Review: OnePlus 7 Pro

OnePlus 7 Pro is the first real high end phone from OnePlus with amazing display, very fast navigation speed, very user-friendly and high gaming experience but the camera and antenna quality must better to compete directly with topmodels like Samsung Galaxy S10+ and Huawei P30 Pro.  See our review of OnePlus 7 Pro and three great alternatives to the phone.

Review OnePlue 7 Pro

There hasn’t been as much excitement for a new OnePlus phone since the very first phone from the chinese manufactor as there is with the new OnePlus 7 Pro.  Its a great phone – the by far best phone from OnePlus – but what about that price?

OnePlus have had some great phones the last couple of years – for the price. They have not been in the same league as the best from other phone brands. They wanna change that with the brand new OnePlus 7 Pro, a phone that impresses deeply on design, display, navigation speed, gaming but it’s not on par with the best when it comes to antenna quality and most importantly – camera.

Design

OnePlus 7 Pro is not a huge step forward when talking design but it looks really cool and is extremely well build with a combination of glass and aluminium. And the blue version that I have here – it’s simply to die for, that color. But its also a heavy phone with 206 grams.

The phone does not have an official IP certification which is given for how water proof a phone is – but OnePlus promise that it can handle a shower and if you spill liquid on it.

Display

The perhaps biggest improvement on the OnePlus 7 Pro is the display. It’s in direct competition with the very best screens from Samsung and Apple – it’s simply amazing! 6,67 inch big with 2K resolution and fluid AMOLED display.

Why fluid AMOLED? Because it got 90 hz refresh rate instead of 60 hz. That means the screen refreshes 90 times per second in stead of 60 times which gives a more fluid experience.

Basically – the display is simply fantastic – maximum smoothness!

Under the screen we have the fingerprintscanner. Normally they suck – traditional scanners are much better – but on OnePlus 7 Pro there has seen some dramatic improvements. There is more space for the scanner and more lenses – now it takes only 0,26 seconds to unlock compared to earlier 0,6 seconds. More importantly – it’s much more reliable than normal and actually works everytime we use it.

Gaming

I do not see major difference in normal phone use with the 90 hz screen but playing games – that’s a different story. A game as Modern Combat 5 has never looked as good as on OnePlus 7 Pro. Crisp colors, extremely nice details.

The sound is also fine from the two speakers on the phone. Combined with the effective gaming mode, where you can answer calls from the speaker, block notifications, enhance the display and other gaming relevant stuff – Oneplus 7 Pro is probably the best gaming phone right now.

Navigation speed

OnePlus 7 Pro comes in different versions with 6, 8 or 12 GB RAM. This phone is with 12 GB RAM – total overkill in my point of view. 6 GB RAM will give you just the same experience when it comes to navigation speed – and it’s much cheaper.

To improve the navigation speed you should enable RAM Boost. RAM boost increase RAM  usage according to your usage. Over time the phone learns how you use your phone, for example what apps you use in the morning and at certains times during the day – then it allocates RAM for that making sure that the apps are ready to open – and when you do open them, they open in a split second.

The UI is Android 9 and Oxygen OS which is also a nice, quick combination.

Battery

The battery is average to good. Average when using the 90 hz update rate of the screen – good when using the more normal 60 hz. My advise: use only the 90 hz for gaming – its easy to change anytime you want.

The warp charger – a more fancy way for saying quick charger – can charge the phone from 0-100 percent in about an hour and 15 minutes. Not record fast but very decent.

Price

The price for OnePlus 7 Pro starts from 669 dollars or around 600 euros.  That is actually a great price for this kind of phone but there are two major things you should be aware of before buying.

Is it unfair to have the camera on the negative list? It is a fine camera and performs fine basically – but in low light it is actually pretty far behind phones like Samsung Galaxy S10+ and Huawei P30 Pro. The camera do struggle in low light conditions – also when we use Nightscape. Actually the phone takes greater pictures without using nightscape – there’s to much noise on the pictures.

I’m also not impressed with the bokeh effect for portraits and macro photos.

The selfie camera is however pretty pretty fly – it’s motorized and pops up when you want to take selfies or use the face unlock function. It’s fast and the selfie camera is actually good.  A nice function: When the selfie camera is activated and you drop the phone – then it automatically pulls in so it won’t break.

The antenna quality: its poor with a very high sar value – lets compare sar value on some of the newest and most popular phones right now. The higher sar value the poorer antenna quality. In areas with poor mobile coverage you will experience problems keeping the phone on the network which is pretty important unless you like seeing your phone turning into a brick. In cities you probably won’t feel a thing though, as the network is fine in most cities – but: Poor antenna quality makes the phone work harder thus using more chip and RAM power which further means more battery usage.

Other things I have on the negative list:

• Too big for easy one hand use
• No headphone jack
• No wireless charging
• No memory card slot
• Segment med positive og negative ting

Conslusion

I have to give OnePlus 7 Pro top rating – it’s over all amazing on design, display, navigation speed, user friendliness and gaming  – but I would not buy it myself mainly because of the camera performance and partly because of the antenna quality. 7 Pro is an important step forward for OnePlus but there are still better alternatives out there.