The OnePlus 8T was released almost a year ago as the only flagship OnePlus phone for the latter half of 2020 ('T' models usually get an additional Pro variant). The phone was slightly upgraded earlier this year and released as the OnePlus 9R alongside the rest of the OnePlus 9 series. Both phones shipped with LPDDR4X memory, but OnePlus has quietly switched both phones to faster LPDDR5 RAM modules.

The OnePlus 8T shipped with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM (depending on the model you chose), and the official specifications sheet still says the phone uses LPDDR4X RAM. The same page for the OnePlus 9R never mentioned the specific type of RAM used, but independent testing later confirmed that it also shipped with LPDDR4X RAM.

However, some buyers have discovered that their units have faster LPDDR5 memory, even though OnePlus never announced that it had switched to faster RAM on the OnePlus 8T/9R. The difference became apparent to some when they attempted to unbrick their 8T or 9R using the MSMDownloadTool, which wasn't compatible with the LPDDR5 variant due to an incompatible XBL (eXtensible Boot Loader) image. The firmware update instructions from LineageOS have since been updated with different flashable images depending on the RAM type.

It's easy to figure out which RAM type your OnePlus 8T or 9R uses. If you have ADB installed on your PC, run the following command with your OnePlus 8T or 9R connected — it returns 0 for LPDDR4X RAM and 1 for LPDDR5 RAM. You can also run the command on the phone itself using Termux, but you don't have to type the 'adb shell' part.

        adb shell getprop ro.boot.ddr_type
    

XDA's Aamir Siddiqui tested it on his OnePlus 9R review unit, and it has LPDDR5 RAM. In contrast, the retail OnePlus 8T unit purchased by XDA's Mishaal Rahman in late January has the advertised LPDDR4X RAM.

There have been many cases in the past of seemingly identical phones having better or worse internal hardware than other units, such as the Galaxy S8's varying internal storage and the different modems in older iPhones. However, most people likely wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two RAM types.

We have reached out to OnePlus India for confirmation on this matter and will update this post if we hear back.