The fact that the successor to the extremely popular OnePlus 3 is making its way to India is an open secret. But now we finally have a release date! The OnePlus 3T is going to launch in India on December 2 and will be sold alongside the existing OnePlus 3.
The information was revealed by a tweet by Vikas Agarwal, General Manager, OnePlus India.
OnePlus has taken the Apple route with the OnePlus 3T. Just like Apple’s ’S’ models, the 3T has exactly the same design as the OnePlus 3 with an upgraded processor, bigger battery and a better front facing camera.
How much will it cost?
Coming to pricing, the OnePlus 3T 64GB has been priced at $439 (roughly Rs. 29,800), while the 128GB model will come at $479 (roughly Rs. 32,500). To recall, the OnePlus 3 was launched at $399 (priced at Rs. 27,999 in India) - and it was only available in a 64GB model.
As the OnePlus 3T will be sold alongside the 3T, we can expect two scenarios. Either OnePlus will reduce the price of the OnePlus 3 and price the OnePlus 3T at around 29-30k or the OnePlus 3 will continue to cost Rs 27,990 and the 3T will be priced at a premium.
Let’s see how the OnePlus 3T differs from the OnePlus 3 in detail:
Design
The OnePlus 3T looks almost identical to the OnePlus 3, with a few software and hardware tweaks that OnePlus says “were “inspired by feedback from the active OnePlus community.”
Design wise the biggest difference between the 3T and the outgoing model is the new Gunmetal Grey colour and a Soft Gold colour which will be launched soon.
Hardware
This is where the OnePlus 3T sprints ahead of its predecessor. It comes with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 821 processor (as compared to the 820 in the OP3) clocked at 2.35GHz, the Adreno 530 GPU, 6GB of DDR4 RAM and a 3,400mAh battery. The battery is 13% larger that the One Plus 3, which had a 3,000mAh battery.
While these are not massive improvements in any sense of the word, this should make the OnePlus 3T slightly faster than its predecessor.
The handset also comes with OnePlus’s ‘Dash Charge’ technology, which the company claims can give the phone enough juice to last a day with just a 30 minutes charge.
Display
If you were hoping the OnePlus 3T comes with a QuadHD display, you’re in for a disappointment as the new handset still makes do with a 5.5-inch 1080p Optic Amoled display.
Now, what is this "Optic" AMOLED technology that OnePlus is talking about? Well, it is an AMOLED panel that OnePlus has tuned for greater emphasis on blacks and reds, which OnePlus believes gives a better brewing experience
The lack of a QuadHD display might be a disappointment for some, especially those interested in using the smartphone for VR.
Camera
The front camera of the OnePlus 3T has been bumped up from an 8MP sensor to a 16Mp Samsung 3P8Sp sensor with an aperture of f/1.0 and a pixel size of 1.0 microns.
Unfortunately, the OnePlus 3T comes with the same rear camera as in the One Plus 3 - a 16MP Sony IMX 298 sensor with an aperture of f/2.0 and a pixel size of 1.12 microns. The rear camera comes with an updated Electronic Image stabilisation algorithm as well as Optic Image stabilisation.
On the software front, the camera has seen some tweaks such as an improved manual mode which will allow you to control the white balance, ISO, shutter speed and so on and RAW image support.
Software
The OnePlus 3T is running the latest version of OxygenOS based on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. No Nougat for now sadly which might be a put off for some.
