OnePlus’s latest range-topping 8 Pro phone puts Samsung on notice, featuring a slick design, 120Hz screen, 5G, improved cameras and even wireless charging.

Starting at £799, the 8 Pro builds on the success of last year’s £649 7 Pro and £699 7T Pro, but with a higher price on par with its premium rivals. In offering it, OnePlus has shifted from its self-proclaimed cut-price “flagship killer” roots to directly competing with the likes of Samsung and Apple without a massive price advantage.

The 8 Pro simplifies the design of last year’s models. Gone is the novel popup selfie camera, replaced by a more traditional hole punch situated about one-sixth in from the top left of the screen. It’s small and fairly unobtrusive during use.

The phone has a line cut into the top which is strangely pleasing to the eye. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The large industry-leading QHD+ 6.78in screen is the star of the show, filling the entire front of the device. New for this year is a bump up from 90Hz to 120Hz refresh rate, matching Samsung’s S20 line and a smidgen smoother in slow scrolls than last year’s phones or the cheaper OnePlus 8.

The difference between the previous standard 60Hz screens and a 120Hz screen is quite something: scrolling through lists, sites, content and other animations is just so much smoother at 120Hz. It’s difficult to go back.

The screen can be used in either FHD+ or QHD+ at 120Hz, unlike Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Ultra, which is limited to FHD+ at 120Hz.

A glass back is not just for aesthetics this year, as the 8 Pro is OnePlus’s first phone with wireless charging – more on that later. The 74.4mm-wide, 199g 8 Pro is 1.5mm narrower and 7g lighter than last year’s models, making it far more manageable than most, including the oversized Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. I didn’t feel the need to immediately put a Popsocket or phone ring on the back to help me hold it. However, it is a full 2.7mm longer than the 7T Pro, which makes it more difficult to comfortably fit in a pocket.

The 8 Pro is also the first OnePlus to come with an official IP68 water resistance rating.

The hole-punch selfie camera is certainly less exciting than last year’s popup module, but works just as well. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Specifications

Screen: 6.78in 120Hz QHD AMOLED (513ppi)

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 865

RAM: 8 or 12GB of RAM

Storage: 128 or 256GB (UFS 3.0)

Operating system: OxygenOS 10.5 based on Android 10

Camera: quad rear camera 48MP, 48MP ultra-wide angle, 8MP telephoto, 5MP colour filter, 16MP front-facing camera

Connectivity: 5G, dual sim, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.1 and GPS

Water resistance: IP86

Dimensions: 165.3 x 74.4 x 8.5 mm

Weight: 199g

Speed and battery life

The USB-C port in the bottom is no longer the only way to top up the battery as OnePlus has finally added wireless charging to its phones. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The 8 Pro has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor with 8 or 12GB of RAM, depending on storage version, as the OnePlus 8 and performed equally brilliantly: snappy and more responsive than anything else, with 5G capability baked-in too.

The 8 Pro also matches the 8 on battery life. It lasts over 32 hours between charges, making it from 7am on day one until 3pm on day two.

Three hours of the 32 was spent on 4G, the rest connected to wifi, with the FHD+ 120Hz screen on for well over five hours, including 50 minutes of video, plus seven hours of Spotify via Bluetooth headphones and about 20 photos. Increasing the screen’s resolution to QHD+ reduced battery life by only an hour or so.

5G performance was similar to a Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra on EE and Vodafone, but I could not test its impact on battery life during lockdown in the UK. The phone is limited to 4G-only when two sims are used at the same time, pending an update.

Warp Charge 30T superfast wired charging reached 50% in 28 minutes and a full charge in 77 minutes. New for this year is optimised charging, which preserves the battery by delaying charging to 100% overnight until just before you typically need it.

Also new for the 8 Pro is wireless charging, including standard Qi and OnePlus’s proprietary Warp Charge 30 Wireless charging, which requires a special charger with a cooling fan but reaches a peak of 30W – considerably faster than the five to 15W offered by rivals. The 8 Pro can also wirelessly charge other Qi-enabled devices from its back.

Sustainability

OnePlus rates the battery in the 8 Pro for 800 full-charge cycles till 80% capacity – better than the typical 500. Battery longevity is aided by the optimised charging system. The battery can be replaced and the smartphone is generally repairable by OnePlus in the UK.

The firm offers a trade-in programme for both its own phones and models from rivals. It did not comment on the use of recycled materials in its smartphones.

OxygenOS 10.5

Google Discover replaces OnePlus’s less-than-loved ‘Shelf’ on the 8 Pro’s homescreen. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The 8 Pro ships with the same OxygenOS 10.5 based on Android 10 as the cheaper OnePlus 8.

Google’s Discover feed now features on the home screen, alongside nice touches such as the ability to choose which icons show in the status bar, full theme support and choices for animations such as that around the fingerprint scanner.

OxygenOS has developed into the best version of Android you can get on a phone, balancing features, aesthetics and speed like no other.

OnePlus only offers software support for three years from release, including two years of Android version updates and then a further year of security updates on a bimonthly schedule. Samsung offers four years of support for its S20 devices and Apple offers five for its iPhones, so there’s still work to be done for OnePlus.

Camera

The camera on the OnePlus 8 Pro is a significant step up from previous efforts. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The 8 Pro has a quad-camera on the rear of the device, combining a 48MP main camera, a 48MP ultrawide camera, an 8MP telephoto camera and a 5MP colour filter camera.

The main 48MP camera is great, producing some excellent, highly detailed and well exposed shots. The auto-HDR mode handles high-contrast scenes well, while low-light performance is much improved from the 7T Pro and 8 without needing the dedicated Nightscape mode. It shoots 12MP images by default, with a 48MP mode available, which suffered more from camera and object shake.

The 48MP ultrawide-angle camera is also one of the better modules on a phone, producing some good images in bright light in 12MP mode. It was weaker in middling light, producing more noise and artefacts than the main camera, but it can use Nightscape in really dark scenes to help.

The 8MP camera is good too, but as can be expected has significantly weaker low-light performance than the main camera. It has a 3x hybrid zoom, which is very good, and a further digital zoom up to 30x that rivals all but those phones with telescopic optical zoom lenses, such as the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. If your subject is still you’ll get pretty good images all the way up to 24x zoom in good light.

The 5MP photochrom colour filter camera is a gimmick that can be safely ignored, producing poor images even in good light. You can do better with software colour filters.

The front-facing 16MP camera is really good too, producing highly detailed and well toned images in good light. It gets slightly softer in poor light, but still respectable.

Observations

The 8 Pro’s fast and accurate under-screen optical fingerprint reader is significantly faster and more forgiving than rivals used by Samsung and others. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

OnePlus’s excellent alert slider toggles between silent, vibrate and ring.

The stereo speakers are pretty good.

A pre-applied screen protector and good clear-plastic case are included in the box.

Call quality was excellent on both sides of the call.

The first phone tested had a faulty screen that showed a green tint to dark. colours with the screen brightness set to under 40%.

The new optional textured sandstone cases (£22.95) are the best for adding grip to a phone I’ve ever used.

Price

The OnePlus 8 Pro costs £799 with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage in black or £899 with 12GB and 256GB in glacial green in the UK. Other colours are available in other regions.

For comparison, the OnePlus 8 costs £599, the OnePlus 7T Pro costs £699, the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra costs £1,199 and the Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max costs £1,149.

Verdict

The 8 Pro shows OnePlus is no longer the underdog significantly undercutting the big boys on price.

Instead it has filled the cost-cutting gaps with features that truly rival the best from others. The 8 Pro has a genuinely fantastic screen, a cracking design that’s big but comparatively easy to handle, and it finally has wireless charging and proper water resistance – two hallmarks of top-end phones.

The Chinese firm has also addressed a traditional weakness in its camera, producing a phone that competes favourably with all but the very best and most expensive super-camera phones.

Add that to OnePlus’s traditional strengths of slick software, serious speed and strong battery life and you have a very potent combination. It simply offers a better day-to-day experience than practically anything else, beating Samsung, Google and others at their own game.

It’s not perfect, of course. You only get three years of software support where Apple offers five. The phone is a bit long for small pockets and not being able to have 5G at all when using two sims is irritating.

It’s no longer cheap at £799, but the OnePlus 8 Pro is simply better than practically everything else. Samsung should be worried because we have a new Android king.

Pros: fantastic screen, top performance, good battery life, superfast wired and wireless charging, great camera, great software, alert slider, water resistance, 5G, dual-sim, superfast in-screen fingerprint scanner. Cons: no headphone socket, 5G disabled when using two sims, only three years’ software updates, expensive, very long.

The glacial green 8 Pro is similar to aquamarine, looking more blue in bright sunlight and greener indoors. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

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