OnePlus’ new flagships have finally arrived.
What’s funny is that if you have been following OnePlus over the past few weeks, there was one word that has been associated with the brand name — Hasselblad. Indeed, if OnePlus wanted to attract a wider group of users, it made sense for the brand to announce the cooperation with one of the most well-known luxury camera brands with much fanfare. But the association with Hasselblad isn’t really exaggerated, as this time, the new OnePlus flagship definitely feels different.
In this OnePlus 9 Pro review, we want to keep aside any bias that the Hasselblad logo may add, and want to highlight the qualities of the real phone that other reviewers may not tell you.
OnePlus 9 Pro Review: Design
Let’s look at the OnePlus 9 Pro’s design. To be honest, it’s hard to say that the 9 Pro brings us enough surprise over its design. The 8.7mm thickness and the 197g weight are not so outstanding among plenty of new models coming with a more compact body.
But the good news is that the 9 Pro maintains an excellent build quality with OnePlus’ unique AG-glass processing. The camera module doesn’t protrude too much either. After we got our hands on the real model of the OnePlus 9 Pro, we think the Pine Green variant in our hand is the best-looking one among all three colors. By the way, we have one complaint about the position of the fingerprint reader. It’s too close to the bottom, which requires you to access it with a really uncomfortable stretch of your thumb.
And although OnePlus explained at the launch that it was so proud of the upgrade of the 9 Pro’s display, in actual use, we didn’t really feel the gap. OnePlus claims the 9 Pro’s display is made of LPTO O-Led, a new display material that remarkably reduces the power consumption of the excellent high-refresh-rate display. But in our test, the battery life of the model didn’t see any remarkable improvement. But let’s talk about it later. Anyway, by far this display is still one of the best phone displays on the planet, having the best colors, the 2K resolution, the 120Hz smooth refresh rate, and probably it does consume less power. However, as ordinary users, we cannot really feel the improvement in battery life.
OnePlus 9 Pro Review: Abandoning HydrogenOS in China
This time, surprisingly, OnePlus decided to abandon Hydrogen OS and replace it with ColorOS in all its new China models. ColorOS is an operating system based on Android developed by its sister brand — OPPO. So is it bad news for Chinese users? Nope. Actually, the Hydrogen OS has been criticized for years and most OnePlus users are happy to see the change.
But the global OnePlus 9 series still runs the Oxygen OS. So there is no need to worry about it. But our concern is, how does Color OS perform? Is it much better than the Hydrogen OS?
Well at first glance, there is no significant difference on the UI level. OnePlus has copied the basic design of the Hydrogen OS to the new system and preserved the smooth experience with a similar simplified design, so it’s not a problem to get used to it, even if you get the china version.
ColorOS possesses the traditional advantages of hydrogen OS i.e. its “light and fast”. Quick response is the foundation of hydrogen OS’s survival, but now this advantage has almost disappeared as others have caught up. Another major feature of Hydrogen OS is that it is completely open and close to the original Android system. And Color OS has always been a GMS-certified system, there is no obstacle to using original Google services, and there is no problem in managing Google accounts. The icon-pack functions that hydrogen-os fans loved were replaced by Color OS’ personalized customization center. You can not only use ART+ icons in the icon style but also those compatible icon packs from the HydrogenOS packs.
Not to mention the optimization of Color OS’ localized services, including game acceleration centers, SoC performance scheduling strategies, energy-saving strategies, the latest LTPO backplane dynamic variable refresh rate algorithm, and localized life services, which are all missing from hydrogen OS. These are indeed the functions urgently needed by domestic users.
Simplicity used to be the main advantage of Hydrogen OS, but at present, it’s turned to be a downside, pushing OnePlus to change. The brand is short of resources to provide as many features as the other systems do. Consequently, the simplified Hydrogen OS wasn’t able to keep up with increasing users’ needs. And OPPO’s Color OS has higher level of completion with an increase in positive rating. So probably it’s time for OnePlus software department to shift their focus to the camera experience and give up struggling with the operating system.
And now, another question comes: What will they do with the Oxygen OS? Will they abandon the slow-evolving Oxygen OS in the same way? Actually we don’t think so in the near future. If OnePlus is to keep a positive image in their global market, the Oxygen OS still got its mission to complete. But what they may do is to integrate some of the features that developed in Color OS into the Oxygen OS, which probably is a good thing for Oxygen OS to solve the same issue that happened on the Hydrogen OS.
OnePlus 9 Pro Review: Benchmarks & Gaming
Well, most reviews wouldn’t really talk about the 9 Pro’s gaming performance. Here is our conclusion: by far it’s not ready for gaming.
In some benchmark tests, the OnePlus 9 Pro’s results couldn’t compare to the other flagship models running the same Snapdragon 888 chipset. And even just for running these benchmarks, the OnePlus 9 Pro easily heated up. Then we weren’t really expecting much on its gaming performance.
Running Genshin Impact, the average framerate on the 9 Pro is 39.98fps, which is not close to other top flagships from this year. Even if it’s for lower power consumption and CPU thermal-throttling, the CPU strategy seems really conservative. But the fact is that in our battery life test, the 30mins gaming consumed 18% of power, which is not really as good as they claimed.
Then we moved on to PUBG Mobile. Since the game has got excellent optimization, we have tested it on so many models. not just flagships but also mid-rangers can perform well without any performance throttling down. However, we still met tiny throttling down on the OnePlus 9 Pro with an average framerate of 57.97fps. But don’t get me wrong. It’s still fluent enough and probably you won’t perceive it during gaming. But is it necessary to throttle down by 5fps in such a light game?
But we also got good news in 2K20 mobile. It’s easy for the 9 Pro to access the best performance at 60fps without any throttling down issues.
The last game we tested is Nimian Legend. What’s funny is that the OnePlus 9 Pro didn’t finish the 20mins gaming test and the game crashed in the 12th minute, leaving a reminder saying that the model was overheated. Well, then we knew where the issue is. Due to the heating issue, the OnePlus 9 Pro has to apply a pretty conservative strategy to protect the model from being overheated. Even though the phone still easily got heated up and the temperature of the model surface was really perceivably high. We noticed that usually the performance down throttling would happen when the surface temperature reached 47℃.
OnePlus 9 Pro Review: Camera Performance
Now let’s see what we got in its camera department. The main camera features a customized 48MP Sony IMX789 sensor; and the wide-angle camera using the latest freeform lens features a 50MP Sony IMX 766 sensor; and along with these two, there is one more 8MP telephoto camera and another chromo lens.
Before we show you camera samples, there are some important details that we wanna share with you. One is that the overheating protection also exists for the camera, and it happened quite frequently when you continuously use the camera for 15 or 20 minutes. When it happened, the phone would not allow you to use the camera to shoot photos or videos. Trust me, you would definitely be frustrated waiting until the phone cools down and gets back to work.
Another one is the strange photo preview issue. When you capture a photo, the preview window in the bottom right corner doesn’t show the exact photo that you’ve clicked. It’s more like the moment when you click the shutter button. And only when it is opened, the real photo shot on cameras will appear. When you go back to the camera interface the preview window eventually will show you the real one. The reason why OnePlus does it probably is to give users an illusion that the phone has fast shutter response and fast image processing. But the fact is that like most other phones, the shutter and processing delay exists on the OnePlus 9 Pro but most of them didn’t cover it up this way.
And the high-resolution option and RAW image option are hidden in the Pro camera mode. About their performance, we will show you some samples later.
Main Camera
Let’s start with its main camera. we have to admire that the OnePlus 9 Pro is using hybrid focus technologies and has a really quick focusing speed. Most of the samples are impressive with a natural richness of color that is pleasing to the eye but not unrealistic. It did show off a close style of Hasselblad colors. At the same time, the images shot under normal mode also has good contrast detail with accurate exposure. But what surprised us is the Raw image mode collects richer image detail. It allows you to have an excellent image post-creation, provided you are professional enough.
The night samples were also stunning with a great improvement of overall brightness but its noise control is not excellent. And when shooting night photos with a smudged lens cover, we found that sometimes the 9 Pro encountered excess flare issues, which may immediately spoil your sample. So please make sure that you wipe the lenses clean before you begin your shooting, which can reduce the annoying flare to some extent.
Ultra Wide Angle Lens
The biggest surprise should be the wide-angle lens. It’s the best wide-angle lens that we’ve ever seen to effectively solve the issue of distortion and resolution. Its colors were pretty consistent with what we have on the main camera, being natural with rich detail. And there is almost no image distortion on the wide-angle lens. This makes us a bit excited to see how it performs in video shooting. And its night shooting is also not bad but still has the same noise issue, which may get adjusted in future updates.
Both the main camera and the wide-angle camera support high-resolution mode with HDR processing. So if you want a better resolution on your photos, just remember to turn it on.
Telephoto Lens
The 8MP telephoto camera supports 3.3-time optical zoom and up to 30-time digital zoom with OIS anti-shaking. The image quality is not bad. Not only for good lighting conditions but in night shooting, it also performs pretty well with good colors and exposure.
Well as for the last chromo lens, we don’t think it’s necessary to equip such an assistant lens for only one filter use. Actually, OnePlus offers 3 black and white filters on the 9 Pro. Two can work without the chromo lens. Except for higher contrast, the one that works with the chromo lens didn’t really show much difference.
Video Shooting
For video shooting, both the main camera and wide-angle one supports up to 8k 30fps filming. Although the 8K video has pretty good resolution and allows you to crop the proper image you want, it also requires a high-performance machine to do the 8K editing. On the other hand, the 4k 120fps filming is a real surprise. It allows users to shoot excellent slo-motion videos with great resolution, which only exists on some expensive professional cameras. Now on the OnePlus 9 Pro, you can create the same work.
OnePlus 9 Pro Review: Camera Performance
About its charging and battery life, just check the results here.
Based on the battery life test we did, we don’t really think that the battery life of the OnePlus 9 Pro is gonna cheer you up.
So that’s all the details we want to share with you.
Is the 9 Pro a flagship model worth buying? No doubt the answer is yes. But if you want to buy a gaming model, however, just skip the 9 Pro. As we said, it’s not yet ready for gaming.
But if you are looking for a unique camera phone, it definitely could be one of your best options. Also please note that the system part we shared with you all is only for the China version. We just want to share why OnePlus was choosing a new path in the Chinese market, and why this time OnePlus is different.
