OnePlus 9 Pro Review By MobileTechReview

This is Lisa from mobile tech review, and this is the OnePlus 9 pro we'll also be reviewing the OnePlus 9, not pro, but this time around, it's the pro model. So here it is they're going full-frontal flag shipment. At this point with OnePlus, this phone has a snapdragon 888 CPU, the latest and greatest with 5g. It has a 6.7 inch, OLED display, and it's a new LPO display, which is a more sophisticated variable, refresh display, much like we've seen on, say the galaxy s21 ultra, so 120 hertz max refresh on this and a new Hasselblad camera partnership, which they made a big deal about Hasselblad branding back here. Is it more than just branding we're going to find out now, but before we dive into those cameras, there is more to a phone than well the cameras these days, much as that might seem not the case, given what manufacturers and some reviewers focus on. First, the price 969 dollars for the lower end configuration with eight gigs of ram and 128 gigs of storage and a thousand sixty-nine dollars for the configuration that we received from OnePlus, which is 12 gigs of ram and 256gb gig storage, allotment uh, there's no micro, SD card slot.

So that's it! You can't expand the storage. So that's what I mean by full-frontal flagship in terms of pricing too, and some people- and I admit me to kind of miss when they were that upper midrange kind of upstart flagship killer thing going on there. But that said, you know what Samsung needs some competition in the android space because motor well, they dropped out of the high-end other than foldable phones years ago now, and lg really has a pretty small market segment. So we need somebody to keep Samsung on their toes and to maybe offer a different kind of experience than Samsung offers. So that's why this is worth the luck when you're just thinking.

Well, why shouldn't I? Besides some people, really don't like Samsung software or whatever you know it's up to you carrier compatibility. Another important point right: you know, so it's sold, as has been the case with OnePlus phones as a T-Mobile phone. You can get it that way. If you want, for both the nine and the nine pro you can also buy it. Unlocked and unlocked is a nice proposition there, and it will work on Verizon's low band 5g.

Admittedly, they've just started rolling that out, they've been focusing on that superfast, but tiny footprint millimeter wave 5g. This is only certified for the lowest of 5g. So you know you might not care much now about 5g, it's become sort of a joke and people are like. Oh, my 5g speed was lower than my 4g speed, but for a phone, this expensive and forward-looking as 5g improves- and we start to see, c-band in use and some real gains and better coverage and all that sort of stuff. You know you want to have it so a t.

This is a sad story. A t has not certified it to work, and they haven't said a word about their intent to do so they're. You know one of the big three networks that does count for something it will work on ATT's 4g network, so that's okay, but a carrier actually have to approve a phone before they allow it on their 5g network. That's what's going on with that, so those things out of the way, the rest of the phone. It's your typical flagship, specs you've got glass on the back.

You've got glass on the front: it's gorilla, glass, 5, now, thankfully, so a little more hopefully drop and shatter resistant. We hope, as in terms of bulkiness, you know OnePlus used to be some of the biggest heaviest phones on the market. This is 197 grams, and it actually is a lighter and smaller carry than the Samsung Galaxy s21 ultra, which is good god. The biggest heaviest phone. Certainly, that Samsung makes you've got NFC on board.

You've got Wi-Fi. You've got Bluetooth 5.2, you have an in-display fingerprint scanner that works well in my tests and a 2d facial recognition. Facial scanner too, so you've got two different methods of biometrics to get into the phone. It's running android 11 with the usual oxygen OS customization, which is to say very little and a very light touch and the stuff that they do. I typically like so, if you don't like the software overload, that Samsung does with multiple versions of the photo viewer application and multiple messaging apps, and all that sort of thing you don't have to worry about they're, pretty much.

Just this great straight google stuff, google messages with RCS. Google photos, you get the idea there, so that stuff is all nice, no surprise, there's no headphone jack man. Nobody does that any more right just about you, do have an USB USB port on the bottom. You can use USB headphones or Bluetooth headphones. If you want, we have stereo speakers built in here, and they're, actually pretty good, there's Dolby Atmos support for the headphone jack as well the display.

Let's talk about that, a little more 120 hertz OLED display very nice looking and fairly well calibrated, but they actually have this vibrant mode. In case you kind of miss the battle days of OLED when they're overly colorful and garish. So you can make it do that if you want to do that, they have this ultra-fast touch response feature which works only in like four games right now, PUBG being one of them. If you're a serious mobile gamer, maybe you're going to get excited by that the display also gets very bright in outdoor, auto brightness mode. The only thing that gets in the way of that a little is boy.

It doesn't have some glare, but part of that is the factory installed screen protector. The sides are curved glass, but not as much as the previous generation, which I appreciate because less accidental edge presses, and it's the technique. They use mostly to try to make the phone look thinner and to make it feel better in hand. It has the brightest always on display. I have ever seen as well, and you can choose from a couple of different kinds of always-on displays in terms of performance.

That's the thing about oxygen, OS and OnePlus phones. They just feel superfast. I mean you got the same processor, and you know if you play games, you can see the same frame rates and the benchmarks are fairly similar to another phone with the same processor and all that sort of thing, but it's what they do with the software that just makes it feel so boom boom boom. So you don't see people saying oh man, my OnePlus slowed down after a couple of months, which people typically say about other brands of phones, and some of it may just be psychological. The longer you use the phone, the more you notice that there may be little delays in doing this and that so not an issue here fast.

The battery on this is 4 500 William, which is par for the course for a phone this size and in this price range. But what isn't par for the course is warp charging, as always, so now we're up to 65 watt charging for the wire charger. And yes, the charger is still in the box, yay that so very fast charging. That's the same one. You would see as the upper end option, with a lot of Ultrabook laptops.

These days, to give you an idea, so you want to charge it from zero to full in a little over a half an hour. Yes, you can do that, but even if more crazy is their new latest warp wireless charger, the 50t, so that charges at 50 watts a wireless charger- and you know 15 watts- is currently for QI wireless charging about as fast as it gets. So that is crazy and no. The phone does not catch fire and burn and yada, and if you do want to buy that wireless charger, that's around 70 bucks or so and comes with the USB cable, but you'll have to use the charger that came with your phone, the 16.5 watt charger to do that. So for those of you who are a fan of wireless charging, I'm sure you'll be thrilled.

It also works with QI. Wireless charging too. If you have existing q wireless chargers, it'll just charge at the usual slower 15 watt rate or whatever it's rated for, and you can use third-party or other phone brands. USB-C chargers too. You just won't charge at crazy warp charge speeds.

Likewise, you can use the warp charger with other phones, and it'll just charge at whatever maximum speed. Those other phones support other and yes, it also supports reverse wireless charging too, so it can charge other cheap devices like a smartwatch or something like that and OnePlus will be coming out with a smartwatch speaking of looking forward to reviewing that as well all right, so we've got all of that out of the way. It's a nice enough, looking phone, nothing unique about it, not one of their riskier designs like the McLaren design phone that they had. Oh, that one was pretty, but it's a pleasant. Looking foam cladding gorilla glass.

We still have the alert silencer slider switch that I like a lot. I think a lot of you probably do too. So what about the cameras? They made a big deal about this whole Hasselblad thing: the shoot for the moon, yada! So OnePlus never had bad cameras. They just didn't, have class leading cameras, so this is their attempt to get there and really cameras. Are the big marketing differentiator these days between phones, because a lot of us don't even buy standalone point of shoot cameras anymore? You just go with what your phone has.

So, if you're into your camera on your phone, keep watching this part they're getting there. Let's put it that way. So you know they did a collab with Hasselblad and I would say that Hasselblad actually had some say an input. It looks like you know. Sometimes it's just throw a logo on there pay a company, some money, and you're done, but they say this is part of a three-year thing going on, and mostly it's about the color space, I'm probably not the only one.

That's going to tell you that, which means you know: Samsung goes for the over top colors kind of with a bit of a bluish color cast, which is great if you're doing landscapes, maybe not so great when you're shooting people um. But here the colors are more natural and more neutral, almost pixel-like or almost iPhones tend to be a little warm the warmer end of natural, so maybe more pixel-like, but sometimes still a little on the blue. Sometimes even some colors are a little understated compared to reality, but not too often white balance is pretty well handled on it. So those are the good things about it, and you have a manual mode inspired by Hasselblad, and you have shutter speeds that remind me of a Hasselblad camera, which is a very expensive family of cameras that probably most of you will never use like six thousand dollars or whatever, but not the fastest shooting cameras in the world. So I have missed photos of our very active cat, for example.

So if you have kids, if you have pets- and you want to do that kind of action- photography thing keep in mind- just keep mashing on the shutter button, and you might catch the shot that you want to catch all right enough of that 48 megapixel main sensor by the way, not much difference between the 9 pro and the 9 for cameras which you're not getting is a telephoto lens, particularly on the not pro OnePlus 9. So 48 megapixel Sony main sensor on this, and it's a fast enough lens, and it takes very pleasing pictures. So a lot of people who I would call the normal out there would take pictures of this and say well. This is delightful stuff, and you wouldn't be wrong, but us reviewers and those of you who are camera aficionados will keep looking and pixel peeping and all that sort of thing- and I wouldn't say they beat the Samsung Galaxy s21 ultra yet or even the iPhone 12 Pro max, but just being up. There is a step in the right direction, and it's the early stages of their partnership.

The wide camera on this or the ultrawide, I should say because the main camera is already pretty wide at 23 millimeter fields of view. The ultra-wide, which is 14 millimeter fields of view, is very good, and it's a pretty large sensor. It's also Sony. They put a big focus on this pun intended, and it takes very good pictures, and they have some control of barrel distortion. You know wide angles tend to look kind of fish eye and weird it's well done, and the pictures, I would say, are certainly at least as good as the iPhone 12 Pro max when it comes to the ultra-wide angle.

The telephoto is where it stumbles a bit, because that's an 8 megapixel sensor so, and it's not is any impressive zoom ratio, if you're a telephoto person- and I confess that I am I'd like to do portraits- I like to capture wildlife and the cat without getting up in the cat's face, which will assure that he's going to stop doing whatever q thing he was doing. This is 3.3 x, optical zoom, so yeah, and if you digital zoom, it's the typical it's going to degrade, especially you're, only working with an 8 megapixel sensor. So if you want that awesome, 10x zoom that you get with the Samsung Galaxy, s21 ultra no iPhone 12 Pro, not max level, still not quite there in terms of image quality, but in good light. It's pretty good in low light. It gets pretty noisy fast night.

Shots on this are quite pleasing and better than real life. Take a look at this image shot of the backyard which was really pretty much pitch black other than those little LED lights around the pool and vague light coming from the neighbor's house, and suddenly it's a colorful and much brighter shot, which is what camera phones do these days. They have better night vision than we do. Certainly it's its well done. So that's the OnePlus 9 pro particularly of appeal, probably to T-Mobile customers, the United States, since the carrier offers it directly, and you've got complete carrier support for this, but not too bad a pick for Verizon either and for those who are not Samsung.

People and you're looking for flagship level, specs and pretty good cameras, even if they're not the best, we have ever seen, they're pretty darn good, then you've got it here versus the s21 ultra. Well, that would be a whole other smackdown, wouldn't it. But one thing that I like about this is: it is an easier and lighter carry a bit less bulky and heavier phone, but you do lose that on the s pen as well, I'm Lisa from mobile tech review be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more cool tech, videos and thumbs up. If you like this vid.

Source : MobileTechReview