Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “OnePlus 6T Revisited: Better than Pixel 3?”.
Hey, what’s up guys mkbhd here back with a bit of a different type of video in the midst of all the galaxy s10 hype. So last year i did my smartphone awards for 2018 and that’s always a mix of uh, a bunch of objective reasoning, which phones are best plus a little bit of opinion injected in there for some discretion as well. But what i didn’t have in that awards was a favorite smartphone of the year to use category, but hindsight 2020. I kind of think my favorite phones of last year to use that i ended up using most often came down to it – probably a toss-up between pixel, 3 xl and oneplus 6t, and there were plenty of other good phones that year.
But a lot of you’ve noticed in the past couple videos when i’m just using whatever daily phone. It is it’s sort of switched back and forth between oneplus 6t and pixel and oneplus and pixel again, that’s because in real life i was getting fed up with one and switching to the other and getting like missing the other one and switching back and then going Back and forth, it’s kind of a blessing and a curse having both of them available to me. So why was i switching back and forth between these two main phones? So often for me? Really, it had two major things to do with the pixel, and it’s not the notch.
That would be the performance and the camera so to step away from the oneplus. For a second on the pixel, the camera is a plus that’s. First of all, the pixel 3 camera consistently takes the best quality photos of any smartphone. I’Ve ever tried so far and it’s kind of not even close, but that’s a big, but the performance issues, including even in the camera app itself, have stuck with the pixel from last year. So here’s the thing there really are actually two best cameras. There’S the camera that takes the absolute best quality images and then there’s the best overall camera experience, which is a combination of image, quality and speed and a bunch of other things.
So pixel keeps for me winning best camera quality. It’S that best camera – and i love that about it. But i would give best camera experience to some other phones, the iphone for its speed or for its video or for samsung for its wide angle that it just added or the mate 20 pro all kinds of others do the experience better, especially with speed.
So that was what was so disappointing, so i’ve had all kinds of various lag and performance issues with this pixel after a couple of months, which is disappointing for a second year in a row, especially when google makes this phone, i mean you would think they have All sorts of control over it, but when i have some other apps open or when things like music apps are working in the background or gps, apps etc, one of the early bugs would be. It would just quit that background app. Whenever i open the camera and that bug’s since been fixed, but there are still issues that are not totally gone, i’m thinking, maybe four gigs of ram, actually really isn’t enough, so the oneplus the 6t. This is the mclaren edition by the way that i’ve been using for a couple weeks, and i really like it. The performance has been fantastic, a plus performance, actually, it’s the fastest android phone i’ve ever used, but and that’s another big, but the camera not so great. So if the, if the pixel had a better performance more consistently, this would be my far and away favorite phone or if the oneplus had a better camera, then this would be by far and away my favorite phone. It kind of comes down to that feeling that there’s just never any perfect phone, so the dilemma is pixel, a plus camera c plus performance or oneplus 6t, a plus performance c plus camera, which do you choose, and for me that was why i kept going back And forth now i got to give some credit to the google camera apk. For those wondering it does make a difference, so you can install what’s essentially a port of the google camera app on the oneplus 6t instead of the oneplus camera app and using that turns out, it’s really good. It gets you better, dynamic range, better contrast and exposure and even white balance more consistently and even better detail and better low light shots.
And then you get night sight built in which works pretty well too, but it’s still nowhere near the pixel’s actual camera. In the detail, department and overall image quality is still clearly going to the pixel. I mean maybe it’s unfair, to compare it to the pixels camera, because nothing quite matches up to the pixel, but by itself this app brings the camera from a c plus to a b b plus so i’ll link it below, because i think every oneplus 6t owner Should know about it now, that’s, of course not the only difference.
Here’S some thoughts. I’Ve had on some other little things between the two over the past couple months. The display on the pixel 3 is definitely better than on the oneplus, but it’s not massively different enough to make a huge difference to me.
You would think for me, you know a pixel peeper. A larger higher resolution display would automatically take the advantage over the 6t, but then again the 6t has a way less obtrusive notch. But honestly, at this point neither of the notches bother me that much so the display was a net zero.
It wasn’t a deal breaker at all for me in either direction, but for you it might be different matter of fact. Most people will agree that the oneplus 6t has one of the notches. That’S easiest on the eyes for any phone to come out last year and it wasn’t too weird interfacing with most apps.
It fits neatly in the notification bar and didn’t get in the way of icons. So if you’re one of those people that really hates notches, then that could actually be a big swinging point for you. Build quality is also different between these two in materials and construction of these two phones. The batteries are different sizes. One of them is water resistant. The other isn’t one of them has wireless charging and the other doesn’t, and that turned into one of the main things i really missed about the oneplus 6t. Is it not having wireless charging and a lot of other phones coming out now? Just generally, you kind of expect a flagship to have wireless charging, and i missed it now. I know they love their dash charging and their fast charging is super good, but i have wireless chargers in all kinds of convenient places and it was just really disappointing to not be able to use them as i use the oneplus 6t. So that’s the one thing i miss and now it looks like oneplus is probably also not going to have wireless charging in the oneplus 7, at least according to recent reports, also pretty disappointing. Then the speaker, of course, i got ta, give that edge to the pixel as well.
You know, anytime, you try to get rid of bezels. You basically have to sacrifice speakers, but the one upside to the pixel having some of the thickest bezels in the game. Is it still has huge stereo front-facing speakers, while everyone else’s, including one pluses, are pretty average at best and then there’s the operating system so oxygen os versus pixels android and, as i said in my review of the phones, pixel’s android is smarter. It has more useful features like call screening and the now playing song identification and top shot and night sight in the camera, etc, etc.
The list goes on, but oxygen os isn’t exactly slacking with features either it’s it’s fast and then it’s got things like the shelf. It has dark mode, it has dash charging it’s clean and it also gets frequent software updates it’s ahead of most of the rest of the skin phones, even if it’s right behind the pixel, so it’s got lots of useful stuff on its own. So what it really comes down to and the point of this video is, i really enjoyed using each of these phones in the respective times that i use them for different reasons. But the question of is the oneplus 6t, this one better than the pixel 3 xl.
Objectively, no, it really isn’t actually like. If you look at it on paper, you get wireless charging, you get water resistance, you get a better camera, you get a better display. You get all these exclusive software features better, build it’s a better phone than the oneplus 6t, but the experience of using the 6t was often better than the experience of using the 3., which is even more impressive because of the price difference. The 200 plus dollar difference between these two phones, which is even more if it isn’t the mclaren edition, which, by the way, just has two extra gigs of ram. It’S not a crazy, huge difference in specs, but i have enjoyed this phone so for those asking all. Seven or eight of you wondering why i keep switching back and forth it’s the performance that keeps pushing me away from the pixel and then the camera that keeps pushing me back easily.
My next favorite phone to use is oneplus 6t because it’s got all these amazing features and it’s got excellent performance. But then i go to take pictures and i remember how good this camera is and then i switch back and then i’m disappointed by the performance again, and so you can see how that vicious cycle’s played out either way, we’ll see oneplus 7 and pixel 4. This year, in 2019, along with a bunch of other phones, i mean this is an exciting year for phones. It sort of turned out for those who are asking. If we’ve reached peak smartphone, now we have a folding phone launching this year.
We saw all that stuff at mobile world congress and then we have new patents for a motorola folding phone and all these other flagships we haven’t even expected. Yet. The note 10 is totally under the radar.
Uh it’ll be a good year for phones, but let me know what you’re looking forward to we’ve got plenty of videos coming up on all that stuff, including of course, the s10 review. So let me know what you guys are into either way thanks for watching this one talk to you guys later: peace, .