OnePlus 10 Pro review | Engadget

Comparisons with final 12 months’s OnePlus 9 Professional come up but once more with the cameras. The corporate heralds this as its second-generation Hasselblad digital camera, with enhancements to the OnePlus Billion Shade Answer (which nonetheless struggles to promote itself as a compelling characteristic) and an up to date Hasselblad Professional mode, which I’ll clarify later.

Glancing on the spec sheet, even when the digital camera array itself appears to be like notably completely different, the OnePlus 10 Professional has very related digital camera sensors – and in reality there’s really one lower than final 12 months’s OnePlus 9 Professional. Sure, we’ve misplaced the monochrome sensor, which shouldn’t be an enormous deal. It was a low two-megapixel sensor and I didn’t miss it in any respect. In any other case, all of the numbers match: a 48-megapixel main sensor, a 50-MP ultra-wide lens – this time capturing throughout 150-degree views, and – just like the OnePlus 9 Professional – a middling 8-megapixel telephoto possibility that tops out at 3.3x optical zoom.

My expertise matches what Chris Velazco stated final 12 months in his overview of the 9 Professional. The first sensor captures detailed photographs, particularly in well-lit environment. OnePlus has additional refined the sensor to enhance dynamic vary and noise discount in photographs, and also you’ll nonetheless get one of the best photographs from the pixel-binned 12-megapixel mode. If you happen to do wish to seize all of the element you’ll be able to, nevertheless, there’s a high-res capturing mode that’s simply accessible by means of many of the digital camera app’s modes. 

The brand new ultrawide digital camera will get a couple of tips, too, together with a brand new fish-eye seize mode that’s a little bit of a gimmick, but it surely’s enjoyable nonetheless. You possibly can change between a light and robust fish-eye impact. I’m not going to win pictures awards however the outcomes are clear and it’s a innocent addition.

The telephoto digital camera stays the weakest a part of the OnePlus digital camera setup. Given the 8MP decision, photographs appear blurry and low on element. Generally my photographs simply lacked colour and vitality, which is a disgrace as a result of I take advantage of the telephoto cameras on telephones lots because it affords some extent of compositional freedom when framing my photographs. (I can’t imagine I simply wrote the phrase “compositional freedom.”)

OnePlus’ flagship held its personal towards an iPhone 13 Professional and Pixel 6 Professional, but it surely wasn’t one of the best. The cameras often struggled with scenes with excessive dynamic vary. 

When capturing this scene, with a plant in entrance of an open fireplace and a vibrant neon signal within the background, the ten Professional couldn’t fairly tame the aggressive lighting, blowing out the neon mild slightly an excessive amount of. The iPhone captured the scene in barely hotter tones, whereas the Pixel appeared cooler. After I in contrast the photographs, nevertheless, it was the OnePlus 10 Professional, even when it lacked the element and dynamic vary, that had nailed the colours of the room. Maybe that Hasselblad partnership is definitely working? Even then, would I desire a extra precisely coloured shot or a wider dynamic vary? The latter.

I needed to see if something had actually modified between the 2 OnePlus flagships, so I in contrast a couple of pattern photographs. Whereas many had been indistinguishable from one another, the ten Professional edged out final 12 months’s 9 Professional when it got here to nighttime pictures, which may very well be attributable to computational enhancements and a sooner chip – or OnePlus’ personal inside calibrations and tweaks. Having stated that, OnePlus’ night time pictures and AI help are slightly too heavy-handed for my liking; they made some low-light scenes look artificially vibrant.

Software program-wise, the brand new Hasselblad Professional mode works throughout all three digital camera sensors, including wonderful management like ISO ranges in addition to 12-bit RAW seize for these prepared to dive deep into picture enhancing. OnePlus’ RAW+ picture format can also be right here, which makes an attempt to mix all the data of a photograph, but it surely’s augmented by the computational picture seize we’ve seen in most telephones over the previous couple of years. Was I utilizing RAW+ seize over the stripped-down auto mode? More often than not, no. But it surely’s extra versatile for customers prepared to push the ten Professional’s cameras to their restrict.

Efficiency and software program

OnePlus has lengthy been capable of stability a streamlined Android expertise near inventory whereas including its personal tweaks and options. The OnePlus 10 Professional continues that method regardless of the nearer collaboration with Oppo and a shared codebase. In actual fact, the most recent model of OnePlus’ OxygenOS, model 12, was apparently one of many causes that the ten Professional took so lengthy to reach after its debut, with extra time wanted to tweak the software program for areas past China.

I nonetheless admire the flexibility to simply change off OS additions I don’t want. The OnePlus Shelf is a pop-up menu that may be pulled down from the highest proper nook of the telephone. It teams collectively a number of adjustable tiles – like these widgets you’ve been in a position so as to add to your homescreen on Android telephones for a couple of decade. 

Briefly, I don’t want it and would get pissed off when it pops up as an alternative of the usual Android drop-down menu containing setting toggles and my notifications. Fortunately, I can simply faucet the settings cog contained in the Shelf, and switch all the characteristic off. 

One addition I received’t be disabling is a brand new AI adaptive brightness characteristic. The OnePlus 10 Professional can be taught your show brightness preferences and make changes, hopefully earlier than you do. Synthetic intelligence options inside smartphones are sometimes onerous to note in day-to-day use (suppose: battery optimization options that are supposed to adapt to how you employ your telephone and cut back energy consumption). However OnePlus’ adaptive brightness quickly appeared once I would examine the ten Professional within the early hours of the morning, serving to to defend me from an unnecessarily vibrant display screen earlier than I’d even had my coffe

There are additionally a couple of gaming enhancements to benefit from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip. The HyperBoost recreation engine, courtesy of Oppo, tries to stabilize body charges throughout gaming classes, whereas additionally rising the responsiveness of the touchscreen by means of a brand new characteristic referred to as O-Sync. Each endure from my points with behind-the-scenes AI optimizations. It’s additionally not suitable with streaming video games from Xbox Cloud Gaming or Stadia, which is how I recreation on smartphones more often than not.

The OnePlus 10 Professional wasn’t fazed by something I threw at it – which has been true for many telephones powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. When enjoying a video on repeat, the 5,000mAh battery took over 14 hours to run down – which isn’t nice in comparison with roughly 17 hours from Samsung’s Galaxy S22+.

Benefiting from Oppo’s R&D, the OnePlus 10 Professional helps 80W SUPERVOOC charging. Sure, quick charging isn’t something new for OnePlus, however rattling, that is genuinely quick. With the suitable charger (don’t fear, there’s one included with the telephone), the ten Professional may be totally charged in a mere 32 minutes. If you would like even sooner charging, OnePlus says 80W SUPERVOOC can cost the telephone from 0 to 61 % in simply quarter-hour; I acquired across the identical figures when recharging the telephone myself. It’s a robust characteristic, and importantly, one thing that the OnePlus 9 Professional doesn’t have. 

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Sadly, US house owners will not get an equivalent expertise. In a discussion board dialogue on the OnePlus web site, the corporate clarified: “In North America, the OnePlus 10 Professional helps 65W SUPERVOOC – it’s because 80W SUPERVOOC doesn’t at present assist 110 or 120-volt AC energy – the standard customary for energy retailers within the area.” A 65W charging pace would nonetheless be the quickest telephone charging customary within the US, but it surely’s onerous to not really feel a bit short-changed in comparison with different areas. 

Wrap-up

OnePlus was on a roll. Final 12 months, it proved it may ship a real high-end smartphone rival to the likes of the iPhone and the Galaxy S sequence with the OnePlus 9 Professional. However with the OnePlus 10 Professional, the corporate has struggled to push the envelope additional.

The OnePlus 10 Professional has spectacular fast-charge capabilities, a stunning display screen that’s incrementally higher than final 12 months’s mannequin, whereas OxygenOS continues so as to add extra to the Android expertise with out derailing it. I particularly like how the inexperienced model appears to be like, however on the identical time, the smartphone competitors strikes quick. 

(Whereas I examined the covetable inexperienced model, within the US, OnePlus is promoting the black mannequin with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage for $899 within the US. The corporate says the inexperienced model, with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, will arrive later. The value continues to be TBC. )

OnePlus might need nailed its cameras final 12 months, but it surely’s not on the identical stage of one of the best telephone cameras in 2022. Its computational pictures appears overly aggressive and the telephoto digital camera, once more, disappoints in comparison with the competitors. When the Pixel 6 Professional prices the identical, the OnePlus 10 Professional is difficult to suggest over Google’s personal flagship, even to die-hard OnePlus followers trying to improve from the OnePlus 9 Professional. At the least it’s barely cheaper.

Correction, 3/31/22 10:50AM ET: Clarified that the US model of the OnePlus 10 Professional will solely assist 65W SuperVOOC charging.