Geekbench but also in the slightly lower Antutu 9 score compared to something like the Xiaomi 12S Ultra.

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• nubia Red Magic 7S Pro
  1345
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  1336
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  1324
• OnePlus 10T (High performance mode)
  1321
• Asus Zenfone 9 (High Performance)
  1313
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  1110
• OnePlus 10T
  1043
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  975

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9 (High Performance)
  4338
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  4300
• nubia Red Magic 7S Pro
  4231
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  4021
• OnePlus 10T (High performance mode)
  3907
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  3447
• OnePlus 10T
  3401
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  2659

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• nubia Red Magic 7S Pro
  1087412
• Asus Zenfone 9 (High Performance)
  1083092
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  1045876
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  1039412
• OnePlus 10T (High performance mode)
  1016958
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  886248
• OnePlus 10T
  786238
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  762090

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9 (High Performance)
  67
• nubia Red Magic 7S Pro
  62
• OnePlus 10T
  60
• OnePlus 10T (High performance mode)
  60
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  59
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  58
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  38
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  37

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 10T
  46
• OnePlus 10T (High performance mode)
  46
• Asus Zenfone 9 (High Performance)
  46
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  46
• nubia Red Magic 7S Pro
  46
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  46
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  43
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  33

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9 (High Performance)
  69
• nubia Red Magic 7S Pro
  69
• OnePlus 10T
  60
• OnePlus 10T (High performance mode)
  60
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  59
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  45
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  41
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  39

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9 (High Performance)
  52
• nubia Red Magic 7S Pro
  52
• OnePlus 10T
  51
• OnePlus 10T (High performance mode)
  51
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  51
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  50
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  48
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  36

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9 (High Performance)
  89
• nubia Red Magic 7S Pro
  81
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  79
• OnePlus 10T
  60
• OnePlus 10T (High performance mode)
  60
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  60
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  51
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  48

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 9 (High Performance)
  104
• nubia Red Magic 7S Pro
  104
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  104
• OnePlus 10T
  103
• OnePlus 10T (High performance mode)
  103
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  103
• Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro
  103
• OnePlus 10 Pro
  97

These results were obtained with the High performance mode enabled, which increases the base CPU clock speed and can also sustain higher clocks under load. With this mode disabled, the CPU performance drops down to roughly the same level as the Snapdragon 888's peak performance.

Admittedly, this is not noticeable in everyday usage and the phone remains extremely fast and smooth regardless of what mode you run it in. Having said that, it's worth nothing that you are not really getting the full CPU performance that this chip is capable of unless you enable a special mode, which, by the way, is not at all optimized for efficiency. Otherwise, you are getting no more performance out of this phone than what you would have gotten out of the OnePlus 9 Pro.

GPU performance, however, is unaffected and you always have access to the full power of the Adreno 730 at your disposal. Gaming performance is good but held back by the 60Hz limitation for most games. There is no point having this much performance under the hood if you are being held back from using it.

OnePlus has also implemented its largest vapor chamber yet for cooling the chipset. While playing games in an ambient temperature of around 23°C, the phone was able to maintain a comfortable temperature, even when playing at 90fps in select titles like Fortnite. However, with most games locked to 60fps, the cooling system never quite gets used to its full potential, so heating is rarely going to be an issue.