OnePlus 8 Pro REVIEW: finally playing with the big boys By Phandroid

Oh, it's no secret that Android smartphones come in all different sizes shaped and prices, but if you're looking for a flagship device, the recipe is typically pretty straightforward. In 2020, that means a Qualcomm snapdragon 865 chipsets, 5g connectivity, a massive battery and a camera that the manufacturer claims can compete with a DSLR. The new OnePlus, a pro seems to check all the right boxes for a flagship device this year, but it also has a few features that we've been wanting to see for a very long time. Let's start things off with the basics: eight gigabytes of RAM, with a hundred and twenty-eight gigabytes of storage, check a more expensive model with twelve gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage check a six point: seven eight inches, quad HD plus display with a hundred and twenty Hertz refresh rate check. Quad camera with a color sensor check four thousand five hundred and ten William hour battery with 30 watt fast charging check, 30 watt, Wireless, fast charging and reverse wireless charging check an official ip68 dust and water resistance rating check. While those last few features have been included on flagship devices.

From other manufacturers for about a half decade or so they're features that have been sorely missed on previous one plus devices, giving the competition the upper hand, when all other specs have been the same or even better, on OnePlus devices. So does this mean that OnePlus is finally able to compete on a level playing field where the OnePlus, a pro, can truly be measured up in every category against the best smartphones of 2020? Let's find out, I have to say that this is one of the first times that I haven't been disappointed, that a manufacturer, hasn't traumatically changed the design of its phone holding the OnePlus 7 pro and the new 8 pro side-by-side. There aren't really that many changes to set them apart. The new phone is slightly taller, but besides that, and the fact that they've swapped out to pop up selfie camera for a hole-punch one, there's really not much else. That's changed.

The buttons are all in the same spot, and you still get a centered camera module and the phone's fit and finish feels as good as it ever did. The new glacier green hero, color is more than the name implies, but it's absolutely gorgeous and really shows why Samsung dropped the ball with its color options this year and, to put it all into context, we need to start things off with the phones price. The OnePlus 8 pro sells for eight hundred and ninety-nine dollars for the base model or 999. If you simply can't live without 12 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage, placing this phone squarely in the same flagship territory as Samsung's, Galaxy, S, 20, lineup, of course, OnePlus didn't simply just bump up the price and call it a day. So what are the features that have been added in to justify the steep price increase? The first is wireless charging, something that OnePlus fans have been begging for since the original OnePlus phone hit the market, but the company didn't just slap in a regular QI.

Charging coil, like any other manufacturer, would in true OnePlus fashion the company developed a proprietary fast charging system which delivers a 30 watt charge to ensure that the phone's battery doesn't undergo too much stress. The phone also includes two charging pumps, which step-down the charge current from 20 volts at 1.5, amps to 5 volts at 6 amps by the time it gets to the battery. Of course, this also means that, in order to take full advantage of the phone's maximum wireless charging speed, you will need to shell out an additional $70 for the official OnePlus wireless charger. The good news is, though, that the phone still works with any old QI charger that you might have lying around. The other hardware upgrade that finally lets the OnePlus.

A pro compete with other flagship devices is its official ip68 dust and water resistance rating. It's also one of the reasons why the pop-up camera from last year's 7 Pro didn't make a comeback other than that the OnePlus. A pro has the usual upgrades that the company's been focusing on for the last couple of years, like any other flagship smartphone. This year, this device comes with 5g connectivity. Thanks to the new snapdragon 865 processors, Verizon customers, you get low-band and millimeter wave support, but 5g is limited to low-band on ATT and T-Mobile.

As for performance of the chipset itself, it's honestly pretty spectacular, especially since one plus has gone the extra mile by including lpddr4 AM and you FANS 3.0 storage, to ensure that there are no bottlenecks along the way. The model I have only has 8 gigabytes of RAM, but that's more than enough to keep nearly a dozen apps in memory, and if you want to make sure that your favorite apps are always loaded up and ready to go, you can also lock them into memory as well, but the only major upgrade that you can actually see is the phone's six point. Seven eight-inch quad HD plus display on its own. The AMOLED panel, is absolutely gorgeous with incredible viewing angles and a peak brightness of 1440 for Nets making it the brightest display that I've ever tested on a smartphone. On top of that, you also get ten bit color reproduction and HDR 10 plus support, which gives it incredible color, accuracy and dynamic range.

But to give you the best experience possible, they've, also upgraded the refresh rate to a hundred and twenty Hertz with a 240 Hertz touch sampling rate. Now we've seen this before on Samsung's the latest devices, but the difference here is that this amazing refresh rate can be done at the full resolution, rather than stepping things down to full HD. The only real drawback to the display is its curved edges. While they give the phone a sleek and modern look, the curved glass makes using the phone more difficult than it should be, since one plus is palm rejection. Algorithms aren't nearly as good as Samsung's typing can be frustrating at times, and tapping icons or buttons close to the edge of the screen can be infuriating.

On top of that, you also get excess glare from the curved glass when watching videos in landscape. If you're new to OnePlus devices, you need to know that the custom oxygen OS skin on top of Android 10 is probably the best software experience that you're going to find it's simple, clean, customizable and, most importantly, extremely fast. Personally, I could easily trade Google's pixel build of Android and for oxygen OS any day of the week, especially this year, since one plus has finally ditched it's the custom shelf to the left of the main home screen and replaced it with the Google feed. Like most other Chinese manufacturers. There are plenty of customization options in the software, but oxygen OS doesn't go overboard with its own walled off themed store, but instead uses the hundreds of icon packs that are already available to the Google Play Store.

When it comes to its cameras, OnePlus has always been a step or two behind the competition. This year, the pro delivers. The best camera experience that we've ever seen from the company with a quad camera setup on the back, highlighted by 248 megapixel sensors for its standard and ultra-wide cameras. But you also get an 8 megapixel, hybrid zoom camera and a unique color filter camera. One Plus went all out this year with a top-of-the-line imaging sensor from Sony for its main camera.

Well, you can set it to capture images at 48 megapixels, the main settings switches things over to 12 megapixels. Since it allows more light to be captured by the sensor, the resulting images are fairly impressive, sharp and quite colorful. One plus takes a couple of pages, though out of Samsung's playbook, delivering a touch more saturation and sharpness than what you would typically expect, but it's not over-the-top. The only thing that may need a little of tweaking with a future update is the white balance which tends to err on the warm side. It's not really that noticeable unless you match things up with shots captured with other devices, but once you see if it's hard to miss.

The same goes for the ultra-wide camera, but the sensor and lens at one Plus is using here deliver much sharper images than what we've seen on competing devices. The only disappointment, though, is that the 18 millimeter lens isn't anywhere close to the field of view that you get from Samsung's a 13 millimeter lenses on its new s20 lineup for its telephoto camera OnePlus has moved over completely to a hybrid zoom system, which is simply a fancy way of saying that they're doing some algorithmic enhancements on top of digital zoom. While there's no dedicated optics, that will get you in closer to the subject. The resulting images are actually fairly good, even in low-light conditions. A periscope camera, of course, with a 5x telephoto lens, would have been preferable, but that would have only bumped up the price of the phone even further for video capture, the pro delivers 4k video clips at 60 frames per second OnePlus has focused on better low-light performance and improved stabilization, which now uses optical and electronic image stabilization.

At the same time, for incredibly smooth video, the only real disappointing camera feature is the phone's 16 megapixels selfie camera. Not only is it limited to 1080p 30fps video capture, but the lens isn't quite as white as what the competition has to offer. This forces you to squeeze in tighter with your friends or family while taking selfies together, or simply it cuts out the background a lot more than it should. On top of that, the images simply aren't nearly as good as what we've seen from other competing flagship devices this year, and that brings us to the color filter camera. But honestly, there's really not much to say here.

The camera allows for a unique monochrome, color filter, which makes the images look like they were captured in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The results are definitely intriguing, but it's not something that you're going to use more than a few dozen times over the lifetime of the film. It seems like they added it in just so that they could say they had a quad camera, just like the competition, but I think they would have done better if they simply excluded it and drop the price of the phone by 20 bucks, and that brings us to the last item on the list. The phone's forty-five hundred and ten William hour battery now I'm going to keep this simple. Even with the phones, a hundred and twenty Hertz refresh rate turned on for its display and running on a T-Mobile 5g connection.

I was never once able to kill the phone off in a single day, while even averaging between six and eight hours of screen on time. Well, the OnePlus, a pro is by far the best smartphone that the company has ever built is also the least compelling device that we've seen from them in a very long time. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the phone itself, it's a flagship device with specs and pricing to match what the competition has to offer. But the company has lost sight of the fact that many people have flocked to the brand simply because they weren't willing to pay the premiums that other brands were charging and adding insult to injury. Is the recent revelation that the phone is a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars cheaper in markets like India and China? But the question is: should you actually buy this phone choosing between the OnePlus a pro and the Galaxy S 20 lineup is a hard choice, but the pro in my opinion does come out ahead thanks to its refined software and overall experience.

That being said, personally, I'd actually go with the one plus eight and save $200. There's no real reason why you shouldn't buy the OnePlus a pro for $8.99 or $9.99, but if you're still holding true to one plus core value of offering incredible value with its flagship smartphones. This device here simply isn't for you and the OnePlus 8 he's a better option.

Source : Phandroid