OnePlus 9 Pro Long Term Review! By TecworkZ

Hey guys it’s Sagar and here is my long term review of the OnePlus 9 Pro. OnePlus was a really exciting brand in the beginning. They packed in all the latest and greatest specs in their earlier phones, just like the other flagships. But they priced their phones much lower than the said flagships, making OnePlus phones amazing value for money options for the buyer. But after doing this for couple of years, they changed their strategy. Now, they still pack in all the latest specs available in their phones, but they also keep on increasing the prices of their phones 2 times every year.

And at a starting price of Rs.64,999, OnePlus 9 Pro is their most expensive smartphone to date. That being said, it is still priced a bit lower than the other flagships, at least here in India, but it is no longer the best value for money option as OnePlus smartphones once were. I have been using this OnePlus 9 Pro as my main phone ever since it came out, and in almost every way, it has it has been a pretty good phone, but it hasn’t lived up to the hype that OnePlus created for it. Now the design of this phone is not new or revolutionary. With a glass sandwich design and curved display at the front, It seems like a mash up of the OnePlus 8 Pro and the 8T, with the camera module pushed on to one side.

But it still looks nice and premium specially this Stellar Black colour. That brings me to a very important point. No one, and I mean No one prefers to have a glossy glass back like on the Morning Mist colour of the 9 Pro, specially when you have 2 amazing finishes on the Stellar Black and Pine Green colour. The glossy back shows fingerprints and scratches very easily, and it also makes the phone very slippery. So if anyone from OnePlus is watching, you guys have had amazing matte finishes to the back ever since the OnePlus 6 or 6T, and you have refined and made it even better over the years, so from next time, please being the matte frosted glass back to all the colour options.

Everyone will appreciate the design even more. Like all other OnePlus devices, 9 Pro is a very well build phone. The metal frame provided it a lot of rigidity, and the metal buttons are tactile and feel very robust. This phone also gets IP68 water and dust resistance rating, so you no longer have to worry, if the phone takes a quick shower or if you accidentally drop it in swimming pool or spill some water over it. OnePlus 9 Pro is a bit shorter and narrower than the 8 Pro, so it fits better in my hands.

The screen is still curved at the edges, but the curve is a bit subtle compared to the 8 Pro. This is to reduce the accidental touches. But I did run into some responsiveness issues while using this phone without a case. This is more of an issue while trying to reach a certain part of the screen with one hand, or while using the camera app. Because, chances are you have multiple fingers touching the screen at the same time without you knowing about it.

Other than that, it’s a wonderful display. Very easily one of the best ones out there. With 1300 nits of peak brightness It can get very bright, and the colours look amazing. When set to QHD+ it looks extremely crisp. It’s an LTPO display, so in the smart 120Hz mode, refresh rate can drop down when the screen is showing something less demanding, and it can race up to 120Hz for more demanding stuff.

While this is great but every now and then when the refresh rate goes from low to high, I see a couple of dropped frames. It has got much better with updates, but I still see it here and there. I don’t think this is a major issue, and I doubt that most people will even notice it. Overall I really like this display. The bezels are super thin, and you can very easily get used to the small notch on the top left.

The in display fingerprint sensor is placed a bit too low, and it took me a good 3-4 days to get used to its placement. Now this is one of the good ones, it is very fast and accurate to unlock the phone. I just wish it was placed a bit higher, like on the OnePlus 8. While using the fingerprint sensor, you get the first tase of the amazingly strong haptic motor inside this phone. It is not very often that you get a good vibration motor on an android phone.

You get a very nice haptic feedback throughout the user interface. For example, if you are increasing the volume or brightness, vibrations go from light to strong with the slider, and this is a very nice touch. While we are talking about the things that are inside this phone, lets us also check out the other specs. It is powered by the latest and greatest Snapdragon 888 processor with Adreno 660 GPU. You can choose between 8 or 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and 128 or 256GB of UFS 3.1 2-lane storage. This phone does get 5G support, but right now it only has 2 5G bands, but OnePlus says they will be adding support for more bands with future software updates.

With all of this you can expect flawless performance from this OnePlus 9 Pro. It can fly through anything that you through at it. Everyday social apps, streaming content, playing games, do anything and you won’t be disappointed. Well this is the case with any OnePlus phone. They stay fast and snappy for years to come.

The only issue you might run into, is the phone heating up if you use it for long time. If you play a lot of games or click images or videos for a long time, it gets very hot. In the beginning you got this warning very often when the phone got very hot, but with updates I have started seeing this warning less and less. But the phone has actually not stopped overheating. It still gets uncomfortably hot sometimes.

I called out OnePlus on Twitter and in my camera review of this phone, for the overheating issue, and some people said that I was exaggerating the issue. But if you go to OnePlus Forums, there is a 39 page thread about heating related issues on the OnePlus 9 Pro, so this issue is very real. And it still persists even after the latest software update. The overall software experience is very good on this phone. OnePlus’s Oxygen OS is one of my favourite Android Skins.

I love the features and customisation options it gives you. It is minimal and functional at the same time. And I love that OnePlus offers software support for a long time. They have however slowed down or delayed the Android 11 update on some of the older phones like the OnePlus 7T. But this is their flagship device, and I hope we will get better software support for the 9 Pro in the future.

Speaking of software updates, I have already received 3 or 4 of them in just the 1 month that this phone has been out. There are the most number of updates that I have got on a new phone in such short time. While this sounds like a good thing that OnePlus is working on things and pushing out timely updates. But I strongly feel that no smartphone should need these many updates to get the basics right. Most of the things that they are trying to fix with these updates should have been taken care of before the phone was launched to the public.

OnePlus is no longer small company, and this is not an entry level smartphone, This is their most expensive smartphone and it should not be plagued with issues right out of the box. There are couple of things that really bug me. When I was talking about the haptic feedback while adjusting the volume and brightness level, did you notice how long it took the phone to make the changes to the brightness level after I had moved the slider? Have a look at it again. It just takes way too long and it is a delayed response. I understand gradual changes in the auto brightness level when you go from bright to dark room or the other way around.

But when I am manually adjusting the brightness level, I want it to be responsive, just look at how long it takes for the brightness to go up or down after I have made the changes. If you call this a feature, I am sorry but you are just wrong. Another major issue is delayed notifications. In an effort to preserve battery life, OnePlus adds intelligent battery optimisation to all the apps by default. And for some reason, this doesn’t let your phone fetch notifications when it the screen is off or the phone is sitting idle.

And when you pick up the phone or wake the screen, all notifications will start piling up. This is frustrating. There have been so many time sensitive notifications that missed due to this. To get all your important notifications in time, you will have to manually go into battery settings and turn off this optimisation off for those apps. It should be the other way around.

These are a few hiccups that I came across in the last few days. All that being said, I still like the overall OnePlus UI and the features that it offers, and I wish all the issues and bugs are ironed out asap. In the last month or so of using the 9 Pro, I found the battery life to be very disappointing. It barely ever gave me a screen on time of over 5 hours. I tried switching to FHD+ resolution, but didn’t see any major improvement in the battery life.

This is again something that many people are complaining about, and I really hope OnePlus could do something to squeeze slightly more usage out of the 4500mAh battery. We do get the 65 watt warp charger In the box, which fully charges the phone in under half an hour. So the battery not lasting long enough on a single charge is not turning out to be that big of an issue, at least in the time of this pandemic, where we barely get out of our homes. And we can plug the phone into the charger whenever we want to. It also supports 50 watt wireless charging with the OnePlus wireless charger, which is even faster than wired charging on most of the phones.

All that being said, with the latest efficient processor and a 4500 mAh battery, we should have got better battery life out of this phone. We should not have to dial back on some of the key features like QHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, just to squeeze out a day’s worth of battery on the OnePlus 9 Pro. With all the being covered, let us move on to the most hyped part of this phone, it’s cameras. I have made a dedicated 20 minute video only about the cameras on this phone, so it won’t make much sense for me to repeat all those things again. To know about the cameras in depth, I suggest you definitely check that video out.

I will leave a card to it on the top right corner of the screen, and also link it in the description section. Most people know this by now, that OnePlus has partnered with Hasselblad in the hopes of improving the cameras on their phone. This a 3 year collaboration and OnePlus is spending close to 150 Million dollars on it. While Hasselblad might have some input in the camera hardware on future OnePlus phones, this time, most of Hasselblad’s influence seems to be on the software side. They are said to have helped OnePlus achieve natural Colour Calibration in its images.

But if you saw my camera review of this phone, we know it doesn’t capture natural colours. And yes, this is after the update which was said to have improved the cameras. You don’t have to take my word for it, go and watch the image samples in my dedicated camera review and decide for yourself. And while you are there, check out the comments, there are quite a few OnePlus 9 Pro owners who are not very happy with the cameras. Well frankly, other than colours, I don’t have any major issues with the cameras.

I specially love the wide camera on this phone. I feel it is the best wide camera on any phone that I have tested yet. And the fact that it doubles as a macro camera is just a cherry on the cake. The wide camera is actually showing better looking colours than the primary camera. The 16 megapixel selfie camera does an adequate job if the lighting is not too harsh.

Adequate is the right word to describe it. These selfies have enough details to not make these images look bad, but there are much better selfie cameras on phones prices lower than this. If there is one area that the camera has seen the biggest improvement in, it is while shooting videos. Not just with the video resolution and frame rate options, but quality wise as well. I really like the videos that the OnePlus 9 pro can shoot.

I am specially a fan of the 4K 120fps mode. But you should know that the phone gets very hot if you use the cameras for long, specially while shooting videos. Now the cameras on this phone have a lot of potential, and sometimes they take incredible images, but what it lacks in is consistency. If OnePlus could somehow make this camera more consistent, I won’t mind using this as my main phone. As good as the cameras on this phone are, I doubt that you will really see a difference between its and OnePlus 8 Pro’s images.

So that begs the question that should you even get the OnePlus 9 pro over the 8 Pro. Because OnePlus 8 Pro offers you 90% of what the 9 Pro does at a much lower price. Well if you have the OnePlus 8 Pro, you don’t even need to think about upgrading to the 9 Pro. And if you are who is confused between these 2, I would say get the 8 Pro and save yourself some money. But if you are someone who wants the latest and greatest of all the specs, and with that you need the super fast wired and wireless charging speeds, and if you don’t mind spending the extra amount, go with the OnePlus 9 Pro.

But please get the Stellar Black or Pine Green colour, coz the glossy back of the Morning Mist just doesn’t fair well in day to day usage. Personally I feel OnePlus has gone a step too far with the pricing on the OnePlus 9 Pro, but if you still want a flagship smartphone that packs in all the latest specs, and still costs a bit less than others, it is one of the best options. I just hope this is the last price hike from OnePlus, because it will be very difficult for me to recommend their phones to you guys, if the price just keeps rising. What do you guys feel about this OnePlus 9 Pro? Let me know in the comments. And if you want to purchase it, I will appreciate if you get it from the affiliate links in the description section.

That is it for this video guys. Please hit the like button if you enjoyed this video, and subscribe to the channel for more quality tech videos like this. You can also check out some of the other videos from this channel. This has been Sagar, and I will catch you guys in the next video. Take care.

Source : TecworkZ