Day 3: Camera

at the end) (and Audioat the end)

Apologies for the late camera review, hopefully it was worth it!

ALL IMAGES HERE ARE AUTO MODE AND UNEDITED UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE



NAVIGATION

Unboxing ● Design/Display ● Camera ● Performance

Dash Charge/Power Consumption ● OxygenOS ● Conclusion



For a lot of people, the deciding factor for which smartphone they choose is the camera. Understandably so, we're living in a day and age where we share our thoughts and feelings using pixels on a screen rather than some writing on a piece of paper. When we have an experience, we can send it off for the entire world to experience it with us.



The OnePlus 5T still has dual cameras, but the implementation is very different. While the 5's secondary camera was a telephoto lens allowing for 2x lossless zoom, the 5T's secondary camera is one optimised for low light. This brings some advantages as well as disadvantages from the 5.



The megapixel count on the cameras are still 16MP and 20MP respectively, but megapixels aren't everything. Both lenses have a very wide f/1.7 aperture allowing a lot of light to enter, and a standard focal length of 27.22mm. While the 20MP sensor has a lower pixel size (1μm vs 1.12μm), it is the one used for low-light and does a good job by using 'Intelligent Pixel Technology' where 4 pixels are merged into 1.



Shots taken under normal conditions ​

Any camera will shine best under normal lighting conditions! The OnePlus 5T is no

exception. In daylight, the quality of the pictures taken are absolutely astonishing.



Browns of the tree and the greens of the leaves are represented accurately. There is also a lot of detail in the texture of the trunk of the tree.









The veins of the leaves are all visible with great clarity. the foreground is nicely in focus and the background remains blurred (without portrait mode). Again, the colours are well represented.

This picture is a kinda low light - HDR scenario but I included it here because I don't think it's dark enough to be in the low light section. You can see the high dynamic range of all the colours in the sky here and overall it's a beautiful image with it not being too overexposed or underexposed. ​



All images above, in my opinion, are very sharp and crisp. Moreover, colour representation is generally very accurate. Cameras often struggle with the colour red but the OnePlus 5T also does a very good job here:



The red is also accurate here as well as the green *This image is a portrait mode image

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Under good lighting conditions, I have found no artifacts such as noise/grain. In addition to that the pictures are not oversaturated as we often see in flagships by OnePlus' competitors. Overall clarity, sharpness, and accuracy is really great for any smartphone, and is made better considering that it costs around $500.

Portrait mode ​

OnePlus claims that it is due to the dual camera setup that allows portrait mode to work so well to create a bokeh effect. While I'm not entirely sure if both cameras are still used for this effect or if its purely software, it still looks astounding. As the secondary camera is no longer a telephoto lens, we can see that there is no longer any cropping:



As you can see above, edge detection works very well between both phones.





Again here edge detection is well but slightly confused between the leaves in the background and the one in the foreground.

​

There are often cases where you may not want to use Portrait Mode though. The wide aperture lens already has somewhat of a depth of field effect, so you may want to decide for yourself which is better:





Portrait mode on





Portrait mode off

I like this picture more as it doesn't rely on edge detection and there are beautiful bokeh balls towards the top right of the image

​

In general, Portrait Mode works fantastically and allows you to take images that will make people question if it was taken on a DSLR! However, often there are times where standard mode can take similar shots (depending on spacing between subject and background) so keep that into consideration.

Shots taken under harsh lighting ​

Under harsh lighting, where light is directly on the sensor or reflected into the sensor, things start to get a little interesting.



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In the picture above you can see an intense lens flare towards the left where the sunlight is hitting the sensor. Not only that, but this seems to have confused the 5T a little and perhaps is the reason why the right edge of the tree is blurred.



Let's take another look at the same tree, but this time from an angle where the sun is directly facing the tree.

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All in all, this is a very good shot with a 'large-ish' range of colours. The sky is detailed as well as the tree in the foreground. Here we see no lens flare but there is indeed some parts where the image has been over exposed/blown out.



Shots taken in low light ​

Low light shots blew me away compared to the OnePlus 5! The 5T only activates its secondary camera with 'Intelligent Pixel Technology' when brightness levels go below 10 Lux, so you may not always see it in effect until this does happen.



This is the shot taken on the OnePlus 5:



The OnePlus 5's output is very dark and you can see that there are trees there but not any detail. The sky is very grainy and the leaves are dark so they blend in to the background.

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Now this is the shot taken on the OnePlus 5T:



Here the sky is also grainy, but there is so much more detail on the trees and the leaves are distinguishable from the background.

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The difference shocked me, so I went back to check a few times if I accidentally put it in manual mode and changed the exposure or something, but no - I didn't!



The improvement in low light is definitely worth the removal of the optical zoom of the OnePlus 5, in my opinion. I rarely use the zoom lens (if I need to, I will get physically closer to the subject) so while this may not be worth it for me, it may be important for you depending on if you may ever need to use zoom.

Zoom ​

As mentioned earlier, the second camera of the OnePlus 5T no longer uses a telephoto lens. This means in pictures where you zoom in, the quality is not as good as the OnePlus 5's:





OnePlus 5's 2x zoom





OnePlus 5T's 2x zoom

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On the face of it, you may not notice the difference between the two cameras. But if you zoom into the building in the background, there is a noticeable difference.



With the 5T's camera there is less detail in the trees and the building looks 'cartoony'

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As you can't really tell much of a difference until you zoom in a lot, I wouldn't say I will miss the zoom feature much.



OnePlus have also used a software algorithm, which they are calling Clear Zoom that 'enhances clarity of photos when zoomed in'. With the lack of a telephoto lens, this statement is true but still doesn't match the level of the OnePlus 5.



Another example of the OnePlus 5T's 2x zoom vs OnePlus 5's 2x zoom

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Cropped in onto the squirrel:

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We can see that Clear Zoom does a decent job at trying to retain quality, but the OnePlus 5 still wins here as you can see more detail in the squirrel's fur and it doesn't look like an oil painting.



As a conclusion for the camera portion of the review, I would like to reiterate that the OnePlus 5T's camera is honestly really good but has a few shortcomings. Under good lighting conditions: sharpness, clarity, accuracy, saturation, etc are really good - meaning you will get a really good picture from the phone. The Portrait mode still works amazingly well even with a different camera setup and can get you pictures that look like they've come straight out of a DSLR. Low light shots have been improved but has had to make compromises on zoom quality in order to achieve this. Overall, it is an amazing camera for the $500ish price and gets really close but not exactly at the level of its vastly more expensive rivals.



However, if OnePlus truly was focused on ultimate lowlight performance it would be nice to see the return of Optical Image Stabilisation alongside the already existing Electronic Image Stabilisation. Perhaps next time?



BONUS! Here are some more shots that I liked:



^ Manual mode but only changed focus distance, everything else is Auto











I also often put pictures on my Instagram

-----

Audio

And a little bit on Audio for

I also often put pictures on my Instagram @alviemahmud (shameless plug)-----And a little bit on Audio for @eye842 and anyone else

The speaker on the OnePlus 5T is a mono speaker on the bottom of the device. I would have preferred to have seen a stereo front facing speaker setup here because it is easy to cover the speaker when holding the phone. You may have to shift your hands or cup around the speaker.



However, the audio outputted can get really loud and retain quality at high volumes. For a mono speaker, the sound is still very clear and highs/mids/lows are quite distinguishable. When watching videos, no audio latency issues have occurred for me.



In terms of how they perform with earphones (which they can do because of the 3.5mm headphone jack!) , I have briefly tried them out with OnePlus Bullets V2. The DAC built in is of good quality and I don't hear any static/electrical artifacts. While I haven't tried them with more powerful headphones, I expect they'll work well still.



While recording audio, I have noticed that audio is general clear but wind can affect it quite a bit. There are 3 mics that do help with background noise cancellation a lot though.

