Will The OnePlus 10T Emerge As A Top-Tier Gaming Phone?

Games Will The OnePlus 10T Emerge As A Top-Tier Gaming Phone? Mitch Wallace Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I write about gaming hardware, software and news. New! Follow this author to improve your content experience.

Got it! Jul 21, 2022, 04:01pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin OnePlus 10 Pro Credit: Mitch Wallace Yesterday, OnePlus set a firm date — Wednesday, August 3 — for the grand New York-based unveiling of its forthcoming flagship smartphone, the 10T 5G. As the Verge reports , it’s rumored to come equipped with a cutting edge Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, “a pull-out-all-the-stops kind of processor” which is “largely intended for mobile devices geared toward gaming. ” This upgrade theoretically places the new phone in a tier above OnePlus’ previous 2022 flagship device, the 10 Pro, which I’ve been gaming on and testing for some time now.

It’s been several months of putting the smartphone through its paces, and as a gaming device, I consider the 10 Pro to be very impressive, though not without drawbacks. This is in direct contrast to the behemoth 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 the Note20 Ultra 5G before that), an excellent gaming phone in its own right. But after playing extensively on the OnePlus 10 Pro — and I’d never thought I’d admit this — I think I prefer gaming on the 10 Pro’s just-as-crisp (though definitely more compact) adaptive 120Hz LTPO OLED display.

Colors and visuals feel just as vibrant as on Samsung’s 2022 flagship device, but holding OnePlus’ phone has 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 bulk simply isn’t very conducive to avoiding hand fatigue.

The 10 Pro does feature a handy pull-down in-game overlay that tracks important stats while playing apps, like the processor’s temperature, battery life, framerate and time. There’s even a voice modulator for chat, an orientation lock, a screen recorder to gather gameplay clips, as well as a game focus mode that blocks everything from notifications to calls and other small annoyances. MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry You can also toggle between performance settings like low power mode, balanced mode and pro gamer mode, which all provide different perks when it comes to image quality, heating and battery life.

I should mention that I’ve been gaming with a silver pair of OnePlus Buds Pro, and they’ve provided some really nice crisp sound. I don’t find them as comfortable as some of Samsung’s offerings, but the audio quality is definitely there. My Emerald Forest (AKA green) review unit has a paltry 8GB of RAM, something I find to be a bare minimum these days when it comes to mobile gaming and multitasking.

It’s also got 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 features a 5,000 mAh battery and snappy 65W charging, both of which come in handy when gaming. I found the battery life to be fair when playing at high graphics settings, as it can drain quite quickly under the right circumstances.

Luckily, the ridiculous 65W charging brick brings everything back up to speed (and temperature) in short order. Overall, games play very well on the 10 Pro, though not perfectly by any means. The phone can get quite hot when gaming for extended periods of time, especially with demanding titles like Diablo Immortal and Genshin Impact .

During the latter, the phone’s CPU was reaching upwards of 37°C with the highest graphics quality enabled. Also, I was experiencing pretty significant frame drops, from 29 and 30 down to as low as 16 in certain areas of the map, sometimes with jarring multi-second freezes. That being said, I think the 10 Pro performs best using moderate graphics settings, and the heat, while noticeable, isn’t terribly distracting, especially when using a phone case.

This is why I’m especially interested in seeing how the upcoming 10T performs in terms of gaming. Will the potentially upgraded processor make OnePlus’ newest flagship more of a gaming contender? I just hope review units ship with more than the barebones 8GB of RAM that I’ve experienced with the 10 Pro. You can purchase that 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 more than suffice for the average mobile gamer’s needs. More hardcore gamers might take issue with the heat and throttling, but we’ll have to wait until August and see if this upcoming successor will iron out any of these kinks.

Disclosure: OnePlus provided review product for coverage purposes. Mitch Wallace Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.