OnePlus 9 Pro Review: taking on the Ultras By Phandroid

I think we can all agree that the hype around the OnePlus 9 series has died down just a little since they made their debut a couple of weeks back. As always, OnePlus has been a leader in the hardware space when it comes to smartphones, with bleeding edge technology at an affordable price, but that last bit of the statement has been less and less apparent over the last couple of years, especially among its devices featuring the term pro after their name. So here's my question is the flagship device from OnePlus still worth your money in 2021, I'm nick ray- and this is my review of the OnePlus 9 pro. If you're not familiar with the basics, let's do a quick overview. The OnePlus 9 pro is clearly positioned as an alternative to the galaxy s21 ultra and the newly announced Xiaomi mi 11, ultra sporting, a snapdragon 888 chipsets, 12 gigabytes of ram quad, HD, plus AMOLED display that has an incredible refresh rate that ranges between just one frame per second going, all the way up to 120 fps for optimal gaming performance and best battery life as well. It also has a Hasselblad branded quad camera system on the back.

That should allow its cameras to stand out from the competition and then, of course, an incredibly fast wired and wireless charging system. That should put the competition to shame, but before we get into all that to see if the phone's specifications live up to the hype, let's talk about the design, real quick. This may sound a little blunt, but OnePlus really phoned it in this year, spending very little time or effort to make the phone's design and its looks one of the selling points here. There's really nothing horrible or offensive to point out, but there's really nothing exciting or unique, either for what it's worth, the design is familiar featuring, the usual notification, toggle some well-placed buttons and that great fit and finish that we've come to appreciate from OnePlus over the years. It just doesn't look or feel like anything special but OnePlus didn't make any promises about the phone's looks.

Instead, it spent weeks teasing about the phone's, improved camera capabilities and its multi-year partnership with Hasselblad. There's. Definitely a lot to talk about when it comes to the cameras on this device, but let's get one thing out of the way right now. The Hasselblad logo on the back of the phone really doesn't mean anything at this point. Yes, Hasselblad did help tune.

The imaging sensor for a more natural look and the OnePlus camera team did incorporate some Hasselblad design touches within the camera app, including the orange shutter button, and also that ever so satisfying Hasselblad shutter sound. But if you're looking for a true Hasselblad camera on a smartphone, I suggest checking back in next year with that out of the way the cameras on this phone are incredibly good, especially for OnePlus for its main camera. The 9 pro features a Sony mix 789 sensors, while the ultra-wide camera is a Sony IMAX 766, that's right. Sony spent the extra cash to make sure that they're using the best camera hardware on the market, not only for the main camera, but the ultra-wide camera as well, which typically have much, much smaller sensors that don't perform well in low light conditions for comparison. The sensor used on the ultra-wide camera on the 9 pro is 66 percent larger than that used on Samsung's galaxy s, 21 ultra.

The results truly speak for themselves: the ultrawide camera on the 9 pro outperforms, every single ultrawide camera that we've tested on a smartphone this past year. It doesn't matter if you're taking pictures on a bright sunny day indoors or at night when out on the town. This camera delivers fantastic shots that are definitely worth sharing. On top of that, the free form lens that OnePlus paired with the sensor does an incredible job at minimizing edge distortion that is often prevalent when capturing ultra-wide images on smartphones. As for the main camera, the results are equally impressive, but the difference in performance when compared to other flagship smartphones isn't as apparent.

I guess. The main selling point here is that OnePlus has finally caught up to the competition when it comes to its main camera, an area in which they've always been a step or two behind when compared to the galaxy s21 ultra or the pixel 5. The 9 pro still doesn't perform quite as well in low light conditions, but the results are still very good, mainly because OnePlus stole a page out of Huawei's playbook by using a monochrome sensor on the back of the phone that enhances the light absorption of the main sensor in low light situations, while also helping with dynamic range and daylight shots as well. There's also a telephoto camera on the back of the phone with 3.3 x magnification. That gets the job done when you want to take a close-up shot, and you really can't move physically closer to your subject.

It's low light performance really isn't anything to write home about, but that's honestly par for the course for zoom cameras. What is a little odd, though, is the fact that OnePlus decided not to use the zoom camera at all for 4k video capture instead opting for 2x digital zoom on the main sensor, the only way to actually use the 3.3x magnification for that camera, while recording video is bumping. The resolution all the way down to 1080p. The good news is that the main and ultrawide cameras offer incredible video quality going. All the way up to 8k 30fps, though I do recommend sticking with 4k video at 60 frames per second.

If you don't want to chew up all of your internal storage. Video stabilization is great, as well with the larger sensors used on the main and ultra-wide cameras, delivering impressive results in low light conditions when capturing video at night. My only real disappointment with the cameras on this device is the use of the same 16 megapixel sensor that OnePlus has been using on its flagship tier devices since the OnePlus 7 made its debut. I honestly wasn't that impressed with the results back then, and I'm definitely disappointed with them using the same hardware on this device when so many other flagship 2 devices this year have shown to have incredible, selfie cameras, something that you're going to have to give up if you're purchasing this device, but of course in true one plus form the nine pro really isn't the story, it's merely about the camera. The main reason people still love.

These phones are because of the performance that they offer and the software experience as well. I'm going to touch quickly on the software, since there really isn't that much new here. The latest build of oxygen OS running on android 11 is pretty much identical to what we got on last year's OnePlus 8t. It's fast customizable and offers a pretty clean user experience when compared to other custom skins of android from other manufacturers. But if I had a choice, I'd still prefer a stripped-down version of android that Google uses on its pixel smartphones, but oxygen OS still offers a well-balanced experience that gives power users the flexibility to customize the look and feel of their device without all that heavy bloat that you typically get on other custom-builds of android, and that brings us to performance an area where OnePlus has always been a leader if you're not familiar with the basics.

Of course, I touched on this earlier, but the 9 pro is using a Qualcomm snapdragon 888 chipsets, with 12 gigabytes of LP, ddr5 ram and 256 gigabytes of UFS 3.1 storage, while those specs aren't completely unusual for a flagship to your device like this in 2021, the performance that they've been able to squeeze out of the hardware is better than most giving them OnePlus 9 pro a slight advantage in synthetic benchmark, scores which also translate into real world performance benefits if you're a heavy, gamer or plan on using the device for heavy lifting tasks like video, editing or 3d rendering on a smartphone, but in order to deliver the best gaming experience possible. OnePlus is also introducing a new hyper touch feature which reduces touch latency by up to 85, delivering an impressive 360 hertz touch sampling rate. This sounds amazing in theory, but OnePlus does have to whitelist individual games to take advantage of hypertouch, which means at launch only PUBG mobile Call of Duty. Mobile League of Legends, wild rift and brawl stars are the only games that are currently compatible, leaving all other titles with the regular 240hz touch sampling. Now I do have to admit that I really can't tell the difference between the 360 hertz touch sampling rate on the 9 pro and the 240 hertz that you get on the galaxy s21 ultra, while playing Call of Duty, mobile or wild rift, but that could be because both of those games cap the frame rates at just 60 fps, which really isn't the best user experience to start with.

Regardless, though, the gaming performance of this phone is phenomenal, with the phone staying pretty cool, even through long gaming sessions up to 30 to 45 minutes, the internal thermals that OnePlus is using seem to be better than what most other mainstream flagship devices have dissipating the heat evenly throughout the body of the phone, so that the snapdragon 888 can run at peak performance for longer before it starts throttling. If you're looking for a smartphone with a great display, the nine pro is definitely one of the devices that should be at the top of your list, with its 6.7-inch quad HD AMOLED display, while we've seen LPO technology on other devices, with dynamic, refresh rates that range between 10 and 120 hertz. The 9 pro takes things to a whole new level, dropping the refresh rate, all the way down to 1 hertz. This means, if you're, looking at static content on your phone, and you're, not touching the display, it will only refresh the screen one time per second dramatically: reducing its power consumption. As you can imagine, the display is quite nice to look at as well once you rev up its frame rates with its 10 bit color depth, HDR 10, support and being able to reach 13 nits of peak brightness, which means you'll never have issues seeing the screen while using the phone outdoors on a sunny day.

My only complaint here is that OnePlus is still sticking with a curved display. It's less pronounced than it was on last year's eight pro and this time around, there's a lot fewer mishaps that I've gotten as well, but I'm still holding out hope that OnePlus will give us a pro series device with a flat display, hopefully next year. The final thing to talk about is the phone's battery life and its charging capabilities. When it comes to battery size, the 4 500 William hour cell doesn't sound terribly impressive when there's so many other devices with 5 000, William hour batteries or even larger, but fortunately battery life isn't really an issue that you're going to have to deal with when using this smartphone, unless you're constantly using the cameras hours on end or plan on gaming, five hours a day between charges and using this phone for three weeks now, I've averaged 15 hours between charges with six and a half hours of screen on time, which typically include at least 90 minutes of gaming per day. I'd say battery performance is perfectly acceptable and in line with what we've seen from other flagship devices this year.

But what makes this device truly stand out is its charging capabilities thanks to its dual cell battery setup. That allows it to accept up to 65 watts of wired, fast charging and 50 watts using OnePlus proprietary wireless charging stand using the fast charger that comes included in the box, something that we really aren't seeing much of these days. The phone can go from zero to a hundred percent in just over 30 minutes. All in all, I think the OnePlus 9 pro is a very capable device, delivering big improvements on the camera front, along with the performance that we've come to expect from OnePlus over the years. That being said, though, I think OnePlus overpromised, with all the hype that it built up on this phone before its launch, leaving many, including me expecting more than what was actually delivered with this device with the 9 pro OnePlus has finally delivered a smartphone that can truly go head-to-head with the best devices that Samsung has to offer.

It's no longer a question of. Is it good enough? Now it's simply a choice between choosing which brand you want to be loyal to for more smartphone reviews and camera comparisons, be sure to subscribe to the channel and hit that bell icon as well. Thank you guys so much for watching, and I'll catch you in the next one.

Source : Phandroid