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"We pit two affordable flagships against each other to see which comes out on top"
Table of Contents
The OnePlus 3T is a carbon copy of its predecessor, the OnePlus 3, in terms of its design. In fact, besides the new colour variant, the 3T doesn't bring anything new to the table, as it features the same unibody metal design with chamfered edges and curvy back. Interestingly, despite packing a bigger battery the OnePlus 3T weighs the same at 158grams along with retaining the same thickness of 7.6mm of the OnePlus 3.
On the contrary, the ZUK Edge comes with some noticeable changes to its design. While the earlier rumours were pointing to a bezel-less display, the smartphone still manages to pack incredibly narrow bezels, resulting in an impressive screen to body ratio of 86.4 percent. The curves of the 2.5D curved glass on the front are also more pronounced than they were on the Z2 Plus. Both smartphones can be seen sporting a fingerprint sensor up front, though ZUK Edge's scanner supports various gestures, which the company has dubbed as U-Touch. It would also work with wet or greasy fingers.
Taking about the displays, both the smartphones come equipped with a 5.5-inch full HD display. However, the Optic AMOLED display technology used by OnePlus makes the 3T a much better option for consuming content on the phone than the ZUK Edge, which employs IPS LCD technology.
Coming to the most important aspect of a budget flagship, the performance of both the smartphones is on par with one another. Driving the cores on both the smartphones is a Snapdragon 821 processor clocked at 2.35GHz mated with 6GB of RAM. Suffice it to say, both the smartphones will be able to run everything you throw at them without breaking a sweat.
We'd like to point out that both, the OnePlus 3T and the ZUK Edge come in two different variants. While the OnePlus 3T ships with either 64GB or 128GB of storage, the ZUK Edge comes with two different RAM models of 4GB and 6GB, with both sporting 64GB of storage. As neither the 3T or the ZUK Edge come with expandable storage, OnePlus grabs the lead in the storage department with its 128GB variant.
For software, the OnePlus 3T runs Android Marshmallow upon first boot, however the company has promised to update the flagship with Android Nougat by the end of year. On Lenovo's end, the ZUK Edge is already shipping with Android Nougat out-of-the box giving its buyers an instant taste of the latest Android software.
The OnePlus 3T gets a huge bump in the camera department and the flagship can now be seen sporting a bigger 16MP front-facing camera. The sensor on the back however, remains unchanged and is the same 16MP Sony IMX298 module found on the OnePlus 3. Lenovo's ZUK Edge doesn't come with any changes in the camera department and can be seen sporting a pair of 13MP and 8MP camera sensors as seen on the Z2 Plus. Shutterbugs will definitely sway towards the OnePlus 3T as it offers a better pair of sensors on both the back and the front.
The 3,400mAh battery unit of the OnePlus 3T should ideally last longer than the 3,100mAh battery found on the Zuk Edge considering both the smartphones are powered by the same processor and sport similar displays. For connectivity, both the smartphones come with dual-SIM slots along with support for 4G VoLTE.