OnePlus 10T vs iQOO 9T: Which is the best premium budget flagship of the two?

The budget flagship segment has not seen many launches as smartphone brands are focusing on smartphones in the premium mid-range segment. Recently we saw many smartphone brands launch their flagship smartphones with the popular Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset which was aimed to deliver flagship-level performance and gaming.

But the like the Snapdragon 888, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset also had thermal throttling issues which resulted in slight overheating and poor battery life. So later this year, Qualcomm came with its newer chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset which is basically a good upgrade over its predecessor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 as it fixes the thermal throttling issues and also provides good battery life.

So recently, both manufacturers iQOO and OnePlus brought in their respective premium budget flagships with this powerful chipset. There is the OnePlus 10T (Review) and the iQOO 9T (Review) which bring some very good specifications for their price. However, there are a lot of differences between both smartphones. So which one would you consider and why? 

Let’s find out in the full comparison.

In terms of build and design, both the OnePlus 10T and the iQOO 9T sport a premium glass sandwich design but they look very different. On the back, the iQOO 9T has a dual-tone design where you can see that the first half of the back has a glossy design with a design pattern that looks attractive and the second half of the back has a carbon fiber matte finish that does not catch fingerprints or smudges.

The back is flatter and the camera module is also not as protruding as on the OnePlus 10T. Talking about the camera module, the iQOO 9T has a rectangular camera module that consists of a triple camera setup with a LED flashlight whereas the OnePlus 10T has a rectangular camera module with triple cameras and a LED flashlight all of which are round in shape.

The back of the OnePlus 10T has a glossy finish that does catch fingerprints and smudges but the back is well molded around the sides as it curves gently to the side frames thus making it easier to hold in hand compared to the iQOO 9T that does have a flat back which does not curve to the sides much and to the frame. Both the iQOO 9T and the OnePlus 10T lack support for IP rating which is slightly disappointing.

But the iQOO 9T does get an IP52 rating which makes it splash and dust resistant to some extent whereas the OnePlus 10T gets some P2i coating at the back that can handle splashes of water. The iQOO 9T weighs around 206grams and the OnePlus 10T weighs around 204grams so both do feel slightly heavier while holding them in hand. Around the sides, the iQOO 9T is slightly slimmer than the OnePlus 10T.

Around the sides, the iQOO 9T has a premium metallic frame that feels solid compared to the polycarbonate frame on the OnePlus 10T. Both these sides hold the power button and the volume buttons but here the OnePlus 10T lacks an alert slider which has been the signature feature of OnePlus smartphones to control different sound profiles.

On the top, both smartphones get a secondary noise-canceling microphone but the iQOO 9T gets an additional IR Blaster which is helpful in controlling various devices. At the bottom, both smartphones have a USB Type-C port, a dual SIM card slot, a primary microphone, and a loudspeaker grille. Neither of them has support for a microSD card slot for storage expansion nor a 3.5mm headphone jack. 

On the front, both the iQOO 9T and the OnePlus 10T have a punch-hole display on the front with minimum bezels around the sides but the bezel at the bottom is slightly thicker on the iQOO 9T compared to the OnePlus 10T but the difference between both is very minimal. Overall, the build and design feel excellent on both smartphones but the iQOO 9T feels better than the OnePlus 10T.

The OnePlus 10T sports a 6.7-inches display and on the other hand, the iQOO 9T sports a 6.78-inches display where both of them have a Full HD+(1080×1920 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. As these are AMOLED displays, the color saturation, and viewing angles are very good. However, the colors are slightly punchier on the OnePlus 10T as it has a 10-bit panel.

The iQOO 9T, on the other hand, has an 8-bit panel but still, the difference is very marginal. Both of them have a 120Hz refresh rate which makes everything smoother. Both of them do not have an LTPO panel but do come with an Adaptive refresh rate where both the smartphones can switch to 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz refresh rates depending on the content on the display. 

Both of them get a 360Hz touch sampling rate which provides faster touch responses during gaming. The OnePlus 10T can reach an instant touch response of 1000Hz whereas the iQOO 9T can achieve a 1200Hz touch response. The display on the OnePlus 10T is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 whereas the iQOO 9T has Schott Xensation Alpha protection on the front. 

In terms of display brightness, the display on the iQOO 9T can reach a massive peak brightness of 1500nits compared to 950nits of brightness on the OnePlus 10T. So as a result, the display is slightly brighter on the iQOO 9T compared to the OnePlus 10T. The display on both smartphones can be either set to a warmer or a cooler tone and you can different color profiles to choose from.

Since both these displays are AMOLED, they have an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that is accurate and fast. There is support for HDR on YouTube on both and also both get support for Widevine L1 and Netflix can stream HDR graphics on both smartphones. Overall, both these displays are great for media consumption. 

Both the OnePlus 10T and the iQOO 9T sport the latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset which is based on a 4nm efficient process. In terms of daily tasks, both smartphones can handle all the tasks with ease whether it is switching between applications, playing games, rendering videos, etc. All the games like Apex Legends, BGMI, etc run at the highest graphics settings on both smartphones.

In terms of gaming, both can easily run all the games without any frame drops or stutters and also both get a dedicated Game Mode which increases the CPU and GPU speed for smooth gaming but the Game Mode on the iQOO 9T has some extra features like 4D vibration motor that provides great haptics and also frame interpolation for increasing the frame rate during gaming.

After long hours of gaming, both of them did not feel much hot as both also get a dedicated vapor cooling system that dissipates heat faster. In terms of network connectivity, both have support for good carrier aggregation and in terms of 5G support, the OnePlus 10T has support for 11 bands of 5G compared to 9 bands of 5G on the iQOO 9T.

In terms of CPU throttling tests, both smartphones could achieve a sustained performance of around 75-80 percent which is very good but the OnePlus 10T maintains a good consistency compared to the iQOO 9T. But when it comes to benchmarks, though both smartphones are powered by the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, the iQOO 9T scores slightly higher than the OnePlus 10T.

It is because OnePlus has slightly underclocked the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset on the OnePlus 10T to prevent thermal throttling. The OnePlus 10T is available in 8/12/16GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128/256GB UFS 3.1 storage and on the other hand, the iQOO 9T is available in 8/12GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128/256GB UFS 3.1 storage. 

Overall, in terms of performance, both smartphones are excellent for usage but when it comes to gaming, the iQOO 9T holds a slight edge over the OnePlus 10T.

The OnePlus 10T runs on OxygenOS 12.1 based on Android 12 whereas the iQOO 9T runs on FuntouchOS 12 based on Android 12. Both user interfaces feel smooth for usage and both of them provide a lot of customizations like you can change icon shape and size, different wallpapers and themes are present, and you can also change different styles for Always-On display and fingerprint animation on both.

But one area where the OxygenOS holds the clear edge is that there is no bloatware present except for Netflix whereas the iQOO 9T has a couple of pre-installed applications which can be uninstalled but you get a lot of notifications from the Browser application which is very annoying. The FuntouchOS still does not have Android 12 features like Privacy Dashboard and support for widgets on the home screen.

The OxygenOS feels very polished and you get all the Android 12 features like Privacy Dashboard, you can which applications are using the microphone, camera and location. In terms of software updates, both the OnePlus 10T and the iQOO 9T are assured of another three years of AndroidOS updates and four years of security patches. Overall, OxygenOS is a better user interface compared to FuntouchOS.

The OnePlus 10T sports a 50MP f/1.9 Samsung GN5 sensor for the main camera, a 12MP f/2.0 telephoto camera, and a 13MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera whereas the 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX766 sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera. On the front, both the OnePlus 10T and the iQOO 9T sport a 16MP f/2.4 camera.

The images from both smartphones come out with good details and look sharp but the OnePlus 10T has slightly sharper details compared to the iQOO 9T, but the dynamic range is slightly better than the OnePlus 10T. The colors come out natural on the OnePlus 10T whereas the colors come out slightly oversaturated on the iQOO 9T. The noise is slightly less on the iQOO 9T compared to the OnePlus 10T.

In terms of HDR performance, the iQOO 9T has slightly better details whereas, on the other hand, there is a lot of oversharpening in the background in the images shot by the OnePlus 10T.  At night, both cameras do an excellent job in terms of details that look sharper and dynamic range but the exposure is well maintained in the iQOO 9T, and also the images look brighter compared to the OnePlus 10T.

However, the colors look slightly oversaturated on the iQOO 9T whereas the OnePlus 10T takes images with natural colors but there is slight oversharpening present which is not the case with iQOO 9T. With the Night Mode turned on, the iQOO 9T has the edge over the OnePlus 10T in terms of dynamic range and exposure is also much better.

In terms of ultrawide camera, the iQOO 9T has a larger 13MP ultrawide camera compared to the 8MP ultrawide camera on the OnePlus 10T so as a result, the images from the iQOO 9T have much better details that look sharper and dynamic range is also better than the images taken on the OnePlus 10T. The noise is also less on the iQOO 9T but the colors look slightly oversaturated compared to the OnePlus 10T.

At night, the images from the ultrawide camera on the iQOO 9T come out with very good details compared to the OnePlus 10T but the dynamic range is not so good on both. The colors look slightly oversaturated on the iQOO 9T whereas the OnePlus 10T maintains natural colors in the images. But the OnePlus 10T has a lot of noise in the background compared to the iQOO 9T.

The third camera on the iQOO 9T is a telephoto camera whereas the OnePlus 10T has a 2MP macro camera. The iQOO 9T uses the ultrawide camera as a macro camera. In terms of macro images, the iQOO 9T takes excellent macro images with sharper details, good dynamic range, and less noise compared to the OnePlus 10T which takes macro images with poor details, and a lot of noise is present.

Since the OnePlus 10T misses out on a telephoto camera so it uses the main camera for 2x digital zoom whereas the iQOO 9T with its telephoto camera uses 2x optical zoom so as a result, the zoomed-in images come out with much sharper details and dynamic range on the iQOO 9T compared to the OnePlus 10T. The noise is also lower on the iQOO 9T compared to the OnePlus 10T.

The same is the situation during the night as the telephoto camera on the iQOO 9T also has a dedicated Night Mode so images during the night come out with good details and dynamic range compared to the OnePlus 10T. In terms of portraits, the edge detection is good on both smartphones but since the iQOO 9T uses a dedicated telephoto camera, the background blur is much better than on the OnePlus 10T.

The human skin tones look slightly oversaturated on the OnePlus 10T whereas the iQOO 9T brightens up the human skin tone on the OnePlus 10T. In terms of selfies, both the iQOO 9T and the OnePlus 10T sport a 16MP camera, and the images have good details and dynamic range but the iQOO 9T has less noise and skin tones look natural with slightly sharper details compared to the OnePlus 10T.

In terms of selfie portraits, the edge detection is slightly better on the OnePlus 10T and the colors look natural compared to selfies on the iQOO 9T that have slight oversharpening in the background. In terms of videos, both smartphones can record 4K videos at 60fps and the details come out sharper the dynamic range is good on both smartphones as OIS is present on both. 

But the stabilization is slightly better on the OnePlus 10T compared to the iQOO 9T and the colors look natural compared to the iQOO 9T which has slightly oversaturated colors. Both the ultrawide cameras are restricted to 1080p at 30fps and the video footage has slightly better details and dynamic range on the iQOO 9T compared to the OnePlus 10T.

In terms of selfie videos, both smartphones can record only 1080p videos at 30fps as there is no support for 4K recording. The videos have much better details and dynamic range on the OnePlus 10T and also it has EIS present which is not present on the iQOO 9T, hence the videos from the OnePlus 10T come out with better stabilization and less noise compared to the iQOO 9T.

Overall, the iQOO 9T holds a clear edge in terms of cameras but when it comes to videos, the OnePlus 10T has a slight edge over the iQOO 9T.

The OnePlus 10T sports a slightly larger 4800mAh battery compared to the 4700mAh battery on the iQOO 9T. However, there is not much difference as both these smartphones can easily last for two days with normal usage with the display set to 120Hz, and with heavy usage, both smartphones lasted a day and a half with the display set to 120Hz. Switching to standard 60Hz provides more battery life.

The standard screen-on time was around 5-5.5 hours on the OnePlus 10T whereas the iQOO 9T had a slightly better screen-on time of around 6-6.5 hours as it uses an E5 AMOLED panel that is about 20 percent more efficient than the E4 AMOLED panel used on the OnePlus 10T. However, in terms of charging both can charge from 0 to 100 percent within 20-25 minutes which is very fast. 

The OnePlus 10T gets a 150W fast charger whereas the iQOO 9T gets a 120W fast charger. Both of them lack support for wireless charging is slightly disappointing but you get USB PD charging on both which means you can use the respective chargers to fast charge devices like laptops, power banks, etc.  Though having the same charging speeds, the iQOO 9T has slightly better battery life than the OnePlus 10T.

Both the OnePlus 10T and the iQOO 9T have a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds loud and clear. But the sound is slightly louder on the OnePlus 10T and also it has Dolby Atmos present which is missing on the iQOO 9T. Both of them lack a 3.5mm headphone jack but iQOO does provide a USB Type-C to 3.5mm converter inside the box which the OnePlus 10T lacks.  

Overall, both are very good premium budget flagship smartphones as they have a lot of common between them as both get a premium build and design, a 120Hz AMOLED display with stereo speakers for multimedia consumption, a powerful Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset for daily performance, and gaming, a good set of cameras and the battery life is also good on both with support for fast charging.

However, there are a couple of differences between both smartphones. The iQOO 9T holds the edge when it comes to build and design, cameras where it has got a better ultrawide camera and comes with a telephoto camera, and overall images are better than that of the OnePlus 10T, it has a slightly better battery life and also the gaming experience is better than the OnePlus 10T.

On the other hand, the OnePlus 10T provides a better software experience as OxygenOS is more polished and cleaner compared to FunTouchOS, the display has slightly punchier colors and the sound experience is slightly better than the iQOO 9T. In terms of daily performance, there is very hard to differentiate between both smartphones.

So if you want a cleaner software experience with good performance and brand value of OnePlus, then the OnePlus 10T is the better pick but if you want a better set of cameras, better battery life, if gaming is your highest priority and you are not concerned about software experience, then the iQOO 9T is better but considering the overall package, the iQOO 9T edges over the OnePlus 10T by a small margin.