OnePlus 5T Review Part 2: Performance Analysis

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Last week, we had a quick look at the OnePlus 5T’s design and display and reviewed its cameras, one of the most important features you consider when purchasing a new phone. Today, we are going to take a deep dive into the OnePlus 5T’s performance, one of the potential dealbreakers of any purchase in my personal opinion.

Speed & Multitasking

With the latest and greatest from Qualcomm, teamed up with next-gen UFS 2.1 storage and as much RAM as your laptop, it is nearly impossible to get this phone to slow down. Loading apps is a breeze – you just tap on it and it just loads ludicrously fast. You won’t find yourself yawning while an app or a game is loaded. The words speedy and snappy were created to describe that level of performance. One of the things that help project that impression is the trimmed down transition animation. While it may stray away from the general so-called “stock Android feel” that OnePlus likes to boast, it does give a satisfying sense of speed.

While many would expect multitasking to be a breeze with 6 or 8 gigs of RAM, it pains me to say that this isn’t always the case with the OnePlus 5T. Yes, it can hold from 8 to 12 apps in memory without struggling, but once you decide to launch a game or two some apps may be shut down. It’s not like your Twitter feed will be reloaded once you exit the app, but it isn’t as spectacular as the spec sheet suggests. In my not-so-sophisticated testing, I came to the conclusion that the OnePlus 5T could only manage 1 game consistently along with my usual suite of apps (Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, Facebook, Chrome, YouTube, Hangouts), which is borderline good for a flagship device. It is a bit disappointing to see a phone with 8GB of RAM struggling to keep 2 games in RAM while my old HTC One M9 handles 3 games flawlessly. However, it’s come to my attention that the OnePlus 5T isn’t consistent when it comes to RAM management. Sometimes it keeps all apps and games in RAM with no issues, and sometimes some of the opened apps are just axed out of memory. And if the OnePlus 5’s Oreo update is of any indication, things are about to get worse since I have noticed that apps get killed more often, sometimes even delaying notifications from apps like Telegram and Slack. OnePlus is seriously not taking full advantage of the plentiful RAM on board. Some people might be convinced that this aggressive RAM management is one of OnePlus’ tactics to save battery. But then, why did OnePlus opt for fitting more RAM?

Benchmarks: Thermals

At this point, some of you would expect me to put on some numbers on fancy graphs comparing the OnePlus 5T benchmark scores with the other flagships, like in other sites like GSM Arena. However, in my not-so-humble opinion, benchmarks and spec sheets do not tell the whole tale. But, since benchmark apps put a lot of strain on the SoC inside, I am going to leverage that to judge how the phone fares on the thermals front, by repeatedly running a compound benchmark such as AnTuTu for multiple times and recording the CPU, GPU and battery temperatures after each run by using CPU Float.

Methodology: AnTuTu Benchmark v7.0.4 test is repeatedly run for 10 times with no time interval between each run under the following circumstances. All background apps closed, Airplane mode engaged, Adaptive Brightness mode disengaged, screen brightness level set to minimum, location services disabled. This test has been conducted in an air-conditioned room with an ambient temperature of 25 degrees Celsius.

It doesn’t take too long to realize that the OnePlus 5T is among the best performers when it comes to sustained performance, and by extension power efficiency, with very consistent scores and minimum heat output. This confirms ARM’s claim of considerably reduced heat output with the A73 core design, which is what the Kryo 280 performance cores are based on. Furthermore, according to Anandtech, the Adreno 540 GPU is the most efficient GPU of them all, further complimenting the CPU’s efficiency.

As you can see, the Snapdragon 835 only loses the battle to its recently announced successor, securing a remarkable lead over its predecessor – the Snapdragon 821. The Exynos 8895 trails behind not only its Qualcomm counterpart but also 2016’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 821. All things considered, with the Snapdragon 835 on board, the OnePlus 5T will surely provide the best experience for all gamers concerned.

Smoothness

So far the OnePlus 5T has been above and beyond when it comes to speed and efficiency. But what about smoothness? Well, I have managed to devise a series of tests as an attempt to thoroughly assess the device’s performance on the smoothness front. Rather than providing vague, possibly inaccurate statements while randomly scrolling through the phone’s launcher and some other randomly selected apps, a more accurate tool will be used to plot the frames rendered against the time needed to render each frame. Data will be collected while several selected tests are performed – one at a time of course – to emulate real-world scenarios.  

Attached below are the frame rate charts obtained for each test, where the time needed for each frame to be rendered is recorded. Higher bars indicate slower frame rate. Bars higher than the horizontal green line (16ms) indicate a frame rate lower than the optimal 60fps the Android system aims for.

 

• Google Calendar Schedule View (Quick Fling): A quick fling for 12 months in Schedule view and then back to the same starting point.
• Google Calendar Schedule View (Slow Scroll): A slow scroll at reading pace
• Gmail (Quick Fling): After allowing the app to preload all the contents to eliminate the limiting factor of the network speed, frame rate data has been recorded while doing a quick fling to the end of the list and then back to the starting point.
• OnePlus Launcher (App drawer): Frame rate data has been recorded while summoning and scrolling through the app drawer
• Gboard Typing: Frame rate data has been recorded while typing on Gboard at a pace of 70 words/minute
• System Animations (System UI): Frame rate data of the system animations (app launching, pulling down notification drawer and Quick Settings panel, switching between apps in the recent apps view, enabling and disabling Split View mode)

Looking at the graphs above, we can quickly come to the conclusion that the OnePlus 5T certainly isn’t what people call a “buttery smooth” experience. While the phone fares very well when dealing with quick flings in Gmail and Play Store, which is a relatively light task, the OnePlus 5T suffers from significant frame rate inconsistency and inevitable dropped frames that are very evident in heavier tasks such as flinging through the Google Calendar app. It’s also come to my attention that this frame rate inconsistency becomes more pronounced when scrolling slowly through the Calendar app instead, with periodic frame rate dips occurring nearly every 60-70 frames, which is when my finger first touches the screen at the beginning of each scroll. Moving on to the Gboard Typing test, the OnePlus 5T fails to turn heads either. While it certainly isn’t as bad as old versions of TouchWiz, it is still surprising to see a flagship phone dropping frames as badly. Moving on to the System Animations tests, the OnePlus 5T manages to render the system animations in a more consistent manner, with periodic dips on touch registers. Overall, when it comes to smoothness, the OnePlus 5T performs well though it doesn’t quite hit the nail on its head. Perhaps things get better with the recently pushed Android Oreo update.

Software Review

OxygenOS has indeed come a long way through a lot of evolvements and refinements, developing its own character of being rich with useful features without being too cluttered with bloatware and/or gimmicky features that are only enjoyed in the honeymoon phase. And indeed, the same trend continues. Gaming Do Not Disturb continues to be the most underrated feature that should have been present in all phones, where you can just prevent these heads-up notifications from flooding your screen at will. It’s true, this feature is slowly starting to spread across various other devices. But I am yet to see that on a Pixel or Nexus device. Other features like assigning custom actions for long pressing or double tapping any of the on-screen buttons and enabling screen-off gestures to control music playback – or even assign my own preferred actions when drawing certain patterns on the screen – continues to enrich the overall user experience and add even more convenience. Having reading mode around when reading some articles or books at night, which essentially enables a monochrome display mode, is a bliss. With a behemoth 6.0” screen on board, many people would quickly jump to the conclusion that handling the OnePlus 5T with one hand is a chore. Thankfully, this is not the case. OnePlus has decided to make good use of that rear-mounted fingerprint scanner – which is positioned where your index naturally rests – by giving the users an option to enable a new specific gesture, where swiping down on the scanner (with your index) will bring down the notifications center, instead of stretching your thumb to the top right/left corner of the screen or giving up on it. Speaking of thumbs stretching, OnePlus has tweaked the navigation bar on the bottom of the screen a little bit, by making it more compact, making the on-screen buttons a bit closer. And an extra treat for the audiophiles – a 30-step volume control for your media. Brilliant!

With OxygenOS, OnePlus continues to prove that manufacturers don’t need to pack unconventional features to turn heads and appeal to the public. And if anything is a living proof of that, it must be OnePlus’ revisit to one of the oldest tales of Android – Face Unlock. The technique has been around ever since Samsung has released its flagship – the Galaxy S3 – back in 2012. Since then, it has been ditched in favor of the much quicker and more convenient fingerprint scanner, when the iPhone 5s first made its debut with TouchID – Apple’s take on unlocking your phone. Fast forwards to 2017, Apple once again sparked a new trend by ditching TouchID for its own Facial Recognition tech under the predictable name FaceID.

While Samsung hasn’t followed Apple’s trend this time around, OnePlus did. Of course, there is no depth sensors or any fancy tech in here – OnePlus is still a very small company compared to the Cupertino giant – but rather surprisingly Face Unlock on the OnePlus 5T is extremely fast, nearly as fast as that fingerprint sensor. OnePlus maintains its statement that Face Unlock is not as secure as unlocking using the fingerprint scanner, and therefore won’t be used in any transactions. From the speed perspective, the 5T’s Face Unlock has won me over. It even recognizes my face from a slight angle, which makes it a feasible solution for unlocking my phone while lying on a desk. OnePlus also offers the option to bypass the lock screen and instantly unlock the phone when Face Unlock successfully recognizes your face, which is enabled by default. Given good lighting conditions, this practically means that unlocking your phone is a matter of only double tapping your screen. Should there not be ample light, the screen doubles as a front-facing flash for Face Unlock so that the camera can still manage to recognize your face. It might not be the best thing to do when unlocking the phone to see your feeds before sleeping though, the screen can get too bright and irritate your eyes a bit too much. Needless to say, you can turn off that feature from the settings.

Other features include the incredibly useful scrolling screenshot, and the fact that you can edit the screenshot (or delete it) on the go, as well as OnePlus’ own launcher that includes a widget styled dock page dubbed as The Shelf, which can be accessed by swiping to the left of the main home screen. I wished there was the option to replace it with Google Now’s feed page, instead of just disabling it. There is also a couple of OnePlus’ own apps that bring a lot of convenience to the overall user experience. OnePlus has included its own File Manager app, which checks all the boxes of Google’s material design and features File Dash – OnePlus’ vision of how files should be wirelessly shared conveniently and quickly enough. Next up on the list is OnePlus’ Weather app, which is a simple app that shows the weather forecast information for 6 days from – you guessed it right – Accuweather.com. Last but not least, OnePlus has decided to include its own Gallery app besides the Google Photos one, featuring a tabular view and a cool Places tab that plots the location of each image on a map. As of now, these are the only apps OnePlus has included. But if the current Open Beta builds are any indication, there will be more proprietary apps making it to OxygenOS.

While all these features are very appealing indeed, the flatter UI elements and shorter animations tend to disrupt that stock Android feel that OxygenOS is trying too hard to retain. Another thing that can be hardly ignored is the fact that the OnePlus 5T comes with Android Nougat out of the box instead of Android Oreo, especially since it was launched near the end of 2017. My only guess is that they didn’t want to upset their OnePlus 5 customers too much. Still, it is not like the company is dropping them out of their minds – they have already updated the OnePlus 5 and the OnePlus 3 to Android Oreo officially before the recently released Oreo update for the OnePlus 5T. 

Make sure to stay tuned for the final part of my review, in which we will discuss how hard did OnePlus cut the corners. Hats off to my fellow XDA Recognised Developers Joshua Choo and Zachariah Kennedy. I have definitely learned a lot from them.

Featured-Image: FrAndroid