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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boeush - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
Yup. People with expensive high-fidelity headphones want to be able to listen to their extensive, high-fidelity music catalogs on their expensive, high-fidelity flagship smartphone. I don't see what's so hard for designers/vendors to comprehend about this...Just because Apple decided to go full retard with deliberate omission of a headphone jack, doesn't mean the rest of the world has to voluntarily lobotomize itself in response. Even though it did, and continues to do so - it doesn't HAVE TO keep on doing it. Idiots....
wr3zzz - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
OnePlus8 pretty much makes the case that flagship killer is henceforth pointless. There is hardly any "need" that can only be possible on $1000+ phones for 99% of the usage cases. Since OnePlus7 Pro, the extra $300-500 tacked onto the flagship class phones are mostly for checklist and not utility. Rational consumer, i.e, the flagship killer demo, pay for need and not marketing.Quantumz0d - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
Not a flagship at all when it lacks 3.5mm jack and no Micro SD slot. Esp with their proprietary bullshit charging and uber high speed, high current, high voltage battery destroying tech all for Samsung level of price with their bloated garbage Oxygen OS.And it's CCP powered. Only good thing about this phone is its Bootloader unlockability.
watzupken - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
"Not a flagship at all when it lacks 3.5mm jack and no Micro SD slot. Esp with their proprietary bullshit charging and uber high speed, high current, high voltage battery destroying tech all for Samsung level of price with their bloated garbage Oxygen OS."My question to you is whether you have used a OnePlus phone before to come to the conclusion that the Oxygen OS is garbage? I have not tested the OneOS from Samsung, but the Oxygen OS is leaps and bounds cleaner and smoother than the old TouchWiz OS from Samsung. Having used a OnePlus 7 Pro for some time, I feel the software support/updates from OnePlus is also better than Samsung. I am confident to say that Samsung probably included more bloatware than OnePlus, since OxygenOS is pretty much the closest to the stock Android experience.
The lack of micro SD slot is a bummer, but 3.5mm jack is pretty much missing in most of the new flagship phones.
Siva - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
Coming from a pixel 3 to the OnePlus 8 this phone is incredible but the camera is straight trash.serendip - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
What's Samsung's secret sauce for the high CPU numbers on the SD865?Roph - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Too bad both the headphone jack and MicroSD slot are missing, making it totally irrelevant to me. "Never settle", right?Also bizarre that the reviewer says good riddance to a pop-up camera. Having a piece of the screen missing is a negative.
Absolutely don't want these phones, I wouldn't use them even if they were free.
airdrifting - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
It's funny OnePlus's mainstream model beats their high end "Pro" mode practicality wise. I almost never considered the "Pro" model.Brane2 - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
After so many iterations, what does "flagship phone" even mean ?Does anyone even care anymore ?
When you need a toothpick, do you go for base model or check the sites for a "flagship" one ?
AsturzioAugias - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Thanks for the detailed review, from a new op8pro user.In your opinion, in terms of battery drain what the difference will be between 90hz and 120hz?