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
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.
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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