OnePlus 5T or HTC U11+

Liquid_Entity · 23 Nov 2017 at 08:24

Earth[Tera].bin said:
Find the £629 now, it's available to pre-order

I have a wedding to pay for next July. Mehhh I'd bite if I could sell my 6P but it's worth peanuts cos of the issues with battery

Ideally I wanted it on a contract phone, I am mid SIM-ONLY contract with EE for 20gb for £19.99 but if I look for a phone with a contract the data is pitiful, like 5gb and that's for like £30-£50 a month.

I would buy outright but her indoors will find out and wonder how much money I've blown when we have a wedding to pay for.

MrRockliffe · 23 Nov 2017 at 08:24

Liquid_Entity said:
Yeah the U11+ does look the business.

Is the battery bigger in this than the OP5T?

Just shy of 4000 mAh

Liquid_Entity said:
I have a wedding to pay for next July. Mehhh I'd bite if I could sell my 6P but it's worth peanuts cos of the issues with battery

Have you not tried returning it to Huawei?

kona786 · 23 Nov 2017 at 09:24

Matteysan said:
Don't know why people are getting hung up on this. Just because treble is around doesn't mean all companies are magically going to start updating their phones after certain periods. They will still stick to their same crappy timeframes.

If you like stock android then the op5t is the only way to go. Sense is decent & optimised but it's no where near stock as the OP is.

What are the downsides of Treble out interest?

stoosh said:
One massive issue with the 5T if you value updates. It doesn't support Project Treble nor will there be a timeframe in the future to do so.

http://www.techradar.com/news/onepl...t-project-treble-androids-easy-update-feature

It seems no phone other than a select few that are released without oreo from day one will have project Treble.

Is the U11+ confirmed to have it?

Oneplus over the last year have been pretty prompt with updates and patches.

FishLicker · 23 Nov 2017 at 09:48

Shocky-FM said:
You only get colour shifting at extreme viewing angles where you would struggle to read anything regardless.

I get that, but it doesn't really answer why OLED is a must? If a display is good, it's good, whatever tech it may use. What makes OLED a must for you? I have it on my S7 Edge, but it really doesn't bother me to use a good LCD.

Matteysan · 23 Nov 2017 at 09:53

stoosh said:
You're forgetting the security issues that OP have recently had.

I rather have a secure device than deal with a company that cannot offer secure devices from the off.

Lastly OP is not the only stock like phone that is on offer there's also the Nokia 8 which offers way better value for money but not the form factor if you like 18:9 screens and various other Moto phones.

You mention security updates & then recommend Motorola lol. Nokia is a good shout though. Don't get me wrong some of the stuff OP have done in the last year isn't great especially the backdoor stuff but they have been sorting it.
No downsides to project treble Kona but if people think phones will get updated quicker with it then they are living in lala land

kona786 · 23 Nov 2017 at 11:10

I'm optimistic about Treble. I hope it helps.

I can cope with updates within 3 months of release. Anything past that is an annoyance.

Shocky-FM · 23 Nov 2017 at 11:59

FishLicker said:
I get that, but it doesn't really answer why OLED is a must? If a display is good, it's good, whatever tech it may use. What makes OLED a must for you? I have it on my S7 Edge, but it really doesn't bother me to use a good LCD.

It just is, nothing beats those deep blacks for watching video, gaming and images, there is a good reason people spend £1500+ on OLED TV's when you can get a similar LCD panel for half the price.

Rimsy · 23 Nov 2017 at 12:00

Matteysan said:
If you like stock android then the op5t is the only way to go. Sense is decent & optimised but it's no where near stock as the OP is.

Have you used sense recently? It is incredibly close to stock.

FishLicker · 23 Nov 2017 at 12:26

Shocky-FM said:
It just is, nothing beats those deep blacks for watching video, gaming and images, there is a good reason people spend £1500+ on OLED TV's when you can get a similar LCD panel for half the price.

Well I'm one of those that spent 1/3rd on a TV because there was no way on this planet it was worth it to spend 3x the price getting a 10% better picture

Nothing massively wrong with the blacks on it either. Plenty of LCD phones look very nearly as good as the OLED display on some phones. I wouldn't mind betting the U11+ has a better looking screen than either the OP5T or the Pixel 2XL.

I don't deny they are the future mind, just that I'm not sure I'd write off an objectively superior machine just because it doesn't use a certain display tech.

Belloni · 23 Nov 2017 at 13:03

Charlie Bravo said:
Have a look at the Huawei Mate 10 Pro.

I've had one a few days and the battery life is something else. The HTC may look nice but I suspect it'll be like most of their phones... unreliable.

Can't decide between this and the HTC, hmmm!

Matteysan · 23 Nov 2017 at 13:14

Rimsy said:
Have you used sense recently? It is incredibly close to stock.

Admittedly I haven't seen it since the 10, but that wasn't close to stock, it is a lot lighter than it used to be though.

It is a lot closer than Samsung though.

kona786 · 23 Nov 2017 at 13:33

For me it's always been OLED over LCD. The contrast and blacks are just on a different level. For most people though, they won't even notice the difference.

FishLicker · 23 Nov 2017 at 14:01

kona786 said:
For me it's always been OLED over LCD. The contrast and blacks are just on a different level. For most people though, they won't even notice the difference.

I don't disagree, as it happens. I agree OLED displays look better, all things being equal. What I'm saying though, is LCD can be very nearly as good to most people, and if the rest of the specs on the LCD phone were superior (which they are), then I know where my money would be going

Shocky-FM · 23 Nov 2017 at 14:02

FishLicker said:
Well I'm one of those that spent 1/3rd on a TV because there was no way on this planet it was worth it to spend 3x the price getting a 10% better picture Nothing massively wrong with the blacks on it either. Plenty of LCD phones look very nearly as good as the OLED display on some phones. I wouldn't mind betting the U11+ has a better looking screen than either the OP5T or the Pixel 2XL.

I don't deny they are the future mind, just that I'm not sure I'd write off an objectively superior machine just because it doesn't use a certain display tech.

Each to their own but the difference is much more than 10%, also the added benefit of not having to constantly adjust picture quality to find the right balance between brightness, contrast and blacks depending on the content is worth it.

Tried QLED and could never get the balance right, it was always a pain, the technology may improve but these issues will always be there.

lamboman · 23 Nov 2017 at 14:42

Pre-ordered the HTC U11+ for a number of reasons.

Sense UI is a pretty barebones Android overlay, use Nova Launcher and you pretty much have a stock Android device. Same applies for the OnePlus 5T, but on the wrong version of Android. This rules out the likes of Samsung, Huawei etc. immediately.

Oreo out of the box, so Treble support. HTC are usually pretty good with releasing source code. With Treble, I believe the required device specific work for updates boils down to device trees, the kernel, and vendor blobs. The vendor/device implementation is stable across Android versions and the HALs are now standardised, with only the architecture-agnostic (i.e. consistent across all devices regardless of SoC) Android OS components being updated. This means that for fairly 'standard' hardware (i.e. common phone components, not additional features such as Edge Sense), a single Android OS release could be used without modification on an entire range of devices, as the kernel, blobs, drivers etc. are not changed in any way across Android versions. This is applied in practice by the Vendor Test Suite (https://source.android.com/devices/tech/vts/), a common AOSP build on which all tests must pass for the device to be approved. Whether manufacturers bother to update their devices is a different matter, but we could be at the point where the development focus for third-party distributions such as LineageOS could now be on re-implementing OEM features (such as Edge Sense) rather than just getting devices up and running. Additionally, with 6 years of Linux LTS kernel support, almost the entire software stack can be kept up to date and secure on virtually any device (the only hole being vendor blobs, but the isolated, independent proces HAL model should at least help with that, see here: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/07/shut-hal-up.html). It is quite obvious that the likes Samsung and OnePlus are avoiding implementing Treble to push more sales of future devices.

Huge battery.

IPS display. It seems that many manufacturers still struggle with calibration. The modes can be called 'Vibrant' or 'Saturated' or whatever, if they aren't accurately representing colours, they're incorrectly calibrated. Additionally, until all manufacturers have OLED displays that are as good as the iPhone X's with regards to (largely absent) colour shifting/superior viewing angles, I'd rather use proven technology. Also, 1080p with a PenTile matrix pixel layout isn't enough IMO.

Seemingly decent enough speakers.

Great camera.

Expandable storage and USB 3.0 (vs. USB 2.0 in the 5T).

At current prices, I think it's decent value compared to the Pixel 2 XL (my previous choice). Almost S8 pricing, which I think is great value when you compare the pretty mediocre software experience of the S8 (in my opinion based on it being my work phone).

Really depends what you care about. The only hardware advantage the Pixel 2 XL has is the Pixel Visual Core, not really worth the current £270 price difference for my usage. Daydream is also not of interest.

Personally wouldn't buy the 5T at all purely because of OnePlus, their recent security issues, and their lack of commitment/breaking of commitments to updates. If you don't care about that, probably the one to go for.

Liquid_Entity · 23 Nov 2017 at 14:59

MrRockliffe said:
Have you not tried returning it to Huawei?

I tried Google and Huawei and because it has damage to the rear glass they won't accept it. I bought some new glass to replace the back but stupidly because I spoke to Google/Huawei already they know the phones been reported as damaged so even if I sent it now they'd invalidate warranty. Stupid me thinking a bit of glass cracked would totally invalidate a warranty even though the phone works fine, it's the battery drain issue that's well known and they've owned up too. Should still be covered in my opinion

Goose · 23 Nov 2017 at 15:25

Very slightly off topic but does anyone know if the U11+ will be available from amazon at any point? The standard U11 is but according to Techadviser the U11+ will only be available direct from HTC.

stoosh · 23 Nov 2017 at 16:09

kona786 said:
Is the U11+ confirmed to have it?

Oneplus over the last year have been pretty prompt with updates and patches.

Apparently all devices with Oreo running out of the box have the framework to run Project Treble. Whether HTC has enabled Project Treble is unknown.

True that OP have been speedy with updates it's just disappointing that they didn't release the OP5T with Oreo from the get-go.

stoosh · 23 Nov 2017 at 16:11

Matteysan said:
You mention security updates & then recommend Motorola lol. Nokia is a good shout though.

My bad it was a lapse in concentration..I shouldn't have included Motorola

lol

Matteysan · 23 Nov 2017 at 17:56

stoosh said:
My bad it was a lapse in concentration..I shouldn't have included Motorola lol

Hehe sorry if i seem a little rude with my replies.

If it was before Lenovo took over I'd have recommended Motorola all day long but not anymore. Seems as though Treble will help custom development https://www.xda-developers.com/stock-android-oreo-huawei-mate-9-project-treble/