Alright so is been about a month since I got the OnePlus 5T. I haven’t attempted to flash a ROM, ‘debloat’ Oxygen OS or even unlocked the bootloader. Everything is pretty much the same it was when I got it aside from using Action Launcher over the stock launcher and installing my apps.

When I first got this phone I was a bit skeptical because this phone wasn’t like the OnePlus 3T in that you could buy it on day 1. Paul Clark and I were talking about this prior to the announcement in NYC and we were looking forward to it. Unfortunately it never happened.

It was announced but the only people that got it on day 1 were high profile bloggers and company employees. Those guys (high profile bloggers) while popular are not really people you could trust to tell you what is bad about a phone. They usually ride the middle line and what that means is that they don’t ever tell you why not to buy a phone. They don’t look into the camera and say ‘Look, this phone is trash! You would have to be a total idiot to buy this trash!’. That just never happens! After all they want to keep getting review units. They don’t want to piss anyone off so they hold back a lot! This was the case for pretty much every review prior to the general population getting a hold of one (21st November).

So why were you skeptical?

Because I wasn’t sure if there was something major that these bloggers were holding back on. They all told you that the phone was great for the price and that OnePlus did good job improving the OP5 but there was never a ‘BUT’. It felt like they were holding back! It really did because even looking at the Pixel 2 and the S8, these guys were being some what honest but with the OP5T it was all smiles. Something didn’t seem right or so I thought…

When I got the phone I fell in love with the screen instantly. Coming from the OnePlus 3T it was like finally stepping into 2017. My phone finally felt like it got a seat in the big boy table! I turned it on and was also amazed by the speed! I set things up to my liking and began trying to find something wrong with the phone! Why? Because I wanted to see if these bloggers were holding back on something!

I wanted to see what would cause it to slow down. The phone was advertised to be fast and hold up so I wanted to put it to the test! I downloaded several games from the play store and switched between them. That didn’t slow the phone down at all. Everything remained fast and so I kept those games in recents/background thinking that they were put pressure on the system over time. That didn’t happen either and so I opened up the camera. I started shooting video in 4K and of course nothing happened. The phone took everything I threw at it. This was driving me a little nuts but secretly I was happy because finally had something that was living up to the hype. I installed a few more apps and used it for the rest of the day and everything ran like a champ! The next day I tried to see if maybe using apps or doing different things like running the hotspot while in a phone call would cause the phone to start showing some signs of it slowing down and again I was disappointed.

After a few days I gave up in trying to break it. I honestly don’t think is possible. The thing comes packed with the SD 835 and 8GB of ram. Everything you can throw at it, the thing takes! I don’t think is possible unless you root your phone and start removing libs/apks from the system like some kind of pissed off gremlin.

The next thing I wanted to check out was the battery life!

Every phone I’ve got up until now has had this weird thing in that the battery life would be AMAZING the first week and then it would dip down to mediocre-ville. The battery life would go from 5–6 hours of screen on time the first week to about 4 and sometimes 5. You would lose on average about a whole hour of screen on time. I’ve had this happen on the Honor 5/8, Zenfone 2, Nexus 6, Nexus 6P and OP3T. On this phone I don’t seem to have that problem.

When I first got it I was getting 6–7 of screen on time with my usage. I consider myself a heavy Android user because I’m on Telegram almost all day just lurking, trolling and giving people a hard time. I listen to several different podcasts daily and of course I need my music on Spotify. I NEED MY MUSIC!!! I text with my wife and my little brother throughout the day and here lately I’ve become hooked to Instagram. So a month later and I’m happy to say that I still get 6–7 hours of screen on time. Keep in mind that I haven’t rooted my phone. I haven’t installed a custom kernel to improve battery life or tweaked the stock kernel with kernel auditor or anything like that. This is just the stock kernel with the settings that OnePlus put on here.

Next on the list was the camera!

Every reviewer AFTER the 21st of November posted in their review that while the phone was fast, great quality and had a beautiful display, the camera seem to lack in all the wrong places. I strongly disagree. I know I’m not a famous blogger and you probably will take the word of those guys over mines but every picture I’ve taken with the OP5T has been great for me!

I’ve had no grainy effect or any complaints about the quality being low. I’ve taken many pictures this month, more than usual actually. I even opened up a Instagram account like I mentioned above because the picture quality was just that good that I wanted to show off a bit.

The OP5T has even got me even taking selfies, I never take selfies! I always felt like taking selfies was for weirdos that wore skinny jeans haha. I take selfies now! The camera is THAT great! I heard some complaints about the Google camera ‘mod’ that’s going around in that it caused pictures to look grainy or sometimes you would get a bunch of ‘dots’ but I stayed away from that mod and I recommend you do the same. I stayed with the Oxygen OS camera and haven’t had any issues. I did so because I didn’t want to use anything custom. I felt like if I was going to give the phone a fair shake and see what it had to bring to the table then I had to SOS — stay on stock!

One thing I will say is that is obviously not the Pixel 2. A lot of people even bloggers jumped to comparing the camera to the Pixel 2’s but I don’t think that’s fair.

Take this for example and tell me if is fair. If you went to buy a car at any dealership but say a BMW dealership or whatever you consider expensive and you compared every car you came across to a BMW, you would probably miss out on some very nice cars! You would be dismissing the works of say Toyota, Audi, Buick, etc. A lot of companies that do it right and do it at a price you can’t really look away from. This is the case with the OP5T. While is not as expensive as say a Pixel 2, is still a great phone with a great camera! Sure the Pixel 2 has a great camera but the OP5T’s camera is not chopped liver either.

Few things that I’ve found that could be better

- Deep sleep. The phone doesn’t go into a deep deep sleep and so your battery stats show your phone is sometimes still up. Although this hasn’t had any major effect on the battery life (still get 6–7 screen on time), it could for sure be better.

- Bluetooth drain. Again this hasn’t had major effect on battery life but it could be better. I noticed that while listening to a podcast via the speaker phone or taking video or pics, the phone barely uses any battery but if I’m listening to anything via BT, the drain is faster.

Aside from that, the phone lives up the hype! I’m not in a major hurry to unlock this phone and put anything custom on it! I don’t really care for Oreo because like I told Jeff McIntire today, everything from Lollipop up til now looks and feels the same to me. Sure they tweaked the way Settings looks and moved around the QS area a bit but as far as performance and actual improvements, I’m not missing anything on Oreo.

I highly recommend this device to anyone that’s not wanting to drop 1K on a Pixel and looking for something that can hold up!

Link to my Instagram for pics taken with the OP5T

https://www.instagram.com/du.alexcruz/