OnePlus 7 Pro
The 7 Pro is the firm’s biggest, most powerful and luxurious phone to date, but it isn’t quite perfect
“The OnePlus 7 Pro’s screen has a 90Hz refresh rate, raising the prospect of ultra-smooth gaming and silky-smooth scrolling”
SCORE PRICE 12GB/256GB, £666 (£799 inc VAT) from oneplus.com
In truth, we’re stretching our definition of “mid-range” to its maximum by including the OnePlus 7 Pro in this roundup. For while OnePlus phones have become synonymous with great performance for a great price, this year’s OnePlus 7 Pro is different: it’s gunning for the Huawei P30 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S10 Pro, with a design to match. And it looks stunning, especially the “indigo blue” model, which is finished with a silky, matte-finish glass at the rear and a shimmering “nebula blue” colour.
In the hand, the OnePlus 7 Pro doesn’t feel as beefy as you might expect given the huge 6.67in display. That’s mainly due to the dramatic curves that run down the edges of the phone. The Gorilla Glass 5 at both the front and rear feels silky smooth, too.
The frame-filling screen means OnePlus uses an under-display fingerprint reader, and this is an improved version of the one employed in the OnePlus 6T, with a larger detection area and improved lens. And it performed well, with fewer failed readings than the previous model and a snappy response time.
Elsewhere, for the first time in a OnePlus phone, the OnePlus 7 Pro has stereo speakers. The firm has added and improved haptic-feedback motor for a more subtle buzz when calls and notifications arrive, and it has “liquid” cooling and faster UFS 3 storage, too. Note that there’s still no official IP rating for dust and water-ingress protection.
Punchy display
There are no such compromises with the 6.67in display, with HDR 10+ certification and a resolution of 1,440 x 3,120 for a ludicrously high pixel density of 516ppi. Since it’s an AMOLED display, contrast is effectively perfect, and a peak brightness of 412cd/m2 ensures you can read it in most circumstances. It doesn’t go nearly as bright as its Samsung rivals in automatic mode, however, which means taking photographs or reading your WhatsApp messages is a challenge in bright sunshine.
As with all Android phones, the OnePlus 7 Pro doesn’t switch colour modes automatically, so you must choose a colour mode according to the app you’re using. For browsing the web and looking at your photos, I’d recommend you switch away from the default Vivid mode to the phone’s oddly named “Nature” mode. This delivers 89% coverage of the sRGB colour gamut and decent colour accuracy, where the “sRGB” mode gives you only 84.3% coverage.
For watching Netflix, meanwhile, you’ll want to use the Display P3 option. Listed under “Advanced” in the “Screen Calibration” section of the Display menu, this delivers 98% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut. Weirdly, though, despite the HDR 10+ certification and the fact that it measures well, HDR content didn’t look right at all. We picked out a couple of scenes from Netflix’s Marco Polo series and everything looked far too dark – even scenes filmed in broad daylight. There’s clearly something broken here.
The big attraction with the OnePlus 7 Pro’s screen, however, is that it has a 90Hz refresh rate, raising the prospect of ultrasmooth gaming and silky-smooth scrolling. So far, high-refreshrate displays have been limited to gamingspecific smartphones such as the Razer Phone 2 and Asus ROG Phone, so it’s good to finally see such screens trickle down to more mainstream handsets.
The benefits are subtle yet noticeable, particularly in and around OnePlus’ OxygenOS. Menus scroll by in a noticeably smoother fashion than on 60Hz displays and, when I tested various mainstream apps using the GameBench frame rate-monitoring app, I found many – including Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and Chrome – were working at up to 90Hz, too.
Stunning speed
Raw performance is impeccable, as you’d expect from a phone running Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 855 chip. This is backed up by either 6GB, 8GB or 12GB of RAM, depending on the model you buy, and either 128GB or 256GB of UFS 3 storage. Geekbench results of 3,456 in the single-core and 10,933 in the multicore tests are in line with the results we saw from the Xiaomi Mi 9 – the only other handset we’ve tested so far with the 855 inside.
I also gave the phone a workout with several games while monitoring using the GameBench software and, so far, nothing has caused it to break
“On another positive note, video recording is excellent, with the camera able to shoot 60fps 4K footage fully stabilised”
sweat. Even with Shadowgun Legends set to its highest quality settings, I saw a median frame rate of 60fps, with few moments of slowdown. It was the same story with Real Racing 3, and with PUBG Mobile in highest quality mode the OnePlus 7 Pro delivered a solid 40fps, which is currently the maximum available.
Perhaps more impressive, however, is that despite the big, pixel-dense 90Hz display, battery life is very good indeed. In our videorundown test, with the display brightness set to 120cd/m2, the OnePlus 7 Pro lasted 18hrs 30mins. For a phone with this type of display, that’s excellent. It also offers Warp Charge 30, which means it goes from empty to 50% in 20 minutes.
Triple camera
Aside from the display, the OnePlus 7 Pro’s other big attraction is the camera. The primary camera is a 48-megapixel Sony IMX586 module with an f/1.8 aperture, and this is accompanied by an f/2.2, 16-megapixel ultra-wide camera and an f/2.4, 8-megapixel, 3x telephoto camera. Of these three cameras, both the primary and telephoto cameras are equipped with optical image stabilisation (OIS).
By default, the OnePlus 7 Pro is set up to capture 12-megapixel images. By using a technique known as “pixelbinning”, the colour and brightness values from four pixels are averaged and squeezed into just one, the idea being to deliver superior colour and dynamic range compared with the full 48-megapixel image.
That’s fine. But, while it’s possible to capture 48-megapixel images with the OnePlus 7 Pro, there are significant problems. First, you have to switch to Pro mode, at which point you lose easy access to the wide-angle and telephoto cameras.
To be fair, once you have seen the results from the straight-up 48-megapixel mode, you probably won’t want to use it again anyway. Not until OnePlus issues an update, anyway, because the photos it delivers are terrible. In good light, they’re so devoid of fine-detail capture that I initially thought the software might be grabbing the images from the lower-resolution wide-angle camera and upscaling them.
In good light, it looks like the camera firmware is applying a hugely over-the-top noise-reduction algorithm. The textures in brickwork are smeary and smooth, while foliage looks like it’s been put through a paint-effect filter. The odd thing is that there’s no sign of any such problems in Normal mode. In fact, in good and low light, in 12-megapixel mode, the primary camera competes strongly with the Huawei P30.
The 3x telephoto camera produces sharp, clean, shake-free images. It’s softer than the P30’s 3x telephoto camera, but there isn’t much in it. With the ultra-wide camera, however, it’s back to disappointment. The colours look slightly off, there’s lots of chromatic aberration (purple and green fringing) in areas of strong contrast, and the distortioncorrection algorithm is too strong in the corners, resulting in images that look stretched and out of shape.
The caveat with these weaknesses is that they look like software problems rather than hardware issues. That means they could well be ironed out with future updates.
On another positive note, video recording is excellent, with the camera shooting 60fps 4K footage fully stabilised and, while zooming isn’t perfectly smooth like it is on the iPhone Xs and Xs Max, it’s better than most multiple-camera Android smartphones can manage.
The front-facing camera, which pops up quickly whenever you switch to selfie mode, is an f/2, 16-megapixel snapper. It’s also decent, capturing realistic results without overly softening skin textures. Intriguingly, it’s also drop-sensitive, tucking itself away automatically if it senses you’ve let it slip out of your grasp. This won’t help with short drops of around a foot or less, as the mechanism isn’t quite quick enough. But drop it from a greater height and it’s unlikely to be the first thing that breaks.
Tough choices
Despite my fears over OnePlus going premium with the 7 Pro, I needn’t have been worried. While this phone is the most expensive the firm has produced, it’s good value compared with similar products from big-name rivals Samsung, Apple and Huawei.
How much it costs depends on which configuration you choose. The 6GB of RAM/128GB storage version, which comes in “mirror grey”, costs £649. Upgrade to 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage for £699 and you can choose from mirror grey, “almond” and “nebula blue”. And at the top of the range is the nebula blue phone I tested: this offers 12GB RAM and 256GB storage for £799.
Where it might come unstuck is that Samsung and Huawei phones tend to fall steadily in price – the Huawei P30 is already down £100 to £599 on Amazon – while OnePlus prices tend to stay steady. In a year, the OnePlus 7 Pro may look pricey.
Still, this phone has many positives. It has a bigger display than the Galaxy S10+ and Huawei P30 Pro, it’s superfast, has great battery life and looks lovely. My big caveat is that the 48-megapixel camera currently under-delivers. Once OnePlus fixes these issues, its four-star rating will jump to five. SPECIFICATIONS Octa-core 2.84GHz/2.42GHz/1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 12GB RAM Adreno 640 graphics 90Hz 6.67in AMOLED screen, 1,440 x 3,120 resolution 256GB storage dual SIM triple 48MP/16MP/ 8MP (3x zoom) rear cameras 16MP front camera 802.11ac Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 NFC USB-C connector 4,000mAh battery Android 9 75.9 x 8.8 x 162.6mm (WDH) 206g 1yr warranty