Will the OnePlus 10T become a top gaming phone?

Yesterday, OnePlus set a firm date – Wednesday, August 3 – for the grand unveiling in New York of its next flagship smartphone, the 10T 5G. As Verge reports, it’s rumored to feature a cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, “a do-it-all kind of processor” that’s “largely aimed at gaming-oriented mobile devices.”

This upgrade theoretically puts the new phone in a higher tier than OnePlus’ previous 2022 flagship device, the 10 Pro, which I’ve been playing and testing on for some time now. The smartphone has been going through its paces for several months, and as a gaming device I consider the 10 Pro to be very impressive, but not without drawbacks. This is in direct contrast to the giant Samsung phones I’ve grown accustomed to, and we’ll get into that comparison here.

The 6.7-inch screen size on the 10 Pro is a definite downgrade from something like the 6.8-inch Galaxy S22 Ultra (or Note20 Ultra 5G before that), a great gaming phone at full share. But after playing a lot on the OnePlus 10 Pro – and I never thought I’d admit it – I think I’d rather play on the 10 Pro’s equally sharp (albeit significantly more compact) adaptive LTPO 120Hz OLED display. .

Colors and visuals are just as vibrant as on Samsung’s 2022 flagship device, but holding OnePlus’ phone made long mobile gaming sessions slightly easier to tolerate. I feel like I’m slowly moving away from massive phones when it comes to gaming. The volume just isn’t very conducive to avoiding hand fatigue.

The 10 Pro has a handy in-game overlay that tracks important stats when playing apps, such as CPU temperature, battery life, frame rate and time. There’s even a voice modulator for chat, an orientation lock, a screen recorder for gathering gameplay clips, plus a game focus mode that blocks everything from notifications to calls and more. small annoyances.

You can also switch between performance settings like Low Power Mode, Balanced Mode, and Pro Gamer Mode, all of which offer different benefits in terms of image quality, heating, and battery life.

I have to mention that I played with a silver pair of OnePlus Buds Pro, and they delivered really good crisp sound. I don’t find them as comfortable as some Samsung offerings, but the audio quality is definitely there.

My Emerald Forest (AKA green) review unit has a paltry 8GB of RAM, which I find to be a bare minimum these days when it comes to mobile gaming and multitasking. It also has 128GB of internal storage with no option for SD cards, which is a shame, but seems to be the norm these days when it comes to flagships, unfortunately. Additionally, the 10 Pro has a 5,000mAh battery and 65W fast charging, both of which are useful for gaming.

I found the battery life to be fair when playing on high graphics settings, as it can drain pretty quickly under the right circumstances. Luckily, the ridiculous 65W charging brick brings everything back up to speed (and temperature) in no time.

Overall, games run very well on the 10 Pro, but not flawlessly. The phone can get quite warm when gaming for long periods of time, especially with demanding titles like Diablo Immortal and Genshin Impact. During the latter, the phone’s CPU reached over 37°C with the best graphics quality enabled. Additionally, I was experiencing fairly large frame drops from 29 and 30 all the way up to 16 in certain areas of the map, sometimes with jarring multi-second freezes.

That being said, I think the 10 Pro performs best on moderate graphics settings, and the heat, while noticeable, isn’t terribly bothersome, especially when using a phone case. That’s why I’m particularly interested in how the upcoming 10T will perform in terms of gaming.

Will the potentially upgraded processor make OnePlus’ new flagship a gaming contender? I just hope the review units come with more than the barebones 8GB of RAM I experienced with the 10 Pro. You can buy this particular phone with up to 12GB of memory, an amount that has become a borderline necessity for high-end gaming and productivity. We all used to laugh at phones with lots of RAM, but now it’s becoming more of a norm.

As it stands, the 10 Pro will be more than enough for the needs of the average mobile gamer. More hardcore gamers might have issues with heat and throttling, but we’ll have to wait until August and see if this next successor fixes any of those issues.

Disclosure: OnePlus has provided a review product for coverage purposes.