“Never Settle” has been OnePlus’ mantra since the brand released its first smartphone, the “Flagship Killer” OnePlus One. For years, the “Never Settle” motto and “Flagship Killer” title were the butt of snarky headlines. Every new smartphone that OnePlus released would evoke criticism that the company was, in fact, “settling” on something. As the prices of new OnePlus smartphones slowly crept upward, encroaching on the territory of the Samsung Galaxy and Apple iPhone, OnePlus fans have wondered when the company will release a truly no-compromise smartphone that deserves the price hike. Today, the company did just that with the new OnePlus 7 Pro.

The OnePlus 7 Pro is the biggest generational leap for OnePlus in its entire history. The list of what’s changed from last year’s OnePlus 6T is remarkable: an upgraded display with a higher resolution and refresh-rate display, the elimination of the notch and nearly all bezels, a triple rear camera setup, the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, 30W fast charging, up to 12GB RAM, faster storage, a better fingerprint reader, and much more. In the U.S., the OnePlus 7 Pro starts at $669 - $120 more than the OnePlus 6T, but $70 less than the Samsung Galaxy S10e. Is the OnePlus 7 Pro with all those upgrades really worth the extra $120 over the OnePlus 6T, and is it better than the entry-level Samsung Galaxy S10? Let’s find out in our review.

About this review: I received the Nebula Blue OnePlus 7 Pro (12GB RAM + 256GB storage) from OnePlus on May 2nd, 2019. I have used the device as my daily driver since receiving the device. OnePlus is a sponsor of XDA, but they did not have any input on the content of this review.

OnePlus 7  Pro Forums


Design

The Nebula Blue OnePlus 7 Pro is a beauty. Shining light on the back reveals a purple-ish hue near the top and a lighter sky blue near the bottom. There are multiple layers of glass along with an anti-glare layer. The back doesn’t attract fingerprints like you would think, though you can see smudges if you shine a light directly on the back. Besides the OnePlus logo and branding text, the triple rear camera setup with an LED flash can be found on the back. There’s no fingerprint scanner on the back because the OnePlus 7 Pro, like last year’s OnePlus 6T, supports Screen Unlock.

The frame on the OnePlus 7 Pro is metal and feels sturdy. On the bottom, you’ll find the dual nano-SIM card tray, the USB 3.1 Type-C port, a microphone, and a speaker. On the right, you’ll find the power button and alert slider. On the left, you’ll find the volume buttons. Lastly on top, you’ll find the pop-up camera and another microphone.

The front of the OnePlus 7 Pro is almost entirely adorned with the 6.67-inch Fluid AMOLED display. The phone is definitely tall and hard to use in one hand, but it's thin and not very wide so it's easy to reach across the display. Coming from the huge 7.2" Huawei Mate 20 X, the OnePlus 7 Pro doesn't feel that big to me, but I realize I'm in the minority here. It's definitely a big phone that you'll have to get used to.

There are virtually no bezels to be found on the OnePlus 7 Pro apart from a tiny bottom bezel and an even smaller top bezel housing the second speaker and proximity sensor. The display is curved and thus wraps around the edges, resulting in minimal side bezels. The fingerprint sensor is located under the display. The display is, in my view, the best part about the OnePlus 7 Pro, but before I dive in too deeply I’m going to address how OnePlus managed to make the smartphone notch-less.


About the Pop-up Camera

To achieve such a high screen-to-body ratio (93.22%), OnePlus moved the front camera from the top bezel to the top of the device, retracted into the body of the phone. Unlike the mechanical slider mechanism of similar bezel-less smartphones (the Honor Magic 2 and Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 come to mind), the OnePlus 7 Pro’s pop-up 16MP front camera is controlled by a motor. There’s no satisfying click to show and hide the front camera, but the noise you hear from the motor is quiet and the lighting effect on the edge of the display is pretty. Also, since the front camera appears automatically when you unlock the screen (if face unlock is enabled), you can unlock your phone much more quickly than you can on mechanical slider phones.

Since the pop-up camera is controlled by a motor, there are two things to worry about here: Is it quick to appear and is it durable? At a pop-up time of about 600-700ms, I can definitely say that the mechanism is fast enough to not impede facial recognition. The OnePlus 7 Pro scans my face basically instantly after pressing the power button; I haven’t noticed any major differences in face unlock speeds from my OnePlus 6T. Here are two videos I recorded showing the front-facing camera popping out of the top and retracting into the body.

Since Vivo announced the NEX last year, concerns about the long-term durability of motorized pop-up cameras have raged. It’s been a year since the Vivo NEX, and I haven’t heard of any major issues with its front camera. The OnePlus 7 Pro is an entirely different phone, to be fair, so I can’t fully judge its durability using the Vivo NEX as an example. That being said, OnePlus claims the OnePlus 7 Pro can withstand 300,000 cycles of popping the camera in and out of the device or over 400 times a day for 2 years. I can’t fully test that claim in the time I’ve had the device nor would I want to subject my review unit to potential breakage anyway, but I did write a short Tasker script to open and close the OnePlus 7 Pro’s front camera and take a selfie 10,000 times. That’s more than 3 months of use of the front camera, assuming you unlock your phone with face unlock and take selfies 100 times a day.

My 10k Tasker test is by no means a true stress test of the motorized front camera because I didn’t test the pop-up mechanism when there are obstructions, particles, or anything else that could interfere. The front camera should be protected against drops to the floor, however, since the OnePlus 7 Pro will automatically close the front camera when a fall is detected. I tested this by dropping my phone from a few feet onto a bed and the front camera immediately closed after leaving my hand. When I picked the phone up, there was a warning that the camera was closed to protect it. For the average, everyday user, the OnePlus 7 Pro’s front-facing camera should last you throughout the device’s lifetime. If you’re still not convinced and want to see an objective stress test of the device, you’ll have to wait for someone like Zach from the YouTube channel JerryRigEverything to put the phone under the grinder.

Face unlock settings in OxygenOS 9 for the OnePlus 7 Pro. You can either set face unlock to automatically unlock the phone when your face is recognized or you can set it to stay on the lock screen. The former means you’ll almost never see the lock screen while the latter lets you see your notifications while skipping the entry of your PIN/password/pattern.

Sadly, face unlock on the OnePlus 7 Pro is still insecure. Authentication works by comparing a saved image of your face with the live image from the viewfinder; the technology is entirely based on the accuracy of the image recognition software that OnePlus implemented. Because the OnePlus 7 Pro lacks dedicated facial recognition hardware (the flood illuminator, IR camera, and dot projector on the Xiaomi Mi 8 EE, iPhone X, and Huawei Mate 20 Pro, or the TOF sensor on the LG G8 ThinQ), its facial recognition can be defeated if someone has an image of your face. While the OnePlus 7 Pro’s facial recognition is fast, it’s insecure and not recommended for use if you care about securing the data on your device.


Display

A large, bezel-less, curved 6.67” display dons the front of the OnePlus 7 Pro. The OnePlus 6T already had some of the thinnest bezels we’ve seen of smartphones sold in the U.S., but the OnePlus 7 Pro takes things to a whole new level. Almost the entire front of the phone is the display save for a very thin bezel at the bottom and an equally slim bezel at the top housing a speaker. I’ve used a nearly bezel-less phone before in the Honor Magic 2, but the OnePlus 7 Pro does a much better job at keeping me immersed thanks to its superior 516ppi AMOLED display.

The display curves around the sides like on the Samsung Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+. A curved display means the side bezels are nonexistent, the sides are easier to initiate swipes from when the phone is encased, and the sides can be used for cool effects like the notification lighting. (The last one is especially important since the OnePlus 7 Pro, like the OnePlus 6T before it, lacks a notification LED.) On the other hand, a curved display means it’ll be harder to apply an aftermarket screen protector; for better or worse, OnePlus pre-applied a screen protector in the factory so you don’t have to buy one yourself. If you haven’t used a smartphone with a curved screen before, don’t worry. It doesn’t bother me at all when watching a video.

Plenty of new smartphones are nearly bezel-less, so that’s not what makes the OnePlus 7 Pro stand out. Instead, it’s the fact that the new OnePlus has arguably the best display on the market with its 90Hz QHD+ panel.

90Hz and QHD+

The OnePlus 7 Pro packs the best display that OnePlus has ever put on a smartphone. The OnePlus 3, OnePlus 3T, OnePlus 5, OnePlus 5T, OnePlus 6, and OnePlus 6T all had Samsung-made “Optic AMOLED” displays running at 60Hz at 1080p resolution. The new OnePlus 7 Pro has what the company is calling a “Fluid AMOLED” display running at either 60Hz or 90Hz and at either 1080p or 1440p resolution. QHD AMOLED displays are already a rarity apart from the flagship Samsung Galaxy series, but the inclusion of a display capable of running at a 90Hz refresh rate is truly remarkable. The OnePlus 7 Pro is the first smartphone sold outside of China with such a display.

Out of the box, the OnePlus 7 Pro is set to its native 90Hz refresh rate but automatically switches between FHD+ and QHD+ resolutions. OnePlus says the resolution auto switch takes into account what content is being displayed on the screen. For example, the resolution will dynamically switch to QHD+ if OxygenOS detects you’re watching a video. Personally, I prefer leaving the OnePlus 7 Pro at 90Hz and QHD+ resolution; battery life be damned, this combination provides the best experience! But as you’ll find out in the battery life section of this review, enabling the OnePlus 7 Pro’s best display settings doesn’t have a significant impact on battery life, though the GPU performance is affected.

For many people, the OnePlus 7 Pro will be their first smartphone with a high refresh rate display. It’s actually my first smartphone with such a display, though I’ve used 120Hz gaming monitors and both generations of the Razer Phone for brief periods of time. The benefit of the OnePlus 7 Pro’s higher refresh rate isn’t something that can be shown on video, sadly. It’s something you really have to see for yourself to understand its greatness. Like on every OnePlus flagship, scrolling is buttery smooth on the OnePlus 7 Pro, but it’s absurdly smooth with 90Hz enabled. If you get a chance to play with the device in a store, try reading text as you scroll pages up and down with your finger. At 90Hz, you can actually make out the text as you’re scrolling. At least for me, that’s not possible at 60Hz.

Unlike desktop PCs, the move to 90Hz on the OnePlus 7 Pro doesn’t provide much benefit for mobile gaming. The majority of Android games are FPS locked, meaning you can’t push them beyond 30 or 60 frames per second. For gamers, having a high refresh rate display matters much more on the PC side rather than mobile. However, I would argue that having a high refresh rate display is far more important for general usage on mobile than PC. Users scroll far, far more often on mobile than PC, meaning you’ll actually see the effects of the higher refresh rate outside of gaming.

In-display fingerprint scanner

Last year, OnePlus debuted “Screen Unlock” on the OnePlus 6T. Screen Unlock is their term for the optical under-display fingerprint scanner. There are two kinds of under-display fingerprint scanners: optical and ultrasonic. Optical sensors are found on most smartphones with under-display fingerprint sensors. They work by lighting up the AMOLED panel in the area above the sensor and reading the reflection of the light when your finger is pressed against that part of the panel. Ultrasonic sensors, however, detect the ridges and contours of your finger by measuring the time it takes for an ultrasonic wave to reach your finger and reflect back onto the sensor. The only smartphones with an ultrasonic under-display fingerprint scanner are the Samsung Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+.

Like all optical sensors, the OnePlus 7 Pro’s in-display fingerprint scanner can have trouble scanning in low-light conditions, scanning wet fingers, or scanning cold fingers. While I personally haven’t had much trouble with the OnePlus 6T or OnePlus 7 Pro recognizing my finger, I’ve heard other reviewers and users complain about the technology. A trick I recommend is to initially train your finger once in a low-light condition and then once more in a bright condition where there’s sunlight. I haven’t had to do this on my OnePlus 7 Pro, but doing this on my Black Shark 2 review unit, another phone with an optical under-display fingerprint scanner, worked wonders to improve recognition.

The fingerprint recognition on the OnePlus 7 Pro has generally been very quick and accurate in the nearly 2 weeks I’ve used the device. OnePlus says the 7 Pro uses a next-generation sensor, which means the recognition area is larger when compared to the OnePlus 6T. I haven’t really noticed a difference, personally. That being said, I have to point out two flaws with Screen Unlock since they still hold true from my OnePlus 6T review. First, the sensor requires a hard press and brief hold against the display unlike the ultrasonic sensor on the Galaxy S10/S10+ which works with a light tap. Second, the sensor lights up the screen and turns off Night Mode when doing so; you may find your face blasted with a bright light if you try to unlock your phone at night. These issues aren’t deal-breakers by any means, but they’re annoyances that I know can be solved by switching to an ultrasonic sensor.

Lastly, the OnePlus 7 Pro comes with some additional Screen Unlock customization options that weren’t available on the OnePlus 6T at launch. The ability to change the fingerprint animation effect returns from the OnePlus 6T, but OnePlus has also brought the “quick launch” feature which was added to the OnePlus 6T a few months after its launch. This feature lets you access app shortcuts or launch an app by continuing to hold your finger against the fingerprint recognition area after the phone is unlocked. After holding your finger for a second or two, your selected shortcuts will appear on the screen.

Curved Edge Lighting Effects

To improve the screen-to-body ratio on the OnePlus 6T, OnePlus had to sacrifice the notification LED so they could fit the proximity sensor and front-facing camera into the waterdrop notch area. Since there’s not much room on the top of the OnePlus 7 Pro, OnePlus sadly had to once again ditch the notification LED. This time, however, the company has an alternative: edge lighting effects. When the phone’s screen is turned off and an incoming notification appears on the ambient display, a short, blue pulse can be seen on the curved edges. This lets you know that there’s a new, unread notification. While by no means an innovative feature (we’ve seen a form of this on Samsung phones since the Galaxy S6 edge), it’s good to see that OnePlus has heard the feedback from users.

Currently, there’s no way to customize the lighting effect, but we hope that OnePlus introduces such customization in a future OxygenOS update.

Night Mode 2.0, Video Enhancer, DC dimming, Reading mode, and screen calibration

The OnePlus 7 Pro’s display deserves its own review, and we’re planning on having our display analyst, Dylan Raga, scrutinize every aspect of it. As a casual observer, I haven’t noticed any of the usual issues that crop up with AMOLED panels: no ugly blue shifting at low brightness, no image distortions in the curved edges, etc. I’ve watched videos like Game of Thrones, YouTube videos, and anime. I’ve played games like Fortnite Mobile and PUBG Mobile. I’ve spent hours browsing the web on Chrome, wasting time on Reddit, reading emails, and checking social media. In all cases, text and images are crisp, vibrant, and beautiful. Display purists will want to change a few settings on the phone while avoiding others, so here’s a brief rundown on the available features that affect the display:

  • Video enhancer - This feature seems to enhance the vibrancy of videos by increasing the saturation of the display.
  • DC dimming - This feature has started appearing from basically every Chinese smartphone brand. What it does is lower the voltage of the screen to reduce screen flickering at low brightness. This can help reduce screen fatigue, but it comes at the cost of color accuracy.
  • Night mode - A standard platform feature since Android 7.1 Nougat, Night mode shifts the color temperature of the display to reduce eye strain at night. The warmer the temperature, the less blue light gets beamed to your eyes. OnePlus says Night Mode has been enhanced on the OnePlus 7 Pro, which is why they’re now calling it “Night Mode 2.0.” The company says they’ve managed to reduce the brightness to an extremely low level (0.27 nits). Indeed, the phone can get really, really dim if you set the “lightness” slider to the darkest value. Speaking of brightness, on the opposite end the highest brightness level you can manually adjust to is 420 nits while the auto-brightness can kick things up to 600 nits.
  • Reading mode - This feature makes the screen grayscale and blocks heads-up notifications in the apps you select. The idea is to improve the contrast by turning everything black and white, letting you read for longer without your eyes getting tired, while also blocking distracting notifications.
  • Screen calibration - You can choose between the Vivid and Natural display mode presets here. Vivid is considered color inaccurate but more pleasing to the eyes for most users. Natural is, I’m guessing, color accurate, but I can’t say for sure without properly testing the calibration. Lastly, you can choose the “Advanced” option to change which color gamut to target (NTSC, sRGB, or Display-P3) and also the temperature of the screen using a slider.

Continue to Page 2 - Performance, Camera, and OxygenOS

Performance

OnePlus prides itself on the performance of its smartphones. “The Speed You Need” and “Unlock The Speed” are their mottos for the OnePlus 6 and OnePlus 6T respectively, after all. While we can argue endlessly about where OnePlus compromised on their smartphones, the performance is one area we can all agree they’ve “Never Settled” on. That holds true once again for the OnePlus 7 Pro.

Let me briefly summarize the relevant specifications to show you what I mean:

  • SoC: Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 mobile platform
    • CPU: 1 x 2.84GHz Kryo 485 + 3 x 2.42GHz Kryo 485 + 4 x 1.8GHz Kryo 385
    • GPU: Adreno 640
  • RAM: Up to 12GB LPDDR4X memory
  • Storage: Up to 256GB UFS 3.0 storage

Although not strictly related to performance, OnePlus has still made improvements in the following areas compared to the OnePlus 6T:

  • Battery: 4,000mAh
  • Charging: 30W fast charging (Warp Charge 30 - 5V 6A)
  • Ports: USB 3.1 Type-C

So, when compared to the OnePlus 6T, the OnePlus 7 Pro offers a better CPU, better GPU, more RAM, faster storage, higher battery capacity, faster charging, and faster file transfers. The OnePlus 6T was already a performance beast, but the OnePlus 7 Pro is a monster...at least on paper.

Earlier on, I talked about how smooth the OnePlus 7 Pro is in general use. It’s true that I had no issues with scrolling fluidity, app launches, memory management, or gameplay performance. The combination of the 90Hz refresh rate, fast UFS 3.0 storage, 12GB RAM, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 is what allows the OnePlus 7 Pro to offer best-in-class real-world performance across the board.

However, I decided to run the gamut of performance benchmarks anyway to show what the OnePlus 7 Pro is theoretically capable of and how it compares to your existing smartphone. In a separate review, Adam Conway will be posting his thoughts on the real-world gaming performance by testing the top Android games on Google Play and the most performance-intensive console emulators.

The following benchmarks were performed with “Fnatic mode” enabled. Fnatic mode is the OnePlus 7 Pro’s new gaming mode which shifts CPU, GPU, memory, and network resources to favor the current app. We’ve previously covered benchmark cheating in OnePlus devices, but the company has stepped up their game and now offers performance-enhancing tools packaged as general gaming tools. Since OnePlus expects gamers to play with Fnatic enabled, we also chose to benchmark the OnePlus 7 Pro with it on.

Overall Performance

Let’s start off with AnTuTu. This is one of the most popular benchmarks for Android devices, and for good reason. It’s a holistic benchmark that tests the CPU, GPU, and memory performance using both abstract tests and user experience simulations. The final score is weighted according to the company’s considerations. Given how extensive their database is, it’s a good idea to test AnTuTu to compare performance across devices.

I did 4 tests in AnTuTu to make sure the results are consistent. The average score, 371661, is noticeably higher than the average result we got from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 reference design (352,407). Much of the improvement here can be attributed to the fact that the OnePlus 7 Pro has UFS 3.0 storage. We’ll talk more about storage performance in another section, though.

GPU Performance: 90Hz + QHD vs. 60Hz + FHD

In display settings, OxygenOS warns that changing the display resolution to QHD+ or will reduce battery life, but what about performance? To test the potential performance impact, we performed two sets of tests in GFXbench: one set with the OnePlus 7 Pro at QHD+ resolution and another set with the device at FHD+ resolution. GFXbench is a handy benchmark that simulates real-world video game graphics rendering using newer APIs like Vulkan, though some tests still use OpenGL ES 3.1. GFXbench renders a lot of high-quality textures and effects during its simulations, so it’s a good way to consistently test the GPU performance.

Above: GFXbench performance at 90Hz + QHD. Below: GFXbench performance at 60Hz + FHD.

Predictably, there’s no change in scores for the offscreen tests. After all, there’s nothing being rendered on the screen so all the load is happening on the GPU without taking the display into consideration. On the other hand, there’s a pretty substantial difference in performance for the on-screen tests. The phone has to work much harder to handle the on-screen rendering tests when the benchmark scenes render at QHD+ resolution rather than FHD+ resolution. Specifically, the GPU has to render about 80% more pixels on the screen. This is totally unsurprising, but something you should keep in mind when you’re playing a game. Few games on the Play Store support anything higher than FHD, so you’re unlikely to run into any issues there anyway.

The OnePlus 7 Pro and Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 reference device performed nearly identically in the few GFXbench tests that I managed to run on both devices. I only played around with the Qualcomm reference device for 2 hours back in January, so sadly I couldn’t perform the entire suite of GFXbench tests, nor could I do any tests to examine thermal throttling. OnePlus boasts a “10-layer liquid cooling system” on the OnePlus 7 Pro, so it’s possible it outperforms the reference device in sustained performance but not peak performance.

CPU Performance

Geekbench is one of our favorite benchmarking tools because of how detailed its score breakdown is. The test employs several CPU-heavy computational workloads including compression, rendering, search, HDR/blurring, physics and ray tracing, and more.

In both the single-core and multi-core results, the OnePlus 7 Pro slightly underperforms the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 reference device. Keep in mind that the reference device was running a slightly older version of Geekbench and I don’t have the detailed breakdown of its scores. Regardless, the OnePlus 7 Pro outperforms both the Google Pixel 3 XL with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (expected) and the Honor Magic 2 with the HiSilicon Kirin 980. Expect the OnePlus 7 Pro to outperform other Kirin 980 devices in CPU performance, too.

Storage Performance

Universal Flash Storage (UFS) is a standard designed with the power constraints of mobile devices in mind. UFS 3.0 was standardized in January 2018, and flash storage chips based on the new standard should theoretically have over double the sequential read and write speeds of UFS 2.1 chips. We tested just how fast the new UFS 3.0 storage chip is in the OnePlus 7 Pro by running AndroBench.

AndroBench is a fairly old benchmark with an equally dated design, but it’s still the go-to for storage testing. It tests the speed of sequential read/write, random read/write, and SQLite insert, update, and delete operations. A sequential read/write is an operation that involves reading/writing storage blocks that are contiguous, while a random read/write involves reading/writing randomly scattered storage blocks. SQLite describes a type of database management system; developers dealing with large databases often have to make SQLite calls to retrieve or modify the database.

We can get a good idea of the storage performance of an Android device with AndroBench. By default, the benchmark writes a 64MP file with either 32MB or 4KB buffer sizes for sequential and random read/writes respectively, and an SQLite transaction size of 1. The speed of the former operation is measured in MB/s while the latter in Queries Per Second (QPS).

As expected, the OnePlus 7 Pro blazes past smartphones with UFS 2.1 in AndroBench. When compared to the Samsung Galaxy S10+, the OnePlus 7 Pro’s sequential read is about 460 MB/s faster. That’s a 52.13% increase - nearly half the theoretical increase, but still a very noticeable one. The sequential write, random read, and random write speeds don’t see substantial improvements, but the SQLite database queries nearly double in speed. These numbers on their own don’t mean much, but the important thing to take away is that the OnePlus 7 Pro is theoretically faster than comparable smartphones when it comes to operations like app launch times, game resource fetching, document loading, image saving, etc.

System Performance

In the last of our synthetic benchmark suite that tests the theoretical maximum performance, we turn to PCMark. PCMark is an excellent indicator of system performance because it tests performance in areas like web browsing, photo editing, video editing, and data editing. A higher score in PCMark is a good sign that the real-world performance in common user operations is excellent.

In this regard, the OnePlus 7 Pro performs outstandingly. The device averages a score in PCMark of 9591, about 700 points higher than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 reference design. The Qualcomm reference device runs near-stock AOSP (technically AOSP + CAF framework changes), however, so it actually underperformed even the Google Pixel 3 XL with Snapdragon 845 by about 200 points. That’s more a testament to the Pixel 3 XL, though. Even so, the OnePlus 7 Pro outshines them all - even the Honor Magic 2 with its Kirin 980 - in PCMark. The OnePlus 7 Pro is a solid performer in real-world tasks.

Thermal Throttling

Companies love to tout the performance of their devices, but when they do so they’re usually only talking about the peak performance. The sustained performance of a device is incredibly important, too. Rarely do we perform resource-intensive tasks in short bursts, especially for gaming. Thus, I decided to test the OnePlus 7 Pro’s sustained performance.

Let’s start with the sustained CPU performance test. I used a fairly obscure app called “CPU Throttling Test” to test the performance. This app repeats a simple multithreaded test in C for as short as 15 minutes. The app charts the score over time so you can see when the phone starts throttling.

On the left, I ran the throttling test for 15 minutes while the phone was unplugged. On the right, I ran the same test for the same length of time while the phone was charging with the Warp Charge 30 charger. When the phone isn’t charging, there’s hardly any thermal throttling for the first 15 minutes of the test. However, stressing the CPU while the phone is charging can result in pretty substantial thermal throttling as the phone has to balance performance with keeping the battery temperature under control.

I was sadly unable to properly test the sustained GPU performance using GFXbench. The reason is that the new “device temperature warning” in OxygenOS kicks in about halfway through the test, warning me that it’s going to start throttling. That’s not a problem because it’s exactly what I want to measure, however, when the notification shows up it also automatically cancels the GFXbench test because that’s just what GFXbench does. Our review of the OnePlus 7 Pro’s gaming performance will show what the device is capable of under sustained gameplay of graphically intensive games, however.

If the phone overheats, it'll warn you that it'll shut down some things to bring the temperature under control.

Memory Management

Although I don’t have any benchmark data to share on the memory management, I can assure you that you’ll have no problems with apps being killed in the background or pictures not being saved. OnePlus has always packed a decent amount of RAM on their smartphones, and the OnePlus 7 Pro is no different. The absurd 12GB RAM is probably overkill for most people, though. I don’t think my experience with the device would significantly change if I switched to the 6GB RAM model, though perhaps I wouldn’t be able to switch between games and Chrome tabs as easily. The fact that almost every app is kept in memory on the 12GB RAM model does help with UI fluidity, as I can seamlessly switch between apps using gestures without waiting on anything to reload.


Camera Impressions

While other brands substantially improved the camera quality in their smartphones with each generation, OnePlus has traditionally lagged behind in upgrading the cameras of their smartphones. Both the OnePlus 6 and OnePlus 6T have a dual rear camera setup consisting of a 16MP, f/1.7, 1.22μm sensor and a 20MP, f/1.7, 1.0μm sensor for depth detection in portrait mode. The OnePlus 5T before that used its 20MP secondary camera to take better pictures in low-light conditions, but that didn’t turn out so well. Then there’s the OnePlus 5, which before the new OnePlus 7 Pro was the last smartphone from OnePlus to have a telephoto lens. Suffice it to say, OnePlus hasn’t been on par with other brands when it comes to photography, especially when we’re talking about the likes of Google and Huawei.

This year, OnePlus has made a huge leap in the camera hardware they’re offering in their devices. The OnePlus 7 Pro has a triple rear camera setup consisting of a primary 48MP, f/1.6, 1.6μm sensor, a secondary 8MP, f/2.4, 1.0μm telephoto sensor for 3x optical zoom, and a tertiary 16MP, f/2.2 117° wide-angle lens. OnePlus has finally brought zoom back to its smartphones, and they’ve also gotten on board with the awesome wide-angle lens trend. There’s nothing really special about this setup - the cheaper Xiaomi Mi 9 also has the same 48MP Sony IMX 586 sensor, a telephoto lens, and a wide-angle lens - but there are plenty of smartphones out there without a telephoto and wide-angle lens. Thus, I’m glad that OnePlus is finally competitive once again with other brands in terms of camera hardware.

Like the Honor View20 and Xiaomi Mi 9, the main camera on the OnePlus 7 Pro doesn’t output photos at 48MP resolution by default. Rather, OnePlus has employed 4-in-1 pixel binning to combine 4 pixels into 1, allowing for better details at the 12MP resolution output. (The pro mode in the camera app lets you save 48MP snapshots, however, the images are unprocessed. There's notably no noise reduction, and the saturation and exposure are off.) Plus, the main camera has an Optical Image Stabilizer, and OnePlus has also added EIS. With an OIS, you have a better shot at taking low-light pictures as the stabilizer compensates for your handshakes during longer exposure times. With EIS, shakiness in videos is reduced, allowing you to capture smoother videos when moving about. The telephoto lens also has an OIS, but the ultra wide-angle does not have a stabilizer.

The OnePlus 7 Pro certainly has some impressive camera hardware, but OnePlus still needs to nail the image processing in order for the device to actually produce impressive-looking photos. The 7 Pro's new "UltraShot" technology and their 3 auto-focus modes (PDAF, CDAF, and LAF) is how the fruits of this effort. Still, OnePlus realizes they aren’t the very best at image processing or computational photography, so they want us to temper our expectations about the camera quality of the new OnePlus 7 Pro.

That being said, the results are certainly decent. Both myself and Adam have taken a few photos with the device, but we’re leaving the full camera quality review to Idrees Patel as he’s done a great job at reviewing the camera of the OnePlus 5T, OnePlus 6T, Huawei P20 Pro, and Huawei Mate 20 Pro for us. I want to leave you with a gallery and a couple of videos I’ve taken with the OnePlus 7 Pro so you can get a good idea of what it’s like shooting pictures with the phone.

OnePlus 7 Pro Rear Camera Samples

OnePlus 7 Pro Front Camera Samples

Camera Quality

My overall impressions of the camera quality can be summed up as decent, but not excellent - once again. Google and Huawei have risen the bar so high that anything less than utter perfection is seen as mediocre nowadays. Given that most of us view images on tiny screens these days, what matters most is our first impression at a glance. This is how a casual observer will judge the camera quality, which is also why I take this approach.

When viewing the photos from the OnePlus 7 Pro, the first thing that I notice is that the images are color accurate. The images that I see match my recent memory, which may not be appealing to some users as they're not as vibrant or saturated as photos from Huawei phones. I haven't extensively tested the camera at night, but color accuracy seems to not be as great in low-light conditions. Nightscape seems to have improved since the OnePlus 6T, though. The next thing that we noticed is the images don't seem to have as many details as should be present given that OnePlus is using pixel binning; my Huawei Mate 20 X and Google Pixel 3 XL still seem superior in retaining detail.

Regarding the wide-angle, there seems to be an exposure issue as I'm noticing darker, underexposed photos. On the other hand, I don't have any major qualms with the quality of the output from the telephoto lens. The scene detection is also not that great - I had trouble getting it to detect food on a plate, for example.

For the front-facing 16MP f/2.0, 1.0μm camera, selfies tend to get blown out when there’s any sunlight. The portrait mode blurring doesn’t do a great job at capturing depth now that the dedicated depth detection sensor is missing. The addition of EIS helps stabilize videos when walking around, which is nice.

The video recording modes are unchanged from the OnePlus 6T. You still have access to video recording at up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. Be warned that recording at this quality will result in huge video files. You can also record at 720p resolution at 480fps for a slow motion effect. Note that this is natively supported by the sensor, there’s no funky frame interpolation going on here like on Huawei or Xiaomi devices. Sadly, the OnePlus 7 Pro doesn't let you record videos using the wide-angle lens.

The OnePlus 7 Pro brings marginal improvements in image quality over the OnePlus 6T, but the added flexibility of the telephoto and ultra wide-angle lens is greatly appreciated. If you're looking for a more detailed camera review, stay tuned for Idrees' review. He'll go into far more detail than I can.

Camera App

With the new camera app, OnePlus has solved one of my biggest pet peeves: the fact that you couldn’t swipe between camera modes. Otherwise, the look and feel of the camera app is unchanged from OxygenOS on the OnePlus 6T. The zoom slider is accessed by tapping and dragging on the 1x icon or the trees that are next to it, additional camera modes can be accessed by swiping up from the name of the current mode, and the automatic white balance and focus can be locked by tapping the lock icon after focusing on any particular area.


OxygenOS 9.5 for the OnePlus 7 Pro

Gestures

The full-screen gesture navigation in OxygenOS is one of its best features. Now with the 90Hz refresh rate on the OnePlus 7 Pro, you can really enjoy the fluid animations when navigation home or switching between apps. For those who haven’t used OxygenOS before, here’s a quick summary of how the gestures work:

  • Swipe up from the bottom: Go home
  • Swipe up from the bottom left or right: Go back
  • Swipe up from the bottom and hold: Show recent apps list
  • Swipe up from the bottom, move up, and to the right: Quickly switch to the previous app
  • Press and hold the power button: Launch the Assistant

The following screen recording demonstrates these gestures, but do note that the experience feels a lot smoother than what you’re seeing here. YouTube can’t show you what the OxygenOS gestures look like at 90Hz.

These gestures are great, but not perfect. You still can’t use screen pinning when gestures are enabled. I still frequently swipe to go back when I meant to go home, or vice versa. I still frequently miss the very bottom because the phone is tall, the bottom bezel is small, and the AMOLED dark themes in many of my apps makes it hard to see where to start the gesture.

Screen Recorder

Stock Android has an API for apps to record the screen, but they can’t record the internal audio at the same time. (At least, not until Android Q.) Like Huawei and Samsung, OnePlus now offers a screen recorder that can record the internal audio from other apps. You access this screen recorder from its Quick Settings tile. Once launched, you’ll see a floating overlay with a start/stop and settings button that you can tap and drag around the screen. (This overlay doesn’t show up in screenshots, which is why I don’t have any to share.) In the settings, you can change the screen recording resolution, the bit rate, the audio source, whether to lock the orientation, whether to show touch inputs, and whether to automatically pause the recording when the screen is turned off.

Screen recorder on the OnePlus 7 Pro

Here’s a short gameplay video of Fortnite Mobile on the OnePlus 7 Pro, recorded using the new screen recorder.

Digital Wellbeing

New to OxygenOS is the integration of Digital Wellbeing into settings. Digital Wellbeing is Google’s initiative to reduce smartphone addiction by letting users monitor their smartphone usage and control how long they can use certain apps. Digital Wellbeing has a dashboard showing how long you’ve used your phone today and how long each app has contributed to the screen usage. It also shows you how often you receive notifications from certain apps as well as how often you open each app. Lastly, you can set a “wind down” timer which can automatically enable Do Not Disturb and grayscale mode so you’ll put down your phone before turning to bed.

Digital Wellbeing was initially a Pixel-exclusive feature when it debuted on Android Pie, but it eventually made its way over to Android One smartphones. Then at MWC this year, Google announced the feature will be coming to additional smartphones. We’ve already seen phones like the Razer Phone 2 and Motorola Moto G7 get the feature, but now the OnePlus 7 Pro joins the party. We don't know if other OnePlus phones will get Digital Wellbeing in a future OxygenOS update, though.

Fnatic/Gaming Mode

OnePlus is no stranger to gaming partnerships. The company already sponsors Michael Grzesiek, better known as Shroud on Twitch. Now, they’re slapping the Fnatic brand onto their new gaming mode. Fnatic may not be a household name in the U.S., but anyone following Counter-Strike will have heard of the team.

In any case, the name doesn’t matter - it’s just branding for the new advanced gaming mode in OxygenOS. All it does is block more distractions and prioritize the CPU, GPU, memory, and network usage for the currently running app or game. You can also control the behavior of notifications, brightness, and incoming calls to reduce annoyances during gameplay. Lastly, you can enable “enhancements” to the “gaming display” and haptic feedback, which improves what you can see and what you can feel in certain games.

Fnatic mode on the OnePlus 7 Pro

Is it a gimmick? It sure sounds like one. The options to control notifications, brightness adjustment, and incoming calls will surely be useful, but I’m skeptical about how helpful “gaming display enhancement” and “Fnatic mode” really are. We'll dig a little deeper for our gaming reviews.

Zen Mode

Ever want to go cold turkey for a few minutes? Zen Mode is here for you. It almost completely shuts you out of your phone for 20 minutes so you can go enjoy life or study in peace. By default, Zen Mode also notifies you when you’ve used your phone for more than 2 hours. When Zen Mode is activated, you can still make and receive phone calls.

Quick reply in landscape

If you receive a message from either Instagram and WhatsApp while using the OnePlus 7 Pro in landscape, you have the option to launch the app in split-screen mode automatically by tapping “reply.” This also conveniently launches Gboard in its floating mode. I’m quite surprised by how useful this feature is, but I wish it worked with apps like Telegram, Hangouts, or Discord.

Other Features

I’m planning on writing up a full review of OxygenOS 9, but to round out the software portion of my OnePlus 7 Pro review I’m going to summarize some of the other interesting features.

First, I noticed that Gboard is slightly raised from the bottom of the display. There’s a black bar that separates the navigation bar (or bottom bezel if gestures are enabled) and the bottom row in Gboard. This makes it easier to reach the keyboard because the phone is pretty tall.

Next, OxygenOS 9 has various permission warnings when apps are using the camera or GPS. This is a platform feature in the upcoming Android Q release, but OxygenOS users can already enjoy the feature months before the Pixels.

Permission warnings

Like every OnePlus phone since the OnePlus 2, the OnePlus 7 Pro has an alert slider. The top position silences the phone, the middle position sets it to vibrate, and the bottom position enables the ringer. Limited customization exists for the alert slider. In the alert position, you can toggle whether media volume is also muted. Lastly, in the ringer position, you can toggle whether calls will also vibrate the phone. We still wish OnePlus would allow us to customize the alert slider. The company addressed feedback on the alert slider once before when they changed the middle position from “Do Not Disturb” to “vibrate,” but alert slider customization has never appeared in an OxygenOS stable or beta release.

Alert slider settings

The ability to control background data usage is limited in stock Android, but OxygenOS lets you set whether an app can use Wi-Fi, data, or nothing at all on a per-app basis.

Data usage control

Lastly, there are loads of navigation and gesture customization options. OnePlus offers the most customization of the navigation bar apart from Samsung. While I don’t personally use any of the off-screen gestures, I recognize the feature’s popularity among custom kernels on XDA so I’m sure many people will find them useful.

Navigation and gesture customization

As you may have noticed from all my screenshots, OxygenOS has a built-in dark theme. That’s no longer as exciting as it used to be since it’s now a platform feature in Android Q. However, OxygenOS also lets you customize the accent color throughout the system. You can thus change the look of OxygenOS to your liking.

OxygenOS is definitely one of my favorite versions of Android. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Samsung’s One UI or Huawei’s EMUI, but it’s far less cluttered and complicated. It’s visually appealing and has most of the features to satisfy the average power user. My one gripe is the unfixed bug that causes notifications from some apps like Discord and Slack to be delayed. I’ve spoken with OnePlus about this and they’ve confirmed they’re looking into it.

Continue to Page 3 - Battery Life & Charging, Audio & Vibration, Connectivity, and Conclusion

Battery Life and Charging Speed

Battery Life

When OnePlus removed the headphone jack on the OnePlus 6T, one of their primary justifications for the move was to make room for a larger battery. The OnePlus 6T indeed packed a 3,700mAh battery compared to the 3,300mAh one on the OnePlus 6. Many, including us, had hoped to see OnePlus match Huawei and Samsung by including an even bigger battery. With the OnePlus 7 Pro, they finally have. The OnePlus 7 Pro has a 4,000mAh battery, and it really needs it.

The QHD+ display set at a 90Hz refresh rate means the display very likely consumes more power than the FHD+ 60Hz display on the OnePlus 6T. On the other hand, the new 7nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 is more power efficient than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. So how’s the battery life?

At least in benchmarks, the OnePlus 7 Pro seems to last pretty long. While I couldn’t test the battery life using GFXbench because of the system temperature warning that I talked about earlier, I did test the battery life at 50% screen brightness using PCMark. PCMark’s battery life test does a good job at approximating the average real-world screen-on-time, and the result of 8 hours and 17 minutes matches the battery life I’ve been getting these past 2 weeks. While the battery life on my OnePlus 7 Pro hasn’t been as great as on my OnePlus 6T, the difference is nowhere near enough to be a deal-breaker. In fact, I’ll reiterate something I said before: Battery life be damned, I’m keeping the phone at QHD+ and 90Hz.

OnePlus 7 Pro battery life

Warp Charge 30

With the OnePlus 3, OnePlus debuted its fast-charging technology called Dash Charge. Dash Charge, based on OPPO’s VOOC, was well-received by the community because it not only quickly charged the device but also did so while keeping the phone cool. Dash Charge is outclassed by the likes of Huawei’s 40W SuperCharge 2.0 and OPPO’s 50W SuperVOOC, so OnePlus came up with something new when they launched the OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition: Warp Charge 30.

On the new OnePlus 7 Pro, Warp Charge 30 provides 30W fast wired charging through the Warp Charge 30 power brick and cable. When the lock screen is shown, a Warp Charge animation is shown when plugging in the device with the right power brick and cable. If you miss the animation, the lock screen will tell you the phone is warp charging.

We measured the speed at which the OnePlus 7 Pro is charged using the provided Warp Charge 30 power brick and cable. We used Tasker to monitor the battery level, current, voltage, and temperature. We then plotted each value into easy-to-understand charts. We performed this charging test with and without stress. The no stress condition involved simply plugging in the phone and letting it charge while the screen is off, while the stress condition involved running the CPU Throttling Test for 45 minutes, playing Fortnite for 30 minutes, and browsing the web for the remainder.

Warp Charge 30 on the OnePlus 7 Pro

 

Warp Charge 30 on the OnePlus 7 Pro

No Stress

Stress

Average Current (mA)

3363

2771

Minimum Current (mA)

994

376

Maximum Current (mA)

6016

4891

Average Temperature (°C)

36

38 (5.56% increase)

Minimum Temperature (°C)

28.6

30.3 (5.95% increase)

Maximum Temperature (°C)

41.2

41.6 (0.97% increase)

When it’s not under stress, the OnePlus 7 Pro fully charges in about 65 minutes (+5 or so minutes for the current to reach 0mA after the battery indicator reaches 100%.) On the other hand, the OnePlus 7 Pro takes over 90 minutes to fully charge when it’s under stress. What’s remarkable about the plots for the stress condition is that the temperatures aren’t significantly higher than the no stress condition. The histogram for the stress condition seems more skewed to the left which is consistent with our expectations, but the number of occurrences in the higher temperatures is not that significant. That’s the beauty of Warp Charge 30 - it keeps your OnePlus 7 Pro cool even while you’re charging it.

I should note that since Warp Charge 30 is proprietary to OnePlus, you can’t use an alternative power brick and cable, so your choices for third-party chargers are nonexistent. If you really need a car charger, though, OnePlus is offering a Warp Charge 30 Car Charger accessory. The OnePlus 7 Pro now has USB 3.1 Type-C support, but the phone doesn't indicate that it supports fast charging when a PD compliant charger is connected. More analysis will need to be performed to determine if the phone does support USB Power Delivery.

Update 1 (5/14/19 @ 5:23 PM ET): Changed text to reflect that further testing needs to be done to confirm whether the device supports USB Power Delivery.

Update 2 (5/23/19 @ 4:12 PM ET): OnePlus has confirmed in an AMA that the OnePlus 7 Pro does support 15W USB PD.


Audio and Vibration

Audio

OnePlus has equipped the OnePlus 7 Pro with dual speakers - the second speaker grille on the OnePlus 6T was just for show. There’s a bottom-firing speaker on the bottom right side and a front-firing speaker located in the top bezel. The speakers get fairly loud without significant distortion. OnePlus has also partnered with Dolby to provide Dolby Atmos audio enhancement. You can choose from the Movie or Music presets, or leave it on the default Dynamic mode to let Dolby Atmos automatically adjust the audio profile to match what’s being played.

For Bluetooth audio, the OnePlus 7 Pro supports Qualcomm’s aptX HD audio codec. You’ll need a pair of Bluetooth earbuds compatible of streaming audio using aptX HD, though. The new Bullets Wireless 2 are aptX HD-capable, for example. Bluetooth audio streaming is still lower quality than wired audio, but aptX HD support on a pair of nice earbuds makes Bluetooth audio acceptable for all but the audiophiles among us. Sadly, the device lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack for wired audio output. If you crave a pair of good wired earbuds, the OnePlus Type-C Bullets are among the best USB Type-C earbuds you can get.

Vibration

An often under-looked aspect of smartphones is the vibration motor quality. The vibration quality isn’t really a selling point unless it’s great, which should give you a good idea why OnePlus is boasting about the vibration on the OnePlus 7 Pro. It’s good, really good. It’s on par with the Google Pixel 3. The vibrations are subtle and feel like they’re right underneath where your finger hits the screen. Typing is satisfying. Like the 90Hz display, the vibration quality on the OnePlus 7 Pro is something you’ll have to experience for yourself.


Connectivity

Besides the obvious 5G model, there are not many differences in connectivity between the OnePlus 7 Pro and OnePlus 6T. The Snapdragon X24 modem in the OnePlus 7 Pro supports Cat. 18 LTE download speeds and Cat. 13 LTE upload speeds. In the U.S., the OnePlus 7 Pro fully supports T-Mobile’s network but also supports Verizon’s LTE network. I personally use the phone on Verizon and have had no issues whatsoever.

The OnePlus 7 Pro supports Dual SIM, Dual Standby so you can receive calls and texts on the secondary SIM while the primary SIM isn't actively being used. Like the OnePlus 6 and OnePlus 6T, the OnePlus 7 Pro also supports dual 4G LTE standby. As an American, I don't have much use for dual SIMs, but I recognize that this is a popular feature in Europe and India.

One minor difference between the OnePlus 7 Pro and the OnePlus 6T is that the new smartphone supports dual-frequency GNSS. That means it’ll have better location tracking in dense urban areas.


Miscellaneous Odds-and-Ends

To finish up this review, here are some extra details about the OnePlus 7 Pro as well as some screenshots showing off various details that may be important for some:

  • The OnePlus 7 Pro is Widevine L1 and Netflix HD certified. This means you can stream Netflix videos in HD. We haven’t been able to stream Netflix videos in HDR, but support may be added at a later date.
  • The device can stream YouTube videos at up to 1440p quality with HDR.
  • The OnePlus 7 Pro has A/B partitions for seamless updates, supports all the Bluetooth 5.0 features, supports ANT+, supports the Camera2 API, and supports USB OTG.

Conclusion

Now we return to the title and why I dubbed the OnePlus 7 Pro the “best smartphone so far in 2019.” I hesitated to call it the “best smartphone” since I haven’t used every smartphone released this year. However, when I look at what the OnePlus 7 Pro offers at the price it’s being sold for, it’s a no brainer to heap praise upon it.

Let’s start off with the design. The OnePlus 7 Pro is a slim and sleek smartphone with a cool-looking finish on the back, but that’s true for most flagships these days. What differentiates the OnePlus 7 Pro from the likes of the Honor View20, Xiaomi Mi 9, or Samsung Galaxy S10 is that the OnePlus is bezel-less and notch-less. It’s all screen.

So, about that screen. It’s good - really, really good. So good, in fact, that I can’t wait to try out Daydream VR on it even though it’s unsupported - because why not. No other smartphone on the market boasts a QHD+ AMOLED display and a 90Hz refresh rate. The display is the biggest factor in what led me to choose the OnePlus 7 Pro as the best phone I’ve used this year. Of course, it’s HDR10+ certified, too, but that’s just an added bonus.

OnePlus phones typically pack the best available hardware, but that’s even truer this time around. Not only does the OnePlus 7 Pro come with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 (like the U.S. Samsung Galaxy S10 and Xiaomi Mi 9), but it’s also the first smartphone to launch globally with the faster UFS 3.0 storage standard (sorry, Samsung!) The OnePlus 7 Pro smokes the competition in benchmarks, and it’s probably the best Android smartphone for gaming on the market despite the fact that it’s not a “gaming” phone.

The cameras are all powerful and useful on the latest OnePlus. You’ve got the 48MP Sony IMX 586 like on the Xiaomi Mi 9 and Honor View20, a telephoto lens for 3x optical zoom, and an ultra wide-angle lens. In comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S10e lacks a dedicated zoom lens. While OnePlus still has a ways to go before they can match Huawei and Google in camera quality, the company has made a huge leap forward in the camera hardware they’re offering on their latest smartphone. All that’s left is some fine-tuning.

OxygenOS 9 based on Android Pie is still one of the best Android experiences on the market. In conversations I’ve had with fellow tech journalists, OxygenOS ranks in the top 2 next to the Google Pixel software experience. There’s a general agreement among tech enthusiasts that Samsung’s One UI and Huawei’s EMUI, while much more feature-filled, feel bloated compared to OxygenOS. In addition, features like the full-screen gestures, the built-in dark theme, and permission alerts are only now making their way to the Android platform in Android Q while OxygenOS offers these benefits right now. In addition, OxygenOS on the OnePlus 7 Pro is getting new features like a screen recorder that can record internal audio, a revamped gaming mode, quick reply for WhatsApp and Instagram in landscape mode, and more.

The OnePlus 7 Pro offers a large 4,000mAh battery, outclassing both the Xiaomi Mi 9 and Samsung Galaxy S10e while matching the Honor View20. The OnePlus beats all 3 in wired charging speeds with 30W Warp Charge 30, although the Galaxy S10e and Mi 9 have the added benefit of wireless charging.

Like the Samsung Galaxy S10e, the OnePlus 7 Pro offers dual speakers. Unlike the Galaxy S10e, the OnePlus 7 Pro lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack. I haven’t used the Galaxy Buds yet, but my impressions of the Bullets Wireless 2 are very positive so I don’t think you’re missing out on great Bluetooth audio if you choose the OnePlus. The vibration on the OnePlus is way better than on the Samsung, though. The OnePlus 7 Pro’s vibration is on par with the Google Pixel, in my experience.

I hope that I’ve demonstrated that, for the first time, OnePlus’ price hike is justified this generation. You get so much more over the OnePlus 6T that it’s almost worth skipping the wait and upgrading from the 6T right now. The display, design, and performance of the OnePlus 7 Pro are currently unmatched. Because I value these three aspects so highly, I am confident in declaring the OnePlus 7 Pro the best smartphone in the first half of 2019.


Where to find the OnePlus 7 Pro and its dedicated forum!

You can purchase the OnePlus 7 Pro from OnePlus.com in the United States or from any T-Mobile store starting this Friday, May 17th. In Europe and India, you can also buy the phone from OnePlus’ website, though you may also be able to grab the device from other regional physical and online retailers. For example, the device is available via Three in the UK.

Pricing

Model

Price (USD)

Price (Pounds)

OnePlus 7 Pro Mirror Gray (6GB RAM + 128GB storage)

$669

£649

OnePlus 7 Pro Mirror Gray (8GB RAM + 256GB storage)

$699

£699

OnePlus 7 Pro Nebula Blue (8GB RAM + 256GB storage)

$699

£699

OnePlus 7 Pro Nebula Blue (12GB RAM + 256GB storage)

$749

£799

Availability

Forums

If you do buy the OnePlus 7 Pro or want to lurk the forums so you can learn more before you make the jump, you can visit the XDA forums for the device at the link below.

OnePlus 7  Pro Forums