Some notable changes that are featured, includes, a larger display and thinner bezels found on the device with the repositioning of the fingerprint scanner from the front to the rear panel.

The 5T's body is made entirely from anodized aluminum, uses 2.5D Gorilla Glass 5 as protection for the display, and uses a ceramic coating for the fingerprint sensor which was moved to the rear of the phone.

The 5T is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 and comes with the choice of either 6 or 8 GB of LPDDR4X RAM, depending on the storage configuration.

[11] The OnePlus 5T has become available in multiple limited edition variants over time, such as a Star Wars edition promoting Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which came with a special case and a new color scheme; a "Sandstone White" variant which was released on 5 January 2018 and featured a white color scheme and a red "Alert Slider", which sold out in under 2 hours;[12] and a "Lava Red" variant which was released on 11 January 2018 initially in India,[13][14] and became available in Europe and North America on 6 February.

[15] The OnePlus 5T ships with Android 7.1.1 "Nougat" and uses the OxygenOS user interface, OnePlus' proprietary custom skin built on top of Android, adding various features not found in the stock Android operating system, such as night mode and reading mode, which both change the color temperature of the device's screen, and the ability to change the Bluetooth audio codec.

[19] The first beta for this version was released on 29 December 2017, but was pulled a couple days later due to issues with regards to instability that were present.

The Verge was full of praise for the phone's elegant design and optimized software but noted that the camera was still mediocre.