Now that the OnePlus 3T is finally launched in India, we have among ourselves a new affordable champion that claims to take on the high and mighty smartphones and obliterate them in terms of performance and price. Yes, OnePlus 3T is the latest offering from the company that has consistently delivered premium phones at rates closer to the mid-range segment. In this regard, it is only fair to peg the OnePlus 3T against the best premium smartphone on offer- The Google Pixel. The OnePlus 3T is a hardware upgrade of the OnePlus 3. It's not the OnePlus 4, but it's not a OnePlus 3S either. Hence the 'T' tag to it. It's somewhere in between and as a result, the OnePlus 3T is not a game changer. We have seen it in the OnePlus 3 and we are seeing it in the OnePlus 3T again. Only this time, the competition is with the elite league of Snapdragon 821 phones that are at the forefront of smartphone innovation. The Google Pixel, the bezel-less Xiaomi Mi Mix and the likes.
With the Snapdragon 821 powering it, the OnePlus 3T has the same amount of firepower as the Google Pixel, if not more. While the Pixel comes with 4GB of RAM (which is more than enough), OnePlus 3T goes a step further and comes with 6GB of RAM. The performance, as a result, is equally snappy with minimal lags and stutter. And all this extra firepower, for half the price. What sorcery is this?
Both phones have very similar displays. Both the OnePlus 3T and the Google Pixel XL sport a 5.5-inch AMOLED display. But the one on the Pixel XL is sharper courtesy its quad HD display while the OnePlus 3T manages a full HD screen. This is respectable going by the huge difference in price.
Design-wise, neither of the phone brings anything new to the table. The OnePlus 3T has a camera bump on the back while the Pixel hides the bump with the 'top-third' back which in turn improves the cellular reception.
The camera on the OnePlus 3T, though quite decent is no match for the one on the Pixel. Google has made painstaking efforts to make the camera the center of attention. The Pixel camera leverages machine learning and software tweaks and as a result, the rear camera tops the DxOMark benchmark. The OnePlus 3T on the other hand sticks with the same camera as the OnePlus 3 with the only improvement is perhaps the next-generation Electronic Image Stabilisation courtesy the new processor.
Having said that, one area where the OnePlus 3T beats the Pixel in terms of imaging is the front camera performance. The OnePlus 3T sports a 16-megapixel front camera with Samsung 3P8SP sensor with big 1 micron pixels and a wide f/2.0 aperture, ensuring well-lit, sharp self-portraits. The Pixel's 8-megapixel shooter can only do so much.
OnePlust 3T comes with a 3,400mAh battery that the company claims lasts for more than a day on average use. The Pixel XL comes with a little more at 3,450mAh. In essence, both phones will last you a day with ease. In case they don't, both phones come with some form of fast charging or the other that charges the phone to full capacity in 30 minutes.
So far, the OnePlus 3T looks pretty much a worthy rival to the Pixel phones but the moment it comes to the software, the Pixel leaves the rest of the competition far behind biting the dust. The OnePlus 3T runs on Android Marshmallow with Oxygen OS on top. Never mind that's its an old Android version, it is quite closer to vanilla Android but nothing like the one on the Google Pixel which has been made by Google from the ground-up. At the center of this is the Google Assistant, the new contextually aware, digital-assistant that leverages the entirety of Google's knowledge graph and machine learning to come up with the right answer. The OnePlus 3T is like the rest of the players in the market with nothing new to offer in terms of software. Although, because of more RAM, the memory management in the OnePlus 3T is one of the best. OnePlus even claimed they have worked on improving speeds at which apps open.
However, even with such drawbacks, the OnePlus 3T is a straightaway winner simply because of the price it comes for. The 64GB variant costs Rs 29,999 while the 128GB variant goes up to Rs 34,999. In comparison, the Pixel goes up to Rs 66,000 for the 128GB variant (the Pixel XL for even more at Rs 76,000). The price difference is almost half. And yet, the OnePlus 3T comes packed with more or less the same things as the Pixel, give or take a few. But the company managed to pull off its magic once more by making it the most affordable premium phone once again.
If you have the moolah, the Google Pixel is the one to go for, but on a budget constraint, the OnePlus 3T is more than a decent performer. It is perhaps the best Android phone south of Rs 40,000.
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