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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wr3zzz - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
Same here. The dual speakers setup used on OnePlus7/8 does not sound good, or correct, for video viewing.What happened to display audio that don't need speaker holes? Sony and LG had them a few years back and then never heard from again.
Kishoreshack - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
I really love the one plus displayIt feels even smoother & sharper than s20 line up
One plus has been constantly delivering better displays even than the display manufacturer Samsung itself
It's a shame Samsung who manufacturers display can't deliver the smoothest sharpest display
On the market
NOTELLN - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
It seems phones are more about bragging rights than how they actually perform now a days. $1000usd for a phone? No thank you.flyingpants265 - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
It's about profit, market share, and demand. They just started arbitrarily raising price, and decided it was better to sell slightly fewer phones, at a much higher price. It's called market capitalism. It's awful.Also, around here, the telcos are helping subsidize certain phones again, AND financing: every phone is available for $0 now. So we may only see higher prices.
Nexus 5 was $299 (I think? Don't remember really). OnePlus One was around the same price.. Redmi K20 whatever was $420
If you look at Realme X, it's $145 USD for a 1080p FULLSCREEN phone with SD765. So they can easily make budget phones and sell them at a slight profit... But they artificially limit sales of phones by region!! It barely even works in North American networks.
Quantumz0d - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
Exactly, the Android OS is already saturated and removing features like Filesystem advantage and shoving iOS crap into it. The worst part is as you said the insane price tag, this POS phone what does it do better than an S10+ for the same price retail currently, for non tinkerers it does nothing. It has a BL unlock but apart from that S10+ trumps this garbage clone CCP device in everyway.Kishoreshack - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
Their commitment to the display tech is a testament in itself how far they have comeThey are literally beating display manufacturer SAMSUNG in terms of Quality
Sharma_Ji - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
Lmao, 1+ fanboy.Just stop.
mobutu - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
More interested in the OnePlus Nord or whatever they'll end up calling it.mrochester - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
Why is the manual brightness on android phones so low?Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
Probably to avoid having people needlessly blasting the brightness at full intensity all the time.