The day has finally arrived. OnePlus has just launched its new phone from the OnePlus 7 series and it’s a good one. Just as the leaks suggested, it’s called the OnePlus 7 Pro.
It’s the first time ever that OnePlus has decided to launch two smartphones in a single launch event. Previously, it was just one phone, which happened to be the company’s flagship at that time. However, now we have two phones. A “regular” OnePlus 7 and the top-of-the-line OnePlus 7 Pro. The former, unfortunately, won’t be making its way to the US but that’s nothing to worry about as the Pro is a handful on its own.
Let’s see what makes it special and how it stacks up against the competition.
Design & Display
The OnePlus 7 Pro features a bezel-less, edge-to-edge Fluid AMOLED display. It measures 6.67″ and has a resolution of 3120×1440. This, however, isn’t the highlight of the panel. It’s the 90Hz refresh rate that truly makes it special. You’ll really need to use it on your own to behold the beauty of a 90Hz panel and it has the ability to spoil every other phone display for you.
Personally, I like the fact that OnePlus finally gave their smartphone a Quad HD display resolution. The Full HD resolution that the Pro’s predecessors used wasn’t exactly bad. However, flagships from the rival brands like Samsung used the sharper resolution, which gave them a competitive advantage.
The rest of the design is classic OnePlus. Unfortunately, there’s nothing new about the materials used, but there’s no denying that it feels premium nevertheless. The front and back are is all curved glass that meets in the middle with an aluminum band. The back now has three cameras with a flash module below them. The chassis is splash-resistant but unfortunately, there’s no IP certification.
The most drastic and controversial design change is the front camera situation. The OnePlus 7 Pro has a motorized pop-up front camera that comes out when it’s in use. You can argue about the reliability of this setup all day and I’d probably agree with you. However, OnePlus has thought things through. The camera mechanism has been tested and rated to be raised and lowered 300,000 times without failing. It also has a fail-safe to retract when it detects the phone to be in free-fall.
Cameras
As I’ve mentioned earlier, the OnePlus 7 Pro comes with a three-camera setup in the rear. It consists of a main, telephoto and wide sensors, which is new for OnePlus as previous models didn’t have telephoto and wide angle. The main sensor is 48MP and has dual-OIS. Its aperture is fixed at f/1.7.
The wide-angle shooter has a focal length of 17mm, giving you an effective viewing angle of 117°. The sensor is 16MP and the aperture f/2.2. It doesn’t have OIS. Lastly, we come to the telephoto. It has a focal length of 78mm, giving you an effective 3x optical zoom in your photos. The sensor is optically stabilized with a resolution and aperture of 8MP and f/2.4 respectively.
The front camera, along with its sliding mechanism, has a 16MP sensor. It isn’t optically stabilized so it has to make do with electronic stabilization. The aperture is fixed at f/2.0 as well.
It doesn’t end here as the hardware is useless without adequate software. OnePlus is debuting its NightScape 2.0 with this device. It’s pretty good and gets the job done flawlessly. However, it’s still nowhere near Google’s Night Sight, which it is supposed to compete with. The stock camera app also has Google Lens built-in for AI object recognition.
Performance
If you’re familiar with OnePlus phones, you’d know that performance is where they truly shine. The OnePlus 7 Pro is no exception as it comes with Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon™855 CPU along with an Adreno 640 GPU. The CPU has a 7nm process with the ability to clock up to 2.84 GHz.
OnePlus is really serious about the performance of their devices. The Pro is the first OnePlus phone to feature a 10-layer liquid cooling system for the CPU that keeps the temperatures at an optimum level to avoid thermal throttling. OnePlus claims that because of this, you can even play heavy games while charging without the feat of any overheating.
You can get the OnePlus 7 Pro with three RAM configurations, which are 6, 8 and 12 GB. The module is LPDDR4X, which is the fastest one out there. The storage options seem limited, however, as you only get an option for 128 and 256 GB. With competitors like Samsung having 512 GB and even 1 TB options on their devices, it seems like OnePlus is lagging behind.
However, that can be forgiven considering the fact that 256 GB is still more than adequate for phone storage especially in the age of cloud storage. OnePlus also has the honor of launching the first phone with a UFS 3.0 file system. It helps in reading/writing files much faster than UFS 2.0, that’s used in almost all other Android devices.
Lastly, we come to the battery situation. It has one with 4000 mAh, which is decent in this age. However, that doesn’t help considering the 7 Pro only manages 4 hours of screen-on time thanks to the 1440p display that refreshes with 90Hz. You can dial the display back to 60Hz but that’ll take away the best thing about the display. It also doesn’t help with the fact that OnePlus, despite using glass backs, still hasn’t given us wireless charging.
However, once again, all is forgiven as you get the Warp Charger as standard with the 7 Pro. With a power output of 30W, it is the fastest Android charger you get standard with your device.
Software & Security
OnePlus 7 Pro will come out of the box running on Android 9.0 (Pie) with OxygenOS. OxygenOS is OnePlus’s own UI and provides an experience similar to stock Android. There’s no bloatware, the icons look good and you get plenty of customization. It’s also all stitched well together so that you get a seamless Android experience.
OnePlus also pushes updates faster than any other Android phone out there except for the Pixel. It also promises 2 years of software updates for every device with 3 years of security patch updates. This is great if you intend to use your device for the long term.
Just like the OnePlus 6T, the 7 Pro comes with an RGB, in-display fingerprint sensor. Now it may not be as secure as Samsung’s Ultrasonic sensor but it sure is faster. Thanks to a larger sensor and software tweaks, the sensor is not only faster off the bat. It even uses AI to become even faster and efficient over time.
You also get OnePlus’s notoriously fast face unlock. It uses the retractable front camera’s sensor to detect your face which, again, begs us to question its security.
Price & Verdict
The OnePlus 7 Pro starts at $669, which seems too good to be true for a phone of this caliber. However, it is to note that the phone you’ll get at that price will have 6GB/128GB configuration. Cough out $749 and you get the top-of-the-line 12GB/256GB powerhouse that’ll put any other premium device to shame.
I think it’s safe to say that the OnePlus 7 Pro may just be the best value for money for any smartphone out there. This is especially when you consider similarly specced devices retail around $1000.