OnePlus 6T review

Performance

The OnePlus 6T finds itself in a rather weird place as far as internals go. It is based around the still current Snapdragon 845 flagship, but the chip came out fairly early this year. On the one hand, that potentially places it pretty late in its deprecation cycle. Well, not literally, of course, since a flagship chipset remains relevant for at least a few years. But, you still get our point.

On the other hand, and this is the weirder part, the original OnePlus 6 is also based on the same 10nm, Snapdragon 845 silicon. RAM tiers are pretty much unchanged as well, set at 6GB for the entry-level and 8GB for the upper tier. Storage has seen some changes, namely that the base storage variant is now 128GB, not 64GB. Now, the official specs do mention some storage specifics, namely that the UFS 2.1 chips use 2 lanes. What that boils down to is potentially quicker storage speeds, which could affect performance to some degree. We ran a quick benchmark to see just how much of a variance we are looking at, and while the OnePlus 6T has consistently quicker speeds, the difference is not really significant.

Storage speed: OnePlus 6T • OnePlus 6

Other than that, we expect the 8GB, 128GB OnePlus 6T review unit to perform practically identical to our 6GB, 128GB OnePlus 6 in synthetic benchmarks. Both also run OnePlus' signature near-stock build of Android Pie. So, any variance should come from extra RAM alone. And the numbers line up perfectly.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone XS
  11472
• Apple iPhone X
  10215
• Huawei Mate 20 Pro
  9712
• OnePlus 6
  9011
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  9003
• OnePlus 6T
  8977
• Samsung Galaxy S9
  8830
• Sony Xperia XZ3
  8607
• Xiaomi Mi 8
  8494
• Google Pixel 3
  8146
• Google Pixel 3 XL
  8088
• Huawei P20 Pro
  6679
• Google Pixel 2 XL
  6428

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone XS
  4823
• Apple iPhone X
  4256
• Samsung Galaxy S9
  3759
• Huawei Mate 20 Pro
  3291
• Sony Xperia XZ3
  2486
• OnePlus 6
  2450
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  2438
• OnePlus 6T
  2431
• Xiaomi Mi 8
  2431
• Google Pixel 3
  2377
• Google Pixel 3 XL
  2363
• Google Pixel 2 XL
  1915
• Huawei P20 Pro
  1907

Looking at the pure-CPU test first, we see the 4x2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold, plus 4x1.7 GHz Kryo 385 Silver cores inside the Snapdragon 845 perform as expected. We had no issues with thermal management during stress tests either. The OnePlus 6T remains lukewarm to the touch under load.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone XS
  6060
• Apple iPhone X
  4708
• OnePlus 6T
  4452
• OnePlus 6
  4440
• Google Pixel 3
  3909
• Google Pixel 3 XL
  3895
• Xiaomi Mi 8
  3858
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  3713
• Sony Xperia XZ3
  3700
• Samsung Galaxy S9
  3382
• Google Pixel 2 XL
  3379
• Huawei P20 Pro
  3252

Basemark ranks the pair of OnePlus devices even closer together. Also, quite noticeable ahead of the Snapdragon 845 pack, due to software optimization alone.

AnTuTu 7

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone XS
  346379
• OnePlus 6T
  293994
• Sony Xperia XZ3
  284555
• Huawei Mate 20 Pro
  273913
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  265314
• OnePlus 6
  264200
• Google Pixel 3 XL
  258244
• Samsung Galaxy S9
  250156
• Google Pixel 3
  233699
• Apple iPhone X
  233100
• Xiaomi Mi 8
  217298
• Huawei P20 Pro
  209884
• Google Pixel 2 XL
  203119

Moving on to AnTuTu and its more compound performance assessment, we can clearly see it's taking notice of the extra 2GB of RAM, compared to the OnePlus 6. Looking at the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and the Xiaomi Pocophone F1, both also equipped with 8GB of system memory, we can see the benefits of OnePlus' near-stock, lean and well-optimized Android OS at work.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone XS
  98
• Apple iPhone X
  65
• OnePlus 6T
  60
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  60
• OnePlus 6
  58
• Google Pixel 3
  57
• Sony Xperia XZ3
  56
• Xiaomi Mi 8
  53
• Huawei Mate 20 Pro
  53
• Samsung Galaxy S9
  46
• Google Pixel 3 XL
  44
• Google Pixel 2 XL
  42
• Huawei P20 Pro
  40

GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone XS
  60
• Apple iPhone X
  37
• OnePlus 6
  35
• OnePlus 6T
  35
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  35
• Google Pixel 3
  35
• Sony Xperia XZ3
  35
• Xiaomi Mi 8
  33
• Huawei Mate 20 Pro
  29
• Samsung Galaxy S9
  28
• Google Pixel 3 XL
  28
• Google Pixel 2 XL
  25
• Huawei P20 Pro
  23

On-screen rendering is where the screen resolution starts to play a major role. The Adreno 630 feels more comfortable rendering at the FullHD+ scale of the OnePlus 6T than the QHD+ on something like the Sony Xperia XZ3.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone XS
  60
• OnePlus 6
  55
• Google Pixel 3
  55
• OnePlus 6T
  53
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  53
• Xiaomi Mi 8
  50
• Apple iPhone X
  49
• Huawei P20 Pro
  37
• Sony Xperia XZ3
  31
• Huawei Mate 20 Pro
  27
• Samsung Galaxy S9
  24
• Google Pixel 3 XL
  24
• Google Pixel 2 XL
  21

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone XS
  47
• OnePlus 6
  33
• Google Pixel 3
  33
• Xiaomi Mi 8
  33
• OnePlus 6T
  31
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  31
• Apple iPhone X
  28
• Huawei P20 Pro
  21
• Sony Xperia XZ3
  19
• Huawei Mate 20 Pro
  17
• Samsung Galaxy S9
  14
• Google Pixel 2 XL
  13
• Google Pixel 3 XL
  12

That being said, it is clear that even the 60 extra rows of 1080 pixels each, that the 19.9:9 OnePlus 6T sports over its predecessor do make a noticeable difference when rendering the same thing in true full-screen. Of course, if you run into any performance trouble or simply can't tolerate the notch digging into your content, there's always the option to hide the notch for certain apps and games.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Google Pixel 3
  44369
• OnePlus 6
  44229
• OnePlus 6T
  43886
• Sony Xperia XZ3
  43843
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  43652
• Xiaomi Mi 8
  43285
• Google Pixel 3 XL
  43073
• Samsung Galaxy S9
  42645
• Huawei P20 Pro
  39945
• Google Pixel 2 XL
  39143

Basemark X typically offers a more accurate and comparable representation of overall graphical fidelity, and we can see the OnePlus 6T neck to neck with its predecessor.

So, hardware-wise, it should come as no surprise that the OnePlus 6T is just a potent and capable of a flagship as its predecessor. Perhaps the latter might just have a slight edge in some on-screen rendering scenarios if you really insist on using the entire screen to game. However, marketing materials for the OnePlus 6T do mention a rather interesting Smart Boost technology, which we couldn't find any mention of on previous OnePlus phones.

As per its description, it merely takes frequently used apps and stores some of their initialization data in the RAM. This, in turn, enables the promise of 5% to 20% faster cold starts on said apps. Unfortunately, this is really hard to test. Plus, any meaningful data we do acquire could be skewed in the UFS 2.1 storage chips on the new OnePlus 6T do turn out to use one extra data lane for quicker read and write speeds.

So, let's just put it this way:

Thanks to its clean and light approach to Android, the OnePlus 6T, just like its predecessor, are currently among the snappiest and most optimized devices, running Google's mobile OS.