INTRO
OnePlus is still an emerging name on many markets, but if you’ve ever heard of it, you probably know that their phones are called “flagship killers” because they are on the premium level, but cost much less than other premium phones. Whether their new flagship killer, the OnePlus 7 Pro, can offer more than the Samsung Galaxy S10 or Huawei P30 Pro, stay with us to find out. Welcome to the MOBOSdata channel. If you’re an old subscriber, thanks for following, and if you’re new to the channel, make sure to subscribe and turn on the notification bell.
As we’ve said in the unboxing video, the OnePlus 7 Pro is a long awaited phone that has received many new features. It now has a new 90 Hz display, stereo speakers, even better in-display fingerprint scanner as well as a plethora of other improvements we’ll talk about in the next several minutes. Let’s start with the design.
ONEPLUS 7 PRO DESIGN
Previous models had notches on top of displays which housed seflie cameras. This time, the selfie camera is hidden inside the body of the phone, so the notch is missing, but more on that in a bit. The whole front panel of the phone is now, essentially, display, with minimal side bezels and the screen that curves towards them. Both the front and the back panels are protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The phone doesn’t have water and dust proofing certificate, but will nonetheless survive an accidental dip in the water – still, we don’t recommend intentional submerging.
On the back of the phone there is a vertical setup of the main camera. Here we have three sensors below which is an LED flash. The OnePlus 7 Pro comes in three color options, Mirror Grey, Almond and Nebula Blue, and later we’ll probably get some limited edition colors as well. The Nebula Blue version that we have here is one of the most beautiful colors that we’ve ever had a chance to see in a smartphone. The light reflects off the surface in various angles making gorgeous black-blue effects on the back and near the edges.
ONEPLUS 7 PRO BOX CONTENT
The factory box of this phone still has pretty much the same design as all previous OnePlus phones. Inside of the box, there is another smaller box which contains user manuals, stickers, a SIM tray tool as well as a silicon gel case. Beneath the phone itself there is a USB Type-C cable together with a 30W WARP charge adapter.
DISPLAY
Definitely the most interesting feature of the OnePlus 7 Pro is its Fluid AMOLED display. Here we have a QHD+ 1440p display with the diagonal of 6.67”. Bezels around this phone are extremely slim because the front facing camera is mounted on a pop-up mechanism that goes out of the top edge. It is very well built, and images almost don’t distort at all.
The most interesting thing about this display is its 90 Hz refresh rate. In general, phones switch out 60 images per second, while OnePlus 7 Pro switches 90 of them. It is truly great to see such fluidity on a display, and we’re sure that you’ll notice it. This refresh rate does draw a bit more power from the battery compared to the standard 60 Hz rate that you can manually turn on through the settings.
Colors are vivid and colorful, and you can adjust them through color profiles. Available profiles are Vivid and Natural, and in advanced settings you can adjust the color temperature of AMOLED Wide Gamut, sRGB or DCI-P3 profiles. This is all at your disposal.
Brightness is good but not the best. You won’t have issues with sunlight legibility, but we did see brighter displays in other phones.
HARDWARE AND OS
This phone is powered by the latest and greatest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset. This is a 7nm chipset that comes paired with 6 GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage memory, 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage or even 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. At the moment, 12GB of RAM is honestly redundant and unnecessary, but we’re sure that it will be the norm as soon as the apps get more demanding. The phone uses UFS 3.0 memory which provides extremely high read and write speeds. This phone is the first one on the market with this type of memory, which is another reason why we consider it to be the fastest in the world. It found its place among the top phones tested on the AnTuTu benchmark with the score of 365.000 points.
It runs on Android 9.0 Pie with OxygenOS 9.5 on top of it. OxygenOS is one of the cleanest versions of Android out there. This time we’ve received even more new features implemented into this super fast system. One of the more unique features is the ZEN mode that disables everything besides phone calls for 20 minutes. There is also a shortcut that marks your car’s parking location as well as a built-in screen recording feature. Preinstalled apps are now reduced to the bare minimum, and they include File Manager, Clock, Calculator, Weather and Voice Recorder.
We must be subjective here – this really is the fastest phone that we’ve ever used. The difference between 60 and 90 Hz is noticeable, especially in screen transitions and navigation through the menu, or in games. It is true that so far there aren’t too many games that work on 90 or more fps, but we can surely expect to see them in the future. While we’re at the topic of gaming, it was very interesting to see the OnePlus rendition of the gaming mode that they call Fnatic mode. When you launch a game, the phone asks you whether you wish to enter this mode in which you can completely isolate the game. There is an option to completely shut down calls as well as other notifications, all this to help you get to that Chicken Dinner.
FINGERPRINT SENSOR
As in the previous version, the fingerprint scanner is located beneath the display, however, it is now even further improved by a new algorithm.
It is as fast as supersonic sensors. The unlock area is even bigger which makes unlocking super fast and precise, even when your fingers are wet.
STEREO SPEAKERS OF ONEPLUS 7 PRO
The OnePlus 7 Pro is the first OnePlus device that has stereo speakers implemented. The top speaker, which doubles as the call speaker, works together with the main, bottom speaker to provide excellent sound quality and volume. Honestly, this is one of the best sounding phones that we’ve ever tested.
CAMERA
On the gorgeous blue background we can find three camera sensors in a vertical alignment. The main sensor is a Sony IMX 586 sensor that bears the resolution of 48 megapixels and has the aperture of f/1.6. The secondary wide-angle f/2.2 camera packs the resolution of 16MP, while the third telephoto sensor has 8MP resolution and comes with 3x optical zoom. The camera is optically stabilized. Focusing is implemented through Laser and Phase detection. This is an improvement compared to phones which only have PDAF technology, but it’s still slower compared to Dual Pixe technology implemented into other phones.
PHOTO QUALITY
Quality of photos captured in daytime is truly impressive, and on par with Huawei P30 Pro or Samsung Galaxy S10+. They are well detailed, even when you zoom into the photos. Colors are pretty realistic and photos are nicely exposed. There is, however, a bit of noise in shadowy spots, but nothing too serious. The night mode does a great job capturing photos, but we would still like to see warmer colors in dark areas because they do look a bit washed up. This is not a deal-breaker though, as this is still one of the best smartphone cameras.
Portrait mode or bokeh photos have very nicely separated edges even though we don’t have a DoF of ToF sensor. This mode uses the telephoto camera for portraits, which are really good.
SELFIE CAMERA
The front facing, 16MP camera is mounted on a pop-up mechanism that rises from the top edge of the phone. We saw this type of camera for the first time in the Vivo Nex S that we’ve already reviewed, and now it’s made its way to the OnePlus as well. It is very solid, and goes inside the phone when pushed or when the phone somehow falls down. There is even a video on the web in which someone uses this camera to pop open beer bottles. Obviously, this is not its primary function, but the mere fact that the camera has remained fully functional and intact speaks volumes about build quality.
Sadly, it is not equipped with an autofocus system, but it still does capture quite good photos in daylight. Color tones are somewhat warmer than on the primary camera, but in darker parts there is still some noise visible. The portrait mode is available in the front camera as well. It also separates the subject from the background quite well, however not as well as the main camera.
VIDEO
Videos recorded by the main camera retain a lot of details as well, white balance is perfect and exposure is very precise. Optical stabilization does an excellent job here as well. Videos are captured in maximum 4K resolution at 60fps, and slow motion recording is also present in FullHD resolution at 240 or HD at 720 fps.
CONNECTIVITY
This is a Dual SIM device that supports two nano SIM cards. There isn’t an option to expand the storage memory via memory cards, so you’ll have to satisfy your needs with the memory option you chose. OnePlus did not want to make a memory card slot because they are far slower than the ultra fast memory inside the phone. If you ever happen to need more memory to back-up some data, keep in mind that the OnePlus 7 Pro supports OTG connections which means that you’ll always be able to transfer data on a USB or an external hard drive.
The phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm port nor a USB Type-C to 3.5mm adapter that was there in the previous version. To make matters even worse, the price of this connector has doubled up. If OnePlus continues like this, they will definitely become like Apple and charge five times more money for their products than they are actually worth.
All newer wireless network options are present. We have the dual band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth version 5.0 as well as an NFC sensor implemented into the phone.
BATTERY
The battery of the new OnePlus 7 Pro is now increased to 4000 mAh, which is by 300 mAh more compared to its predecessor. On the other hand, the phone does drain the battery quite a lot due to having to power so many power consuming components. Its autonomy is influenced by the 90 Hz display and its many different factors including resolution, refresh rate, dark colors etc. which means that it will depend on the settings you use.
With the resolution set at QHD, refresh rate at 90 Hz and a bright theme, the phone provided around 6 hours of Screen On time. With reduced parameters this time goes up substantially to 8 and even more hours, however, we didn’t like the idea of reducing these parameters since we wanted to use all the features of the phone, otherwise why would we even have them.
CHARGING
OnePlus did surprise us with something else – their WARP charging. There is still something to complain about, so let’s get into it. The phone goes up from 0 to 50% in only 20 minutes which is extraordinary. A full charge takes up around 1 hour and 20 minutes. What we did have a problem with is that the phone’s temperature rises substantially during charging, and goes up to 40 or even more degrees which is near the limit that the battery can withstand. We believe that OnePlus engineers knew what they were doing, but still, we didn’t use the phone while it was charging.
FINAL WORDS / VERDICT
With each new OnePlus phone we get more and more features that leave us speechless, but they come with an increasing price. We can say that this is the fastest phone of today regarding user experience, but it still doesn’t have the best cameras or the fastest charging speeds. It’s impossible to make it the best in everything, but it’s still very good in all areas, and definitely worth its price. It lacks wireless charging and IP rating, but it still comes at a smaller price point than the competitors. The baseline 6/128GB version costs around 700€, but the price goes up to 820€ for the 12/256GB version
If you think this is too much, there is also the vanilla OnePlus 7 without the Pro mark which costs around 200€ less. We should review this phone soon as well.
OnePlus 7 Pro Full Specifications
Do not forget to subscribe to our channel and turn on notification bell to see what’s new in the mobile industry. Thank you for following us, and see you in the next review!