The OnePlus 9 Pro Gets nearly everything right By XDA

Hello guys this is Adam Conway back with data, and today I'm going to be reviewing the OnePlus 9 pro the OnePlus 9 pro launched a few weeks back, and it has a few different changes and improvements and a bit of a change of direction nearly for OnePlus in terms of their flagships. There's a lot to talk about here. There's a lot of things I like, and a couple of things that I don't. This is going to be a long one. So, let's get into it, so first I apologize for both the lighting and my lack of haircut. The haircut situation is going to take a while uh welcome to lockdowns in Ireland and again with the lighting.

That's also thanks to lockdowns, because I have nowhere else to film. I am in my bedroom, I'm making the best I can of what I have sorry about that, but getting into the OnePlus 9 pro then just to kind of ream off the specifications of my unit. This unit was sent to me by OnePlus UK I've had the OnePlus 9 pro now since about a week and a half or so before its launch. So I'm well acquainted with it. I'm well acquainted with the issues that I had, and I'm also well acquainted with the fixes that OnePlus rolled out many problems I had with this phone, I have actually been fixed.

There were problems that I had in the week leading up to the launch and the week afterward that previously, this review likely would have been a lot more negative. Had it not been for software fixes. I had heard of some of these problems other reviewers having them, but generally speaking, especially when I'm late with a review like this, I don't like to look at other reviews or read other reviews before I film mine, because I don't want to be influenced by what other people are saying, but I have heard that many of the issues that I faced were rather unique to me and I will go over them later on. But as far as I know, they're they're not an issue anymore, but yeah, as I said I'll, be getting into the specifications. So you've got the snapdragon 8 processors, up to 12 gigabytes of ram up to 256, gigabytes of storage and the quad camera array on the back.

One is a 48 megapixel primary sensor. One is a 50 megapixel wide angle sensor, one is an 8 megapixel 3.3 times optical zoom, telephoto and then another. The final one is a 2 megapixel black and white monochrome sensor. There's no use talking about that one, except for the fact of. Why do you need a monochrome sensor when there are literally filters that can actually apply a black and white cover over the photo you've taken? It makes no sense to have that extra camera, but okay, I've got that out of my system.

I won't be talking about it anymore and then in the charging department we have 65 watt fast wired charging just like on the OnePlus 8t except this is warp charge, 65 t. So, while it's still charging at 65 watts, it's charging at 65 watts for sustained longer periods of time. So when batteries fill up, what tends to happen is you'll, get that 65 watts or whatever that fast rate of charging speed is, but as they get to around, maybe 80 70 they'll start to taper off a bit to not put too much stress on the battery. What OnePlus has done here is they've effectively lengthened the length of time that this 65 watt charging will actually be charging at full throttle for so that means that it fills up faster, and it steps down at a later period in the percentage of charging. So basically not much has hugely changed, except for the fact you're charging at 65 watts for longer, so you'll get that slightly faster charging.

I'm charging this from 1 to 100 in about 28 to 29 minutes, which is pretty good. That's far above most of the devices on the market, so a big win to OnePlus and that, and then you also get 50 wireless charging, which you can get using the OnePlus warp charge.50 wireless uh charging dock uh OnePlus sent me one as well. It looks pretty good it's a great way of looking at your phone on your desk being able to see your battery percentage and your notifications etc. , while also charging your phone really fast in a convenient way. If much prefer using these charging docks over like charging pads, because it's facing towards me.

I can see it when I'm at my computer. Furthermore, I keep it beside my monitor so that I can see my notifications as they come in uh little side note as well. If you want to wirelessly charge, say the Oppo find x3 pro it will charge air VOC, compatible devices with up to 30 watts crazy how that works right now to get into other specifications. It's a quad, HD 120 hertz display, so it's extra crisp, smooth and there's a 16 megapixel front-facing camera as well, there's also an optical in-display, fingerprint scanner, dual speakers at the top and the bottom there's no headphone jack, there's no IR blaster or anything like that. There is NFC for your payments and, finally, you do get that OnePlus alert slider as well, which is fairly unique to OnePlus devices.

So, with the specs out of the way, how does the OnePlus 9 pro fare in general in terms of how it conducts itself, via its hardware and its software? The hardware is fantastic, and I have no complaints whatsoever, as you generally expect, with OnePlus at the very least, ignoring the cost, ignoring the software they nail the hardware generally every single time. The haptics are fantastic. Little notifications and other haptic feedback generating actions on your smartphone feel good in the hand nice to use. You won't miss notifications in your pocket. The processor is, of course, the triple h which handles everything you throw at it, as I've mentioned before the triple eight being the latest and greatest flagship chipset is going to be the best on the market and therefore will run everything you can throw at it, just by virtue of the fact that it is the top dog.

So to say there is nothing else. Anything else on the market that couldn't run on the triple h couldn't run on anything anyway. Really so there's no need to go benchmarking it and showing all how it's the best already, because we know that- and we know that it's going to be the best, and we know it's going to run everything, however, where that generally falters is in regard to emulation and on the OnePlus 9 pro just like I've talked about with any other AAA device. Emulation on this is the best that it has ever been on android using dolphin emulator using Ciara for 3ds emulation. These are fantastic, as always: Nintendo DS, emulation works.

Perfectly pass works perfectly you're going to have no issues running pretty much any of these emulators for known quantity games. So when I say known quantities, I mean games that kind of everybody likes to play so, for example, Mario Kart Wii. You can play that Call of Duty, modern warfare, 3. You can play that Legend of Zelda wind water that works perfectly fine. The Simpsons hit-and-run mostly works.

Fine, there are occasional slowdowns. All these games are like the big titles that everybody knows and all of them are running very well on the OnePlus 9 pro and, as is the case with oxygen OS as well. It's fast it's smooth as people expect, so with the combination of that triple a processor, UFS, 3.1 storage and then the 12 gigs of ram everything's fast and smooth. As expected, you would be more worried if it wasn't the display being a 10 bit. LPO panel gets up to 1300 nits, and it's HDR 10 plus compatible.

So it's great for watching Netflix YouTube pretty much anything you throw at. It is going to be enjoyable to watch, but it's not all good for the OnePlus 9 pro the OnePlus 9 pro features a 4500 William hour battery, which I've already talked about the charging speed and talked about how it's fantastic for that. But OnePlus has kind of neglected battery life. Here to the point that one day when I was using my phone kinda heavily, I only had three and a half hours of screen on time now I came from a pixel 5, so that aside, where I would get kind of six or seven hours screen on time. Even now, three and a half hours of battery life for a flagship is bad.

It's really not good and OnePlus. I don't know what they've done here, but I kind of picked up a little of this on the me11. Nowhere near as bad and the Oppo find x3 pro was still leaps and bounds ahead of the OnePlus 9 pro is getting about maybe four to five to six hours. Occasionally. The OnePlus 9 pro, however, is generally sitting around the four-hour mark, with my worst, the worst being three hours and a half, but the best.

Only being I think, five and a half hours with very little usage, I'm not really sure. What's going wrong here, I've gotten a number of software updates over the past few days that maybe these are starting to get fixed, and I'm hoping that one of them will say in the change log fixed battery life problems. But I can hope at the very least because of the fast charging you don't have to be reliant on having a longer battery life so long as you can get to a charger during your day for even just a few minutes at a time, because you'll get from zero to a hundred percent in roughly half an hour. So the steps leading up to that 100 mark say 60 will be a lot quicker and then one thing OnePlus has love to tout with the OnePlus 9 pro, which is expected is the Hasselblad partnership. In regard to the quad camera array.

On the back now, OnePlus says that Hasselblad is only really focused on the colors of the sensors, which makes sense to it's a fairly new, fairly young partnership uh, which is being confirmed to span over multiple years. This is not a partnership like, for example, VIVO and mass, where mass have their optical coating over the camera, which is an actual physical feature on the phone. This is purely software and so far I'm not seeing the massive benefits. In fact, there are still a lot of very one-plus-like issues that are happening for years, for example, taking trying to take a photo of something that's moving quickly will end up just being a blur. You can wave something in front of the camera and take a photo and reproduce this yourself.

What you took a picture of is not the same as what comes in your gallery, despite the fact that, even in the bottom right you'll see a preview of what you actually took before when you tap it, and it updates, and now whatever you took, a photo of, might be out of frame or might be moved, and it is nearly always blurry. It is impossible to get photos of fast moving situations, even in bright light. The shutter still manages to somehow blur the image. If it's moving. No, I'm showing you a ton of photos that I've taken, because it's not a bad camera, it's actually pretty good, and it improves upon the OnePlus 8 pro, which did have a good camera as well, but its nowhere near as like world-beating.

I guess as what the company seemed to be trying to say when it was doing all its marketing, but then again this is OnePlus, so marketing is kind of their whole thing right. Nevertheless, it's still good, and I feel like it's just hard to kind of praise it so much when it was being touted as if it was going to be one of the best cameras of the year. While it is a good flagship camera, it's still, ultimately an OnePlus camera with the same failings as last year. We can only hope that the partnership going forward will eventually benefit OnePlus camera sensors and how they take photos and how they manage the software from for all of that, rather than just colors, because currently it is just the color balance, which is very good. The color science is great, the photos when they are taken, and you get a photo with the OnePlus 9 pro are very good and likewise with the wide-angle camera, it is basically just as good as the primary sensor and is one of the best wide-angle cameras that I have seen on a smartphone.

So the foundation is there, and I think that for the next OnePlus smartphone, it's going to be very interesting to see just how much OnePlus takes on board in the next year. Thanks to this partnership, there's a lot of work that can be done, and I'm hopeful that the company can manage to pull it off so that the cameras can be some of the best in the android world. Currently, I would definitely put them below the likes of Xiaomi Huawei Samsung, but they're, not that far behind anymore, like they used to be and then getting into oxygen OS as people know, I'm not a huge fan of oxygen OS and I kind of had that just thrown in my face. When I began using this, there were a lot of issues I faced with oxygen OS that have been fixed by software updates.90 of my issues were actually before the phone actually launched. For example, I had issues where, at the top of my screen and the bottom of my screen, when I unlocked the phone, I couldn't tap them.

I end up having to turn off and on the screen, and this would this was happening. Maybe one and five times one and four times, and I would have to turn off and on the screen, then it would be fine as well. I would also end up with problems where, for example, the phone might just freeze up for no reason whatsoever. That happened to me twice even now. I still end up with a problem where it comes up that pocket mode is on, despite the fact that my phone is being held in front of me, I would be holding it like this as it is in relation to the camera, and, it would say, pocket mode is on to tap the little circles, because it's the only way for me to get into my phone.

This has happened to me a few times now that hasn't happened since the most recent software update, but the most recent software update only came out yesterday, which today is the 6th of April. This phone is already out yesterday, so overall there have been a lot of software issues now. All of those are now fixed from what I can see. I have no problems with any of those, but one that I still do have- which I think is very important to mention- is that I'm not getting Gmail notifications. Now there was actually a post on Reddit, which talked about how this may not necessarily be an issue thanks to OnePlus.

However, OnePlus is the only device manufacturer. I have ever had notification problems from with getting emails, every other manufacturer, yeah, sure, okay, there have been issues with notifications in one way or another, be it with realm or Xiaomi or Oppo or whoever, but never have. I had it with Gmail, except for on the OnePlus word, the OnePlus 8t and the OnePlus 9 pro, be it that it may that it could be a Google problem. Why does it only affect OnePlus? Even if it is an issue relating to google? It should affect my other devices then. So I don't really know how you can say: it's not OnePlus fault, when it's the only devices that this happens on and when I reached out to a couple of reviewers to see if this was happening, they all told me.

Yes, they told me that this is a problem on the OnePlus 9 pro. Some of them actually told me that they hadn't they didn't know if they were the only ones to be having this problem or not, and they didn't reach out to people. Others told me that they thought this was unique to them, and they didn't think about it or ask other people, but what happens to me is I have to open up Gmail to check my emails. I don't get notifications. This is a problem that is still present on the latest oxygen OS version and again to be clear.

None of these other issues that I mentioned aside from the notifications happens on the latest oxygen OS version. I'm only mentioning them for transparency so that, because some of these other issues I had donen't affect anybody even on the older versions. So, as far as I know, these could be problems that could come up in a future software update or could be problems that people may face now, I'm just trying to be transparent. In this regard, I genuinely do believe that they are fixed because some change logs made reference to things such as issues with the display or what have you, but it's important to mention it in case it happens to other people. Now, aside from that oxygen, OS does pack a lot of useful features and there's a reason why it's the favorite of many.

I actually do love how one uh I do love how oxygen OS looks, and I think that oxygen, OS 11, is a step forward for oxygen OS. I think that it's having its own unique identity and how it looks is a good thing. Furthermore, I think that the number of features that have been introduced over the years and the special customization options are all good things in the context of OnePlus. However, oxygen OS still has an issue with notifications and I think that for a lot of people, this can genuinely be a dealbreaker, I'm not facing issues, oddly with any other apps except Gmail. So I'm hoping that what this is a sign of is that OnePlus is attempting to mess with their notification issues and try and fix them, and hopefully, in an optimistic view.

What has happened here is that maybe they have misconfigured something for Gmail or anything else like that, because for the first time ever WhatsApp was fine? Messenger is fine. My Reddit app is fine. Everything is fine, except for just one app overall, the OnePlus 9 pro is a great device from OnePlus. There are definitely a number of teething issues, but I think that, as we've come to expect from OnePlus, there's always going to be one or two problems with each iteration and what we hope for is the company to improve on them. There's everything here that you could want with a phone that sends a few small issues.

Great haptics, great sound from the speakers great display great hardware, included case in the box, though there isn't an USB to 3.5 millimeter dongle, which I don't know why the company doesn't do anymore and overall, a fantastic device with pretty good software support. OnePlus has this thing where they will give good software support to their latest flagship, but then, once the next one comes along, you are maybe in a spot of bother. For example, the OnePlus 7 pro has only just gotten the update to android 11 now, and that is a flagship from a couple of years ago. But the point still is that it can take the company a while to get updates out. As far as I know as well, not all the devices get their security updates on time, sometimes as well.

The Otis can be delayed, so overall, the OnePlus 9 pro is a good option for people who know what they're getting into this is one plus. So there will be those software update problems. There will also be some teething issues in regard to the software that may occasionally come up, and you know as well about notification problems and the like. However, if you are comfortable with all these, knowing that they can happen, and you're not bothered by the fact that you might get an email notification occasionally, then this is a good hardware package for what is a good competitor to other flagship priced products on the market. For example, 1 000 for the OnePlus 9 pro still puts it below the likes of the s21 ultra you're, not getting every single ultra feature, but likewise you're, not spending every single euro that you're spending for the s21 ultra.

So there is that balance there. There are a number of improvements. The OnePlus 9 pro has over the OnePlus 9, but for the jump in price for many people, it might necessarily be worth it. So I think, if you're looking to buy a new OnePlus 9 series device, I would look seriously at the OnePlus 9 and the OnePlus 9 pro compares them and see if the price difference is really worth it to you. Likewise, I would then compare the OnePlus 9 pro to other flagships on the market around the same price or even a little more and see if you feel like you're, getting the value for your money that you want, because, ideally a phone like this will last you a couple of years which to be fair to OnePlus, even if they are slower with the software updates.

That generally get them done and if you, and even if they don't OnePlus devices, are so open that you can just unlock the bootloader, install a custom ROM and be on your way anyway. So it doesn't usually matter to enthusiasts like you or me, who can just decide. Okay, I'm not bothered waiting around I'll unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM. However, this is the device you get in the box and if you do not want to have to deal with that, I would not blame you at all, because it's a long and laborious process that can be annoying to have to work with and try and work around, so the OnePlus 9 pro. While I will continue to use it, I do enjoy using it, and this is one of my favorite OnePlus devices of recent years.

I think that the company still has a long way to go, and I'm hoping that for the OnePlus 10 pro, they will finally have perfected the formula of good software, good camera and fantastic hardware, because they've got fantastic hardware, and they do have a good camera, but they do not have one of the top camera. This has been Adam Conway with CCA TV. I would love to hear what you think about the OnePlus 9 pro, be it from watching other reviews and my review and just in general what you think about it. Thank you for watching.

Source : XDA