VERSUS MID-RANGE ANDROIDS
Affordable flagships have nothing to do with the Royal Navy budget cuts and
everything to do with Honor and OnePlus promising more dash for less cashCheaper
chips
What’s the story?
The OnePlus 7 costs £499. For that kind of
money you could pick up a Huawei P20 Pro,
a Samsung Galaxy S9 or, if you wanted to
go a bit cheaper, an Honor 20 or Pixel 3A
with £100 left over. When OnePlus hit
the scene, there wasn’t much competition
in the ‘affordable flagship’ space; now
it’s packed. So, while we absolutely loved
the OnePlus 7 Pro, do we really need a
vanilla OnePlus 7?Is it any good?
No one’s suggesting the OnePlus 7 is a bad
phone. The asking price gets you a flagship
Snapdragon 855 chipset, 6GB of RAM and
OnePlus’s slick UI experience, Oxygen OS.
It also packs a dual-lens camera and a
large 3700mAh battery. But OnePlus
clearly didn’t take any risks when putting
this phone together – it’s basically the old
6T in a shiny new outfit.
The Full HD OLED display, complete with
droplet notch, is bright and sharp, offering
deep and inky colours. But unlike the
7 Pro’s triple-cam rear setup, the basic
7 has just one 48MP camera plus a 5MP
depth sensor for background blurring.
Forget nuance, but it’s still a fine pairing
for point-and-shoot stuff. It can also take
4K video at up to 60fps, plus there’s a 16MP
front cam for flattering selfies.Price from £499 / stuff.tv/OnePlus7
Tech 6.41in 2340x1080 OLED O Snapdragon
855 O 48MP/5MP rear, 16MP front
O 3700mAh O 158x75x8.2mm, 182gStuff says ++++,
A solid, samey refresh of the already
excellent OnePlus 6TWhat’s the story?
When buying a new phone, ‘good screen’
and ‘fast CPU’ come slightly higher up
the wish list than ‘subject to a geopolitical
sanctions minefield’. But that’s what the
Honor 20 is dealing with. With parent firm
Huawei in the US government’s bad books,
there’s a real concern Android updates
might dry up and users get locked out of
their Google apps. Honor’s response: killer
hardware at a fantastic price.Is it any good?
It’s hard to see how the Honor 20 counts
as ‘mid-range’. You get a glass and metal
sandwich with super-skinny bezels and
a large but sensible screen. Look closer,
though, and you will see plastic inserts
keeping costs down.
The 6.26in LCD display delivers vivid
colours that can be dialled back, but while
contrast is decent, deep blacks won’t reach
OLED levels and brightness could be better
outside. Only two of the four rear camera
lenses, meanwhile, are worth using – the
whopping 48MP main snapper and the
16MP ultra-wide-angle – but the 32MP
selfie cam is excellent.
Finding a Kirin 980 octa-core processor
in here is like lifting the bonnet on a family
car to discover an F1 engine. Politics aside,
this is a fantastic mid-range phone.Price £400 / stuff.tv/Honor20
Tech 6.26in 2340x1080 LCD O Kirin 980
O 48MP/16MP/2MP/2MP rear, 32MP front
O 3750mAh O 154x74x7.9mm, 174gStuff says ++++,
A sub-£400 flagship with lots to like but
one major political concernHonor 20 OnePlus 7
O Now that screen
bezels are public
enemy number
one, Honor has
broken out the hole
punch for the 20’s
6.26in screen. The
selfie camera sits in
the top left corner,
poking through
the LCD panel and
giving the phone
a properly modern
look reminiscent
of models that are
far more pricey
than this.O The OnePlus 7
looks good – its
fascia is flat, with
the selfie cam
nestled within
a small notch.
The ‘mirror grey’
finish gives it an
ultra-premium feel,
although it quickly
becomes finger-
smudge central.
Our only real gripe
with the OnePlus’s
design is the
sticky-out rear
camera surround,
which isn’t as
classy as the rest
of the phone.THE BEAUTY
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