[MUSIC]
Hi everybody, it's Lynn here and as one of CNET's dedicated phone reviewers, tons and tons of phones come across my desk all the time.
But right now I'm here to talk about the phone I use everyday and it's the OnePlus 5T.
Keep in mind I actually do like this phone, it's my daily Android driver for a reason.
It does tons of things well which I'll get into later.
But right now I kind of want to dig deep into the initial thoughts I had and what's changed since then.
[MUSIC]
Keep in mind some of the things I talk about isn't so readily apparent when you first handle the phone.
So whatever, I might sound overly critical.
Or as I like call it, it's [UNKNOWN]
time!
[MUSIC]
So one of the things I don't really like.
Is facial recognition.
It doesn't work really well unless you kind of are in great lighting and you use it right in front of your face in this kind of unnatural motion.
It doesn't really work when you place it on your desk, or even when you're hanging and you're kind of looking down on it and And it has to kind of always have this thing.
And most of the time for me at least it doesn't really work, so I kinda just use fingerprint ID, which works a lot faster, as you can tell.
Another think I hate is a new thing in the camera.
It actually changed from the 1 plus 5 to the 5G, and that's Aspect ratio, it used to be 16x9, but now it's 18x9, and I just hate it because it zooms up so close to the subject that you're trying to take a picture of that I have to default to 4x3, which I hate that ratio, it's the iPhone ratio, and I just miss the 16x9.
I kind of want it back.
Lastly, and this isn't a knock on the phone itself but the company, and it's just how it recently handled the credit card breach.
It affected a lot of users and it just seems that at every launch there's always something whether it's the breach or collecting an inordinate amount of user data or benchmark skewing.
It just seems like there's always something.
And the company should just do better, their users deserve better.
And OnePlus makes great affordable phones.
And for now a lot of people are willing to kind of overlook their missteps.
But you don't want to use up the last of your good graces.
Now that that's over with, I'm gonna go back to the stuff that I like.
I really like dash charging, believe the hype.
The battery's still great without it, it still lasts really long.
But dash charging will save you if you're in a pinch.
Five minutes charging on this thing and get 20% more battery.
Don't quote me on that, that's not exact.
But that's basically kind of what I've observed.
If you could afford, get the dash charger for our car.
It's saved my life a bunch of times.
So get it.
Definitely recommend it.
Another thing that I like that I actually didn't expect to like that much and I just kind of grew to love it is reading mode.
It changes the screen to make it a sepia tone.
Whenever you open certain apps, and it makes reading really comfortable, especially when I'm in bed at night.
I'm on these apps reading thousand word articles or whatever, and it just makes it more comfortable.
My eyes aren't strained, it gives me that old newspaper feeling.
Just kidding, not really.
And I thought I'd miss color pictures for this, but not really, it's fine.
I love it.
Another thing that I like is individual app and lock, it just adds an extra layer of security to certain app of your choosing.
And the reason I like it is because my friends, not as much any more, but before, any time you left your phone unattended we would just take it and just start posting Facebook messages or.
Something like that under your name.
And it got me super paranoid.
So now I put it on my Facebook app and my text messaging, on my gallery or whatever.
My friends are really nice but it's just some, that's the kind of environment I grew up with socially.
So now just kind of like, kind of keep it.
I put it on my, you know, text messages, gallery.
It's just like an extra layer of security that I like.
Okay.
One last thing that I like to add is that you should always wait for more colors.
One Plus does a thing, I'm not saying it's going to do it every year or even this year with the next one.
But kind of every time they've launched a phone, they've launched other colors after it.
This year, with the 5G, it's white.
This pretty white one, and red.
Both looked really great, but both are also super hard to find.
So if you're cool with scarcity and don't mind waiting a little bit, wanna see more of your options.
Wait after a little bit when One Plus launches a phone.
And then see what kind of new colors they have.
So that's it.
Those are my takeaways.
Three months after it's launched I still really, really like it.
And I still recommend it, so yeah.
Check it out yourself.
[MUSIC]
[BLANK_AUDIO]
