OnePlus 6T gaming review: PUBG, Fortnite or Asphalt 9, it runs them all and it runs them well.

HIGHLIGHTS

OnePlus 6T is an all-purpose phone but the top hardware inside it means at excels at running games.

In the last few months we have seen arrival of gaming phones. These are the phones designed for people who take their gaming seriously and hence put an emphasis on performance. Now, that is all nice. But where does that leave a phone like the OnePlus 6T, which has top hardware and which also claims to offer incredible? There is only one way to find out, play some games on the OnePlus 6T. And that is exactly what I did. The result:  that yet again proves why this phone is so good.

If you look at all the gaming smartphones launched recently, it's easy to figure out that all of these are equipped with the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chip. Except for Asus ROG Phone, all of them run on the standard clockspeed that Qualcomm ships it with. All of them feature the Adreno 630 GPU, which is presently the most powerful GPU in the Android universe. On paper then, there is no difference between all flagship phones launched in 2018.

The OnePlus 6T offers the same Snapdragon 845 chip clocked at 2.8GHz. The base version offers 6GB RAM and goes up to a whopping 10GB RAM on the McLaren edition. OnePlus uses a fast 2-lane UFS 2.1 storage with capacities ranging from 128GB to 256GB. Therefore, in terms of hardware, the OnePlus 6T is there with the best in the market. However, like the ROG Phone or the Poco F1, the OnePlus 6T doesn't claim to offer any sort of additional cooling enforcements. Also, unlike the others mentioned here, the OnePlus 6T features a sleeker and seductive design with a premium Gorilla Glass 6 body. It's more subtle. This may put off those who love sharp lines with loud colours, but makes for a more practical form factor to live with on a daily basis.

Oxygen OS makes it stand apart from the rest

While putting a Snapdragon 845 chip is mostly easy for any manufacturer, it depends on how each of them treats the software. Most gaming smartphones that I have seen until now rely on highly customised versions of Android with a lot of features baked in - some that you may never need. The ROG Phone, for example, has a dedicated button to free up the RAM from all apps and processes. Nubia's Red Magic gaming phone also features a similar setup. The OnePlus 6T also features a similar feature implemented in a more clever way.

Over the past few years, we have learnt that software optimisation really matters a lot for overall performance. With a heavily customised interface, the phone has to keep certain processes running in the background. This might not have a significant impact on a Snapdragon 845, but it takes away from the efficient functioning of the entire system. OnePlus Oxygen OS is also a customised Android interface, but the tweaking has been done under the hood to boost performance. The skin is lighter on the resources and the 500 optimisations that OnePlus made shows in the overall fluidity. Compared to the older Oneplus6, the 6T easily has an edge despite sporting the same hardware - thanks to the better-optimised software.

Since OnePlus knew that the 6T will be used by gaming aficionados, the company built in subtle additions that add to the overall experience instead of taking away from it. There's a built-in Gaming Mode that's automatically activated once you launch a game. It freezes background applications and optimises the CPU as well as GPU (which is a better way of depicting background process freezing). In addition to that, it also lets the player answer calls via the loudspeaker, gives an option to avoid notifications and a simplified yet unobtrusive way to get text notifications sans the fancy background.

Is the gaming experience smooth?

As I said, the mobile gaming arena hasn't come with games that require dedicated hardware to run certain games smoothly. Developers optimise mobile games to reach out to as many smartphone users as possible. Therefore, a game of PUBG MOBILE with my mates doesn't feel any different than a gaming smartphone. On the OnePlus 6T, an hour's session of PUBG MOBILE doesn't make it lag or stutter in any way. I kept on playing several matches and the phone just took it like nothing. The heat management has also been good, despite the OnePlus 6T lacking a dedicated cooling arrangement. And note that the phone managed to maintain this performance consistently for the past two months - not many phones can achieve that.

The big 6.4-inch AMOLED display makes all games come alive with bright and rich colours. The small waterdrop notch doesn't intrude into the experience, thereby making a joy to enjoy games on the big without any ugly black bars or notches eating up into useful space. The 3700mAh battery with Oxygen OS' optimisation means that a 30-minutes session of PUBG only depleted around 14-15 per cent of battery on an average. This is good statistics and with the Dash Charge, you can be ensured of another 30 minutes of gameplay within 15 minutes at max.