OnePlus 9 vs 9 Pro: Unboxing & Review By DetroitBORG

Hey guys mike here, the Detroit Borg with a pair of new OnePlus phones, the OnePlus 9 and the 9 pro. This really is the inflection point for OnePlus graduating from the flagship killer to the flagship phone with features and specs. You expect from the best smartphone, along with more premium pricing, but we do get two phones that cover a wider price range and feature range which we'll talk about and compare in. This video OnePlus was kind enough to send these out to me early in this really impressive reviewer kit. It's definitely one of the most impressive packages they've done to date. It's always fun to unbox.

So, let's get into it. One of the most important aspects of these new phones is the new Hasselblad integration. So OnePlus worked with Hasselblad to develop the camera systems on both of these phones. Now this largely comes down to the ISP or the software side of the camera, while Sony developed the sensors- and we also have some custom optics which we'll talk about when we get to the camera. But the Hasselblad cameras have been used to capture many important events, including the moon, landing which they celebrate with this big fold out.

So we have the two retail boxes for the OnePlus 9 and 9 pro, and we'll unbox those in just a moment, but we also get some important new accessories, including a new 50 watt wireless charger. So this is one of the new capabilities that really makes OnePlus stand out, and we also get a set of cases which are available in the OnePlus store. So getting to the retail box is again a very familiar OnePlus box, but we get lots of Hasselblad branding this time and the camera specs are even baked into the packaging, so you'll see it along the side and on the inside cover where the camera bump out is housed. Generally speaking, the designs look identical to each other, so there's nice consistency between these two models. So it looks like the same series of phones, but the most obvious physical difference is that we get a quad camera system on the pro, as opposed to a triple camera system on the 9.

, but both of them have wireless charging and NFC, but before we get to the details, let's get to the accessories, and they're pretty generous compared to many other smartphone makers. Both of these phones come standard with a 65 watt charger, one of the fastest in the industry. So this new 65 watt charger can recharge these phones in only 30 minutes and of course, we also get that familiar red OnePlus USB charging cable, getting to the paperwork which is housed in the tray for these phones. Of course, we get a set of one plus stickers. We also get a quick start guide and a sim ejection tool which is mounted on this card with a message from the CEO of OnePlus.

Both of these phones do support wireless charging, but only the pro supports it at 50 watts, of course, using the OnePlus wireless charger, but the OnePlus 9 does support 15 watt QI charging, which is still pretty quick, also supported on both the OnePlus 9 and the 9 pro is reverse wireless charging, which means you can charge another QI accessory or smartphone using the back of the OnePlus 9 or 9 pro. So taking a quick look at this wireless charger, we have seen this design before from OnePlus, but it's been amped up to 50 watts. That does necessitate a turbine fan which does keep the charger cool. The fan is, for the most part, pretty quiet, but at nighttime it does slow down charging while you're sleeping, so it doesn't need the fan. Now it's important to keep in mind that at least this accessory does not include the charger.

So you want to use the one that came with your phone. Although the design looks very similar, they are constructed differently. One of the differences that surprised me is that the OnePlus 9 is actually polycarbonate with a metal finish. So, although it looks like a metal phone, it's actually plastic with fiberglass reinforcement, the premium metal materials are saved for the pro, and that's obvious when you look at the size of the phone, because you can see visible antenna insulators on the outside of the pro, but that's not needed on the OnePlus 9. , but both of these phones still have the same.5G spec thanks to the snapdragon triple eight, regardless of the frame materials, both phones do have corning gorilla glass on the back panel. The other design difference comes down to the display.

It's curved on the pro and flat on the 9. Now the curve on the 9 pro isn't as dramatic as it was on the 8 pro, which was actually a usability problem, because it was easy to unintentionally tap the screen while handling it, and although it doesn't look quite as dramatic, it's definitely a lot more usable. The layout of these phones is pretty much carried over from previous OnePlus phones. So, on the right side we have our sleep. Wake power button and just above that is the alert slider, which has three positions on the left.

Side. Is the volume rocker toward the top is one of the microphones and on the bottom, we'll find an USB connector, flanked on one side by a speaker, grille and another microphone along with the sim tray toward the top edge? Is that very thin earpiece which joins the speaker at the bottom for stereo sound? We do have Dolby, Atmos processing and, generally speaking, the speakers do sound pretty decent, not quite as rich in terms of the low end, as I would like to hear, but there's a nice wide soundscape, so it does create a pretty immersive audio experience in the case you're wondering where the rest of the sensors are in this razor-thin bezel. If you look really closely toward the top edge by the speaker, grille you'll see this really tiny proximity sensor. Another pretty standard OnePlus feature now is an in-screen fingerprint reader, which is optical, so it uses light to see your fingerprint through the OLED screen. Now, besides, the curved display on the pro there's, a few other display differences, so the pro has a slightly larger screen: 6.7 inches versus 6.55 inches, it's also higher resolution. So we have a 1440p tall display on the pro versus a 1080p display on the 9.

, so that's good for 402, PPI versus 525 PPI, so again, a sharper display on the pro now both of these are 120 hertz AMOLED displays, but the pro gets a LPO display. This is a much more energy efficient display, it's up to 50, more energy efficient than a standard AMOLED display. This LPO display also allows for an adaptive refresh rate, so we can go all the way down to one hertz, depending on the content that's displayed. This is very similar to the display technology used on the Apple Watch. OnePlus calls this the fluid display 2.0. So it's unique to the pro.

It also gets a much faster touch response up to 360hz, as opposed to the standard, 60 or hertz. So this is especially useful for gaming controls, where responsiveness is especially important. The pro also gets a 10 bit display for improved color depth and a slightly brighter panel at 300 nits versus 1100 nits for the OnePlus 9. , but both of these panels are still p3 displays, with support for HDR 10 plus. So all of this technology really delivers a stunning display for the 9 pro in fact, display mate rated it a plus and said that it's visually indistinguishable from perfect.

So this is a highly accurate display that matches the performance of leading professional monitors. Fortunately, there's no difference in terms of specs. Both of them are powered by the snapdragon triple eight processors, the same one, that's in the galaxy s21 series, and it does bring some impressive performance improvements over the previous generation. But, more importantly, these are more efficient chips for better battery life. Also upgraded is the cooling system with a vapor chamber and layers of graphite and copper that help keep the device cool, especially for gaming.

Both phones are available with up to 12 gigs of lpddr5 ram and 256 gigs of UFS 3.1 stores. So this is some of the fastest ram and storage you can buy on the smartphone to improve ram performance, they've implemented, something called turboboost, 3.0 memory optimization, and they say that keeps about 25 percent, more apps open in the background than before, so they're, using ram compression, which makes data on the ram, smaller and virtual ram, which turns part of the phone's storage into ram. So your phone has more physical ram to work with. Fortunately, both phones also have the exact same battery size, 4, 500 William hours, and this is a new dual cell design, which allows for both cells to be charged simultaneously, which is why we get such fast charging speeds. Just like the 8 pro the OnePlus 9 pro does get an ip68 water resistance rating, but the OnePlus 9 does not in terms of the camera hardware.

This is where things get a little complicated, there's quite a few differences and similarities. But the major points are that the pro gets a telephoto camera and a better wide-angle camera, but both of them share the same ultra-wide camera. They also share the same two megapixel monochrome camera, which is used for creating black and white images. So the ultra white camera is 50 megapixels with a seven element lens and an f 2.2 aperture, along with a free form lens which reduces distortion at the edges of the aperture. But the main camera is where some differences show up, even though they do share some of the same specs.

Both of them are 48 megapixels with an f 1.8 aperture. They also have a 7 element lens with electronic image stabilization, but only the pro gets optical image stabilization, but the big difference is that the 9 pro is using a new Sony, mix 789 sensors, while the 9 is using the mix 689 from last year's 8 pro so alongside optical image stabilization. This means that the 8 pro can handle 4k up to 120 frames per second, as opposed to just 60 frames per second on the OnePlus 9. Remarkably, both phones support 8k, video up to 30 frames per second on both the ultra-wide and the wide angle camera. Now.

The first thing I notice about images that come under this camera is just how much detail and sharpness there is. So this is a really high resolution camera, and you can see it really working here to deliver these really detailed images and, of course, the image files are kind of big because of it. But this is definitely the closest I've. Seen a smartphone camera get to something like a DSLR or a Lacey camera. This camera really looks like it's moved beyond computational magic, and we just get raw data.

Unfortunately, this is not the best time of year to take photographs outside, which is what I typically like to do, because there's just not a lot of color in winter in Michigan, but you can still see some vibrancy and detail that comes out with this camera, but where this camera really stands out is in situations where you have mixed lighting conditions, whether you have highlights and low lights in the same shot. This really does a great job, balancing it without over processing and flattening the image where these cameras really stand out is in low light performance. This is easily the best low light camera I've ever used on the smart film. You get incredibly sharp detail to the point. You don't know how it's able to do this computationally, but that's thanks to these very large sensors, which let a lot of light in this certainly helps and, of course, that Hasselblad software has done a lot to improve performance in terms of the interface it's pretty close to stock android and, of course, with this fluid display, it's extremely smooth to operate.

We have a nice refresh rate and the pro has that extremely fast response time when you interact with the touch screen in terms of some of the major features I want to highlight here. First thing I want to do is go to the display settings and there's a few features to know about. So we have something called comfort tone which uses the ambient light sensors to adapt the display to the ambient lighting in the room. We also have the hyper touch feature again. This is unique to the pro.

So this is where you can turn that feature on and off. We have some other video enhancement features such as vibrant color effect pro. This is off by default, so this is where you can turn that on again, this enhances the dynamic range of video colors. We have motion graphics, smoothing again turned off by default, but you can turn it on, and you can see the apps that it works with the gallery app for video YouTube and Netflix ultra-high video resolution. Certain apps support it like Instagram.

So this is where you can turn that on and off we do have one setting up here for our display, that's worth pointing out. So this is where we'll find our vision, comfort mode. So again, this is where you can turn that feature on and off tap and hold to get to additional settings. Now you can turn this on manually or have it turn on automatically with the sunset and sunrise. You can also adjust the color temperature and saturation under advances where you'll see your resolution and your refresh rate.

So this is where you can turn on HD plus again. This is unique to the pro by default. It's set to FHD plus to save battery life. You can also enable auto power saving mode which will automatically switch depending on the content you're. Looking at you can also change the refresh rate to 120 hertz or 60 hertz.

We also have a dark mode right here, so you can turn on dark mode which will darken some UI elements and some apps that support it. We also have reverse charging, so this is where you can turn that feature on and off. In fact, you have to do that in order to activate it under customization, we can choose our accent color. We can use our system icon, so we have a few to pick from icon packs and, of course, we're all familiar with that, but we do get a new feature here called canvas which apparently is in beta. So let's go and try this out.

So basically this works with a selfie photograph. So let me go ahead and grab the most recent example right here and uh we're going to go and click preview and see how this turns out. So basically, this works with your ambient display. So, as I move it around here, you can see it wakes up, but if I double tap to wake it up, you can see it fades in. So if you really want to see your face on here fade in and out or somebody more important to you, you can certainly do that under security and lock screen.

This is where you can set up the face unlock, so that feature is still here personally, I prefer not to use it, but you can see just how quick the fingerprint scanner is and, of course, in the time of covet, that's a lot easier to use. Moving on to the cam ramp, there's always lots to take a look at here, but one of my favorite features here is the Lacey camera shutter sound. So let me see if we can capture that pretty neat anyway, so you can see when you tap and hold the shutter release. It starts recording video, and you can also zoom in and zoom out, by sliding left and right and of course we can zoom in and out by tapping these toggles. So we have our ultra-wide our wide and our telephoto lens tap and hold to get to the dial to zoom all the way in up to 30x.

We have some pretty familiar features here as well, so we have our time-lapse: panorama, slow motion, video photo portrait, nights cape pro and tilt shift, so with tilt shift. This is something you can adjust, so this is a pretty familiar Instagram filter, which you can now use, live in your camera, app uh, printing it here, so you can basically focus on the subject and blur the background. So it gives you a little more artistic effect in real time. Our night skate mode, only works with the ultra-wide or the wide camera. Not the telephoto pro mode obviously gives us manual control for quite a few things such as our ISO, and you get this interface that resembles a Lacey.

We have white balance, shutter, speed, exposure value and autofocusing so this is where you can dial in your focus like so and with that haptic motor they've redesigned the haptic motor. You get this really nice feedback as you dial through it. So you can actually feel the detects it's a pretty nice detail in terms of video recording when you're in AK you're limited to the ultra-wide and the wide angle camera. So you can't use telephoto in 8k, go up to settings here, and you can see what setting you're in and quickly jump to 4k. If you want, and then that gives you access to telephoto, you can also see your aspect ratio, whether you want 16 by nine or 21 by nine.

You can also see the frame rate up top. You can see at 8k you're limited to 30 frames per second. If I go to 4k, let's go back up here. You can see. I now have 60 frames per second or 120 frames per second.

So I really like this camera interface. Just this grain out of features in this quick view makes it clear exactly what you can do with each setting. So usually at this point in an OnePlus review, I have to summarize how I feel about the price versus the content and how it relates to the competition. So, for the first time I can say that there is nothing missing on the OnePlus 9 pro. It has all the flagship features, and it has the flagship price starting at 9.69, which is still pretty fair for the size of the screen and some of its unique features on top of all the standard flagship features. You've come to expect, so that includes an incredible camera system, a beautiful display and overall, a great piece of hardware.

Now the OnePlus 9 gets you very close at a 729 starting price, which is quite a savings over the pro and definitely worth considering. But for my money I would definitely go for the pro at 969. It's still a pretty good value for what you get. Alright guys hope you enjoyed this look at the OnePlus 9 and the 9 pro. If you guys enjoyed this video, please give it a like to.

Let me know, and I'll see you again in my next video.

Source : DetroitBORG