The OnePlus 8, OnePlus 8 Pro Review: Becoming The Flagship
by Andrei Frumusanu on June 29, 2020 10:00 AM ESTBattery Life
Battery life of the OnePlus 8 Pro was a big question-mark for a lot of users given the phone’s 120Hz refresh rate. Several weeks ago I had reported on my initial power draw investigation results covering the different display modes of the screen:
Much like on the Galaxy S20 series, the OnePlus 8 Pro incurs a large static power draw penalty when switching from 60Hz to 120Hz. This is a increase in the baseline power of the phone, no matter the type of content that you’re displaying, and will even incur on a pure black screen.
OnePlus 8 Pro Baseline Power usage (Black Screen)
Whilst OnePlus does include refresh rate switching mechanisms based on scenarios such as video playback, the lack of a true variable refresh rate (VRR) mechanism that works on the per-frame basis and is implemented on the deeper OS and GPU driver levels, means that current generation high-refresh rate devices will have to suffer from a larger than usual power and battery life penalty.
In our web browsing test, we see the clear impact of the 120Hz refresh rate on the OnePlus 8 Pro as it reduces the battery life of the phone in the test by 22% compared to its regular 60Hz mode. As a note- we’re testing at QHD resolution here as generally there’s very little power benefit from using lower resolutions.
In terms of absolute results, the 9.71h of the 120Hz mode here are adequate but not great. The results fall in line with the S20+ at 120Hz, but short of the bigger battery capacity of the S20 Ultra. At 60Hz, the 8 Pro moves back in at 12.31h which is a great result and will get you through even the most extensive usage days.
Whilst many will have looked forward to the OnePlus 8 Pro results, the really interesting results belong to the smaller OnePlus 8. The phone here was able to showcase outstanding battery life figures. The 90Hz mode only has an 8% impact on the battery runtime in this test, and in the 60Hz mode the phone lasted for a staggering 14h which is amongst the best results we’ve ever measured on a phone.
In PCMark, the smaller OnePlus 8 again takes the lead in terms of longevity with its 60Hz mode. The 8 Pro also does quite well at 60Hz, and both phones lose respectively 15.4% and 16.4% of their runtime when switching over to 90Hz and 120Hz modes.
Whilst the OnePlus 8 Pro pretty much fell in line with what we’ve expected in terms of its battery life, falling in line with the 120Hz power behaviour of the S20 phones, it’s the regular OnePlus 8 which surprised a lot given that it features a slightly smaller battery, notably surpassing the efficiency of the OnePlus 8 Pro. Given its form-factor and weight, it’s easily the longest-lasting device of its class, with only other heavier, bigger battery phones being comparable in terms of battery longevity.
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jaju123 - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
It's pretty much universally agreed to be the iPhone as far as i know. Otherwise, every android phone generally has some kind of downside to their video as you have said.eastcoast_pete - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
I agree that the respective top of the line iPhone is usually very good at video, and I have been tempted. My main concerns are 1. price (ouch, especially with 256 GB or more storage and, related 2. No expansion slot (microSD) to add more. Good 4K video really needs at least 50 MB/s even in HEVC, and more tends to be better. Plus, it's better in some situations to be able to remove the storage that has the videos, and you can't do that with an iPhone.So, maybe I should have phrased it this way: which is currently the best phone for video that has removable storage and still good 4k video with stabilization and not completely disastrous in low light?
chaose - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
iphone seems to be the best all around phone for video, photos, gaming, screen, and battery life.sonny73n - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
- Can iPhone play 10bit h265 mkv natively using hardware decode?- Can you sort, rename and tag your photos with the native Photos app?
- Can you play games with iPhone on external monitor? Can iPhone play demanding games without being a toaster and performance throttled?
- Is Apple capable of making display instead of relying on Samsung‘s AMOLED? And what’s with the fat notch design for 3 generations?
- iPhone battery life is far from the top.
Can you stop being a sheeple? If not, please don’t spam the web with misinformation/fake news.
rrinker - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
Well,. right there in the charts, the SUSTAINED graphics speed of the iPhone beats the BURST speed of any of the Android phones, so can it play games without excessive thermal throttling? Why yes, it can. The fake news would be claiming Android is just as fast. Funny how iPhones can do it without cramming 12 or 16GB RAM in there, too. That's desktop computer levels of RAM.m00bee - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
1 thing that bothers, on Iphone sometime is not registering my action on screen.Try simple thing like open setting menu, after that scroll down as fast after screen shown the menu.
Apple just freeze. Same when open long conversation on whatsapp, click it, than scroll, it freeze for a while. it still happen on my wife iphone 11pro, and previous iphone X.
Unlike android, it may showing some lag or jitters, but it always registers every click, swipe or scroll.
I did use iphone 7 and note 10, so I experience this every day.
Sorry for my English.
star-affinity - Sunday, July 12, 2020 - link
@m00beeStrange. Not a behaviour I recognize on my iPhones. And I’m quite picky with those sorts of things I think.
drajitshnew - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
There are sheeple I agree, but there are also apple baiters. iPhone did not become the most successful smartphone JUST because it looked good. I have never owned an apple device , but seeing what Android devices are on the market I am sorely tempted. If it was not for the price gouging on storage I would have gone over.Daro - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
True that. Years and years and there is not a good android phone. Please stop with the curved screens!. S10e its the best.Daro - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
True that. Years and years and there is not a good android phone. Please stop with the curved screens!. S10e its the best.