OnePlus 7 Pro Review: How Good is This Phone Compared to Other Flagship Phones?

Sabin Tamang 9 Feb, 2020

OnePlus has been one of the best phones in the flagship segment. They have been known for their flagship phones in much lower prices compared to phones from Samsung, Google, and Apple. After the huge success of the OnePlus 6 series, they introduced two new phones in 2019, i.e. OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro. Currently, the price of OnePlus 7 Pro in Nepal is Rs. 75,000 for 6+128 GB variant. It’s been quite a long time the phone being launched in Nepal and today we are here to give our review regarding this phone.

Unboxing Experience

The packing looks quite good as we expect from OnePlus with a premium-feeling matte finish with the large, embossed, reflective "7 Pro". Upon sliding off the top lid, a flat red box can be taken out, which includes a clear case for the phone and an insert with a letter from Pete Lau, the OnePlus CEO.

Inside the phone, we get the SIM ejector tool, some documentation along with a quick start guide and some OnePlus stickers. And under that, we have a 30-watt warp charger. OnePlus doesn’t include 3.5mm to USB Type C converter and it doesn’t come with an earbud also. So you have to buy it separately.

Design, Build Quality & Screen

Moving towards the design OnePlus has a great design and build quality and the OnePlus 7 Pro really feels like a phone worth a thousand bucks. Although it's slippery and the thin bezels make more difficult to hold, it feels sturdy and well-built.

The left side has the volume rocker while the right side has the physical volume switch and power key. On the downside, it features USB-C 3.0 port, a speaker grille, in-call microphone, and the dual SIM tray. The top is now home to the phone's selfie camera. It pops up when you open the camera app (or any other app that fires up the selfie camera) and it's rated for 300,000 uses.

Talking about the display of the phone, the phone features a 6.67 inches Fluid AMOLED screen with QHD+ resolution (3120x1440px @ 516ppi) with a 90Hz refresh rate. The screen is one of the best you can get in this price segment. The colors look quite good and the screen is very bright outdoors also. Every scroll and swipe will feel very smooth and look awesome. The screen is also tuned to comply with the DCI-P3 and sRGB color spaces.

Audio Quality

This is the first time OnePlus has used dual stereo speakers on one of its phones. There's a downward-firing speaker along the bottom edge of the phone and the in-call speaker doubles as a loudspeaker. Its loudness was very high both with an active external amplifier and when we plugged in our standard headphones.

Battery

There's a large 4,000 mAh battery inside the OnePlus 7 Pro and you get a 30-watt warp charger out of the box which can charge your phone from 0 to 60% in just 30 minutes and 0 to 100% in around one hour. Now talking about battery performance, the battery performance is quite good for me as I am a heavy user who likes to play games and spend time on social media. And yes, 90Hz screen drains your battery quite fast compared to normal 60Hz screen.

Performance

The OnePlus 7 Pro, like many other flagships this year, is running the latest Snapdragon 855 CPU from Qualcomm. We are already acquainted with the 7nm chipset in several other smartphones we've tested, and although impressive, OnePlus isn't the first to cram 12GB of RAM into a phone.

Talking about the geekbench score, it beats phones like Galaxy S10+ and Mate P30 Pro and is behind iPhone XS Max in Multi-core and for single-core, it lacks behind phones like S10+ and Galaxy Fold. Overall, the OnePlus 7 performs admirably and in the UI and web browser, this impression is fortified by the high refresh rate, which takes buttery smoothness to a whole new level compared to regular 60Hz phones.

OnePlus has always been an excellent listener when it comes to its users. Oxygen OS adds many useful features and settings on top of stock Android for a well-rounded and well-optimized UX. OnePlus phones are generally quick to get firmware updates and OnePlus launches beta programs for its flagships regularly. In our experience, Oxygen OS feels even snappier than the vanilla Android that comes on the Pixel phones.

Camera

The biggest changes are the addition of an ultra-wide-angle camera and a telephoto one complete with OIS. The main camera is now 48MP. The 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor has 0.8µm individual pixels which net to 1.6µm sized pixels when you account for the 4-to-1 pixel binning. A slightly brighter f/1.6 aperture lens, OIS, and the larger sensor should all contribute to much better low-light photos.

The overall image quality is very good with good exposure and dynamic range is also quite good and colors are also not oversaturated. The OnePlus 7 Pro is able to bring out slightly more details from the shadows, despite the image's lower final resolution, and it does this particularly well in daylight shots.

The ultra-wide-angle camera, on the other hand, is certainly behind the competition. Colors are noticeably muted compared to the main camera's, but the image quality just isn't as good.

Just check out some of these samples.

Final Verdict

The OnePlus 7 Pro is aiming to compete against all the top players in the smartphone industry. It is a great smartphone with top of the line components, a large, beautiful, and smooth high-res display, as well as the fastest storage you can get on a smartphone today. With the introduction of its 90Hz display, it pushes the fluidity and speed of the feel of its OS to a whole new level. For me, this is one of the best phones in this price segment.

Pros

Very competitive pricing
Bright and beautiful 90Hz display
Fluid and snappy Oxygen OS
Vastly improved hardware design
One of the fastest (if not the fastest) in-display fingerprint readers around.

Cons

No official water resistance rating
No wireless charging
No headphone jack
Non-expandable storage
Does not include earbuds or a 3.5mm audio adapter
The wide-angle camera falls short
No Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) support even though the chipset supports it

OnePlus 7 Pro specs

Body: Dual-Gorilla Glass 5 panes with metal chassis; Aurora Blue, Almond , Mirror Gray
Screen: 6.67" Fluid AMOLED, 90Hz refresh rate, 3120x1440px resolution (516 ppi); 19.5:9 aspect ratio; sRGB + DCI-P3 support
Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, octa-core CPU (1x2.84 GHz Kryo 485 & 3x2.42 GHz Kryo 485 & 4x1.8 GHz Kryo 485); Adreno 640 GPU
Memory: 6GB, 8GB or 12GB LPDDR4X RAM; 128GB or 256GB 2-lane UFS 3.0 storage, non-expandable
OS: Oxygen OS based on Android 9 Pie
Cameras: Main - 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor with f/1.6 aperture, OIS, PDAF and LaserAF; Telephoto - 8MP with f/2.4 aperture, OIS and 3X zoom; Ultra-wide - 16MP camera with f/2.2 aperture and 117-degree field-of-view; Dual LED Flash; Video recording: 2160p @ 60 fps, 1080p @ 240 fps, 720p @ 480 fps
Selfie cam: Motorized Pop-up 16MP fixed focus with f/2.0 aperture; 1080p @ 30fps
Battery: 4,000 mAh; Warp Charge 30W proprietary standard
Connectivity: Dual SIM; Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac; Dual band GPS; Bluetooth 5.0 + LE; NFC; USB-Type C; Audio via USB-C
Misc: in-display optical fingerprint scanner; dual stereo loudspeakers; X-axis Haptic Vibration