OK, it’s quickly turning into OnePlus day here at Coolsmartphone. Today we’re going to take another deep-dive into the OnePlus 7 Pro. It’s a phone which has taken up residence at the Coolsmartphone office and yes – we actually got told off by the OnePlus PR people for keeping hold of our previous OnePlus 7 Pro loaner. It’s that good. We loved the thing.
Mark our words – watch out for OnePlus. They’re about to make the transition from “excellent phones that only certain people know about” to “excellent phones that everyone knows about”.
If you’ve not already read about this phone, where have you been? We’ve got a hugely detailed post about it plus news on the 5G model, a video of the pop-up camera plus photos of the device and shots of the camera.
We managed to get hold of a lovely blue one and, in our humble opinion, the OnePlus 7 Pro continues to be one of the best smartphones of 2019. It has one of the best screen to frame ratios thanks to that pop up camera. This means that it completely does away with the notch. That 6.67″ 19..5:9 QHD+ screen obtains 516ppi at 3120 x 1440 pixels and HDR10 / HDR10+ imagery. It sits behind 3D Corning Gorilla Glass.
Add to that the silky smooooooooth 90Hz refresh rate and, well, it’s really hard to explain. Imagine watching a skateboard glide across a glass surface. Everything is buttery smooth, even when just scrolling through a webpage. It’s something you only really notice when you switch back to a phone that doesn’t feature it.
The OnePlus community forums still lament the lack of an LED notification light but we’ll forgive this small ommision as there’s the “Horizon Light” feature which pulses the curved edges of the screen. You can see this when the phone is face down. It looks pretty cool to be honest.
The on-board 4,000mAh battery can be charged incredibly quickly via the Warp Charge 30 system. This is the OnePlus proprietary charging tech and is based on parent company Oppo’s VOOc charging. Basically you get 30 watt charging – boosting the battery in double-quick time but also keeping the device cool, even when using it heavily – such as playing games whilst charging.
Launched initially with EE and on 3 (where you’ll get some Bullets Wireless 2 earbuds too) you’ll be seeing this appear on other networks or you can buy it direct for £649.
Amazon are offering two hardware versions – a 256GB with 8GB RAM and a 256Gb with 12GB RAM. The latter isn’t seen with networks.
As we mentioned earlier, this has OxygenOS, which is based on Android 9.0 (Pie). There’s an in-display fingerprint sensor, dual nano-SIM slot and you get a Dolby Atmos sound system with stereo speakers plus haptic feedback for excellent game-playing.
Whilst we’re talking about play games, there’s that liquid cooling system keeping everything everything heat-free and a “Fnatic Mode” for when you want everything cranked up to 11.
Camera-wise you’re getting three lenses – a 48 megapixel sensor with OIS, an 8 megapixel 78mm telephoto lens at f/2.4 with OIS stabilisation, and a 16 megapixel 117° ultra-wide angle lens at f/2.2. There’s something called a “three-pronged autofocus system” which uses CAF, PDAF and Laser focus.
Up front, via that pop-up camera, is a 16 megapixel fixed-focus lens.
Other specs include NFC for your contactless payments, face unlock, Bluetooth 5.0, dual-band WiFi, GPS and it’s all powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 CPU (read “really, really fast”) which operates up to 2.84GHz.
Overall
A mini-review wouldn’t be complete without a mini-summing-up. This, I have to say, is another brilliant example of the passion and expertise from OnePlus. Sure, the price has edged up but … really, we’re properly struggling to find anything wrong with this phone. We sat down and had a think – all we could find is that there’s no microSD card and on “Fnatic Mode” we did get through the battery a bit quicker but…
It’s fast, it charges really quickly, it has a gorgeous display, a stunning design, great cameras and a solid OS. Seriously, go get yourself one.