With the OnePlus 7 Pro ($669), this cult smartphone maker continues its trajectory as a swiftly rising flagship killer.
Not only is this the fastest Android phone we've ever tested, it's also loaded with a gorgeous, notchless screen, cool hardware, and smart software features that outpace even the Samsung Galaxy S10+.
If you're looking for a big, powerful Android phone (especially if you're with T-Mobile), the OnePlus 7 Pro is an obvious pick, and our Editors' Choice.
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Models and Pricing
There are three different versions of the OnePlus 7 Pro: 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage for $669, 8/256 for $699, and 12/256 for $749 (the latter two sold by T-Mobile).
The phone comes in blue or gray versions.
There will be two other models of the OnePlus 7 series, but the 7 Pro is the only one we'll see here in the US.
The regular OnePlus 7 is for more price-sensitive countries (the company is very popular in India) and the OnePlus 7 5G is for countries with 3.5GHz 5G networks (which we don't have here).
Physical Form Factor and Screen
At 6.4 by 3 by 0.34 inches (HWD) and 7.26 ounces, this is a big phone.
It's not actually larger than, say, a Galaxy Note, but anyone who's read my reviews knows I'm an aficionado of smaller models because I can spend hours a day standing up holding a subway pole with one hand while trying to use my phone with the other.
This phone feels large and a bit slippery to grip, but your mileage obviously may vary.
From the front, the phone almost looks like a Samsung with its curved OLED screen, until you realize there's no notch, just a lot of screen.
The selfie camera pops up from a little cutout on the top of the phone, so even that doesn't take up space where screen could go.
There's also a ribbed mute switch that has appeared on OnePlus phones for years.
There's still no headphone jack or microSD slot, if those things matter to you (though OnePlus separately sells the excellent $19.99 Type-C Bullets).
Our 7 Pro is a shimmery blue color.
The phone's glass back is slightly slippery, with a smooth, cool feeling to it, and scratches easily.
The phone comes with a clear case in the box, which you should apply as soon as you get it.
The case also makes the body much grippier.
OnePlus keeps trying to ride a line where it makes its phones sort-of-waterproof, but it doesn't pay for IP certification.
I dunked and washed the phone, rather than soaking it for an extended period of time.
Some condensation appeared inside the pop-up selfie camera, and the microphone was messed up for about an hour, but after a few hours, the phone was perfectly fine.
The 6.67-inch, 3,120-by-1,440 resolution screen is a Samsung OLED panel tuned to OnePlus's specifications, and it's even comparable with the Galaxy's (and far better than, say, the Google Pixel 3's).
I tested the screen's colors and brightness with a Klein K-80 colorimeter and Portrait Displays' CalMAN and MobileForge software.
As you can see, the OnePlus 7's colors are just about the same as the Galaxy S10+'s (and they're more accurate than the OnePlus 6T's).
At 411cd/m2 in "vivid" mode and 402cd/m2 in "natural," it's close to the Galaxy S10's maximum brightness of 435cd/m2.
The chart below shows the OnePlus 7 Pro's color levels as dots and DCI-P3 color levels as boxes in both Natural and Vivid modes, alongside the color performance of the OnePlus 6T and Samsung Galaxy S10+.
All phones have slightly cool whites, but the 7 Pro demonstrates particularly admirable, accurate performance in Vivid mode.
OnePlus Color Charts
The big innovation here is the 90Hz refresh rate.
In its standard UI, the OnePlus 7 displays 1.5 frames for every one frame most other phones do, resulting in what appears to be smoother scrolling.
Whether you can perceive this depends on what you're used to.
Our analyst Chris Stobing, a big PC gamer who uses high-refresh-rate gaming monitors, noticed it instantly; it took me a lot longer to see it.
Over time, the high refresh rate should mean less eyestrain.
Higher refresh rate scrolling takes more battery power, but the OnePlus 7 deals with this intelligently by reducing the refresh rate if you're watching lower-frame-rate content, like 30fps videos.
It actually isn't clear to me (and OnePlus couldn't help) if the 90Hz applies outside the general UI.
Our GFXBenchmark graphics benchmark topped out at displaying 60 frames per second, which may be a limit in the Android APIs.
I know Razer, which also sells a high-frame-rate phone, had to write special extensions to get games to run at higher frame rates.
In the video below, that's an LG V40 with a standard 60Hz screen on the left, and the OnePlus 7 Pro on the right.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk2HxfuhIYs[/embed]
I'd dare say the in-display fingerprint sensor is the best one on the market.
While it's optical and not ultrasonic, it seems to have a slightly larger target area than Samsung's sensor does (it's 36 percent bigger than the one on the OnePlus 6T), and it is very fast to recognize my fingers.
Your fingertip still has to be dry and clean; a wet finger reduces recognition to about 80 percent reliability, and putting food on my finger (like guacamole or peanut butter) renders the sensor useless and slightly gross.
Software and Benchmarks
The OnePlus 7 runs Android 9 with OnePlus's Oxygen OS extensions on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset, the same one that's in the Galaxy S10 line and the LG G8.
That said, it benchmarked the best of any Android phone we've ever seen, because of OnePlus's focus on software speed.
I got 9,828 on PCMark and 481.94 on the Basemark Web benchmark compared with 9,547 and 406.84 on the Galaxy S10.
The use of UFS 3.0 internal storage here definitely helps.
The OnePlus got 12,889 on the PCMark Storage benchmark, compared with 9,099 on the Galaxy S10 and 10,152 on the OnePlus 6T.
That may also explain why the OnePlus got ever-so-slightly higher scores than the Galaxy phones on Geekbench.
See How We Test Phones
OnePlus says the phone has a special cooling system, which lets it run at top speed for extended periods of time.
After 10 minutes using a processor-slamming app, the 7 Pro was running at 92% of top processing potential, as compared with the Galaxy S10e at 90 percent.
I wouldn't consider that a noticeable difference.
OnePlus' Oxygen OS remains, alongside Motorola's approach, the smartest and smoothest Android skin out there.
It adds useful features like the ability to load two Facebook or Instagram accounts at the same time without becoming sluggish.
One new innovation, Zen Mode, enhances Google's "digital wellness" features by essentially locking your phone for 20 minutes at a time.
During that period, you can receive phone calls, make emergency calls, and use the camera, but that's it.
You can't even turn it off during those 20 minutes.
Is it wrong that I kind of like it?
OnePlus says that the phone will get updates for the next two versions of Android, and maybe beyond that.
The OnePlus 3, a three-year-old phone, got an update to Android 9.
Wireless and Battery
The OnePlus 7 Pro is compatible with T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T, but is only sold by T-Mobile on the carrier end.
It has all the frequency bands for Sprint, but hasn't been certified and so won't attach to that network.
The T-Mobile-sold versions will work with that carrier's VoLTE and Wi-Fi calling systems, and with Verizon's VoLTE system (but not Wi-Fi calling).
AT&T doesn't allow unlocked phones into its VoLTE or Wi-Fi calling systems.
Also, while the unlocked 7 Pro has dual SIM card slots, the T-Mobile model doesn't.
As with previous OnePlus phones, it's one notch lower in terms of modem capabilities than its Snapdragon X24 modem allows: Category 18 with 5-carrier aggregation, rather than Category 20 with 7-carrier aggregation like the Galaxy S10.
That said, I don't think that's going to make a big difference in the US, where attaching to more than five bands of spectrum at once is rare enough to be practically unheard of.
The OnePlus 7 Pro has 4x4 MIMO on bands 2, 4, 7, and 66.
That makes it ideal for T-Mobile, Verizon, and Canadian carriers, but less so for AT&T, where I would like to see 4x4 on Band 30.
I gave the OnePlus 7 Pro the full signal testing routine, with our usual help from Cellular Insights.
Focusing on T-Mobile's primary frequency bands, I compared the phone with a bunch of other top phones on LTE Band 4 (used primarily in cities) and to the Samsung Galaxy S10 on LTE Band 12 (used more in suburban and rural areas).
The 7 Pro did very well with a weak Band 4 signal, roundly beating the Galaxy S10 and generally staying on par with the LG V40, the phone we rated as having the best signal strength available last year.
With a strong Band 4 signal, the 7 Pro generally got speeds higher than an iPhone XS Max and OnePlus 6T, although in some situations not quite up to the level of the LG V40.
In both Band 4 situations, the OnePlus 7 Pro generally beat the Samsung Galaxy S10.
The S10 did a bit better on Band 12, however.
There, the Samsung tracked consistently a notch faster than the OnePlus 7 Pro, including being able to pull out a tiny bit more of signal out at the end.
The real takeaway here is that the OnePlus 7 Pro handles LTE, at least on the T-Mobile network, like a world-beating flagship smartphone, and it'll give you a great 4G experience.
Rohde & Schwarz, the global leader in test and measurement equipment, provided Cellular Insights with the cutting-edge CMWFlexx solution consisting of two CMW500 Wideband Communication Tester boxes, CMWC Controller, and R&S TS7124 RF shielded box equipped with four Vivaldi antennas for up to 4×4 MIMO, ensuring high reproducibility of near-field OTA MIMO measurements.
The study was done independently by Cellular Insights and shared with Daxdi.
For other wireless standards, the OnePlus 7 Pro has Bluetooth 5.0 with AptX HD, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, and NFC.
Once again, it's not bleeding edge; unlike the Galaxy S10, there's no attempt to build an early 802.11ax client here.
But just like with the LTE situation, OnePlus decided that there aren't a lot of 802.11ax networks out there yet, so it wasn't worth the extra expense to push the boundaries.
Call Quality, Battery, and Charging
With a device at this level, good call quality should be a given.
It's fine on here; I have no complaints except when the microphone had water in it.
The phone has dual stereo speakers, with the earpiece under the screen.
Volume is good, with a maximum of 96dB on our test right up against the earpiece, and 86dB (3dB louder than the Galaxy S10) for the speakerphone at a 6-inch distance.
The speaker sounds a little tinny; the Galaxy seems to have more depth.
With a large 4,000 mAh battery, the 7 Pro takes a long time to drain.
I got 11 hours, 37 minutes in my rundown test.
In ordinary use, the phone would comfortably last two days, definitely outpacing my smaller Galaxy S10e, which I've needed to charge late in the day when I've been using it.
OnePlus CEO Pete Lau has repeatedly belittled wireless charging, and true to form, this phone doesn't have it.
What it does have is a gigantic 30W charger, which can power the phone very quickly.
I went from zero to 35 percent in 15 minutes, 62 percent in 30 minutes, and 95 percent in an hour.
That said, this is a proprietary charging system and so it won't refuel the phone at these speeds with, say, USB-C PD chargers or Qualcomm fast chargers.
Cameras
OnePlus is a sibling company to Oppo and Vivo, major Chinese smartphone makers who don't sell products in the US, and it can borrow some of their innovative ideas that would never be seen in this country otherwise.
The OnePlus 7 Pro features America's first pop-up selfie camera, originally introduced with the Vivo Nex S in China.
The phone's 48-megapixel Sony camera sensor has also appeared on Oppo and Vivo phones in China, but it hasn't been seen here until the 7 Pro.
The front-facing, pop-up camera is a Sony 16MP IMX471 sensor with 1080p video recording.
It's fine.
The most interesting aspect of it, of course, is that it pops up: When you do something that demands a selfie, including waking up the phone with facial ID activated, the little motor whirs and the camera appears.
When you switch away from your application, the camera retracts.
Obviously, the first question will be: Can you break it? The camera protects itself from drops by retracting when it senses the accelerometer.
I tested by dropping it from waist-height several times, and it retracted before it hit the floor.
On the other hand, if you bang the extended camera against a table, you will probably break it.
That's the price to pay for having no notch.
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On the back, there's the 48-megapixel Sony IMX586 sensor with an f/1.6 lens, an 8-megapixel sensor with a 3x telephoto lens, and a 16-megapixel sensor with a 117-degree wide-angle lens.
The camera usually defaults to 12-megapixel images with 4-pixel binning for better low-light performance, but you can kick it into 48MP mode (or RAW) in the camera app's "pro" mode.
The main camera also records 4K video at up to 60fps, and does slow-mo down to 480fps at 720p.
That's a lot of options, and it adds up to a camera that specializes in cropping and zooming.
Low-light performance here is specifically tuned to balance out images with a lot of dynamic range, as opposed to taking pictures in very low light.
That means an outdoor image with a streetlight in it will have fewer halos, like this one of the grocery store below.
But a photo taken in very low light, like the one of the bookshelf below, will be much noisier.
Apna Comparison
Bookshelf Comparison
We saw similar issues in low light with the Huawei P30 Pro.
Notice how the colors are more saturated and the mural of the girl is sharper in the Huawei photo, but the OnePlus image does well with the lower right hand corner of the frame where the light is blaring.
Huawei Comparison
Colors on the OnePlus camera also seem to be a bit less saturated than those on the the Galaxy S10's.
Church Comparison
Tree Comparison
The camera software is clearly a moving target, though.
During our review period, the camera received a software update which made photos taken in good light look sharper.
Before the update, shots were noticeably fuzzy compared with either the S10 or Huawei; after it, they were about on par with the S10,...
