OnePlus has introduced a number of devices in the 9 series. I decided to do a comprehensive review for the OnePlus 9Pro 5G because it had a lot to offer.
DESIGN
The design of OnePlus 9Pro 5G looks refreshing; it has taken cues from the OnePlus8T from last year. Once you flip the phone around, you get an all-new look, with a dual-layer camera bump. Front comes with thin bezels with a small hole punch for the front camera which is 16 megapixels and then you have all the display area.
The quality of product used is great. High quality buttons which are very tactile like the alert slider given on the side of the phone. The haptic on this phone is like the vibration motor which is of good quality.
The device comes in 3 colour base options: Pine Green, Morning Mist and Stellar Black.
Morning mist being a glossy phone, it also has the matte to mirror finish or you can say frosty to mirror finish. Since this is the only glossy phone out of the 3 colours, it does take scratches and finger print very easily. You can put the cover on to keep the pristine finish if you go with this colour variant.
The Pine Green and the Stellar Black are also not bad colour options to go with. Pine Green comes with a matte finish, with a really smooth texture; it doesn’t show scratches and fingerprints that easily. A very good option if you are a rough user. The Stellar black finish has a grainy sandstone finish. If you run your fingers over the back of your phone you can feel the grains.
DISPLAY
The OnePlus 9 Pro comes with a 6.7 inch Quard HD Plus display. Now again this is their fluid amoled 2.0 display so you’ve got 120 hertz refresh rate which is really smooth. Plus, you also get a 360 hertz touch sampling rate so your touch response turns out to be really good and this is a LTP OL panel which helps you conserve battery. It can go from 1 hertz to 120 hertz depending upon what’s on the screen and it can change accordingly. In addition to that, this phone also has the HDR (High dynamic range) and Wide L1 Certification to give a high quality video and image viewing on this device.
The background colours are good, the display gets really bright when watching videos, movies or playing games—basically any sort of content and the media consumption on this display really does a good job. I would say it’s really up there and can give a good competition on this front to the iPhones and the galaxies’ devices as it is a Samsung Panel. It has a slightly curved display that you get on this device.
PERFORMANCE/SPECIFICATION
The device is powered by the Snapdragon Triple 888 Chip that’s going to be the flagship of this year. You have an option of 8 or 12 gigabytes of ram, 128 to 256 gigabytes of storage to choose from.
BATTERY
On this device you get a 4500 mah battery; I would have loved to see a 5000 mah battery on this device but again with a 65 watt wire charging and the 50 watt wireless charging by using the wireless charger it’s just amazing.
You can top up really quickly even if you drain the phone really fast. If you are a power user you just need to plug in the phone for like 15 minutes and your phone will be charged for the next few hours for you to use which is really nice. For the 5 watt wireless charging you’ll have to get the OnePlus official charger.
For me being a heavy user of the phone after a 100% charge in the beginning of the week the battery did last me a full week on a single charge where my battery came down about 20% by the end of the week before I had to recharge the battery again for the coming week. All in all, the battery life of this device is really good.
SOFTWARE
You get an Android 11 and Oxygen OS; there’s no bloatware, so it’s really smooth. You also get Google features with one plus specific features added as well. They are hidden in the Ui and are not on your face like you have to use it. If you want you’ll be able to find them easily. I felt it to be a clean, minimal, smooth and fast software experience. If you are into heavy usage or you multi-task a lot, the Oxygen OS has to be your best bet. You also get speedy android updates as well. OnePlus has been really good with that.
The other feature is the IP68 Water resistance. Splash of water or if the phone gets wet in the rain, you should not face any problem because of the IP68 rating.
CAMERA
Now let’s get to the part of this phone that everyone is excited about: The camera system on the OnePlus 9 Pro which is in collaboration with HASSELBLAD Swedish camera legend.
You get 2 big sensors on the back; you’ve got the ultra-wide 50 megapixel and the main camera is a 48 megapixel. You’ve also got an 8 megapixel 3x telephoto and a macro camera along with a 16 megapixel selfie shooter.
I feel the phone has three solid cameras. The macro isn’t really useful and I don’t think a lot of people take micro photos.
As for pictures taken with the HASSELBLAD camera, the colours are good, true to life; there’s not a lot of saturation and not a lot of post processing. The pictures turn out to be nice with good brightness. The dynamic range is also good with great detail in the picture taken; you get a nightscape mode or night mode that works really well to take pictures in less lighting.
Overall the cameras are good and can compete with the iPhones and the S29 Ultra out there.
PRICE
The base model with 8GB Ram + 128 GB Storage is priced at Rs 64,999. The top end model with 12GB Ram +256GB Storage is priced at Rs 69,999.
CONCLUSION
It is priced lower compared to the Samsung and iPhone’s flagship phones like the S9 Ultra or the IPhone 12. The value you get for the price is really good keeping in mind the software features and the experience of using the HASSELBLAD camera which comes built-in in this phone.
In my opinion, the OnePlus 9 Pro is a solid recommendation at this price point that checks all the boxes.