It is OnePlus phone review time. There are two new models this spring. This is the OnePlus 9 Pro and it's the version that I'm gonna be focusing on.
And there's also the regular OnePlus 9, which is 240 dollars cheaper. I'll jump in a little bit later and talk about that. So, OnePlus, you might think of this brand as the upstart challenger that costs way less than the competition, that was the old days.
Or maybe you know the newer OnePlus phones that are aimed squarely at competing with Samsung. OnePlus has done a lot to establish its brand over the years. It's not really a household name yet, but it's not really niche anymore either. Now, in the US, only T-Mobile is selling these phones directly.
So it is still a you know, you know, kind of phone, but a lot of people know now. And one more thing to know is that the price is higher this year. This 9 Pro is 960 bucks for 128 gigs of storage, and it's a 100 dollars more to get to 256.
If you add up those new prices and the fact that OnePlus really is an established brand, you see that it's time for the company to take the next step, tobecome the establishment. The OnePlus 9 Pro isn't a scrapper taking on the big guys,it is a mainstream alternativeto the Galaxy S21s of the world in its own right. It's a straight up flagship, let's get into why.
Now, if you're gonna be the establishment of flagship phones on Android, there is one thing that you cannot skip on and that is specs. OnePlus likes to throw everything but the kitchen sink in and it has certainly done that here. Let's take a look at what we've got.
It's got a 6.7 inch 1440 by 3216, LTPO OLED display with 120 Hertz refresh rate, optical fingerprint sensor, 360 Hertz touch response rate, Snapdragon 888 processor, all kinds of 5G, 4500 milliamp battery, dual stereo speakers with a WiFi 6 Bluetooth 5.2 and a new Sony IMX 789 camera sensor.
It got 8K 30, 4K 120, 1080 slow-mo at 240, 4K 30 time lapse, 3.3X optical zoom on the telephoto camera, a monochrome like helper aid, Hasselblad partnership. There is a 65 watt wired fast charging. This fast charger comes in the optional 50 watt, wireless fast charge, etc.
So, yeah, the specs are there and really the only Android phone that can outclass these specs is the Galaxy S21 Ultra with it's better telephoto lens, but also higher price. Look though, a laundry list of high-end specs is to be expected here.
What matters is how well the phone uses them and whether they come together into an integrated whole. And the answer is yes, they do. Just look at the design here. I don't like this morning mist color way myself but I can't deny that the build quality in this phone is top-notch.
If you just look at the tolerances on the aluminum rail and the way the screen curves into it, and even the arrangement of the lenses on the camera bump, this Galaxy S20 is just really, really well-made. That was a joke, because this OnePlus 9 Pro really looks like a Galaxy S20.
And I know there's only so many ways that you can sandwich glass and aluminum together, but yeah, wow. If I had a complaint, I guess, it's that while the haptics feel nicely tuned and not very buzzy, they're also not very strong. I can barely feel this thing ring in my pocket.
One last thing before we get off specs and this is a weird one, both the 9 and the 9 Pro won't support 5G on AT&T. And as of this recording, OnePlus is still waiting on certification on Verizon's 5G network.
I have more to say about how the specs translate into the experience of using this phone but we should probably just get to the spec that usually differentiates flagship phones, the camera, because when you're talking about being part of the establishment of flagship phones, there aren't many camera brands more established than Hasselblad. We have seen camera brand partnerships before on smartphones.
I mean, heck Hasselblad itself has done it with things like the Moto mount attachment. The real question is, what exactly does this logo mean? Let's talk about it. Let's just start with the hardware. As I said earlier, there are three cameras on the back plus a helper monochrome camera.
And you know how the Pixel phone has a look that's contrasty and kind of blue,and the iPhone has a look that's very flat and even, and Samsung phones have a look, they turn the vibrancy up to 11, I think with this new camera system and the Hasselblad partnership, we can start to say that OnePlus phones have their own look too. See Hasselblad apparently helped out with the color science here. And I think the result is a melding of those other three phone styles.
So I think OnePlus' color tuning tends towards the blue side of colors more so than Samsung anyway, but it is also more vibrant than what you get out of an iPhone or a Pixel. One Plus also really likes to bring up the shadows a lot. But look, like most smartphone cameras the photos are great in good light.
In the dark, I think OnePlus' nightscape mode is a bit too bright for my tastes, but it works really well. So as usual, you have to look at the edge cases and the difficult situations to see where the real differences are.
So for example, I think OnePlus adds unnecessary noise sometimes by brightening those shadows. And in general, there is a bit of a processed look from over sharpening, especially on the ultra wide, it can get into trouble with that. I mean, just look at this fringing.
On the other hand, the ultra wide is really good at getting rid of distorted lines on the edges. Now the telephoto lens, it's only 3.3 optical and I think it's actually fine enough at that zoom level. Yeah, and if you try and do digital zoom at up to like 30X, it's just gonna get pantsed by the S21 Ultra.
Oh, and there is that monochrome helper camera but if it does anything that you couldn't just do yourself the black and white photo filter, I really couldn't see it. Finally, the selfie camera is good and that it doesn't over smooth faces.
But I do think that OnePlus could have tried a little bit harder to clean up the details on a lot of these photos. The color tuning is fine, but if I'm honest, the Hasselblad influence that I liked the most, is Pro mode, it is great. It's very easy to see what settings you have changed.
You can see what's in automode and it even has focus peaking draws that will line or what's it focus? This camera has a relatively narrow focus steps. So it's super fun to play with what is in focus and what's out of focus.
Honestly, I wish my full-on mirrorless camera had an interface that was this good. As for video, well, I mean, OnePlus put up a number, is 8K 4K 120, et cetera, et cetera, and it has big talk about improved HDR but it just doesn't come through.
The HDR can't really hold up to an iPhone 12 Pro Max at all and the basic quality and the details, especially in a 4K and especially in 8K, it's just lacking. That was a lot of criticism. So let me go back and put all of that in context.
I am being very picky and I'm comparing this phone to the best of the best, the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the Galaxy S21 Ultra, both of which cost more than this phone. The fact that the OnePlus 9 Pro can hang even a little bit, is a win. So that's the camera system on the OnePlus 9 Pro, but we've also got the OnePlus 9
So let's find out how that phone is different from the Pro version. If you're not too concerned with the camera and you wanna save a few dollars, the OnePlus 9 is a really great offer.
There are a few notable differences between the 9 and the 9 Pro, beginning with the price. The 9 starts at $730 for eight gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of storage. And then there's the camera. The OnePlus 9 uses a different main image sensor. It's the same size and pixel count, it's just from last year's OnePlus 8 Pro.
The main camera doesn't include optical image stabilization and there's no telephoto lens here either, just digital zoom, which doesn't look great. But you do get the 50 megapixel ultra wide camera which I really like using.
And of course there's still a Hasselblad color tuning which does a nice job with landscapes, but it's kind of a mixed bag overall. Outside of camera stuff, the OnePlus 9 misses out on a few features. The big one is that there's no IP rating for dust or water resistance.
Though, I can tell you from personal experience, a little drizzle doesn't do any damage. The T-Mobile version will have an official IP 68 rating, but it's the exact same hardware as the unlocked version, so make of that what you will. You don't get the fasterwireless charging speed.
The screen is a bit lower resolution and the display is flat rather than slightly curved. Oh, and it doesn't support millimeter wave 5G, but no big loss. None of these felt like significant trade-offs to me.
The fast refresh rate screen is excellent, the phone is super responsive jumping between apps and scrolling through social media and wired charging is seriously fast. The 6.5 inch screen is big but the phone's tall aspect ratio makes it easier to handle than its dimensions suggest.
You won't sacrifice build quality for opting for the more basic model either. The back panel is Gorilla Glass, just like the Pro, and that's not the case with the Samsung S21 series. Overall, it's a phone I really like using.
It just gets out of your way, handling tasks quickly and seamlessly. The interface feels minimalized and grown up and I really love using the ultra wide camera. I've probably used it as much as I used the main camera.
This is a very good premium mid range device, so long as you're okay with some camera trade-offs and its lack of broad 5G support. Now if you wanna go from the premium mid range, OnePlus 9, to the flagship OnePlus 9 Pro, you have to spend an extra $240.
And that's where the rest of the specs and how OnePlus integrates the really comes in. The camera system is a bit of an upgrade, but really performance isn't any better on the Pro. The difference is that the overall experience is nicer. So the screen is beautiful.
OnePlus is using this new kind of OLED called LTPO, which we've seen before on the Apple watch and also the Galaxy S21. It lets OnePlus set the refresh rate, anywhere from 120 Hertz, very high, all the way down to literally one Hertz.
That saves battery life and battery life here is very good but just like last year, very variable. If you turn on all of the bells and whistles and use the camera all day, you will definitely kill this thing with screen time under four hours.
With more moderate usage, I can clock in well over six, which for me translates into a day plus. Another experience thing is the fast charging. Yes, it comes with the fast wired charger in the box, but there's also wireless fast charging.
So you plug that adapter into a brand new $70, fast wireless charger, is at 50 watts and it will take the phone from zero to full in under 45 minutes. I've tested it a few times now. It does take a little bit longer if you have the screen on and in ambient mode but bottom line, wicked fast wireless charging.
As for the software experience this applies both to the OnePlus 9 Pro and the regular OnePlus 9. I think that OnePlus' whole vibe is just nice and simple, at least compared to Samsung, which has ads all over its apps.
OnepPlus version of Android is called Oxygen OS, it's at version 11, and it now does a better job of not closing apps in the background. Thank you. But the thing I just keep noticing is the whole aesthetic is just cleaner.
My favorite feature is that you can have a swipe down on the home screen, bring up a dedicated widget panel, instead of having them all over different multiple home screens. The OnePlus 9 Pro is a nice experience because OnePlus has gotten very good at taking all of those specs and integrating them into a more cohesive whole.
With the software, the whole thing just feels that little bit smoother than other Android phones and a little bit more chill. Now, sure, the camera is not the best of the best but every now and then it can hang with them.
As for the OnePlus 9, I didn't find myself missing any of the features that the Pro version offers. If you can live without a telephoto camera, then this is definitely the better value of the two. And it's a nice alternative to some of the pricier Android flagships.
Now for the 9 Pro,I get that saying this flagship is part of the establishment doesn't sound like a compliment. Then I'm also aware that there's like a general vibe among the fan base that OnePlus has kind of gone corporate.
But I mean, come on, every phone is corporate. What I mean is that when you have an established brand, you know what the phone is going to do, what it will be like to use and you trust that it will all work really well.
That is the OnePlus 9 Pro, there's no surprises, but there's no gimmicks either. It's just a good phone, a good OnePlus phone. And we know what that means now. It's been established.
Oneplus 9 pro long term review after 1 month use
Hey guys it’s Sagar and here is my long term review of the OnePlus 9 Pro. OnePlus was a really exciting brand in the beginning.
They packed in all the latest and greatest specs in their earlier phones, just like the other flagships. But they priced their phones much lower than the said flagships, making OnePlus phones amazing value for money options for the buyer.
But after doing this for couple of years, they changed their strategy. Now, they still pack in all the latest specs available in their phones, but they also keep on increasing the prices of their phones 2 times every year.
And at a starting price of Rs.64,999, OnePlus 9 Pro is their most expensive smartphone to date. That being said, it is still priced a bit lower than the other flagships, at least here in India, but it is no longer the best value for money option as OnePlus smartphones once were.
I have been using this OnePlus 9 Pro as my main phone ever since it came out, and in almost every way, it has it has been a pretty good phone, but it hasn’t lived up to the hype that OnePlus created for it. Now the design of this phone is not new or revolutionary.
With a glass sandwich design and curved display at the front, It seems like a mash up of the OnePlus 8 Pro and the 8T, with the camera module pushed on to one side. But it still looks nice and premium specially this Stellar Black colour. That brings me to a very important point.
No one, and I mean No one prefers to have a glossy glass back like on the Morning Mist colour of the 9 Pro, specially when you have 2 amazing finishes on the Stellar Black and Pine Green colour. The glossy back shows fingerprints and scratches very easily, and it also makes the phone very slippery.
So if anyone from OnePlus is watching, you guys have had amazing matte finishes to the back ever since the OnePlus 6 or 6T, and you have refined and made it even better over the years, so from next time, please being the matte frosted glass back to all the colour options.
Everyone will appreciate the design even more. Like all other OnePlus devices, 9 Pro is a very well build phone. The metal frame provided it a lot of rigidity, and the metal buttons are tactile and feel very robust.
This phone also gets IP68 water and dust resistance rating, so you no longer have to worry, if the phone takes a quick shower or if you accidentally drop it in swimming pool or spill some water over it. OnePlus 9 Pro is a bit shorter and narrower than the 8 Pro, so it fits better in my hands. The screen is still curved at the edges, but the curve is a bit subtle compared to the 8 Pro.
This is to reduce the accidental touches. But I did run into some responsiveness issues while using this phone without a case. This is more of an issue while trying to reach a certain part of the screen with one hand, or while using the camera app.
Because, chances are you have multiple fingers touching the screen at the same time without you knowing about it. Other than that, it’s a wonderful display. Very easily one of the best ones out there. With 1300 nits of peak brightness It can get very bright, and the colours look amazing.
When set to QHD+ it looks extremely crisp. It’s an LTPO display, so in the smart 120Hz mode, refresh rate can drop down when the screen is showing something less demanding, and it can race up to 120Hz for more demanding stuff.
While this is great but every now and then when the refresh rate goes from low to high, I see a couple of dropped frames. It has got much better with updates, but I still see it here and there. I don’t think this is a major issue, and I doubt that most people will even notice it. Overall I really like this display.
The bezels are super thin, and you can very easily get used to the small notch on the top left. The in display fingerprint sensor is placed a bit too low, and it took me a good 3-4 days to get used to its placement.
Now this is one of the good ones, it is very fast and accurate to unlock the phone. I just wish it was placed a bit higher, like on the OnePlus 8. While using the fingerprint sensor, you get the first tase of the amazingly strong haptic motor inside this phone.
It is not very often that you get a good vibration motor on an android phone. You get a very nice haptic feedback throughout the user interface. For example, if you are increasing the volume or brightness, vibrations go from light to strong with the slider, and this is a very nice touch.
While we are talking about the things that are inside this phone, lets us also check out the other specs. It is powered by the latest and greatest Snapdragon 888 processor with Adreno 660 GPU. You can choose between 8 or 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and 128 or 256GB of UFS 3.1 2-lane storage.
This phone does get 5G support, but right now it only has 2 5G bands, but OnePlus says they will be adding support for more bands with future software updates. With all of this you can expect flawless performance from this OnePlus 9 Pro. It can fly through anything that you through at it.
Everyday social apps, streaming content, playing games, do anything and you won’t be disappointed. Well this is the case with any OnePlus phone. They stay fast and snappy for years to come. The only issue you might run into, is the phone heating up if you use it for long time.
If you play a lot of games or click images or videos for a long time, it gets very hot. In the beginning you got this warning very often when the phone got very hot, but with updates I have started seeing this warning less and less.
But the phone has actually not stopped overheating. It still gets uncomfortably hot sometimes. I called out OnePlus on Twitter and in my camera review of this phone, for the overheating issue, and some people said that I was exaggerating the issue.
But if you go to OnePlus Forums, there is a 39 page thread about heating related issues on the OnePlus 9 Pro, so this issue is very real. And it still persists even after the latest software update. The overall software experience is very good on this phone. OnePlus’s Oxygen OS is one of my favourite Android Skins.
I love the features and customisation options it gives you. It is minimal and functional at the same time. And I love that OnePlus offers software support for a long time. They have however slowed down or delayed the Android 11 update on some of the older phones like the OnePlus 7T.
But this is their flagship device, and I hope we will get better software support for the 9 Pro in the future. Speaking of software updates, I have already received 3 or 4 of them in just the 1 month that this phone has been out.
There are the most number of updates that I have got on a new phone in such short time.While this sounds like a good thing that OnePlus is working on things and pushing out timely updates. But I strongly feel that no smartphone should need these many updates to get the basics right.
Most of the things that they are trying to fix with these updates should have been taken care of before the phone was launched to the public. OnePlus is no longer small company, and this is not an entry level smartphone, This is their most expensive smartphone and it should not be plagued with issues right out of the box. There are couple of things that really bug me.
When I was talking about the haptic feedback while adjusting the volume and brightness level, did you notice how long it took the phone to make the changes to the brightness level after I had moved the slider? Have a look at it again. It just takes way too long and it is a delayed response.
I understand gradual changes in the auto brightness level when you go from bright to dark room or the other way around. But when I am manually adjusting the brightness level, I want it to be responsive, just look at how long it takes for the brightness to go up or down after I have made the changes.
If you call this a feature, I am sorry but you are just wrong. Another major issue is delayed notifications. In an effort to preserve battery life, OnePlus adds intelligent battery optimisation to all the apps by default.
And for some reason, this doesn’t let your phone fetch notifications when it the screen is off or the phone is sitting idle. And when you pick up the phone or wake the screen, all notifications will start piling up. This is frustrating. There have been so many time sensitive notifications that missed due to this.
To get all your important notifications in time, you will have to manually go into battery settings and turn off this optimisation off for those apps. It should be the other way around. These are a few hiccups that I came across in the last few days.
All that being said, I still like the overall OnePlus UI and the features that it offers, and I wish all the issues and bugs are ironed out asap. In the last month or so of using the 9 Pro, I found the battery life to be very disappointing. It barely ever gave me a screen on time of over 5 hours.
I tried switching to FHD+ resolution, but didn’t see any major improvement in the battery life. This is again something that many people are complaining about, and I really hope OnePlus could do something to squeeze slightly more usage out of the 4500mAh battery.
We do get the 65 watt warp charger In the box, which fully charges the phone in under half an hour. So the battery not lasting long enough on a single charge is not turning out to be that big of an issue, at least in the time of this pandemic, where we barely get out of our homes.
And we can plug the phone into the charger whenever we want to. It also supports 50 watt wireless charging with the OnePlus wireless charger, which is even faster than wired charging on most of the phones.
All that being said, with the latest efficient processor and a 4500 mAh battery, we should have got better battery life out of this phone. We should not have to dial back on some of the key features like QHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, just to squeeze out a day’s worth of battery on the OnePlus 9 Pro. With all the being covered, let us move on to the most hyped part of this phone, it’s cameras.
Most people know this by now, that OnePlus has partnered with Hasselblad in the hopes of improving the cameras on their phone.
This a 3 year collaboration and OnePlus is spending close to 150 Million dollars on it. While Hasselblad might have some input in the camera hardware on future OnePlus phones, this time, most of Hasselblad’s influence seems to be on the software side.
They are said to have helped OnePlus achieve natural Colour Calibration in its images. But if you saw my camera review of this phone, we know it doesn’t capture natural colours. And yes, this is after the update which was said to have improved the cameras.
You don’t have to take my word for it, go and watch the image samples in my dedicated camera review and decide for yourself. And while you are there, check out the comments, there are quite a few OnePlus 9 Pro owners who are not very happy with the cameras.
Well frankly, other than colours, I don’t have any major issues with the cameras. I specially love the wide camera on this phone. I feel it is the best wide camera on any phone that I have tested yet. And the fact that it doubles as a macro camera is just a cherry on the cake.
The wide camera is actually showing better looking colours than the primary camera. The 16 megapixel selfie camera does an adequate job if the lighting is not too harsh. Adequate is the right word to describe it.
These selfies have enough details to not make these images look bad, but there are much better selfie cameras on phones prices lower than this. If there is one area that the camera has seen the biggest improvement in, it is while shooting videos. Not just with the video resolution and frame rate options, but quality wise as well.
I really like the videos that the OnePlus 9 pro can shoot. I am specially a fan of the 4K 120fps mode. But you should know that the phone gets very hot if you use the cameras for long, specially while shooting videos.
Now the cameras on this phone have a lot of potential, and sometimes they take incredible images, but what it lacks in is consistency. If OnePlus could somehow make this camera more consistent, I won’t mind using this as my main phone.
As good as the cameras on this phone are, I doubt that you will really see a difference between its and OnePlus 8 Pro’s images. So that begs the question that should you even get the OnePlus 9 pro over the 8 Pro.
Because OnePlus 8 Pro offers you 90% of what the 9 Pro does at a much lower price. Well if you have the OnePlus 8 Pro, you don’t even need to think about upgrading to the 9 Pro. And if you are who is confused between these 2, I would say get the 8 Pro and save yourself some money.
But if you are someone who wants the latest and greatest of all the specs, and with that you need the super fast wired and wireless charging speeds, and if you don’t mind spending the extra amount, go with the OnePlus 9 Pro.
But please get the Stellar Black or Pine Green colour, coz the glossy back of the Morning Mist just doesn’t fair well in day to day usage. Personally I feel OnePlus has gone a step too far with the pricing on the OnePlus 9 Pro, but if you still want a flagship smartphone that packs in all the latest specs, and still costs a bit less than others, it is one ofthe best options.
I just hope this is the last price hike from OnePlus, because it will be very difficult for me to recommend their phones to you guys, if the price just keeps rising. What do you guys feel about this OnePlus 9 Pro? Let me know in the comments.
Thank you