The #phonepocalypse is nearly over, but OnePlus wants to close out this year’s smartphone silly season on a high with the OnePlus 6T.

Between headphone jack drama and launch date hopskotch, there’s been a lot of controversy in the run-up to the phone’s full reveal.

Now the OnePlus 6 successor is finally here, does the latest T-series represent a new high benchmark for the Chinese brand? Here are the top five OnePlus 6T features to help you decide.

In-display fingerprint sensor and face unlock

Prior to launch, OnePlus hyped the launch of its latest flagship with the rather cumbersome tagline “Unlock the Speed.” We already know that OnePlus phones always blisteringly fast — the OnePlus 6T comes with up to 8GB of RAM and the Snapdragon 845 SoC — but the “unlock” part initially raised a few eyebrows.

CEO and co-founder Pete Lau eventually confirmed that the OnePlus 6T would feature both an in-display fingerprint sensor and OnePlus’ face unlock technology. This gives OnePlus 6T users a number of ways to secure and protect their device and removes the need for a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor cluttering the sleek glass design.

In theory, having both face unlock and an in-display sensor puts the OnePlus 6T on par with the feature-stacked Huawei Mate 20 Pro when it comes to unlocking the screen. We’ll just have to wait for our full review to find out if the technology is capable of hanging with the best.

Display (and that tiny notch)

Just over seven months ago, all the Android community could talk about was OnePlus’ divisive decision to stick a huge notch on the OnePlus 6.

Fast forward to today and we have a new OnePlus phone with a yet another notch, but one that’s easily one of the tiniest cutouts we’ve seen on a notched phone to date.

The tear/waterdrop-style notch, inherited from BBK stablemates like the Oppo R17 series, houses an ambient/distance/RGB sensor and a 16MP selfie camera all in one tiny droplet.

The OnePlus 6T features easily one of the tiniest cutouts we’ve seen on a notched phone to date.

The diminutive notch leaves enough room for a 6.41-inch AMOLED display with a 2,340 x 1,080 resolution, 19.5:9 aspect ratio, and a tasty 86 percent screen-to-body ratio.

While it’s not quite the complete rollback some OnePlus fans were hoping for, it’s one of the least intrusive notches on any smartphone and leaves enough room for a large, vibrant display. Plus, if you don’t like the notch, you can always turn it off in the phone’s settings.

OxygenOS 9.0

OxygenOS continues to go from strength to strength both in terms of features and popularity. That’s still true with the latest iteration based on Android 9.0 Pie, OxygenOS 9.0, which ensures the OnePlus 6T offers one of the best, purest Android experiences you can get.

All of the awesome new features from Android Pie are present and correct, including navigation gestures which feel a little iOS-inspired on OnePlus’ latest flagship.

OxygenOS 9.0 also comes with a few exclusive software tweaks of its own. Gaming Mode will now intercept incoming messages and calls from third-party apps and show them as smaller notifications so you don’t get distracted from a heated round of Fortnite.

In addition, OnePlus says a new feature called Smart Boost will improve app cold start speeds by up to 20 percent through some clever use of RAM, meaning you’ll be able to get back in the game faster than ever.

Battery life

If you’ve read our OnePlus 6T hands-on (and if you haven’t go do it now!) you’ll know that Android Authority’s David Imel has been incredibly impressed with the OnePlus 6T’s endurance.

The OnePlus 6T battery has jumped from 3,300mAh on the OnePlus 6 to 3,700mAh, which is a respectable leap, but nothing to write home about on paper. In real world tests, however, the OnePlus 6T managed to hit ridiculously impressive screen-on times of up to 8 hours.

These early results show that there’s almost certainly some heavy optimization going on under the hood with OxygenOS 9.0. As David himself says, “This is probably the best battery life I’ve ever seen in an Android smartphone, proving that battery capacity doesn’t tell the whole story.”

Availability

Okay, so this isn’t technically a feature of the phone itself, but the fact that you’ll soon be able to walk into a T-Mobile store in the U.S. and walk out with a OnePlus 6T in your hand is a huge deal.

Not only that, but the OnePlus 6T is also fully certified to work on Verizon Wireless for the first time ever.

Related: T-Mobile will accept your old OnePlus devices as trade-ins

These are both monumental changes and could greatly impact OnePlus’ visibility in one of the largest, most tricky-to-crack smartphone markets on the planet.

Meanwhile, in the U.K., OnePlus has also confirmed the OnePlus 6T will be sold via multiple carriers for the first time, once again showing that the Chinese brand is aiming much larger with its latest flagship.

For release info in the rest of the world, be sure to check out our price and availability post here.

That’s the OnePlus 6T’s top five features! Of course, there’s plenty more the phone has to offer, as we’ve barely touched upon the OnePlus 6T’s beastly raw specs or the improved camera.

We’ll be bringing you a detailed review of the OnePlus 6T that touches on all this and more very soon. In the meantime, be sure to let us know your favorite OnePlus 6T features in the comments.