Oneplus 9RT

I see no reviews of this phone on Amazon so far. Is mine the First? Looks like not many were interested in this phone after all! 😀 As usual I end up purchasing not so popular things like I did in 2015 by purchasing Samsung Galaxy S5.I ordered my Oneplus 9RT from Oneplus Store app as soon as it went on sale because there was a small extra discount on old Oneplus phones. It looked like a good deal but when I checked the Amazon website, there were already card offers of about Rs.4000 off using SBI and a few other not so popular cards. I have only HDFC credit card which had no offers.But I still chose to purchase it from Oneplus store because I was getting Rs.500 off on OnePlus Band. I decided to try that too as I own Oneplus Buds Z (See! Getting into the Ecosystem). Another offer was 6 months free Spotify premium (not available to those who completed Spotify free trial or previously purchased Spotify premium as per their T&C. Do re-check if you are buying from there).Coming to the Holistic overview of the Phone: I LOVE IT BECAUSE OF ITS AESTHETICS AND OVERALL PACKAGE. And if you are coming from budget phones then this is a good upgrade. It ticks so many boxes. If you are downsizing from a popular flagship of yesteryears, then I don’t think it would make much difference.This review is going to be a bit long may be. I’ll try to keep it short and crisp.AESTHETICS:Hacker Black colour is superb! I just love it. Combined with an aluminium frame, it gives a truly premium look. It reminds me of the days when I purchased Oneplus 3T just for the sake of its Gunmetal colour. Wish they had brought that colour back!No matter how good the design is, most people like me use it with a case on it. Case is good too. No complaints there but I would say you will need to keep cleaning the phone once in a week because there is a significant chance that the dust will damage the phone.It is a slim and tall phone I would say than compared to Xiaomi phones that are usually like wide shouldered body builders.BUTTONS:I am writing regarding this because in one of the YouTube reviews, it was mentioned that the slider button was a bit slippery but with my phone it is fine. It is not as much slippery but does the job fine enough.The other buttons are great. Good feedback so far.BATTERY:Warp Charge! few days ago I plugged this phone at 7:30am when it had 20% charge left. I went to brush my teeth and wash my face which took around 6 mins. I came back and it was 7:36 am and the charge was at 43% and then at 7:43am, it was at 60% and that felt gooddddd!! Unplugged at 7:54am when it was around 97%.I would like to mention that when you connect to multiple Bluetooth devices, you’ll see the battery draining a bit fast but it offsets that with 65W fast charge. Works for me.If you are using it very moderately then it can last even a full day without any issue.CAMERA:REAR CAM: I added some sample images. I would say rear camera is good for casual photography and reels too, I guess. If you are expecting the same like a flagship phone, then it would not meet your expectations. But definitely good for its price. On good lighting conditions the shots are good. Zoom in and you would see some noise in the photos.Macro camera works nicely. But the catch is that you need to adjust the exposure based on your needs and it will capture some good photos too. I liked the Night mode too. At least the pictures that I captured in the night look moderately good.Even though it has the UI that is based out of ColorOS, for me it did not feel so cluttered.Hasselblad branding is not present in this phone. I wish they had it optimized for this phone too. Don’t know if it would make so much difference or not.FRONT CAM: 32mp would’ve been a good upgrade. Pictures from the Front cam were okay-ish in my opinion. There was a little bit of Smoothening effect on the beard and overall image too.Have been seeing Xiaomi 11T pro performing a lot better in terms of camera.DISPLAY:Oh Man! 6.62inch screen size with 120Hz refresh rate is a bliss coming from a 60hz phone. The usual human greed in me to get the best things in less price desired for a 2k Display resolution 😀 but this one has an FHD+ display. It is crisp and accurate is what I feel. White colour is a little bit on the cooler side than the warmer tone of Redmi K20 pro that I had. Overall, it is a great display being in the segment of FHD+ resolution. Good colours but I wish it had a tad bit of more lowest brightness level (for privacy and night time usage. IYKWIM😉).But the thing that I loved the most about my K20 pro was that it had pop-up camera and no camera hole on the display compared to this one that has a punch hole display with the front camera on top left. Got used to it pretty fast.GAMING:Gaming on this screen is awesome! I played BGMI and it was crispy smooth because of the 120hz refresh rate and 600hz touch sampling. When you play in phones with 120hz refresh rate and higher touch sampling rate, I noticed that, as the screen gets wider when viewed horizontally it becomes comfortable to shoot and view the enemies. Although at the beginning you’ll need to get used to the smoother screen, eventually you can score better than what you used to in the old phone.BGMI starts at HD GRAPHICS – HDR frame rate by default. Was able to change it to HDR-EXTREME while in the gameplay.The frame rate in HD-HDR was around 30fps and GPU was at 20% of its usage. This setting was not so conducive for the game play. Things got better when I started playing in HDR-EXTREME. Frame rates were at 52-54 and GPU usage was at 35-40%.Grass was rendering better as I ran across in the game. Shooting became better as well. Temperature hovered at 39 degrees as per the game statistics.Gaming at UltraHD pack and Ultra framerate resulted in 100% GPU usage and frame rates of about 40fps. I would say it was not as smooth as the previous settings and also wouldn’t recommend using it at that level because, GPU was maxing out.The ideal setting was Smooth and Extreme which resulted in framerate of 55fps and sometimes 57 too. GPU usage was at 60% most of the time. This was altogether a better setting for the overall gameplay. I would recommend this.By the way, I plugged the phone to charge while gaming and charging speeds dropped. It wasn’t at the same speed as you would normally see when you are not gaming. Even this way the temperatures didn’t touch 40 degrees (as per the in-game statistics).HEATING:I remember that last year some flagships of Oneplus had higher temperatures but this one has optimum heating levels while charging and even during gaming. It gets warm but not to the point that it would make a huge difference.PROCESSOR and RAM:It is a Flagship processor of last year so no issues there. 8GB ram does most of the day to day job very well. But some apps won’t be there in the recent apps if you play a game and then open the recent apps.I think in that regard the ram management is very poor. I guess a software update may be able to fix this but let us see. Anyways, apps to apps is fine enough.What else is left?My word document shows that I’ve written 1304 words prior to this line. I need to conclude now I guess.Hold on, just few more I want to add.SOUND AND MUSIC:I wanted to talk about this from the start. Speaker set up is a stereo one. It is loud and good.The real deal that hit me was DOLBY ATMOS!! I usually listen to Music at 50% volume with my Boat rocker 510 wireless headphones on. But when I am low on the mood or when I feel like it is time to pump myself up, I turn up the volume to max for few minutes.I love the phones that can push the limits of Bluetooth headphones. This is one of them. I don’t know about too many phones but one thing is that based on tuned equalizer with DOLBY Atmos on, it gives me an awesome output in music. Some bass effects were significantly enhanced. Volume was higher too.Even in watching movies, it is so much fun. I don’t know if it is because of Bluetooth 5.2 or Dolby or this phone in particular but I am loving this part. Even my laptop that is 10th Gen I7 from Dell, doesn’t give out this level of output when it comes to wireless music neither in watching videos.Well well, I’ve crossed 1500+ words, so I’ll conclude here:I would suggest you to go to a Mobile Store and see what is important for you and decide accordingly. But for an average middle-class consumer, this is a good phone. I don’t know if Oneplus 10R is on the cards or not but it is definitely going to cross 40K mark or may be 45k too.The best competitor for this phone so far is the MI 11T PRO. I was not eyeing on that phone because I needed a change especially in the UI. I found the MIUI to be very boxy and a bit cluttered. Sure, there are customizations but I’ve been using that for the last two years and got very bored. The OS on this one is good.The biggest backdrop about this phone is that it comes with Android 11 where as Android 12 would’ve been better since only 3 software updates will be provided by the manufacturer. I wish they re-consider this.Comparing the Camera with Xiaomi 11T pro, I’ve seen it to be better than this and it has better charging speeds too. On top of that, it is cheaper.A good overall phone with aesthetically pleasing design is what I preferred. A friend of mine who purchased his iPhone recently, loved the black colour on this phone. I am sure you’ll have to be content with whatever your decision may be but it doesn’t disappoint.Phew! Time to close. This is my first phone review and crossed 1750+ words. Guess I should start blogging now! LOL. I will dream tonight about Phone manufacturers sending their phones and asking me to write reviews here. LOL (Again).Thank you for your time in reading this far. I hope you liked it. Peace!

Pros:- Phone is truly a flagship device.It has all that one needs in it. An added advantage of OIS in camera!Cons:- Phone heats up a little when we play BGMI or high end games but also cools down rapidly.Battery drains bit fast…Hope OnePlus fixes otherwise an Excellent device