OnePlus 7T Pro, long-term test: An upgrade dilemma

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The OnePlus 7T Pro was produced in October 2019.


Image: OnePlus

When it was first produced in direction of the close of past 12 months, the £699 (inc. VAT) OnePlus 7T Pro received blended opinions. It was hailed as a fantastic flagship-class handset, but not seen as a large leap ahead from the £649 OnePlus seven Pro. Acquiring used the OnePlus 7T Pro as my main handset for a pair of months, I’ve identified some pluses, some minuses, and some options that have left me a very little chilly. 

This is a perfectly specified handset, as it should be for the selling price. The Snapdragon 855+ chipset is a step up from the OnePlus seven Pro’s Snapdragon 855, giving bigger CPU and GPU clock speeds. Apps operate smoothly, video clip renders neatly, and power-players may seriously take pleasure in the excess zip. The OnePlus 7T Pro’s 8GB of RAM will help way too. I didn’t encounter any waits, or stalls, or sluggish-downs during my testing period — if I experienced, I would have been concerned, as they only shouldn’t come about.

You can find 256GB of inner storage, which I didn’t appear everywhere in close proximity to close to filling. The deficiency of a MicroSD card slot for more external storage just isn’t a problem.

The display screen is a delight, and not just since of its headline 90Hz refresh rate, which will appeal most to hardened players. The six.67-inch AMOLED panel is large — loads big enough for video clip viewing and net searching — and has a resolution of one,440 by three,120 pixels (516ppi). As a big fan of staying away from paper, I was equipped to use the OnePlus 7T Pro with a Bluetooth keyboard for observe-having in conferences, even though my tablet or notebook was however essential for doc viewing. It can be not a negative blend.

The OnePlus tactic to configuring the display screen for examining is however a big entice for me. Acquiring the display screen mechanically transform monochrome when I launch a unique app — any app I like — is a big moreover, and really I experienced this facility established up on the Brief Options menu and flipped into it on and off when I required a little bit of eye consolation. For me, it beats the handset’s evening manner. This is a characteristic of Oxygen OS, which sits on best of Android ten, and I cannot fully grasp why a lot more handset makers will not duplicate it. It can be a actual moreover stage.

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The glass again is beautiful, but slippery in the hand.


Image: Sandra Vogel / ZDNet

The in-display screen fingerprint reader is rapidly and economical — no complaints from me on that score. The screen’s curved edges are par for the training course for flagship-class handset these days, and are no big deal here — in actuality, the display screen tapering into the sides would make the OnePlus 7T Pro simple to keep thinking of its size. This matters, since the six.67-inch display screen would make this a pocket-challenging phone at seventy five.9mm vast by 162.6mm deep by eight.8mm thick. It can be unquestionably a little bit of a beast to use a person-handed for those, like me, with more compact hands. 

I was rather pleased with the develop, which feels extremely reliable and proved to be strong. A few accidental drops, which includes a lot more than a person onto a tiled ground, didn’t dent or break anything — the entrance and again both equally characteristic 3D Gorilla Glass. The blue again is fairly neat to glance at, even though its slipperiness intended I resorted to the supplied transparent bumper case at times. This provides a little bit of thickness and excess weight to an by now hefty 206g, and removes that great curved style of the prolonged edges, but at least it leaves the blue again visible. The deficiency of an IP rating for dust and h2o resistance, which is common on other flagship-class telephones, is a slight problem nevertheless. 

You can find no three.5mm headset jack, so you will want to use the USB-C port or a wireless headset. I opted for the latter, with a person of my correct wireless earbuds sitting down in an ear for do the job phone calls, and both equally in area for just after-hrs listening.

Significant workload days challenged the handset’s 4,085mAh battery, draining it to 30{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} on occasions. Quickly charging (30W), which OnePlus phone calls Warp Charge, was a boon: I could established the handset to charge even though paying 50 {d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} an hour planning a food and it would leap from 30{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} to above 70{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} in that time. 

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Image shot with the OnePlus 7T Pro’s 16MP ultra-vast-angle digicam (5 Arches Bridge on the river Cray, SE London).


Image: Sandra Vogel/ZDNet

The array of a few cameras at the again carried out just fantastic during my stage-and-shoot testing. The main forty eight-megapixel digicam has an f/one.six vast-angle lens with OIS (optical graphic stabilisation). This is accompanied by an 8MP f/two.4 telephoto digicam (3x optical zoom, also with OIS) and a 16MP f/two.two ultra-vast-angle digicam. I received some great panoramas even though out on going for walks visits above the Xmas break and into January. The camera’s automatic suggestion to shoot panoramas in ultra-vast manner invariably manufactured superior-framed pictures (see the example ultrawide photograph). I also appreciated using the macro manner.

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The monochrome display screen option is helpful when examining e-guides.


Image: Sandra Vogel/ZDNet

The pop-up entrance digicam (16MP, f/two.) allows for the total of the entrance display screen to be full-encounter without needing to accommodate a notch or cut-out, ensuing in a display screen-to-system ratio of 88.five{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd}. I will not do a lot selfie-connected images, so the wait for the digicam to pop out was not a dilemma keen selfie-takers may discover it irritating nevertheless.

SEE: IT pro’s guideline to the evolution and affect of 5G technologies (free of charge PDF)

One particular further characteristic deserves a extremely honourable point out. The slider on the appropriate-hand aspect that sets the ringer to mute, vibrate or ring is a godsend. No handset should be without a person.

Conclusions

Employing the OnePlus 7T Pro for longer than the standard critique period has been an satisfying encounter. I am a big fan of the Looking through (monochrome display screen) manner and the hardware slider that controls the ringer. These are staples on OnePlus handsets, nevertheless, and I am not confident the 7T Pro is massively superior than the somewhat considerably less high-priced (£649) OnePlus seven Pro. OnePlus supporters may want to do a ‘compare and contrast’:

OnePlus 7T Pro

OnePlus seven Pro

Screen size / technologies

six.67 inches / AMOLED  (90Hz)

six.67 inches / AMOLED  (90Hz)

Screen resolution 

three,120 x one,440 pixels  

three,120 x one,440 pixels  

Pixel density

516ppi  

516ppi  

Dimensions 

162.six x seventy five.9 x eight.8mm

162.six x seventy five.9 x eight.8mm

Monitor to system ratio 

88.five{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd}

88.five{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} 

Body weight

206g

206g

Functioning system / UI overlay  

Android ten / OxygenOS  

Android 9 / OxygenOS  

Cameras (rear) 

48MP (vast-angle), 8MP (telephoto), 16MP (ultra vast-angle)  

48MP (vast-angle), 8MP (telephoto), 16MP (ultra vast-angle)  

Digicam (entrance)  

16MP (pop-up

16MP (pop-up)

Movie capture 

4K @ 30/60fps  

4K @ 30/60fps  

Chipset 

two.96GHz octa-main Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ 

two.84GHz octa-main Qualcomm Snapdragon 855  

RAM

8GB (12GB readily available on 5G McLaren version)      

6GB / 8GB / 12GB 

Storage

256GB

128GB / 256GB

External storage (MicroSD)

no

no

4G LTE bands

24

24

Wi-fi 

802.11ac

802.11ac  

Bluetooth

five.

five.

Positioning

GPS (L1+L5 Twin Band), GLONASS, Galileo (E1+E5a Twin Band), Beidou, A-GPS  

GPS (L1+L5 Twin Band), GLONASS, Galileo (E1+E5a Twin Band), Beidou, A-GPS  

NFC

no

no

FM radio

no

no

Infrared

no

no

Connector

USB-C

USB-C

Headphone Jack (three.5mm)

no

no

Battery

4,085mAh

4,000mAh

Quickly charging

Warp Charge (30W)

Warp Charge (30W)  

Wireless charging

no

no

Fingerprint sensor

in-display screen

in-display screen

IP rating (dust/h2o resistance)

no

no

Selling price

£699 (inc. VAT)

£649 (inc. VAT)

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