With the OnePlus 9T, OnePlus has the opportunity to have the best phone. However, it will not be able to do so without a few key improvements.

The OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro are both great phones, and the Pro is our new top pick for best Android phone. However, the last "T" series, the OnePlus 8T, was a disappointing and insufficient upgrade from the OnePlus 8.

OnePlus' unusual six-month phone cycle gives it a unique opportunity to regain the top spot, but it will need to do something special if it wants to overtake Apple and Samsung.

OnePlus will likely launch the 9T in the fall, and there are no major leaks yet. So, until we know for sure what is coming, we suggest a combination of fixes to current problems with the 9 series and new or improved features that OnePlus would be wise to include that we would like to see.

Thanks to its partnership with Hasselblad, OnePlus has made great strides in photo quality with the 9 series, especially the 9 Pro. However, there are a few parts of the photography experience that are preventing OnePlus from dragging Apple and Samsung off the top of the best camera phone list.

A major area that needs to be fixed is the inconsistency of OnePlus' low-light photo mode, Nightscape; in some scenarios, like the camera showdown between the iPhone 12 Pro and the Pixel 4a 5G, the OnePlus 9 Pro produced the best shots. However, it does not always manage this, as seen in the comparison with the Google Pixel 5 in all reviews.

Effective night mode software is a must for flagship phones, as nighttime and dark environment photography is one of the most common use cases for smartphone cameras OnePlus 9T, with OnePlus tweaking Nightscape, stable and good photography, it has the potential to be a top-class camera phone.

Both the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro offer decent battery life there, but more would be better, and there are several ways OnePlus could manage this.

Obviously, the 9T's battery could be larger; OnePlus used the same dual-cell battery in the 8T, 9, and 9 Pro to take advantage of 65W wired fast charging, but at 4,500 mAh, the phone's size, display and chipset quality Given that, it's not huge. A little more capacity (perhaps 5,000 mAh) while maintaining charging speed would be an obvious upgrade.

Another possibility would be to add the OnePlus 9 Pro's adaptive refresh rate to the OnePlus 9's smaller display. Adding this adaptive system would reduce the phone's power consumption when the display does not need to use the full 120 Hz.

A formal IP rating would provide peace of mind that an expensive new phone would not be useless if dropped in water. Unfortunately, this is not something OnePlus has always offered.

The OnePlus 8 Pro, launched last year, was the first OnePlus phone to receive an official IP68 rating, the flagship phone's typical waterproof rating; after skipping the OnePlus 8T, the OnePlus 9 Pro also received official IP68 certification, but the basic OnePlus 9 missed certification; the Pro handset is expected to have more features than the vanilla model, but obtaining an IP rating is usually the standard for entire phone series.

IP rating is an expensive process, and manufacturers like OnePlus have included water and dust proof features without an official rating. However, if OnePlus is serious about making the OnePlus 9T competitive with iPhone and Galaxy phones, it needs to offer the same warranty.

Considering all the other features we've been asking for, this feature may be the hardest for OnePlus to handle: the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro are priced at $729 and $969 respectively, just below the equivalent iPhone 12 and Samsung Galaxy S21 models at $729 and $969, respectively, slightly below the iPhone 12 and Samsung Galaxy S21 equivalents.

Unfortunately for OnePlus, this year's Apple and Samsung phones happen to be priced lower than last year's base models. If the OnePlus 9T adopts the $750 price point of the OnePlus 8T, it will look like a bargain compared to the $800 iPhone 12 and Galaxy S21.

Adding extra features would likely bring the 9T's price in line with Apple and Samsung phones. As a lesser-known brand, that is not what we want. That said, the $800-$850 price point is a perfect midpoint between the 9 and 9 Pro prices and would provide a higher budget for the other upgrades we desire.