It’s been a month since OnePlus released their new flagship devices for 2019: The OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro. The phone is one of the most awaited devices of the year and with the OnePlus 7 Pro, the company is promising to deliver a significantly better “ultra-high-end” device than ever before. Indeed over the last few years OnePlus has evolved from being a niche brand to actually being one of the most recognized smartphone vendors. With the increased popularity and product maturity, prices have also gone up, and the new OP7Pro carves itself into a higher tier device segment. Still, OnePlus’ product mantra remains unchanged and the new phone promises to deliver outstanding value for the price, being nick-named the “Flagship Killer”.

Today we review the OnePlus 7 Pro in depth, and investigate the device’s outstanding performance, the new unique 90Hz 1440p OLED display, and OnePlus’ take on a new triple-camera setup and implementation of a 48MP sensor. Naturally, we also have to talk about the phone’s new design – characterised by the new full-screen bezel-less display and pop-up front camera.

Let’s start with the fundamental specifications of the phone:

OnePlus 7 Series
		OnePlus 7		OnePlus 7 Pro (Reviewed)
SoC		Qualcomm Snapdragon 855  1x Kryo 485 (Cortex-A76) @ 2.84GHz 3x Kryo 485 (Cortex-A76) @ 2.42GHz 4x Kryo 485 (Cortex-A55) @ 1.80GHz Adreno 640 @ 585MHz
DRAM		6 / 8 GB LPDDR4X		6 / 8 / 12 GB LPDDR4X
Storage		128 / 256GB UFS 3.0
Display		6.41" AMOLED 2340 x 1080 (19.5:9) 60Hz		6.67" AMOLED 3120 x 1440 (19.5:9) 90Hz
Size	Height	157.7 mm		162.6 mm
	Width	74.4 mm		75.9 mm
	Depth	8.2 mm		8.8 mm
Weight		182 grams		206 grams
Battery Capacity		3700mAh 20W Charging (5V/4A)		4000mAh Typical 3880mAh Rated 30W Charging (5V/6A)
Wireless Charging		-
Rear Cameras
	Main	48MP IMX586 0.8µm pixels (1.6µm 4:1 12MP binning) f/1.7 / f/1.6 (Pro) lens OIS
	Telephoto	-		13MP 1.0µm pixels (8MP 3x zoom photos) f/2.4 2.2x zoom OIS
	Wide	-		16MP f/2.4 117° wide-angle
	Extra	5MP 1.12µm f/2.4 Depth Sensor		Laser-autofocus module
Front Camera		16MP 1.0µm IMX471 f/2.0 lens; fixed focus
I/O		USB-C 3.1 no headphone jack
Wireless (local)		802.11ac Wave 2 Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5.0 LE + NFC Dual Band GPS (L1+L5), Dual Band Galileo (E1+E5a)
Cellular		UE Category 16 (DL) / Category 13 (UL) 1000 Mbit/s DL (5xCA 4x4 MIMO) 150 Mbit/s UL
Other Features		Dual Stereo Speakers
Dual-SIM		Dual nanoSIM
Colours		Mirror Gray Red (China & India)		Mirror Gray (Glossy) Almond (Glossy) Nebula Blue (Etched/matte)
Launch Price		6 + 128:	£499 €575	6 + 128:	$669 £649 €749 ₹48,999
		8 + 256:	£549 €639	8 + 256:	$699 £699 €805 ₹52,999
		OnePlus 7 (non-Pro) Not available in US		12 + 256:	$799 £799 €920 ₹57,999

As is expected of a 2019 flagship, the new OP7Pro is fitted with Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon 855 chipset, which by now should be no mystery to anyone as we’ve extensively covered the new 7nm SoC in our review of the Galaxy S10 a few months back. The new Cortex A76 derived CPU cores, the new Adreno 640 and the manufacturing process make the S855 the currently strongest Android SoC on the market.

Where OnePlus can differentiate itself is in the thermal design of the phone, and as we’ll see later in our sustained GPU performance tests, the 7 Pro fully delivers on its promises and the new heat-pipe and carbon thermal dissipation layers result in seemingly outstanding gaming performance.

The chipset is accompanied by varying amount of DRAM: OnePlus segments the capacity along with the NAND storage configuration options, starting at 6GB for the base modem, 8GB for the mid-tier, and also a 12GB ultra-high tier variant.

In terms of storage, OnePlus hit it out of the park this generation as the new 7 Pro is the first and currently only smartphone to ship with a new generation UFS 3.0 storage module. Compared to previous generation UFS 2.1 devices, this promises a doubling of the theoretical peak bandwidth, something that is noticeable especially when installing large applications.

7 Pro vs 6T

Moving onto the design of the phone, the first thing you notice when you have the device in hand is that it’s a notably bigger phone than the OnePlus 6/6T. The 7 Pro is bigger in all dimensions; it’s wider, taller, thicker and heavier.

The back of the phone features a relatively similar design as the 6T: A centred vertical camera layout with a flash underneath it as well as the classical OnePlus logo. The back is still glass; the review unit pictured above is the “Mirror Gray” version which has an interesting holographic effect reflecting off of it. Personally I had found the chemically etched “Nebula Blue” variant a lot more interesting, if not for the colour, then because of the matte finish providing a much different feel to the phone and also not being nearly as big of a finger-print magnet as the glossy variants.

7 Pro vs 6T

On the front of the phone we find the centre-piece and prime feature of the OnePlus 7 Pro: its bezel-less full-screen OLED display.

OnePlus isn’t the first vendor to come with such a bezel-less design to market, as we’ve seen implementations from Oppo, Honor and Xiaomi over the last ~8 months. How the OnePlus 7 Pro differs from the competition is that it offers the most refined solution to date, with the inarguably best display panel specifications in the market.

OnePlus relied on Samsung to source the screen, and it’s said that OnePlus spared no expenses this time around. The screen is a 6.67” diagonal unit at 1440p, with an exact resolution of 3120 x 1440, resulting in a wide 19.5:9 aspect ratio.

While that by itself isn’t very unusual, what is special about the phone is that this is the first 90Hz display with aforementioned specifications. The new high refresh rate display panel of the phone is very much the killer feature of the OnePlus 7 Pro, and it doesn’t disappoint. To top things off, the panel also checks all the boxes with support for HDR10+, various accurate display profiles, and promise of high brightness. The latter point is something we weren’t quite able to verify, something we’ll dwell deeper into during the display testing section.

Underneath the front screen and hidden from view is a new generation optical under-screen fingerprint sensor. The new unit is a lot faster than what we saw on the 6T as it’s very much faster than Samsung’s ultra-sonic fingerprint sensor in the S10.

OnePlus was able to achieve a bezel-less display design thanks to the phone’s new pop-up front camera module. The module itself is a 16MP IMX471 sensor with an f/2.0 lens and it takes adequately good pictures. The module is located in a “tray” that is mechanically actuated up and down by an internal motor and screw assembly. The module pops up quite fast and equally retracts at the same speed. OnePlus also implemented a fall-detection mechanism that automatically retracts the module when sensing that the phone is in free-fall, although it’s not quite fast enough to quite retract itself fully from a standing chest-height.

I have relatively mixed feelings about the design. On one hand I absolutely agree that the bezel-less screen is a definitely a winning factor of the phone, however there’s still large compromises in mechanical camera assemblies such as on the 7 Pro.

For one I found that the module more than once had retracted with some dust or debris. This didn’t result in any scratches, but I do have to wonder how the internals will look like after a year or more of usage. Also I think that this mechanism had a quite big cost in terms of actual internal space of the phone. It takes up a significant amount of volume inside the phone, plus it adds in quite a lot of weight to the phone. OnePlus 7 Pro not only is a big phone, but at 206g it’s also quite heavier than most other devices. In fact the phone that is most comparable to it in my opinion is the iPhone XS Max, which is also quite the massive unit.

The most odd and annoying thing about the pop-up camera however is the top cover of the module. Here the finish and colour just doesn’t match those of the rest of the aluminium frame of the phone. I immediately noticed this at the launch event and it seems it affects all phones in all colour variants.

Going back to the rear of the phone, another key feature of the OnePlus 7 Pro is its triple-camera setup. Like many other vendors this year, OnePlus has opted to go for Sony’s new IMX586 camera sensor for the main module. The sensor is characterised by its 48MP resolution and ability for 4:1 pixel binning into 12MP. The actual sensor’s colour filter is a quad-bayer setup, meaning the real chromatic spatial resolution is 12MP anyway, and the 48MP mode is enabled via pre-processing on the sensor itself, really only achieving chromatic spatial resolution equivalent to about ~27MP. OnePlus here does things better than a lot of other vendors; the 48MP simply isn’t available outside of the Pro mode, and I suggest users to just avoid using it at all.

OnePlus did strive to improve the optics of the new module. It comes with a f/1.6 aperture and features OIS, the latter which is quite crucial for video recording. The camera is augmented by a laser auto-focus module, as the sensor only makes use of limited phase-detect autofocus pixels.

While the new main sensor is new, the bigger addition to the camera experience of the 7 Pro is the inclusion of a wide-angle and dedicated telephoto module. The wide-angle is a 16MP unit with a 117° field of view and f/2.4 aperture optics, in line with what we’ve seen from other flagships.

The telephoto module features an effective 3x zoom (74mm equivalent focal length) at 8MP. It’s to be noted that OnePlus later clarified that the actual sensor is a 13MP unit and the optical zoom is only 2.2x, OnePlus crops this down to 8MP for an effective 3x relative to the main sensor. The full 13MP of the module are only used in portrait mode shots.

Finally, the OnePlus 7 Pro continues OnePlus’ track of not having a headphone jack. Unlike the 6T last year (And the OnePlus 7 this year), at least the 7 Pro makes use of the space by putting the SIM tray in its place at the bottom of the phone. However what’s puzzling is that OnePlus didn’t include a 3.5mm headphone dongle in the 7 Pro package. I find this relatively egregious given that consumers updating to the 7 Pro will have to purchase a unit separately. To top this off, OnePlus also doesn’t offer any bundled headphones with the phone.

The positive things in the audio department is that the speakers of the OP7Pro are significantly improved. OnePlus has significantly widened and increased the size of the earpiece grill, and the module now serves as a second speaker for stereo playback. While the audio is much improved over previous OP devices (which had terrible speakers), it doesn’t quite match the quality seen in the competition.

Overall design wise, I think the OP7Pro is a great phone with great ergonomics. I just have to remind readers that this is a big phone that is also quite heavy – so there will definitely be people who may be put off from the device due to its dimensions.

System Performance

One of the key aspects of the new OnePlus 7 Pro is its promised performance. OnePlus now for a few generations has made a large focus on the performance of their devices, opting to go the extra mile to optimise the software experience of their devices and the OS software. The new 7 Pro promises to thus to differentiate itself from other Snapdragon 855 devices.

Another way that the performance of the OnePlus 7 Pro should be much improved compared to the competition is the inclusion of UFS 3.0 storage as well as the new 90Hz display. Admittedly our testing setup for NAND is currently inadequate to fully test the storage speed, however the 90Hz refresh rate does have some immediate effects on some benchmarks, in particular our favourite, PCMark.

In PCMark’s web browsing test, the OnePlus 7 Pro showcases some larger score discrepancy between its 60 and 90Hz modes. What is interesting is that the 60Hz score is unusually low, performing quite a lot worse than what we saw from other Snapdragon 855 devices who are 60Hz themselves as well. The 90Hz mode does up the score notably, however it still slightly lags behind the Galaxy S10+ as well as all other Kirin 980 powered devices.

The video editing score is in line with the majority of the pack, but again the OP7Pro is lagging behind the Samsung S10+ with the Snapdragon 855.

It’s in the writing sub-test, arguably the single most important workload of PCMark where the OnePlus 7 Pro manages to distinguish itself more compared to other devices. Here both in 60 and 90Hz modes the device manages to take the top spots in the charts.

The photo editing workload is also an important indicator of general device snappiness. Here the OP7Pro again beats the competition from Samsung and LG with the same SoC. I think it’s possible that OnePlus has better and more optimised OS libraries and this is why this is seen as a performance advantage compared to the competition.

The data manipulation score again has a notable difference between the 90Hz and 60Hz modes, but much like the web-browsing test we’re again seeing some oddly low performance of the 60Hz mode, much below that of other Snapdragon 855 devices.

Finally the end-score of the OnePlus 7 Pro ends up just shy of the Snapdragon Galaxy S10+, losing some yet winning others. The 60Hz mode does have an effect of the score and in this mode the OP7Pro loses a few hundred points.

Browser JS Benchmarks

In the Javascript web-browsing benchmarks the OP7Pro is relatively in line with the LG G8. The odd thing here again is that Samsung’s Galaxy S10+ with the same chip offers a quite different performance fingerprint. This is particularly visible in WebXPRT where it has a lead over the OP7Pro. It’s to be noted that in the web benchmarks I haven’t seen any difference in scoring whether the device was in 60 or 90Hz display modes.

Device Performance Conclusion – A Lot Not Covered By Benchmarks

While the OP7Pro performed quite well in our system benchmark suite, there’s a few aspects of the phone that unfortunately aren’t really covered. One such things is the NAND storage and the experience that the 90Hz mode gives.

In terms of the new UFS 3.0 storage, its addition to the phone was something that I immediately noticed in regards to application installation speeds. Here the OP7Pro was significantly faster than any other Android device I’ve had before, shaving off significant chunks off of installation times.

Another subjective aspect that is hard to objectively convey in benchmark numbers is simply the vastly improved UI fluidity brought forth by the 90Hz refresh rate of the phone. Any PC user with a higher refresh rate monitor will know what an immense difference this makes compared to the more traditional 60Hz. The very first time I held the OP7Pro at our pre-briefing I immediately saw the massive difference this makes to the fluidity of scrolling and very much knew that this would be the killer feature of the phone, no matter how all other aspects would end up.

While in terms of UI snappiness, the OnePlus 7 Pro isn’t any faster than say Samsung’s S10, its fluidity just stands out as something beyond any other current device (Asus Rog Phone & Razer phones aside). OnePlus’ combination of high-refresh rate on an OLED screen makes for an incredible selling point.

While the 90Hz is fantastic, I have some serious doubts about the 60Hz mode of the phone and whatever OnePlus did to the software stack in terms of implementing this. For some odd reason, it makes things notably slower, and I’m not just talking about simply there being less frames, but actual reduced responsiveness and an impression of more sluggishness and jank. In fact, in 60Hz mode the phone feels notably more sluggish than the Galaxy S10, when in theory it should have been equal. The fact that the OnePlus 7 Pro somewhat performs more similar to the G8 in some web benchmarks has me suspect it actually has similar BSP performance issues, and the 90Hz mode somehow just counter-acts these negatives. It’s really odd.

That being said, just stick with the 90Hz mode and you’ll have a fantastic experience beyond that of any other phone out in the market right now.

GPU Performance

This generation GPU performance uplifts of the new Snapdragon 855 were relatively muted in devices that we’ve tested until now; Qualcomm had only promised and managed an average improvement of 20% over last year’s Snapdragon 845, even though the chip came on a new process node that should have enabled it for larger power and performance improvements.

The OnePlus 7 Pro thus seemingly shouldn’t be any different than the S10, G8 or other S855 phones in terms of the peak performance of the phone. Where OnePlus however can differentiate itself is the sustained performance of workloads. The company had made an emphasis on its “10-layer cooling system” which in layman terms consists of a heatpipe system with some new carbon dissipation tape in the internal design of the phone and its motherboard. In particular OnePlus claims no slow-downs in games, while it’s not the first company to promise this, let’s see if this time around the phone is able to achieve this.

Starting off with the 3DMark Physics test which is mostly a CPU performance workload within a GPU power constrained scenario, we see that the peak performance of the phone is in line with other SoCs of this generation. What does stand out however is that the sustained performance, even though not as good as what we see on Kirin 980 devices, is indeed better than the Galaxy S10+ and the G8.

Moving onto actual GPU-constrained scenarios, we’re now starting to see what OnePlus was talking about: The OnePlus 7 Pro doesn’t seem to throttle much at all even after long prolonged periods of load. In 3DMark the device takes the very top spot in terms of performance. Until now last year’s Note9 was still the leader in this regard precisely because it was throttling less than newer Snapdragon 855 phones this year, but now with the OP7Pro also not throttling, it’s actually able to consistently showcase the SoC’s actual performance improvement.

In the GFXBench Aztec benchmarks we see a similar story: There’s almost no throttling at all happening, and the device is able to maintain near peak performance seemingly endlessly.

In Manhattan 3.1 and T-Rex we again see excellent sustained performance. It was a bit odd to see that the OP7Pro’s peak performance was slightly less than the S10+ and G8’s, it’s possible OnePlus is running the GPU at a slightly lower clock or has the DRAM running at more lax timings. However this doesn’t matter as it takes the performance lead after a short period of gaming.

Outstanding Sustained Performance – At A Cost

Overall, the OnePlus 7 Pro is currently the best performing Android device out there for gaming. OnePlus indeed was able to achieve an excellent thermal dissipation system, and the phone is able to disperse the heat across its chassis in a much more even manner than any other phone.

It’s to be noted that this still isn’t enough to catch up to Apple’s latest iPhone – here we’re just hitting fundamental limits of the Snapdragon 855 chipset which isn’t able to compete in performance and efficiency to the latest A12 chipset.

Although the thermal dissipation system of the OnePlus 7 Pro is excellent and better than a lot of other devices in the market right now, it does come at a cost. The company is still extremely lax in terms of maximum device temperatures under load. I was able to measure a peak of 51°C in terms of screen skin temperature, whereas devices such as the S10 will not allow for more than 42-43°C in the same scenario. So while the phone is extremely performant, it’s also extremely hot and the battery drain at these performance levels is also quite extreme and will go from 100% to 0% in less than 3 hours.

In the end, such load scenarios won’t be encountered by most users in every-day games, although if the game has an unlocked framerate, it will mean a lot more load than other 60Hz devices.

Display Measurement

The screen of the OnePlus 7 Pro is definitely the key feature of the phone. The 6.67” 3120 x 1440 resolution panel not only represents OnePlus’ highest resolution display to date, but the 90Hz display mode also makes it stand out above any other smartphone currently available.

Display Architecture: 90Hz - But How?

In our article covering the phone’s announcement, a big question for me was exactly how OnePlus had achieved the running of 1440p90 in terms of hardware implementation between the SoC and the panel DDIC. Initially I had theorised that OnePlus would have had to employ a dual-MIPI interface, doubling up on the hardware connections between the two chips.

To my surprise when investigating the device’s kernel source, this actually isn’t the case, and the OnePlus 7 Pro still only has a single MIPI interface to the DDIC. After a bit of research, the only explanation I have is that this must be one of the very first devices in the market which is implementing a newer D-PHY physical layer standard in the MIPI DSI interfaces. The SoC and DDIC must be using either a new D-PHY 1.2 or D-PHY 2.0 standard with much increased data transfer rates.

I was actually quite surprised by this and it’s generally excellent news for the phone as it means the hardware implementation was done in the most optimal way, as opposed to the less efficient dual-interface implementation on some other phones.

I did try to measure what the actual power drain of the screen was, but wasn’t able to get to quite as straightforward results as I wanted. Measuring input power into the phone, the device’s base drain was in line with last generation devices at ~550mW in 60Hz mode. Oddly enough turning on 90Hz had a large effect on the drain and increased base power by ~100mW.

Measuring the power on the device’s internal PMIC however showed good figures in line with the Galaxy S10 at a lower ~400mW, and no noticeable difference between the 60 and 90Hz modes. We’ll revisit this discussion later on in the battery results page, but for the moment I’m more inclined to believe the former (worse) numbers given the results I’ve achieved.

Display Measurement

First of all, let’s go over the fundamentals of the display panel itself. OnePlus promises a lot, and indeed the phone checkmarks almost every feature out there, including high resolution, high refresh rate, and high brightness and support for HDR10+ content.

The device’s screen gamuts are implemented in the traditional style with multiple pre-defined profiles. There’s a “Vivid” mode which goes beyond the DCI P3 standard, and there’s an accurate “Natural” mode that is also colour managed for Display P3 and sRGB content much like on the Galaxy S10.

On top of these, OnePlus also gives an “Advanced” option with sub-selections of the AMOLED, P3 and sRGB gamuts with a custom colour temperature slider. These later modes are quite a disappointment as we’ll see shortly.

As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as our measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and examined using SpectraCal's CalMAN software.

  

In terms of maximum brightness in manual mode, the OnePlus 7 Pro achieves up to 399 nits on full-screen white, which is in line with other phones which have dedicated high brightness modes in “Auto”. It’s to be noted that OnePlus here is quite a bit brighter than Samsung’s phones.

 

When high brightness mode is enabled under high ambient luminosity in the Auto mode, the OnePlus 7 Pro boosts up to ~548 nits. I was a bit surprised at this figure as it is well below OnePlus’ advertised figure of 800 nits at 100% APL. I again dug a bit deeper into the drivers of the panel and saw that the hardware isn’t allowed to go over 670nits in HBM. After further digging I discovered that the brightness behaviour in the Vivid mode is quite different and this actually even activates APL brightness scaling; here the phone is able to reach around the 670nits figure at 100% APL.

So although brightness of the phone’s display isn’t really an issue, it’s not quite as bright as advertised, and it also doesn’t quite reach the levels of some other phones by the competition when in accurate colour modes. Legibility in direct sunlight as captured above in the picture is still very good.

SpectraCal CalMAN
   

We’re measuring Grayscale accuracy in the device’s most accurate default mode; the “Natural” mode. At 200 nits brightness, the phone is showing good results. The biggest issue I see is that it’s veering off towards the warmer side with an average CCT of 6013 – the blues are clearly too weak in this display mode. The core issue here is that colour temperature over brightness isn’t quite linear and the brighter you get, the nearer to the target 6500K you get.

Gamma accuracy is also good, although just slightly above the target 2.2 mark at 2.36 average. The average is pulled up due to the first and last 10% of levels being too dark.

OnePlus had advertised an odd minimum of 0.27 nits in brightness which I had time to comprehend at the beginning. Indeed this mode is only available when enabling “Night Mode 2.0” on the phone, which is essentially the blue light filter mode. Without this, the phone’s minimum white brightness is a regular 1.88nits which is in line with what we see in the industry.

Again we’re seeing black clipping at the lowest intensity levels of the phone. Currently only Apple’s iPhone X and XS series are the only OLED devices on the market to able to handle this characteristic correctly.

SpectraCal CalMAN

Overall the phone’s greyscale accuracy is good and in general most people won’t notice any issues in the “Natural” mode of the phone.

SpectraCal CalMAN
Natural Mode (sRGB)

In terms of saturation accuracy of the phone, we also measure the Natural mode as the most accurate profile, but I want to take a second to showcase an oddity of the phone’s Advanced mode in a second.

In the Natural mode, the phone was excellent saturation accuracy results with a deltaE2000 of 1.24, with only slight deviations in the lower red intensity levels.

SpectraCal CalMAN
Advanced Mode sRGB

What’s really confusing is that the phone’s “Advanced” mode really isn’t that advanced. First of all the default colour temperature in this mode is very much off and too blue. For the above measurement I tried to get as close to accurate whites as I could with the slider (Slider around the 80% mark), however the results were still massively disappointing with results being quite over the place, resulting in a bad dE2000 of 4.22.

Nevertheless, I recommend the Natural mode and thus the display accuracy of the OnePlus 7 Pro in this regard ends up as extremely competitive and among the top performers.

SpectraCal CalMAN

 

The Display P3 gamut is also available under the Advanced modes, although this mode also needed tuning to get to an acceptable colour temperature, and while the saturation accuracy was better than the sRGB mode, it still showcases some of the same deviations in the greens and reds and thus ends up with a dE2000 of 3.14 (yay for Pi).

SpectraCal CalMAN

SpectraCal CalMAN

In the Gretag-Macbeth chart of common colours such as skin-tones, the OnePlus 7 Pro ends up with excellent results with a dE2000 result of 1.63. There’s some devices that still beat it, but overall it’s still a fantastic result and should result in visually imperceptible differences to consumers.

Display Conclusion

Overall, the OnePlus 7 Pro’s display is excellent. While it doesn’t really break any records, OnePlus was able to currently deliver the best Android screen this year, besting even Samsung in terms of calibration.

While there’s always room for improvement, the only other issue I’d talk about is that the screen’s side curvature is quite of a larger radius than what we’ve seen from other more recent phones adopting this design. This does result in more reflections.

Battery Life

The OnePlus 7 Pro comes with a 4000mAh battery with a standard nominal chemistry voltage of 3.85V which results in a capacity of 15.4Wh. It’s to be noted that this is the typical capacity of the battery while the rated capacity is 3880mAh / 14.93Wh.

We’ve seen from competing smartphones that what’s almost always more important than the actual battery capacity is the power efficiency of the components. We do expect the OP7Pro to have a higher power drain than competing smartphones due to the 90Hz screen, but the question is as to exactly how much more drain we’ll be seeing.

The battery testing results were done in the native 1440p resolution of the screen.

As mentioned before on the Display page, I had measured the device’s base power consumption with some conflicting numbers depending on methodology. One set pointed out the OP7Pro had quite large power drain, while the other set pointed out it’s almost as good as the Galaxy S10’s. The actual battery longevity results should shed more light onto this:

As I had anticipated, the OnePlus 7 Pro’s battery results veer more towards the higher power drain figures. In our web browsing test the OnePlus 7 Pro achieves good results, although it’s not able to keep up with the competition this year nor with the OnePlus 6T from last year.

Here it seems the phone does indeed have quite high base power consumption figures around the 550mW mark and the 100mW difference between 60Hz and 90Hz modes seems to be correct.

In PCMark, the 7Pro comes with good to great results depending on whether we’re using the 60 or 90Hz modes. I only had limited time with the device so I couldn’t also do the 1080p resolution battery life tests, and frankly I believe they’re not very relevant to the majority of users as there’s not much reason to use that mode.

In PCMark the 60Hz to 90Hz battery delta is slightly more pronounced than what we saw in the web browsing test, and this might be simply because the device is doing more computational work.

Overall, the OnePlus 7 Pro’s battery life is good, although it’s clearly not the best out there.

For me personally I use my phones a lot more in the evening and tend to use dark mode in the OS and apps. Under such scenarios the effect of a phone’s base power consumption will be more amplified as it represents a larger % share of the total consumed energy – and in this case the OP7Pro will give a noticeably worse result than say Samsung’s current generation.

Still, this is seemingly the first high-refresh-rate phone on the market that has completely useable battery life without any major handicap, all thanks to OnePlus’s optimal hardware implementation of the 90Hz refresh rate. In general if you’re buying the phone, you’re buying it for the 90Hz mode, and it makes very little sense to pay attention to either the 1080p or even 60Hz modes that the phone gives you.

A Word About 30W Charging

The OnePlus 7 Pro comes with a 30W charger. Here OnePlus is opting for a high current charging standard that goes up to 6A at 5V. The benefit of using a lower voltage and high current standard is that the phone’s PMIC will have a higher conversion efficiency when transforming the voltage down to the 4.4-4.5V cell battery charging voltage, reducing phone heating.

I am still extremely sceptical about these high power charging standards as they will more quickly degrade your battery capacity over time. At 30W / 5A for a 4000mAh battery, this means a peak charging rate of 1.25C which is well above the commonly agreed peak rated limit of 1C. Personally I would not trust to use such a charger in other than urgent circumstances, and generally I’m a bit worried at the battery longevity aspect of things with the current industry’s trend of racing to ever higher charging rates as a means of product differentiation.

Besides that, it’s also relatively disappointing that the OP7Pro doesn’t support wireless charging, even though the phone is relatively thick and does have a glass back. OnePlus said that this is something they’ll be looking into for future products.

Camera - Daylight Evaluation

Having covered the OnePlus 7 Pro’s main feature, the 90Hz screen, the other major selling-point of the phone is its triple-camera setup.

The main camera is a 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor with an f/1.6 aperture lens and OIS. It’s to be noted that OnePlus does one thing right with the new sensor: It largely ignores the 48MP mode and is generally inaccessible besides in the Pro Mode. In general for all intents and purposes this is a 12MP camera shoot, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As we’ve seen reviewed in several other phones over the last year, the sensor’s native resolution capture mode comes with big compromises in terms of dynamic range and in 90% of the cases it’s not something I would recommend users to use.

The wide-angle and telephoto modules on the OP7Pro are also a first for the company, and allows the phone to match the features of the highest end Samsung and Huawei devices. We expect essentially every vendor this year to adopt the triple-camera setup in their flagships, so it’s a must-have in order to compete in the photography department.

Latest Firmware Update as of Writing

Also I have to make a big mention regarding the firmware version this review was written on: Initially I had already completed a camera testing round on the 9.5.5 firmware when I had received the phone, but then OnePlus had released the new OxygenOS 9.5.7 version which had major changes in the camera processing department as well as updating the Nightscape mode with a new improved algorithm, so I've redone the whole camera testing on the new firmware.

This review is also done with Samsung’s latest May firmware update on the Exynos S10 variant which also has major improvements, and coincidentally Huawei had also pushed a big update for the P30Pro which in turn also says to have improved camera performance.

It’s a bit annoying for us reviewers as camera performance is a continuously changing aspect of a new phone following its release (It’s one of the very last things OEMs spend development time on), but hopefully this review gives readers a good representative evaluation of what to expect of the phones for the rest of the year, including the new OnePlus 7 Pro.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ]
[ G8 ] - [ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

In the first scene there’s a lot of detail and high natural dynamic range as it was a clear day with the sun shining, while also having a lot of darker shadows in the scene.

The OP7Pro does a good job in terms of exposure and composition, however we do notice it lags behind the S10 in ability to capture the true brightness of the scene as well as the more natural saturation of the greenery.

I included the Honor 20 Pro into this review purposely because it has the very same IMX586 sensor as the OnePlus 7 Pro, with the differences between the two phones being that one is running on the Snapdragon 855 and the other is using the Kirin 980 chipset. Naturally each vendor’s camera calibration will also come into play here. This also applies to the Oppo Reno, again using the same popular sensor.

Unfortunately for the OP7Pro, the H20Pro has notably better colours and better HDR, something particularly visible on the highlights of the large hedges. The OnePlus tends to flatten things too much. The shadow captures also remind one very much of the Pixel 3, although it’s not quite as terrible as on the Google phone; here the S10 and iPhone XS’s dynamic range is just much better. OnePlus’ cousin the Oppo Reno also seems to have better handling of details throughout the scene as it’s not washing textures out as much.

We see about the same differences in the wide-angle lens of the OP7Pro: The composition is good, however things are flattened out too much as textures are washed out compared to other phones with wide-angle modules (Well, besides LG), albeit we are talking about different sensors this time around.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ]
[ G8 ] - [ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

This next scene was actually a bit shocking to me when I was sorting the pictures as I couldn’t believe just how many phones outright failed to get acceptable results. This was actually a sunny day with intermittent cloud cover, and the scene in question was overcast by a larger cloud during the captures. The background clouds however were extremely bright and I think a lot of phones failed because of this.

The OnePlus 6T’s result was particularly potato-quality as its HDR algorithm decided to get rid of all intensity levels beyond 75% luminosity. Overall I find it quite a pity with what OnePlus had done with the 6T as I deemed the OP6 last year to be among the best daytime cameras out there.

Nevertheless, this is about the 7 Pro, and here the new phone does a lot better than the 6T and it manages to get a reasonable exposure. Still it’s not really enough to keep up with the competition as the scene is too dark and the shadows in particularly are artificially too pronounced. The Exynos S10 fell flat when it came to colours, leaving the Snapdragon S10 as the only phone with a good representation of the scene, even if the background sky was blown out.

The wide-angle on the OP7 Pro is good, although again it’s having too dark shadows and the colour temperature is also slightly too warm. What’s interesting here is that in terms of viewing angle, the OP7 Pro is similar to other phones such as the H20Pro, Reno and G8, however the OnePlus has a massively more pronounced distortion on the lens, as seen by the curvature of the ledge at the bottom of the screen.

I found the zoom lens of the OP7 Pro here to be quite excellent. The 3x effective factor results in extremely sharp images throughout the scene, and although the exposure wasn’t challenging here, it was very good.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ]
[ Honor 20 Pro ] - [ G8 ]
[ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

The next scene is also an excellent showcase how having the same sensor doesn’t really mean too much in terms of the resulting picture: The OP7Pro, H20Pro and Reno have absolutely nothing in common in terms of the end image.

The picture’s histograms between the OP7Pro and Pixel 3 are shockingly similar, with both phones ending up with similar compositions. However they’re both too dark and wrong colour temperature (The 6T does much better here). The Galaxy S10 is the best representation of the actual scene.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ]
[ G8 ] - [ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

The next scene is a lot easier in terms of exposure and the OP7Pro ends up with a good composition. Its weaknesses is again similar to that of the Pixel 3 and older phones in that it doesn’t have any dynamic range in the shadows for what is essentially broad daylight.

The Honor 20 Pro showcases that the sensor is able to capture a lot more, and also it doesn’t wash out textures as seen on the OnePlus phone in the road, sidewalk and building façade.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ] - [ G8 ]
[ Oppo Reno ] - [ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

Continuing on a relatively bad streak, this next scene also isn’t too kind to the OP7Pro. Here it’s actually the 6T which best showcases the 7Pro’s lackings in terms of texture detail as well as shadow exposure. The Honor 20 Pro and Reno both again showcase the hardware should be able to achieve better.

The wide-angle here is good, although again lacking in shadows. It’s at least nice to see that OnePlus’ processing between the main and wide-angle is extremely similar with little to no difference in the vast majority of scenarios, so that’s a plus.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ]
[ G8 ] - [ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

This last every-day scene again showcases the OP7Pro’s tendency to seemingly destroy shadows and the best example of this is the 6T. Even though the 6T has its own issues here such as flattening highlights too much, it’s able to accurately portray the shop fronts while the OP7 tends to almost clip to black (And actually does so).

The wide angle here did some quite aggressive HDR and brought down the sun-lit foreground street to almost the same levels as the shadow cast parts, something the P30 Pro also erroneously decided to do.

The telephoto module here again performed excellently, resolving a fantastic amount of detail at this magnification level. The only odd thing is that the saturation intensities are quite low, and elements such as the “Coolcat” shop logo ended up completely muted compared to all other phones’ telephoto modules.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ]
[ G8 ] - [ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

Finally this last scene is just a hard task for any phone and simply a test of the raw dynamic range of the phones; taking a picture against the sun.

The OP7Pro still manages to get good black points in post-processing, although doesn’t match Huawei or Samsung in terms of dynamic range. Oddly enough the phone’s wide-angle achieves a lot better results here.

The telephoto also does very well in prioritising the actual scene, as opposed to the dark shots of the P30Pro and Honor 20 Pro.

Daylight Camera Conclusion

Overall, I was relatively disappointed by the OnePlus 7 Pro’s daylight capture performance. Having the Honor 20 Pro and the Oppo Reno in this camera comparison has showcased that this isn’t inherently an issue of the camera’s hardware and the Sony IMX586 sensor, but rather something on the part of OnePlus’ camera calibration and post-processing algorithms.

The two most egregious issues with the main camera sensor shot is the fact that OnePlus tends to wash out textures a lot more, and that it gives too little priority to shadows. The first issue is actually quite bad in some cases as we’ve had some shots in which the OnePlus 6T actually fared better.

The issue of the dark and even clipped shadows reminds me a lot of the Pixel’s processing. I do really hope that OnePlus wasn’t trying to mimic Google’s processing here and that this is just an issue of the exposure algorithms rather than an intentional post-processing effect in order to add contrast to the pictures. I was never impressed by this part of the Pixel’s camera and is easily the single worst aspect for OnePlus to have in common with.

The wide-angle module, much like on other phones, is an outstanding addition to the capture experience of the phone. In terms of actual picture results, it shares the same processing issues as the main camera. While this is to expected of a wide-angle module, the chromatic aberrations and distortions on the very edges of the frame are exceptionally pronounced on the OP7Pro, pointing out to rather low quality optics.

Finally, I didn’t have any major issues with the new 3x telephoto lens. I was actually quite impressed by the detail the module was able to resolve, and I don’t feel it has as many processing issues as the other two modules.

Overall, whilst the OnePlus 7 Pro’s camera in daylight isn’t outright bad, it really can’t claim it’s a flagship killer as it gets bested by a lot of phones, including from Huawei, Honor, Samsung.

Camera - Low Light Evaluation

One of the purported advantages of the IMX586 is that it’s able to achieve 4:1 pixel binning in its 12MP capture mode. This means that in effect the pixel pitch in terms of light capture ability ends up at 1.6µm – which is an increase and advantage over last year’s 6T’s 1.22µm module and even 1.4µm modules from the traditional sensor size crowd such as Samsung, LG, Apple and Google.

Again, what will be interesting in this comparison from a competitive stand-point is how the Honor 20 Pro and Oppo Reno stand up against the OnePlus 7 Pro as we can directly analyse whose software processing algorithms are superior.

As aforementioned, the OP7Pro night shots were done on the new 9.7.7 firmware which includes a new update and improved Nightscape low-light capture mode, which did improve things a lot compared to the release firmware.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ]
[ G8 ] - [ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

In the auto mode, I have a very hard time to understand what’s happening to the OP7Pro here. The results are quite outright terrible and the phone is posting significantly washed out textures compared to what the Oppo Reno and the H20Pro are able to get. OnePlus here prioritised too much on having a longer exposure rather than higher ISO levels, so even though both the OP7Pro and the Reno both have similar resulting brightness levels, the Reno is massively sharper. The H20Pro is also far ahead, but granted the phone has a big advantage with its f/1.4 aperture lens. In Auto mode this is actually a downgrade from what the 6T was able to achieve.

Turning on Night mode notably improves things, however it’s not sufficient to compete with the top low-light performers. The Reno’s Night mode, while a bit flat, does significantly better in terms of detail and is a lot sharper. Google, Huawei and now Samsung remain as the top perfomers.

The OP7Pro’s wide-angle here was just a disaster and it didn’t focus correctly. Unfortunately OnePlus doesn’t yet offer Nightscape mode for the wide-angle module, and thus it’s far behind Huawei and Samsung in such shots.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ]
[ G8 ] - [ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

Here while OnePlus was able to improve on the sometimes comical results of the 6T’s Nightscape processing as seen here, it’s still only good enough for a thumbnail as under closer inspection we see that the phone continues to lag behind other vendors. As seen in the 7 shots, whilst the night mode does brighten things up, it actually severely blurs out elements that were well lit.

The wide-angle continues to be uncompetitive.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ]
[ G8 ] - [ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

When going dark and darker in scenes, we actually see that sometimes the Nightscape mode does improve some aspects, but again there’s a big compromise, as seen in this shot the text on the traffic sign is completely blurred out, while it was reasonably good in the auto mode.

The wide-angle is bad.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ]
[ G8 ] - [ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

We continue with bad results; here yet again while the Nightscape mode is able to brighten things up a lot, we again see large degradations in the better exposed parts of the scene such as the pavement.

The wide-angle is having a hard time to capture much.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ]
[ G8 ] - [ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

It’s only in effectively uniformly dark scenes where one can say the Nightscape mode is actually a no-compromise improvement over the auto mode. Here the OnePlus 7 Pro showcases much better results than the previous generation 6T.

Unfortunately that’s not enough for the latest generation phones as well as the new software updates from the competition. While the 7Pro is competitive against the Snapdragon S10 with the original low-light mode, Samsung’s new Night mode as seen in the Exynos shot above is leaps ahead of OnePlus.

The wide-angle is effectively blind here.

[ OnePlus 7 Pro ] - [ OnePlus 6T ]
[ S10+ (E) ] - [ S10+ (S) ]
[ P30 Pro ] - [ Honor 20 Pro ]
[ G8 ] - [ Oppo Reno ]
[ Pixel 3 ] - [ Pixel 3a ] - [ iPhone XS ]

This last scene largely mimics the last shots, again while the OP7Pro would have been competitive against the S10’s original low-light mode, it can’t compete against the new improved variant.

Overall Low-Light Capture Conclusion – A Big Disappointment

It’s very much unfortunate that OnePlus wasn’t able to invest more efforts into its computational photography. Even with the very latest firmware update we’ve used here the phone simply has massive issues under low light. There are some shots we’ve seen today which do point out what some of the issues are with OnePlus Nightscape mode: Unlike Huawei’s, Google’s and now Samsung’s Night modes, it doesn’t just selectively stack areas for photo exposures, and instead does the whole frame, and it’s not able to correctly stack sections to as to avoid blurring. In effect the Nightscape mode should be good on a tri-pod, but it’s not competitive in hand-held mode.

This is solely something that OnePlus has to fix, as Honor and Oppo showcase it’s possible to achieve good results with the very same hardware sensor.

Video Recording

Video recording on the OnePlus 7 Pro is a bit more disappointing that what you’d expect the phone to be capable of. The core issue first and foremost is the fact that currently video recording is only possible on the main camera sensor. There are some ways to switch over to the wide-angle, however this is not supported by default in camera applications.

EIS is engaged for the 1080p30 and 4K30 recording modes only, and there’s some issues with the implementation. First of all in the 1080p video above we see that it takes 2 seconds for the EIS to actually engage at the beginning of the video which is something I hadn’t seen in a phone before. Secondly, in the 4K30 video also towards the beginning when walking underneath the tree canopy we can see some severe stabilisation jitter / artefacts. These are in fact also present in the original video files and are not a side-effect of YouTube compression, meaning it’s a side-effect of the EIS implementation.

The 60fps capture modes don’t use EIS. The 4K60 footage in particular quite outstanding even though it’s quite shaky. The issue with this mode is that OnePlus went completely overkill in terms of the encoding bitrate. At a whopping 160Mbps the H.264 stream takes up 1.6GB of storage space for 84 seconds of footage, and OnePlus doesn’t offer H.265 to reduce the storage requirements.

Overall, I was very disappointed with the video recording ability of the OP7Pro as there’s evident major flaws in its implementation. I wish that at least OnePlus would enable the other camera modules, as in effect they’re useless in video recording. Let’s not go into the fact there’s a lack of any kind of higher dynamic range recording, let it be HDR to SDR file capture or even outright native HDR recording.

Speaker Evaluation

The OnePlus 7 Pro is the company’s first phone (along with the regular OP7) that features stereo speaker playback. Speaker audio quality is something OnePlus has suffered for a few generations, at best landing at something average and adequate, but not sufficient to compete with the higher-end devices from the competition.

The new OP7Pro features both a redesigned main speaker as well as introducing a eapiece speaker capable of stereo playback.

First of all, let’s investigate the device’s loudness:

The OnePlus 7 Pro does get quite loud, but what’s more important here is that the phone's frontal directionality has improved significantly compared to the OnePlus 6/6T. This was something that the predecessors suffered from especially, and just putting your thumb/palm on the speaker grill would almost completely mute the phone.

Another improvement in this regard is that OnePlus has moved the main speaker grill from the left side to the right side of the phone. In landscape mode the company noticed that the vast majority of users turn the phone 90° counter-clockwise. This new change thus helps against muffing the speaker grill in your right palm.

Whilst the new earpiece serves as a stereo speaker, the problem is that the main speaker is still overwhelmingly louder and there’s still very much a bias towards the right side when listening to audio in landscape.

The main reason for this is that the earpiece speaker has a much more limited frequency range than the main speaker, and thus sounds significantly quieter than stereo speaker setups from the competition.

In terms of the frequency range between the 7Pro, 6T and the S10+, OnePlus has definitely made some large improvements and the 7Pro sounds leagues better than its predecessor. It’s not quite as good as what Samsung is able to offer, particularly there’s a disadvantage in the bass, lower mid-range as well as the higher trebles frequencies, so the phone definitely doesn’t sound as full or clear. Still, it’s a good speaker setup, even though not quite top of the line.

No headphone jack, no 3.5mm dongle, no headphones?

I’ve dreaded the removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack on the 6T, especially since OnePlus did nothing with the freed up internal space in that design (Seeming this also applies to the regular OnePlus 7). With the 7Pro, the issue I have is that OnePlus doesn’t even offer a dongle anymore after one half-generation, nor does the company give you any bundled headphones at all.

I understand that the company is heavily promoting its own audio accessories, but we’re not in the same situation as Apple which included the 3.5mm adapter for several years before finally dropping it from the package. It’s quite the anti-consumer move.

Conclusion & End Remarks

As we’re wrapping up this review, the main question for me and a lot of users for is whether the OnePlus 7 Pro is worth the additional cost, and if it makes a successful landing in its new higher price category whilst maintaining the company’s mantra of offering the best value for the money.

In terms of design, I really liked the OnePlus 7 Pro and I had very little to complain about the new form. This is OnePlus’ first curved screen phone, and whilst I think some vendors by experience have gone back to slightly tighter radius curvatures on their displays, for the OP7Pro it’s still something that you can definitely get used to, and it does improve ergonomics a lot.

In terms of ergonomics, my subjective feeling is that this is a bit too big a phone for me, but for users who are looking into iPhone Plus / Max and Galaxy Note-sized devices, it’ll be a perfect fit. It’s also a very heavy device in the same weight category as the aforementioned devices, so this is something you'll want to consider.

The new display of the OnePlus 7 Pro is easily its single best feature. This is not only because it’s OnePlus’ first ever 1440p screen which is a great improvement in sharpness, but it’s the very first OLED 1440p 90Hz screen on the market.

Overall in terms of the fundamentals of the display, the unit does not disappoint. OnePlus did a very good job in terms of colour calibration with the Natural mode and it’s up there among the best devices, and thus far the best Android device screen in 2019. Brightness was an area of improvement, as OnePlus makes you choose between a brighter Vivid mode with inaccurate colours, or an accurate Natural mode which doesn’t quite go as bright as advertised in daylight.

The 90Hz mode is the single biggest killer feature of the phone and there will be people who will be choosing the OnePlus 7 Pro over other contenders solely for this. This was my opinion when I first held the phone, and I maintain this view after spending sufficient time with it. I think that this is the way forward for phone manufacturers to differentiate themselves. It’s just that much of an outstanding experience.

An outstanding experience is also the performance of the phone. The combination of the 90Hz mode with the new Snapdragon 855 SoC as well as the new UFS 3.0 storage employed in the 7Pro means this is currently the snappiest, and best user experience phone out there.

The performance benefits extend to gaming as well: OnePlus was able to achieve a good thermal dissipation design that seemingly is able to sustain peak performance indefinitely, squeeing out the full potential of the Snapdragon 855, although the phone can get a bit toasty and it does eat up a lot of battery like this.

Speaking of battery, the OnePlus 7 Pro is average to good, and essentially ended up where I had expected it to. I don’t have definitive evidence of this, but the new 90Hz screen is largely suspected as the cause for a larger base power consumption. So even though OnePlus has implemented the new feature in the best way possible, there’s still an unavoidable power hit, and the phone doesn’t last as long as say the P30 Pro or Galaxy S10+ even though they're all in the same range in terms of battery capacity.

The 60Hz mode is a novelty and there’s really no reason to use it, you’re better off with a different phone if you’re avoiding the key feature of the OnePlus 7 Pro.

The cameras of the OnePlus 7 Pro is where things become a bit painful and unfortunate.

First of all, let’s get the front-facing pop-up camera out of the way. It’s a good module, but personally I do think the added weight, internal complexity as well as longevity risk (if you get debris inside) are too big compromises. Yes the full bezel-less screen screen is fantastic, but I could have also just lived with a minimal forehead or just a blacked out status bar with a small notch.

In daylight capture, the OnePlus 7 Pro is a good phone and it has a good camera, but it’s not quite competitive against 2019’s flagship devices. In particular we saw that OnePlus’ processing isn’t able to fully extract what’s actually possible with the new camera sensor. The fact that it’s 48MP is generally irrelevant for 99% of users, OnePlus could have simply gone with a traditional 12MP sensor and likely gotten better results.

The processing reminded me a bit too much of the Pixel 3 in daylight, meaning it lacked sufficient dynamic range and it had the bad habit of over-emphasising shadows that weren’t actually there. There’s some shots where the 7Pro is just worse than the 6T.

The wide-angle, while an excellent addition to the overall shooting experience, suffered from the same processing effects as the main camera. On top of this, it’s visible that the module’s lens is of much lower quality than what’s seen by other manufacturers, causing more distortion and bad chromatic aberrations around the frame edges.

The telephoto module was in my opinion good, and got surprisingly very sharp results. The 3x zoom is a good compromise between 2x and some of the newer more crazy high magnification phones.

Low-light capture of the OnePlus 7 Pro would have been something competitive in 2018, however this year OnePlus had to step it up in terms of its computational photography. Cameras are among the very last things a manufacturer works on when designing a new phone, so it’s possible that over the next few months the company will be able to further improve things. However as it stands, the OnePlus 7 Pro falls behind not only the low-light kings from Huawei, but also now falls behind Samsung as the Galaxy phones are getting updated with a significantly better Night mode.

Video recording has also been soundly disappointing for the fact that it feels the OP7Pro’s camera is just unfinished in this regard, and lacks any option to use the wide-angle or telephoto lenses. On the main module, EIS quality is a bit disappointing and there’s a lack of dynamic range, either through captured sensor HDR or actually natively recorded HDR modes.

Speakers on the OnePlus 7 Pro have massively improved compared to its predecessor, so credit where it's due even though they don't quite match Apple or Samsung's offerings.

In the end I see there’s going to be only one type of person who should consider the OnePlus 7 Pro over say a Galaxy S10+: If you value performance and device fluidity more than anything else, the 90Hz display, the SoC, and the storage speed of the OnePlus just beats out any other contender in this regard.

However for me I feel that the phone is cutting a bit too many corner in terms of its camera. I could have lived with the slightly worse speakers and somewhat lower battery performance in order to enjoy the fantastic 90Hz screen, however the camera disadvantages are just a tad too much. OnePlus can very much remedy these aspects over the coming weeks and months, and I’m very sure there will be software updates in this regard, but it's unknown just exactly how much OnePlus will improve these aspects, and one shouldn’t base one’s purchasing decisions today on tomorrow’s possible improvements.