OnePlus goes full flagship with the OnePlus 8, 8 Pro

OnePlus has been slowly increasing its price that it's now fully shed its "flagship killer" moniker and finds itself firmly in flagship territory. The OnePlus 8 Pro has a starting price of $1,399, while the OnePlus 8's starting price is $1,099. Both will be available through OnePlus.com starting April 29. What do you get with that much money? Let's take a look.

OnePlus 8 Pro

The OnePlus 8 Pro has a new 6.78-inch Fluid AMOLED display, which is the largest display for the brand yet and the first to get a 120Hz refresh rate. It also has a 240Hz touch sampling rate to reduce input lag. The screen is calibrated with a 10-bit panel that supports HDR10+. HDR Boost can take old 8-bit content to improve it. And if this is something you care about, it also has MEMC, which interpolates 24fps videos to 120fps. According to OnePlus, it did extensive optimizations to make sure the interface hits no snags at 120fps.

The company introduces fast wireless charging with Warp Charge 30 Wireless. It is capable of charing the OnePlus 8 Pro at up to 30W, and it can go from 0% to 50% in 30 minutes. This handset also supports reverse wireless charging. Of course, you'll get faster speeds with wired charging. The 30 Warp Charge 30T gets you to 50% from 0% in 23 minutes. And that's despite having a sizeable 4,510mAh battery.

OnePlus equips the OnePlus 8 Pro with a bunch of camera sensors at the back, including two 48-megapixel sensors, a telephoto lens, and a colour filter lens. 

The primary camera uses the 1/1.4-inch Sony IMX689 sensor with 1.12µm native pixels and 2.24µm binned pixels. It offers omni-directional autofocus, optical and electronic image stabilization, and has an f/1.78 aperture. It can record 4K video at 60fps with the new Single Shot 3-HDR feature, which captures three exposures at once, resulting in a better dynamic range.

The other 48-megapixel sensor is an ultra-wide-angle lens with an f/2.2 aperture and 120-degree field of view. It also doubles as a macro camera, capable of taking photos at a 3cm distance.

The third camera is an 8-megapixel telephoto sensor with 1.0µm pixels, f/2.44 aperture, and OIS. And the fourth module is a new Colour Filter camera, which helps with rendering different colour effects.

In front, OnePlus gets rid of the pop-up camera and replaces it with a punch-hole for the 16-megapixel Sony IMX471 sensor with 1.0µm pixels, EIS, fixed focus autofocus, and f/2.45 aperture.

The OnePlus 8 Pro is the first OnePlus device with an IP68 rating, protecting the new Ultramarine Blue and Glacial Green colours as well as a standard Onyx Black colour variant. 

This handset runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor with 8GB or 12GB LPDDR5 RAM, which is said to be 30% faster while using 20% less energy than the RAM on the OnePlus 7 Series. It also has 128GB/256GB UFS3.0 storage. The OnePlus 8 Pro also has an in-display fingerprint sensor and stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support.

And yes, it comes with 5G connectivity, but only on the Sub-6 networks. In Canada, this means it can take advantage of Rogers' initial 5G rollout, but it won't be much different from LTE speeds right now. Once carriers roll out 3.5GHz networks next year, we should see significant improvements then.

OnePlus 8

The OnePlus 8 has the same screen size as the OnePlus 7T, but it isn't using the same panel. The OnePlus 8's 6.55-inch display has a 1080p+ resolution and 90Hz refresh rate, but it's curved and replaces the notch with a punch hole for the front camera. Like it's bigger, more powerful sibling, the OnePlus 8 also supports HDR10+ and offers perfect colour accuracy.

The OnePlus 8 also supports Warp Charge 30T over USB-C for its 4,300mAh battery, which takes you from 0% to 50% in only 22 minutes. But this model misses out on wireless charging.

The main camera on the OnePlus 8 is also a 48-megapixel sensor, but it uses an older Sony IMX586 sensor, which means you don't get omni-directional AF. Pixels are smaller at 0.8µm with support for pixel binning. There's also still OIS and EIS. 

The 16-megapixel ultra-wide camera has a 116-degree field of view but doesn't do macro shots. OnePlus replaces the telephoto sensor here with a dedicated 2-megapixel macro camera. If you want to zoom in, the 48-megapixel sensor natively supports 2x zoom via cropping.

The OnePlus 8 also runs on the Snapdragon 865 processor with the same memory and storage configurations. But RAM is the slower LPDDR4X, similar to older models. This handset also gets 5G and Wi-Fi 6 support, in-display fingerprint sensor, and stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos.

The OnePlus 8 comes in matte Glacial Green and glossy Onyx Black as well as a new variant called Interstellar Glow, which is OnePlus' first venture into offering a gradient-like shade for its devices. Verizon in the US gets exclusive rights to the Polar Silver colour. 

You can check out the full launch event here:

Source: MobileSyrup + GSMArena