In New York this morning, OnePlus has managed to traverse the emotional rainbow from excited to apologetic to confident: excited for the launch of its latest smartphone, the OnePlus 10T; apologetic for the absence of key hardware and software features, and; confident that it's offering a device that can surpass customer expectations with an extremely fast processor and extremely fast charging, all for a starting price of $649. But there's a lot more to untangle than just that.

Frankly, the company got ahead of itself and any potential media narrative by coming clean about the best and worst aspects of the OnePlus 10T prior to today's launch event. But just because issues have been acknowledged doesn't mean they don't deserve context.

Batting for the positive side, there's a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset (a great one in other phones we've seen so far), an option for 16GB of RAM, and a 160W SUPERVOOC adapter in the box that will juice up the device's hefty 4,800mAh battery in no time, even at a lower rate of 125W in the US thanks to our 120V electrical system. OnePlus also gets bonus points for making a PD-compliant SUPERVOOC car charger that can somehow pull 80W from that old cigarette lighter — it'll cost $39. The 10T will also deploy corporate parent Oppo's Battery Health Engine and a dedicated power management co-processor to extend the battery's useful life.

The main camera stars the 50MP Sony IMX766 sensor and it's done fairly okay in a number of other devices including the Find X5 Pro, the Nothing Phone 1, and the Asus Zenfone 9. No Hasselblad branding or tuning to be found here, but it's up in the air whether that matters. That said, OnePlus does prize a good display for its phones and with HDR10+ support as well as 120Hz max refresh rate and 1,000Hz touch sampling rate, this AMOLED panel should do well.

To be sure, it ain't all roses in this garden. You may think the company has lost its way. Don't worry, the people there know this — they said so on stage.

The alert slider, a signature attraction for OnePlus fans, isn't here. The company has released a full-page commiseration, saying the switch was traded away to make room, precious as it is inside a phone, for a lot of the good stuff we just talked about while also maintaining an acceptable thinness and hand-feel.

We reached out to OnePlus since we knew people would be asking about increasing the thickness or something to that effect. The company pointed us back to its prepared statement which you can read below. It does leave open the possibility for future devices to once again have an alert slider.

Why doesn’t the OnePlus 10T come with an alert slider?

Since the launch of the OnePlus 3T, our T nomenclature has represented a holistic

performance upgrade for users. With the OnePlus 10T, we wanted to take that concept to the next level by evolving the device’s upgrades beyond improvements to speed alone. To achieve this goal, a necessary trade-off was the removal of our signature alert slider that provided us with the necessary space inside the device to add new, meaningful technologies that deliver key advancements to the OnePlus experience while maintaining a thin and light form factor.

Based on feedback from the OnePlus Community forum and OnePlus Open Ears forums, we know our users expect OnePlus devices to have high wattage charging, a large battery capacity, and better antenna signal. To excel in each of these three areas, space inside the phone needs to be occupied by new technology.

The OnePlus 10T is equipped with 150W SUPERVOOC Endurance Edition charging in India and Europe. In North America, the device comes with 125W SUPERVOOC Endurance Edition. To deliver both charging standards and super-fast charging speeds as a result, the OnePlus 10T requires two charging pumps. For context, all OnePlus phones that have 80W SUPERVOOC charging or lower wattages only require a single charging pump to achieve their super-fast speeds. That means, with the OnePlus 10T, we are doubling the space required for the device’s charging pumps, which limits the space inside the device to include its alert slider.

Additionally, we worked to ensure the OnePlus 10T’s super-fast charging is supported by the largest battery possible. Without increasing the thickness of the device, the maximum battery capacity we could have put inside the OnePlus 10T while keeping the alert slider would have been 4,500 mAh. Therefore, to increase the battery capacity of the device – delivering on a key feature we know is important to our users – we removed the device’s alert slider and made other optimizations to get its capacity up to 4,800 mAh.

Gaming is an integral part of performance. With the OnePlus 10T, we added an improved antenna for gaming that delivers better signal performance when holding the device horizontally – the way in which most mobile titles are played. Adding this new antenna system was also made possible through the removal of the device’s alert slider, along with other optimizations.

To achieve the three technologies highlighted above, our design team increased the layout utilization rate of the OnePlus 10T’s motherboard to 78%, up from our typical standard of 74%. While the alert slider appears to be a very small component, it actually has a relatively large impact on the device’s motherboard area – taking up 30 mm². To ensure the OnePlus 10T delivers in the areas we know our users value most – with high wattage charging, a large battery capacity, and better antenna signal while retaining the alert slider, we would have had to stack the device’s motherboard, which would have made the device thicker. Therefore, we decided to remove our signature alert slider this time so we could deliver these technologies while retaining a first-class hand feel.

Our product team plans to overcome this technical and design challenge in future devices so we can deliver improved technologies while retaining our signature alert slider. While the OnePlus 10T does not have the alert slider, this does not mean it will be removed from all future OnePlus devices.

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One other question we're asking: what's going on with software? The company took time to prop up OxygenOS 13 — and its "aquamorphic" cues — at the event, but with the requisite Android 13 stable release still under wraps (likely until September) and with the older OnePlus 10 Pro due to get the update first, we're not surprised to hear some trepidation from software geeks who feel that three OS upgrades starting from OxygenOS 12.1 and Android 12L just isn't fair. It's especially a sting since the phone won't actually make it out to consumers for at least another month. At least 10T owners will get four years of bi-monthly security updates.

Pre-orders begin for the OnePlus 10T and its accessories on September 1 with the base model costing $649 and the top model at $749. Amazon, Best Buy, and OnePlus.com will be the places to go. Sales (and, presumably, shipments) begin September 29. OnePlus will follow up at a later date with carrier availability.

Whether you take the purchase up, though, depends on whether you're willing to give what OnePlus is asking for: your forgiveness and trust. Maybe our official review can help with your decision making.