The complete flagship till date from OnePlus – the OnePlus 7 Pro is here! It has everything you ask for in a smartphone – notch-free display, well-crafted body, snappy processor, versatile camera setup and what not!
OnePlus 7 Pro is the eleventh smartphone (OnePlus 7 stands in at 10th) from the OnePlus to enter a market filled with fierce competition. Does the expensive smartphone from OnePlus’ stable manage to undercut it competitions? Check out the review.
Box Contents
- OnePlus 7 Pro 12GB RAM + 256GB in Nebula Blue color
- Screen Protector (pre-applied)
- Clear protective case
- Warp Type-C Cable-Supports USB 2.0
- Warp Charger (5V-2A / 5V–6A)
- SIM Tray Ejector
- Quick Start Guide and Safety Information
Why you should buy the OnePlus 7 Pro
Class-leading display
Even before the official launch, Fluid AMOLED display on OnePlus 7 Pro was the most talked about point. For the first time in the history of OnePlus portfolio, 7 Pro features a 6.67-inch Quad HD+ (3120 x 1440 pixels) Fluid AMOLED display with 19.5:9 aspect ratio. The ‘Fluid AMOLED’ display, as OnePlus labels it, is purely due to the 90Hz refresh rate that it supports. For the uninitiated, the 90Hz refresh rate offers a buttery smooth viewing.
Moving on, it has HDR10 support, Night Mode 2.0 to adjust the brightness down to 0.27 nits for better eye protection in total darkness. Similar to Samsung devices, there is Horizon light that lights up the edges of the display when you receive a notification. In case, if you doubt the capability 7 Pro’ display, it has scored A+ rating from DisplayMate.
Is the difference noticeable? Right from the start! Unsurprisingly, the result is an effortlessly smooth-looking user experience be it animation UI, playing games or scrolling through the website. On the whole, it was a delight! Since I am blown with 90Hz, I am bit hesitant right now to go back to 60Hz devices.
The OnePlus 7 Pro display panel is free from all distractions including bezel or waterdrop notch. This seems like an end of the road for traditional smartphone design, though! Just screen and nothing else. It has a screen-to-body ratio of around 88%. At 516ppi, the display is bright with excellent sunlight legibility, and nicely calibrated as well. Moreover, you also get an option to downscale the resolution to FHD+, if you want to squeeze a bit more time out of the battery.
On the downside, the curved display is prone to a lot of mis-touch especially while watching videos.
Build quality on point!
With OnePlus 7 Pro, the company has completed the journey of transition from flagship killer to a genuine, mature flagship. Be it OnePlus One or OnePlus 7 Pro, the company has always triumphed in its design languages.
Just like other OnePlus devices, the 7 Pro is very well crafted, feels sturdy yet slippery as well. The build quality is top-notch. Just like Samsung high-end devices, it has curved edges and bigger screens as the preferred design aesthetic. The button placements remain similar to that of OnePlus 6T with alert slider placed on the right side.
Moving on, the rear side of the device is made of the same soft-touch glass with microscopic diagonal lines carved under the layer. That subtle curvature develops patterns and highlights when the light hits the back.
It’s worth mentioning that the OnePlus 7 Pro comes in two colours — Nebula Blue and Mirror Grey, with an additional Almond colour that will be available later.
No bloat, no-nonsense software
This time, OnePlus has added some uniques features like Zen Mode, which locks your phone for solid 20 minutes, allowing only calls and photos.
There is Fnatic mode, an advanced gaming mode, created by esports pioneers. Once enabled, it blocks all notification and calls and focuses performance entirely towards gameplay. Also present is a RAM boost, which learns which apps you use frequently and pre-caches them into RAM. And Screen Recorder too.
Considering its huge form factor, there is no real one-handed mode, which is a bummer. Keeping this aside, we have the usual OnePlus stuff including, The Shelf, Hidden Second space and other pre-existing features.
Snappy performance
The OnePlus 7 Pro is powered by the latest Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 7nm Mobile Platform with Adreno 640 GPU under the hood. The phone is incredibly fast, in fact; it is the fastest phone I’ve ever used. The read/write speed is faster with UFS 3.0 storage. In our experience, we experienced zero lag, zero hitches, it’s just pure speed and raw power.
The latest and most powerful outing from OnePlus is indeed a big jump over the older models that can do everything the bigger flagship on the market can, but at about two-thirds of the cost.
Check out some synthetic benchmark scores below
AnTuTu Benchmark 7
It scored 369902 points in the AnTuTu Benchmark 7 and topped the charts.
Geekbench 4 Single-Core
It scored 3421 points in the Geekbench 4 Single-Core benchmark and grabbed the fourth spot, behind the Samsung Galaxy S10e.
Geekbench 4 Multi-Core
It scored 11049 points in the Geekbench 4 Multi-Core benchmark and grabbed the second spot.
Check out the complete set of benchmarks here. Check out the gaming review below.
The speakers are indeed loud, but at the higher volume, it kind of gets distorted. Haptic feedback is yet another major improvement over its predecessor and its amazing. Even though it’s nowhere near iPhones, the 7 Pro along with Pixels have the best haptic feedback in Android phones at present.
Day-long battery life (depends on usage)
The OnePlus 7 Pro comes powered by a huge 4000mAh battery with Warp Charge 30 Fast Charging (5V/6A) technology. It’s worth mentioning that, the Warp Charge 30 was initially introduced in the 6T McLaren edition.
The battery has been slightly bumped up considering the obvious reasons — Fluid AMOLED display and 50% higher refresh rate. Did that work out in real-time usage? Well, for the most part, the OnePlus 7 Pro battery lasted around one to one and a half days, which is the same as the OnePlus 6T.
Having said that, when pushed around with heavy usage at 90Hz like Netflix streaming, PUBG, COD, the battery does drain quickly leaving around a meagre 15% at the end of the day. With Warp Charger 30 as a saving grace, we didn’t find any difficulties, though. It charges the device very quickly (50% in just 20 minutes) and that sort of makeup for the fact that it doesn’t have the convenience of wireless charging.
Is the battery life good or bad? Depends! Since you have the option to pick and choose the settings, you want (60Hz or 90Hz), it entirely depends on the user.
It achieved a One Charge Rating of 16 hours and 49 minutes, which is 2 hours less than the OnePlus 6T mainly due to bigger Quad HD+ screen. We tested with the 60Hz mode, and the 90Hz mode might affect the battery life. Since it has support for 30W Warp Charge, it takes just 1 hour and 16 minutes, and 50% charge takes about 30 minutes.
Great cameras, but..!
The OnePlus 7 Pro features a versatile triple camera setup on the back. There is a 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor with OIS and EIS support. Then there is an 8MP telephoto lens and a 16-megapixel 117° Ultra Wide Angle Lens.
Marketed as a camera-centric phone, well, it doesn’t live up to the expectations. Don’t get me wrong here. The camera is solid and the output is pleasing most of the times, but they are not on the level of what you get from the likes of HUAWEI, Samsung or Pixel. The company keeps improving the camera with several updates, so it should get better.
Talking about real-world usage, the daylight images are sharp with good colours and details. Moreover, the images taken in HDR mode are better with improved contrast and saturation. The portrait shots are better with good edge-detection.
Notably, we had focus issues while shooting Macro and it persists even after the update. The Night mode has been improved over 6T with bright and clear shots (not consistently, though). It’s worth mentioning that while shooting on night mode, we recommend you to keep your hands steady for a second or two, otherwise, all you get is a blurry output.
Since the front is occupied by the display, we got a motorised pop-up camera for the selfies. In our usage, it worked well and does its job when using face unlock. While there is durability concern, the company posted a video of the camera lifting a 49.2-pound block of cement on its official YouTube account.
The pop-up camera takes perfectly good selfies particularly; the portrait selfies are excellent. At the launch event, the company told that the phone would retract the camera if its accelerometer and gyroscope sense that the device is in free fall. We tested it out and they are right!
With Face unlock, the phone unlocks in just 0.7 seconds. It works well in a bright environment but doesn’t have ‘Face Unlock assistive lighting’ for darker conditions. Sadly, if you are in the dark, you cannot unlock the phone through the Face Unlock option.
Overall, the OnePlus 7 Pro camera has a great set of cameras, but its nowhere near the any of Huawei P30 Pro, Pixel or Samsung Galaxy S series smartphones. If your priority is not the best camera’s, then OnePlus 7 Pro is the best you can get.
Check out the camera samples here (Click the image to view the full resolution samples).
Check out the comparison with Google Camera here.
It can record videos at up to 4K 60 fps and also has Super Slow Motion video recording 240 fps for 1080p and 480 fps for 720p. Check out the samples below.
Why you should re-consider buying OnePlus 7 Pro?
Huge form factor
OnePlus 7 Pro has been the tallest, heaviest smartphone in its portfolio till date. It measures 8.8 mm and weighs around 206g. Due to tall proportions, it makes difficult to use with one hand. Especially, for those with smaller hands. Notably, it is big enough to jab me in the stomach when I sit on my bike. All said and done, this is purely subjective!
Premium pricing!
OnePlus are no longer the flagship killer! While the OnePlus 7 Pro is relatively cheaper compared to Samsung Galaxy S10 series and the iPhone XS series, this is one of the steepest increases of all in OnePlus’ history. With OnePlus 7 Pro, the company has entered the premium phones business and so have their prices.
If OnePlus 7 is a good phone for its price, then OnePlus 7 Pro is just a good phone. Dot.
The OnePlus 7 Pro is available in Nebula Blue and Mirror Gray colours at a price of Rs. 48,999 for the 6GB RAM with 128GB storage version, while the 8GB RAM with 256GB storage version costs Rs. 52,999 and the top-end 12GB RAM with 256GB storage version costs Rs. 57,999.
It is available through Amazon.in,oneplus.in, all OnePlus exclusive offline stores, all Reliance Digital outlets, MyJio stores and Croma outlets.