OnePlus 8 Pro review: wireless charging, 120 Hz screen and resale speed – The Verge

The OnePlus 8 Pro is the result of an ongoing specification battle with Samsung. It’s an Android phone that spares virtually no expense in the quest to include the best and most powerful hardware components. The result is the fastest Android phone experience you can buy – starting at $ 899.

This price is simultaneously high and low. Nine hundred dollars is a lot for a OnePlus phone, but it’s still cheaper than its direct competition. For years, OnePlus has succeeded with a two-pronged strategy to seduce Android enthusiasts while undermining price competition. But in recent years, OnePlus has grown from a niche company for its fans to one of the most competitive players in the smartphone space. At the same time, its prices have risen steadily, as it has become more serious to take Samsung head on. And there’s no denying that a $ 900 phone is expensive, regardless of the company that makes it.

Samsung’s Galaxy line is the gold standard – not necessarily because it’s the best Android phone (last year, we gave this honor to the OnePlus 7T), but because it is the most ubiquitous and the More reliable. The Galaxy is the default because it lacks no major features, it is reliable and is sold by all major operators.

The regular OnePlus 8 costs less and is sold in Verizon and T-Mobile stores. This is the mainstream device that most people will see, and you should read Jon Porter’s review here. The OnePlus 8 Pro is only online, and it has a different job: beating the Samsung Galaxy S20.

The OnePlus 8 Pro is available in one size: large. It has a 6.78-inch screen and tiny glasses, but few people will be able to use it with one hand. This is not a problem for people who prefer big phones, but I would personally like there to be a smaller version.

This size is my main complaint about the material. It’s an incredibly well-built phone with a fit and finish that withstands both the Galaxy S20 and the iPhone. I have the blue version for review, and it has a nice two-layer matte finish that reflects the light well. The camera bump is centered and too large, but which camera bump is not these days, really?

OnePlus phones have a three-level sliding ring switch which is extremely convenient. (I am the psychopath who sometimes activates his ringtone when he is at home, so I love him.) It is also classified for IP68 protection against dust and water. OnePlus has historically failed to pay for this IP rating, but, again, the goal here is clearly to make sure it doesn’t lose anywhere for Samsung on a spec sheet.

And this is not the case. It has all the specifications you would expect from a flagship Android phone in 2020: the Snapdragon 865 processor, support for 5G, Wi-Fi 6, 8 or 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 128 or 256 GB of storage UFS 3.0. It costs $ 100 more to get the model with more RAM and storage. There’s an on-screen optical fingerprint sensor, Gorilla Glass, and even dual SIM slots (a relative rarity in the United States).

“It is designed to be fast” is the thing you should take away from the previous paragraph. And it is indeed the case. It is the fastest and smoothest Android phone I have ever used.

It is useful that the OnePlus software philosophy seems to be “first, do no harm”. Its version of Android is called “Oxygen OS” and the additional features it adds are mainly there to support the hardware features of the phone. Unlike Samsung, OnePlus doesn’t try to trick you into using its service ecosystem. The little add-ons it brings to Android aren’t as impressive as you might find on other phones, but they are never boring.

But what gives the greatest feeling of speed and smoothness on the OnePlus 8 Pro is neither its specifications nor the software. This is the screen.

With apologies for the new wireless fast charge feature, the OnePlus 8 Pro’s exceptional functionality is the display. It is superb. In its quest to leave no specifications included, OnePlus has unlocked a full refresh rate of 120 Hz which can be combined with its full resolution of 3168 x 1440. (Samsung limits its high refresh rate setting to a lower resolution. )

If you haven’t used a phone with a high refresh rate screen, I advise you not to do so until you have upgraded. Especially on Android, it offers a noticeable improvement in the smoothness of scrolling and other interactions on the phone. On the OnePlus 8 Pro, it stays on unless there is a specific reason for it to go at a lower rate (for example, when watching a movie).

It’s nice for a spec fight to be able to pair it with full resolution, but I left mine at 1080p most of the time to save battery, and it still looked pretty good. It is bright, bright and, with the right settings, true to color. My only complaint with the screen is that it curves quite aggressively to the left and to the right, which brings me to errant keys when I try to use the phone with one hand. Samsung has reduced its aggressive screen curves this year in response to similar complaints, so it’s interesting to see OnePlus continue with its own version.

OnePlus has added some gimmicky screen features to watch videos. The first is “Vibrant color effect Pro”, which gives the colors a punch. The other is “Motion Graphics Smoothing,” and it only works in certain apps – including YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video.

It is actually a smoothing of movement: it takes video at 24 fps and increases the frame rate to 120 by interpolating the images in between. On a television, the smoothing of movement is rightly mocked like “the Soap Opera effect”. On this phone, I have to say that I don’t hate that. It’s a little more subtle on this smaller screen, or maybe just more elegant than on most TVs. Like switching to maximum resolution, however, it is a serious loss of battery life.

Very good: battery life. I am neither impressed nor seriously disappointed, but I have had times when I have felt these two things over the course of a week. Indeed, the quantity that you can withdraw from the 4,510 mAh battery can vary considerably depending on your use.

If you turn off the 120 Hz refresh rate, leave the resolution at 1080p, set the brightness reasonably, and just use the phone as you probably do every day, you will spend a day and more. I did this. I also crushed battery life in a few hours by doing the opposite of all of these things.

The “average” is therefore a full day of reasonable use, but mainly insofar as it is in the middle of two extremes that I have known. The fact is, do not read this large battery capacity to mean that you will get several days with this phone. He’s there to make sure the large, fast refresh screen and 5G radios don’t turn the 8 Pro into a half-day device.

But the big news here is that this is the first OnePlus phone to support wireless charging. Not only that, but the wireless charge can reach 30 watts, which represents 50% of the battery in half an hour. For comparison, the highest wireless load supported by Samsung is 15 watts, and that only on certain devices. The iPhone 11 Pro reaches a maximum power of 7.5 watts wirelessly.

It really works. I got these charging results almost to the minute. To achieve this, however, you must purchase the OnePlus proprietary wireless charger. It costs $ 69.95, which is significantly more expensive than other wireless chargers. This is partly because it includes chips to communicate with the phone to prevent overheating. It also has a fan to draw air through a vent behind the phone.

Historically, OnePlus has stayed with wired charging because it is faster. In fact, it stayed with its proprietary “Warp Charge” system which requires its own charging cable and brick to operate. It’s still present and works on the OnePlus 8 Pro, but I’m happy to say that wired and wireless charging works well with more common chargers. It will charge very well on Qi pads that you may already have, and it will also charge quickly on a standard USB-C PD charger.

Until last year’s OnePlus 7 Pro, the story with OnePlus phones was always the same: a great phone, a meh camera. That doesn’t match the prices charged by OnePlus for the 8 Pro, and luckily the company delivered a very respectable, but not perfect, camera.

There are the usual range of three lenses: wide, telephoto and ultra wide. On most phones, the ultra wide saves time in terms of sensor quality – but not on the 8 Pro. It uses the same sensor as last year’s 7T, which means that the ultra wide is significantly better than the competition. Glory.

The telephoto lens can zoom “lossless” to 3X, not really optical like the Galaxy S20 Ultra. But I did not miss the zoom of the Ultra. The OnePlus 8 Pro behaves as well as the Pixel 4 or the iPhone 11 Pro with a zoom of around 8X. OnePlus lets you dial up to 30 times, but anything over 10 is a mess.

But the camera that really matters is the main wide angle, which on this device is a new 48-megapixel Sony sensor that triggers 12-megapixel images by default. In bright lighting conditions, I have always been impressed by the level of detail and the precision of the colors. But the bright lighting conditions are not the hard part for any camera.

Strangely, the difficult part is no longer in very dark conditions. All modern phones have some sort of long exposure night mode, and the OnePlus 8 Pro is no exception. It has stood up to the competition, and in a few cases it was actually my favorite.

Likewise, the OnePlus 8 Pro is perhaps the most fun I have had in taking macro photos with a phone. Not only can you get closer to your subject, but the level of detail is really very good.

OnePlus also handles video fairly decently. I like that you can use the OnePlus “Super Stable” video option even when you’re shooting at full 4K / 30fps now, but I found the quality to be pretty average. The average is actually ahead of many Android phones (hey, Pixel 4), but it’s still not as good as what you’ll get with an iPhone 11 Pro.

No, the hard part these days is dim lighting – twilight or indoors in a bar (remember?) Or some other dimly lit place. There, the worst trends of the OnePlus 8 Pro multiply.

Like all other phones, the OnePlus 8 Pro seems to make an effort to cleanse human faces – evening lighting, raising the brightness and smoothing the skin. I don’t like it happening, but when it goes well, it doesn’t bother me too much. And in most lighting conditions, OnePlus does it well. But for some reason, when the lights are dim, this camera trips over itself.

I don’t want to overemphasize this problem. With a little violin, you can get good shots in low light. It just takes one more attempt when the competition first succeeds. And in all other lighting conditions, it was crisp, precise and fun to use.

Oh, the OnePlus Pro also includes a “Color Filter” camera, a whole other lens and sensor dedicated only to color effects, like making the whole world negative. It’s silly, low resolution, and not much better than applying a heavy post effect. I don’t know why it’s there, and you probably don’t either.

I don’t know how they do it these days, but when I was in elementary school, we didn’t have written notes; we have checked one of the three boxes: does not meet expectations, meets expectations and exceeds expectations. The OnePlus 8 Pro meets expectations.

It’s not a blow – because my expectations were incredibly high. At $ 900 or $ 1,000, OnePlus could no longer make a phone with one or two missing features. Its main competition is the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus, and this phone is often reduced to exactly the same price – so there is no more ranking on a price curve for OnePlus.

But the OnePlus 8 Pro has grown to meet these expectations. It has a screen at least as nice as what you can get on a Samsung Galaxy phone – if not better. It is fast, elegant and does everything you would expect from a “flagship product”. If you’re looking for a Plus size Android phone, I think the choice between the Galaxy S20 Plus and the OnePlus 8 Pro will depend on your personal preferences – if not a draw.

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