The OnePlus 10T runs on OxygenOS 12.1 on top of Android 12. Our review unit was running build A.03 at the time of testing. OnePlus has promised three major Android version updates and four years of security updates.
We are quite familiar with OxygenOS 12.1 at this point, not just because we have seen it on multiple OnePlus phones this year but also because we have used it on several other Oppo and Realme phones. This is, after all, just thinly veiled ColorOS 12.
The launcher, plucked out of ColorOS, is reasonably feature-rich, with support for customizable icons and third-party icon packs. OnePlus continues to use the same heavyset typeface for the icon labels, which look overly chunky and often run out of space before displaying the entire app name. You can choose to hide the app names from the homescreen but then they also get removed from the app drawer.
The homescreen supports the usual gestures of swiping down to bring down the notifications and double tap to lock the phone. You can also optionally swipe down from the right side to bring down the OnePlus Shelf, which is just another place to keep your widgets and access them from anywhere. You can also swipe right from the homescreen to access your Google feed. This, however, cannot be disabled and the Google feed always just exists there whether you use it or not.
The app drawer lets you change the sorting order and mark multiple apps to move them or delete them at once. You can't create folders here, though, and for some reason it still lists apps with numeric or non-alphabetical names at the bottom of the list rather than the top. There is also no easy way to hide apps anymore to a separate screen.
OnePlus, like other BBK companies, now also sets the default display scaling too low with respect to the size of the display. This makes everything appear far too large and also reduces the usable display area by pushing things out of view. You have to manually reduce it to make it look appropriate for this display size.
Aside from customizing the icons, OxygenOS 12.1 also features full theme support. To that effect, there is now also a theme store built-in, where users can download free and premium themes, wallpapers, and fonts. You can also manually customize parts of the UI, such as the quick settings icon, fingerprint animation, always-on display, and UI colors.
There are plenty of features to explore, although most of them are buried within the Settings app and may not be explored by your average user at all. Some of them, such as Quick launch and Screen-off gestures are quite useful. The OnePlus 10T also adds Air Gestures, a first for a OnePlus phone, which lets you do things like dismissing calls by waving your hand in front of the screen.
Overall, the software experience of OxygenOS 12.1 on the OnePlus 10T is a little rough around the edges but usable. The major issue with it, however, is how little it is like the OxygenOS versions that came before it and how little of an effort it makes to hide the fact that it is ColorOS with a slightly different skin on top.
Hopefully, the upcoming OxygenOS 13 doesn't just bring some design improvements but makes OxygenOS look more like what long term OnePlus users expect it to look like.
The OnePlus 10T comes with the latest generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. There is a choice of 8/12/16GB of LPDDR5 memory and 128/256GB UFS 3.1 storage, although not all variants are available in every region.
Synthetic benchmark performance was close to the best but not quite there. This is due to the fact that the 4x Kryo Silver cores max out at 1.8GHz on the OnePlus 10T as opposed to 2.0GHz on the other Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 devices we have tested. This is most easily seen in the multi-core score in Geekbench but also in the slightly lower Antutu 9 score compared to something like the Xiaomi 12S Ultra.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
These results were obtained with the High performance mode enabled, which increases the base CPU clock speed and can also sustain higher clocks under load. With this mode disabled, the CPU performance drops down to roughly the same level as the Snapdragon 888's peak performance.
Admittedly, this is not noticeable in everyday usage and the phone remains extremely fast and smooth regardless of what mode you run it in. Having said that, it's worth nothing that you are not really getting the full CPU performance that this chip is capable of unless you enable a special mode, which, by the way, is not at all optimized for efficiency. Otherwise, you are getting no more performance out of this phone than what you would have gotten out of the OnePlus 9 Pro.
GPU performance, however, is unaffected and you always have access to the full power of the Adreno 730 at your disposal. Gaming performance is good but held back by the 60Hz limitation for most games. There is no point having this much performance under the hood if you are being held back from using it.
OnePlus has also implemented its largest vapor chamber yet for cooling the chipset. While playing games in an ambient temperature of around 23°C, the phone was able to maintain a comfortable temperature, even when playing at 90fps in select titles like Fortnite. However, with most games locked to 60fps, the cooling system never quite gets used to its full potential, so heating is rarely going to be an issue.
Tip us
1.9m 150k
RSS
EV
Merch
Log in I forgot my password Sign up