Emergency off: The OnePlus 7T Pro overheats during our test

One of the things we look at during our smartphone reviews is how warm the surface of the device becomes under continuous load. We also check whether the smartphone is able to execute demanding apps for long periods of time without overheating and having to terminate the program.  

Despite developing high surface temperatures, most devices do not have an issue with overheating during our endurance test, the GFXBench battery test Manhattan 3.1. The OnePlus 7T Pro, however, heats up significantly under continuous load with a maximum surface temperature of 46.1 °C. This can be particularly uncomfortable at high ambient temperatures.

The inside temperatures seem to be even more problematic: After only a few rounds of the Manhattan 3.1 benchmark the app shuts down automatically and the smartphone shows a warning saying that it is at risk of overheating and that all apps had to be closed in order to let the internal components cool down again. The overheating did not have any further consequences, so the security system seems to be working. The smartphone completed the less demanding T-Rex test without any issues.

Nonetheless, this overheating is worrisome, as the Manhattan 3.1 is not the most up-to-date test and therefore not the most demanding on the graphics unit. Most other smartphones complete it without any issues or throttle their performance in time to avoid such drastic action. 

We already noticed a similar behavior while reviewing the OnePlus 7T. By the way, there is no throttling on the OnePlus 7 Pro, which means that the issue is probably due to the Snapdragon 855+, the OnePlus 7T Pro's new SoC.  

OnePlus claims that there are no other known cases of this issue occuring. We only found a few users complaining about it on the web. However, they seem to occur on older OnePlus devices as well, which means that it might be connected to the current version of OxygenOS. In any case, this benchmark represents a long, continuous load scenario which is very unlikely to occur during everyday load. OnePlus might also improve the software to avoid this issue in future, for example by making the SoC throttle sooner. Nonetheless, most other smartphones manage to complete the test without any issues.

If you are not too worried about strong heat development under load, the OnePlus 7T Pro is a great high-end smartphone that offers good cameras, long runtimes and great fast charging as well as a nice software interface. It also has a great 90-Hz display without a notch or a hole for the front camera. The selfie cam simply comes out of the case when you want to take a picture. 

If you want to find out more about the OnePlus 7T Pro, we recommend taking a look at our detailed test for further information and detailed results.