OnePlus 8 Pro|| One Step Closer !!!

“You either die a flagship killer or you live long enough to become one.” This phrase is a remarkably accurate depiction of the new OnePlus 8 Pro which is a full-blown flagship with an IP68 rating, Wireless Charging, Enhanced Camera setup, and so on. But with great power, comes a great price tag. So, the OnePlus 8 Pro, while featuring the world’s greatest specs at the time of its release will be available in a flagship pricing of $899. Actually, that’s not that high considering Samsung now charges around $1500 for their ultra flagship devices.

Anyway, the thing about OnePlus devices is that we always have high expectations from these devices. And they never disappointed us till now apart from the mediocre camera. So, Let’s see if this new OnePlus 8 pro can meet those expectations or not.

With all these trends going on in the smartphone market, I think OnePlus 8 Pro has done all the things right to become one step closer to a perfect flagship device.

Our Short Review Of OnePlus 8 Pro

Specification:

Specification wise the OnePlus 8 Pro can be considered as the holy grail of all smartphones, especially the android ones. And even though specs are not all the things that someone should look into while buying a smartphone but you can’t complain if you have it. So, here are all the specs of this smartphone in a glance:

Unboxing

The new OnePlus 8 Pro comes in a pretty tall red box with a modernized OnePlus branding on its top which is kind of similar to the box we have seen for OnePlus 8. Inside this nice and simple packaging, you get to see the following stuff:

• First comes the premium looking OnePlus 8 Pro device itself
• A transparent silicon case with the branding “Never Settle” on its black
• OnePlus’s familiar red USB Type-C cable
• A 30T Warp charging power brick
• A sim ejector tool which is attached to an invitation letter from the OnePlus CEO, Pete Lau
• A quick start-guide along with some stickers
• Documentations regarding Safety Information, SAR value, Red Cable Club etc.

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Design & Build

The Oneplus 8 Pro comes in three very beautiful colors which are Glacial Green, Ultramarine Blue & Onyx Black. OnePlus 8 Pro did not do anything radically different from the design but you are sure to fall in love with the phone as it is going to give you a really sleek in-hand feel.

The Ultramarine Blue variant of the phone has got a very nice matte style finish to the back which should be resistant when it comes to fingerprints. And the Glacial Green variant has got a metallic sheen like finish on its back despite being glass constructed. Both the colors are going to turn some heads because it shifts and reflexes in some really cool ways. On the other hand, if you are a fan of a glossy finish, you can go for the Onyx Black version while having the risk of catching greasy fingerprints.

According to the official specs, the phone weighs about 199 grams which is a little bit heavier than its standard OnePlus 8. But the phone is not crazy big considering the phone having a display of 6.78 inches. You will get a very comfortable grip and premium hand feels aided by the curved edges made at the glasses of both front and back parts of the phone. Also, we Gorilla Glass 5 protection around the front and around the back this time.

The good news for everyone who has been clamoring for an official IP rating in OnePlus smartphones as  OnePlus 8 Pro is the very first one to finally get an IP68 Water and Dust Resistance.

On a super quick tour of OnePlus 8 Pro, you will find the volume rockers on the left edge and over the right edge you will get the power button along with the convenient Alert Slider. Nothing particularly exciting up top except for the secondary microphone and then down below you get to see a hybrid sim tray, a primary microphone, USB type-C port and the speaker grills.

On top of the screen, a sharp cutout has been made in order to place the single punch-hole camera which is hide able by a black bar on the forehead and going down to that we get the Optical Fingerprint Reader underneath the display which is superfast and responsive at the same time. And of course, you will get a fast and accurate face unlock action from the front facing camera of the phone.

Moving on to the downside of the back panel, we see the OnePlus tagged name, on top of which there is a OnePlus branding and a quad camera setup, aided by a Dual LED flash light, a laser light and a microphone for audio focus.

As like the standard OnePlus 8, the sim slot will be using dual nano sims only. The phone is going to create an ambient environment of music through its Dolby Atmos supported dual stereo speakers. And yes, there is still no sign of 3.5 mm audio jack and no notification light as well. But OnePlus has introduced Horizon Lighting so that you do not miss any. Apart from that, the haptics on this phone are also improved as it feels more robust instead of giving a buzzy feeling.

But the major drawback with this new design of OnePlus might be the camera bump which sticks out like about 3mm and makes your phone go rock & roll while using it on any flat surface. Also, the curves on the edges are having a waterfall bend but they are pretty deeper than the previous OnePlus phones which might lead you to get accidental swipes. You can combat both of these troubles by just using a phone case.

Display

The display on this phone is one of the highlights and has got some significant upgrades over the OnePlus 8 as well. The phone sports a stunning 6.78 inches QHD+ Fluid AMOLED display with a resolution of 1440×3168 pixels, 120Hz refresh rate, HDR 10+ support, 20:9 aspect ratio, 90.8 percent STB ratio and a pixel density of 513ppi.

All these features end up making the screen an absolutely pixel perfect gorgeous for enjoying movies, pictures, and whatever that can be visible on the screen. The crisp colors, touch responsiveness and the smooth fluid-like experience of this device are absolute stunners which can easily lead it to be one of the best displays out there.

OnePlus has worked with Pixelworks to include the Iris 5 chipset which enables HDR Boost, HDR10+ and enhances the color accuracy of the phone. Besides, the MEMC technology of the phone will be reducing motion blur and stuttering while watching action-packed, sports or any type of intense content by upscaling the video from 24fps to 120fps.

We must not forget about the 120Hz refresh rate of the phone which will make your scrolling smoother and having a response to the touches much faster while navigating through the UI, webpages, Facebook, Instagram, or any other platform. You can change the refresh rate down to 60Hz if you are intending to have a better battery backup from the device.

But the real kicker here is that you can set the display to both 120Hz and QHD+ for use at the same time which will provide you a great experience but it is really going to hurt your battery life. OnePlus claims that the phone can gain the maximum brightness of 1200 nits, making it one of the brightest displays and facing no issues while using this phone on a bright day. Overall, it has great color accuracy and a number of color profiles to choose from as well.

Camera

Now, if for not the bump on the rear side, OnePlus just introduced a truly excellent camera setup for the first time in their smartphones. The rear camera section is such as below:

• Primary Lens: 48 MP Sony IMX689, OIS, EIS (F/1.7)
• Ultrawide Lens: 48 MP Sony IMX586 (F/2.2)
• Telephoto Lens: 8 MP (F/2.4, 3x optical zoom)
• Photochromatic Lens: 5 MP, Photochrome, f/2.4

If we go to the camera app, you can easily swap between the various lenses just with a little tap on the little icons down there. Pictures, shot by the 48MP primary camera, are of 12MP by default using the pixel bending technology which helps in getting a bit of brightening up, crisp and detailed images but not too saturated.

You can also swipe to High-res 48MP by just a quick tap on the available icon on top. When you go to the ultrawide, it performs really good as it is featuring the same sensors from the last year’s OnePlus 7T.

You can have 3 times optical zoom with the help of the telephoto lens and by pinching in, you can go even further up to 30 times of digital zoom which works okay between 3X to 10X but the quality really falls down after that.

As usual, you get a wide section of bonus modes where you get fast access to features like Pro Mode in order to shoot JPEG images in RAW format up to that mighty 48MP resolution, Nightscape mode for low-light shots, portrait action using Bokeh style backgrounds to help your subject stand out and others.

The interesting part of the camera is that if you want to get arty and have some weird color filter effects without post-processing, you have a 5MP photochromatic lens to dive into some cool filters which actually bleeds all the colors out of your shots.

Camera Performance

The camera is really good in daylight aided by its superfast shutter speed; the primary lens is great although you will notice some color shifts between the lenses and the tendency to overexposing the photos but nothing severe. You will be satisfied with the dynamic range and details of the photos. And for the color tones, it adds magenta like hues sometimes which should not be there especially with the skin tones. Also, you can get really close to the subject and take some detailed fine-looking macro shots.

For video, you can shoot 4K videos at 60 frames per second with a high level of details and the usual super steady stabilization thing turned on. It also allows you to flip between the various different lenses. But the video quality has been upgraded in a couple of other areas as you get a laser beaming focusing system and an Audio Zoom which will allow you to amplify sound in a video recording by zooming into a specific area.

There is a Cinema 4k mode which shoots at 21:9 crop of 4K video so you can watch it on the entirety of your phone screen. Super stable videos use the ultrawide lens to better stabilize your shots and it has been updated to shoot at 4K.

Front Camera

Now, if we flip around to that 16MP front-facing camera you are able to take the usual portraits and HDR photos along with a full HD video action. Although it is lacking auto-focus the photos are always in focus with softening applied to the right places and the portrait bokeh is pretty convincing as the primary camera.

Performance

Software

If you prefer stuff as clean as possible, then you are sure to be fond of Oxygen OS for its neat and clean UI which is free from redundant apps and advertisements. The phone runs the Oxygen OS 10.5 on top of Android 10 which gives you one of the most minimal and cleanest software experiences possible. This little up-gradation brings support for more applications in the dark theme and some slightly new system icons.

Gaming

Inside the OnePlus 8 Pro there is the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 octa-core processor paired with the X55 5G Modem which will be featuring either 8 or 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 128 or 256 GB of UFS 3.0 internal storage that is not expandable via microSD. And the GPU imbedded into this chipset is Adreno 650 so you can upgrade the GPU driver of this chipset like you do on your PC.

You can expect great performance no matter you are up for good gaming and all that. Alongside, the phone is proper future-proof as all the sensors are available on this phone along with the connectivity of Bluetooth 5.1, Wi-Fi 6, and NFC support as usual.

Battery

The phone has a large non-removable Li-Po battery of 4510mAh stuffed in it. Now this is the first ever phone from OnePlus to have Wireless Charging support of 30Watt which is superfast and will also be doing reverse charging. You will be getting 50% of the battery charged in just 30 minutes like the company advertised. But it feels a little bit warmer than the regular 30Watt warp charge which might affect the battery durability over time.

The battery life is great on this device as you will get 7 hours of screen on time comfortably and that is with 120Hz on 1440p. But you can crush the battery in just 4 to 5 hours if you turn on ambient display and the motion graphics smoothing feature along with 120Hz on its full resolution. So, if you drop the refresh rate and the resolution, you will obviously get a longer battery life.

Speakers & Audio Quality

In order to amplify up the media experience, there are stereo speakers with the full support of Dolby Atmos which ensures pretty loud and clear sound even at the top volume. And that is because you get treble and clarity from the earpiece section while the majority of the sound is shooting from the bottom speakers. But if you are to use a wired headphone, make sure that you have an adapter as you are not getting one in the box.

Conclusion

OnePlus phones are getting slightly expensive each year for some time now. But we can see a huge jump up in the price for the OnePlus 8 Pro and that might have come from the IP68 certification and wireless charging but the largest part of that might be for the camera. Now if you want to compete with the top-tier flagships like iPhones, Samsung and Pixels, you need the best lenses as well as the best sensors which is quite expensive.

But the one thing you usually expect from OnePlus is a relatively low price and it is still undercutting Samsung with its price. So, this came out to be a really good overall package and might even be one of the best flagships right now on the market for Android users.

If you are looking for something like a little bit less expensive, you can take a look at the review of its standard OnePlus 8 which starts at $699.

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