The OnePlus 7 Pro Review: Outstanding Performance & Screen, Adequate Everything Else
by Andrei Frumusanu on June 19, 2019 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- OnePlus
- OnePlus 7 Pro
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.
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DillholeMcRib - Wednesday, June 19, 2019 - link
Can I flash this damn thing and run WIndows ARM on it?Jez1 - Wednesday, June 19, 2019 - link
I had this around a week and they were great things about it, but many things I didn't like so returned it.The screen was great and apps installed at an amazing pace, the UI was lovely but to many negatives. The camera was so erratic and one minute would take a nice photo, then the next would have washed out colors and lacked detail and sharpness when slightly zoomed in. A lot of the time my old S7 took more reliable photos and my wife's 6T was also better. I know this could get better with fixes, but was too poor out of the box.
The sides of the screen also got massive reflections outside and the inbuilt screen protector was rubbish. In a week of light use, it was covered in indention's from my nail and also stated getting air bubbles. So you couldn't even appreciate the lovely screen and there wasn't any 3rd party ones available.
The final thing which is subjective is the weight, it felt so heavy one-handed.
I then got a s10+ and and couldn't be happier with in comparison. I got a big discount for my old bashed up S7, so only paid £40 more. I hope OnePlus can get it together for their next phone as love their approach and really didn't want to get another Samsung
Quantumz0d - Wednesday, June 19, 2019 - link
With this phone OnePlus went full marketing mumbojumbo.They spent a lot of cash on that only and while sidetracking all the negatives this phone has. 90Hz is a gimmick, so many people don't want that. Instead they want a phone which is marked at $700 these -
- A 3.5mm headphone jack, (How come the 6T dropped the jack saying no space for the finger print scanner while they crammed a motorized camera into the chassis, It's plain BS as always with Apple or any company, Note had S-Pen, LG has Display fused OLED crystal sound with proper ToF camera with an ESS DAC equipped phone)
- No SD card slot, No don't say cloud or 256GB, I have a ton of data on my PC FHD high bitrate movies, 4K UHD recording directly to SD card pictures to SD card, High quality recording of Audio through Stereo and high bitrate likes of LG, Emulators, FLAC/DSD files etc and top of all, a fully reliable offline cheap storage which just works and offers expansion as per user choice from 128GB to 1TB.
- No IP rating, No the damn shilled tests from Dave2D or MHBHD aren't going to cut it, the IEC conventions are internationally agreed standards not some bs offscreen tests saying it increases price and all rubbish kool-aid.
- Trash camera
- No QI wireless charging, glass back and peanuts charging, they don't wnat to give because they want to milk with all these features barring the jack for another refresh or new unit.
- No price cuts, OP phones never get a price cut, today you can buy an SD835 (By no means a problem) phones like S8+ for 500USD which has everything more than this gimmick phone, LG phones see price cuts, got my V30S for far less price under 500USD which outperforms in all features, Yes even the BL unlock, coming to that, S9 and Note 9 are cheaper at $600USD which again rape this phone to oblivion esp Exynos models which have BL unlock. And the latest S10 is already seeing discounts, and once Black Friday hits the G8 and all phones will drop price.
Next is Zenfone6 that phone is making waves apart from the mediocre LCD display (No pentile, so FHD is fine but the brightness is not enough) and it has 3.5mm jack, Stereo speakers, a big arse 5000MaH battery without this over charging current rate.
Huge thanks to Andrei a lot for this piece on this stupid overdrive current charging done by Oneplus, fools at many blogs and youtube shills refuse to believe me that over high currrent charging is insane simply due to the cathode-anode reactions and faster degradation, esp this is why we need Qi not battery raping marketing BS. These oneplus garbage phones always overcharge and do this rubbish, look at QC with Samsung/LG/Sony any company apart from this and Huawei have that, Apple even sandbags the battery death by reducing the CPU perf. This BS is not seen my 99% of the people and they end up with junk on top of the non user replaceable batteries.
So all in all this is an overpriced "toy" not a proper pocket PC / Powerful computer in your hand.
Quantumz0d - Wednesday, June 19, 2019 - link
Edit - Zenfone 6 specs include - it also got UFS storage unlike Pixel 3a with eMMC trash, an SD855 a great camera than this junk well, at-least from the users, an SD slot, Bootloader unlock and highest SKU is less than 600USD (8GB/256GB)zodiacfml - Thursday, June 20, 2019 - link
I agree especially on the LCD display. I have a lot of praise for OLED until I got it for the first time in the S8+. It is easily not as sharp as my Nexus 5. Every time I open the Nexus 5, I'm taken away how sharp and clean the display is versus the AMOLED S8. I have late 30's eyes. I'd rather take an LCD display for my next phone as long it is reasonably priced vs premium OLED phones.I disagree with your fast charging criticism though. I'm no battery enthusiast, if rapid charging kills batteries, then we should not see them in electric vehicles such as Tesla cars.
My Nexus 5 doesn't have rapid charging tech but my second battery is, again, bulging with less capacity. It does heat a lot though with Data turned and/or during gaming. Certainly, it is heat is the detrimental effect and heat is only the effect of fast charging
Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, June 20, 2019 - link
> if rapid charging kills batteries, then we should not see them in electric vehicles such as Tesla cars.Tesla batteries are also gigantic (In comparison to a regular wall outlet power) and designed to handle that.
We've had a smartphone vendor who promoted one of these super-high charging rate confirm some pretty atrocious long-term capacity degradation, while something like Samsung's degradation curve was like 20% higher in terms of retained capacity after the same amount of cycles.
zodiacfml - Thursday, June 20, 2019 - link
I refer to Tesla's Superchargers where a Model 3 can charge to 80 percent in 30 minutes. A Supercharger charges its battery cells as fast as quick charging smartphones.OP can afford a faster charging rate than Qualcomm's QC because there is no voltage conversion happening in OP's phone, thus less heat. The only drawback only works with OP's charger and thick cable.
rabidpeach - Tuesday, June 22, 2021 - link
sorry it's been years but hopefully the future readership realizes that TESLA herself encourages you to NOT supercharge the car constantly as that would increase the degradation as well as well-reported constant fleet usage of supercharge style system has shown degradation.Xyler94 - Thursday, June 20, 2019 - link
I will always prefer my AMOLED displays in phones. OLEDs have the advantage of having much higher contrast than LCD, because individual pixels can be turned fully off, creating true black. There's no LCD that can do that. LED LCDs come close, but only because you can turn off zones of the LED backlight.Also, colour calibration makes an image look better than the display tech. If the Nexus 5 had better calibration, then it would definitely be a better display. I know Samsung TVs always have too much blue (I've calibrated a few of them), it's possible their phone displays have a bit too much blue too.
zodiacfml - Thursday, June 20, 2019 - link
That's what I thought which led me to buy the Samsung. I realized, the infinite contrast has little value to me except watching movies in darkness.The sharpness of the LCD over the pen-tile AMOLED is noticeable with text, sharper edges with LCDs. Images from my DSLRs or conventional cameras are also sharper on the N5.
White background in AMOLED never convinced me, feels rough or dirty. I checked today, looked at my Samsung around 4 inches away, I can notice multicolored very tiny noise-like pixels.
The Nexus 5 has one of the best calibrated displays during its time. I'm just saying LCDs superior to AMOLEDs in image sharpness alone