The OnePlus 5T was released earlier this week and became the fastest selling OnePlus smartphone within just six hours of its launch. Despite the positive reviews it has garnered so far, the OnePlus 5T’s camera performance hasn’t lived up to expectations, which is why it will be receiving some software updates.
OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei announced in the official OnePlus forums that the OnePlus 5T will be receiving an update that will improve its camera performance. More specifically, the company is planning to improve the camera’s performance in low lighting conditions. Pei said that they are especially planning to improve detail and sharpness in low light photos.
Additionally, Pei said that they are working on improving selfies taken with the OnePlus 5T’s front-facing camera. He said that the upcoming update will improve selfies by giving images a more natural exposure. Lastly, the “beautification” mode will only be turned on by default in certain markets in Asia going forward.
“Early feedback has come in praising the new screen, build quality, and Dash Charge. In addition, the camera has received a lot of positive attention around its improved low light performance and portrait mode,” Pei said. “As people have started receiving their OnePlus 5T orders today, we’ve also begun seeing feedback from our community in addition to that from the media. And by now you should know what Never Settle means — upon seeing this, we wanted to iterate and improve as soon as we possibly could.”
Pei confirmed that the company will start testing the camera update with a private group next week. The public rollout of the camera software update will be available sometime in early December. Unfortunately, Pei didn’t specify an exact release date for the OnePlus 5T software update.
The OnePlus 5T is the first Android smartphone from the company to feature a 6-inch 18:9 aspect ratio AMOLED display and a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. Like the original OnePlus 5, the 5T comes with dual cameras on the back but with one major difference: the secondary camera on the 5T is no longer a telephoto zoom lens, but rather a regular wide angle lens that’s been designed to take photos in low light.
The OnePlus 5T is able to automatically switch to the secondary camera when it detects that the subject being captured is in low lighting conditions. OnePlus said that it’s using what’s called as “intelligent pixel technology,” which merges four pixels into one to reduce noise in dark images.
Unfortunately for OnePlus, some reviewers are saying that the dual cameras on the 5T are actually a downgrade from the OnePlus 5. Mashable said in its review that images taken with the OnePlus 5T produced “extremely soft photos” with “overly extreme” image processing that smeared images that destroys sharpness and details. The Verge was a little more forgiving in its review saying that the cameras on the 5T are definitively better than what’s on the 5, but it also said that “it’s still mediocre by the standards of the wider phone market.”
The OnePlus 5T will receive a software update in December that improves its camera performance when taking photos in low light.