After teasing OnePlus fans for months, the Shenzhen-HQed company has revealed two new phones — OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro. During the online launch event one thing was clear: The brand wants to compete with two companies — Apple and Samsung. All the comparisons that were made during the launch took aim at the two giants of the industry. Will it succeed? The features and packaging seem to suggest that OnePlus is on the right track.
The star of the show
OnePlus 8 Pro is the bigger brother here, offering top specs. Every year the company focuses on one aspect of a phone and takes it up a few notches. After making the world see the benefits of having a 90Hz display, this time it’s about 120Hz and more.
The Pro model comes in just one size, with a huge 6.78-inch screen with almost zero bezels. It’s something people who prefer large phones would like. Complementing the size are two incredibly eye-catching colours (besides Onyx Black) — Ultramarine Blue and Glacial Green, all of them coming with a two-layer matte finish.
The star of the show is the screen, which has a refresh rate of 120Hz. Extra frames means that scrolling through everything — Facebook to news apps — and playing certain video games feel extremely smooth. Swiping would be a lot of fun. And there are two great things accompanying the feature. First, you can pair the refresh rate with the full 3,168 x 1,440 resolution. Second, even at 120Hz, battery life appears promising.
Better camera and video
Though OnePlus phones have always been a delight, till last year the camera department hasn’t been up to scratch compared to the two big players. With the Pro, camera looks better. There is the usual array of wide, telephoto and ultra-wide. The main wide-angle is a new 48MP Sony sensor (IMX689), which gives (through binning technology) 12MP images by default. With the main camera absorbing more light, the resulting images are brighter and more detailed. And night photography has improved drastically. There’s also a colour filter camera for some cool filters.
On the video front, there is better stablisation and a couple of other features, like vibrant colour effect pro, which punches up colours, and motion graphics smoothing, which takes 24fps video and raises the frame rate to 120 by adding frames in between. This will make videos appear smoother but it would eat into battery life.
Performance and battery life
The 8 Pro has the same Snapdragon 865 processor as the OnePlus 8. That’s something you expect from a flagship device in 2020. Besides that, there is support for Wi-Fi6 and UFS 3.0 storage. There’s an in-display optical fingerprint sensor and Gorilla Glass. This is also the first OnePlus phone to support wireless charging and can juice up 50 per cent of the battery in around 30 minutes. That’s all good!
The US models are 5G enabled. A little over a year ago, OnePlus started its journey in America through a partnership with T-Mobile. On Tuesday night, the company made its position stronger by bringing the OnePlus 8 5G UW, its fastest 5G phone ever, to Verizon Wireless, the nation’s largest carrier. Of course, launching a 5G variant in India doesn’t make a lot of sense because the government doesn’t have a clear roadmap.
Launch timing
The spec sheets of the new OnePlus phones are impressive and it’s available in Apple-dominated America. What remains to be seen is whether the timing of the launch works because of the pandemic while the overall economic situation looks bleak. Also, the India launch date would be very important for the company as this is the market that gave the company a good name.
At a glance: OnePlus 8 pro
- Display: 6.7-inch, resolution: 3,168
- x 1,440 pixels 513ppi, aspect ratio: 19.8:9, type: fluid AMOLED
- Performance: Snapdragon 865, GPU: Adreno 650
- Camera: 48MP (main), 8MP (telephoto), 48MP (ultra-wide) and 5MP colour filter
- Storage: 8GB/12GB LPDDR5 and 128GB/256GB UFS3.0
- Battery: 4,510mAh
- Charging: Warp Charge 30T fast charging and 30W wireless charging
- Price: In the US, $899 upwards for OnePlus 8 Pro and $699 upwards for OnePlus 8. India price and availability haven’t been announced
