4242 OCTOBER 2019|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE 380
BOTHTHEPREMIUMònePlus 7Pro
(Shopper379) and its upcoming 5G variant
might be hogging the headlines, but the
regular ònePlus 7isstill worth considering.
It has the same screen si҄e and resolution
as the preceding ònePlus 6T (Shopper373),
6.4in and 2,340x1,080 respectively,and it has
the same style of notch housing forthe
front-facing camera. The chassis is identical,
too, as is the positioning of all the buttons
and the SIM card slot. This news isn’t
necessarily all bad –the 6T wasn’t exactly ugly
or impractical –but it means the screen is
flat all the waytothe edges, lacking the
dramatic curve of the ònePlus 7Pro.
The in-displayfingerprint sensor also
reappears, although getting successful
unlocks proved to be abit of afaff; we
preferred using the much faster facial
recognition option. There’s also no headphone
jack, so if you want to use wired headphones,
you’ll need the supplied USB Type-C adaptor.
NATURE CALLS
In better news, the screen itself is lovely.
Contrast is effectively perfect and choosing
the Nature displayprofile means you get
avery high sRGB colour gamut coverage of
96.9%. Ŵoucan also choose to target the
Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 colour spaces, as
well as boost the colour saturation if you
preferamore vibrant viewing
experience.Brightness could be a
little better,however,with apeak
luminance of 428cdmσ.
òne good argument for
picking the ònePlus 7over the
ònePlus 7Pro is that, despite
the former’s much lower price,
it has the same Ēualcomm
Snapdragon 855 processor.
The Geekbench 4single-core
and multicore CPU benchmark
returned scores of 3,531 and
11,214, showing it’s not just a
match forthe ònePlus 7Pro on
performance,it’s 48% more
powerful than the 6T.
The ònePlus 7’s gaming
capabilities aren’t to be ignored
either,reaching aperfect 60fps
average in the GjXBench
Manhattan onscreen test and
102fps in the offscreen test.
What’s even more impressive
is that while both the ònePlus 7
and the 6T have a3,700mAh
ONEPLUS 7
★★★★★
£499•From http://www.oneplus.com
VERDICT
Alow-keyupdateforOnePlus’ssignaturephone,
buttheOnePlus7stillhassomethingto offer
ANDROID 9.0 SMARTPHONE
battery,this serious boost
in performance hasn’t
decreased the ònePlus 7’s
stamina very much in
comparison. Playing a
looped video with data
connections switched off
and displaybrightness set to
our standardised 170cdmσ,
the ònePlus 7managed to
last 21h 11m before the
screen went blank. That’s
29 minutes less than the 6T,
but taking intoaccount the
major processing gains, this
is aworthy trade-off.
ònePlus hasn’t leftthe camera out
of the equation, either,with exactly the same
48-megapixel primary sensor as the ònePlus 7
Pro.True,you’re missing out on the ultra-wide
and 3x telephotocameras here (the secondary
20-megapixel, f1.7 camera is only used for
depth-sensing duties), but in large part, the
photographs it produces look the same as
theydoonthe more expensive ònePlus 7Pro.
REPEATOFFENDER
Unfortunately,this means it inherits the Pro
model’s weaknesses as well as its strengths.
Although the ònePlus 7’s 12-megapixel
downscaled images are absolutely fine,its
full-resolution, 48-megapixel images
look hugely overprocessed
and severely lacking in detail,
exactly as theydid on the
ònePlus 7Pro.
The differences between
the two images are very easy
to spot when placed next to
each other,too.There’s no
fault in, say, the Xiaomi Mi 9’s
ability to capture finer details,
but the pictures snapped using
the ònePlus 7’s 48-megapixel
shooter look like apoor-quality
watercolour painting. It really
is that bad.
Considering that the
ònePlus 7launched two weeks
later than its bigger brother,we
hoped that the firm’s software
engineers could successfully
address these issues in the form
of asoftware fix but, at the time
of writing, that wasn’t the case.
That’s not the only problem,
either.Rather infuriatingly,you’re
Batterylife
0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100
Seepage90forperformancedetails
PROCESSOROcta-core2.8GHzQualcommSnapdragon855•
SCREENSIZE6.67in•SCREENRESOLUTION3,120x1,440•
REARCAMERAS48megapixels,5megapixels•STORAGE
128GB•WIRELESSDATA4G•NFCYes•DIMENSIONS
158x75x8.2mm•WEIGHT182g•OPERATINGSYSTEM
Android9.0•WARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILSwww.
oneplus.com•PARTCODEGM1903
SPECIFICATIONS
21h11m
forced to fiddle about with
the camera’s Pro mode to
access the 48-megapixel
camera, and from this
setting, you lose basic
features such as the ~DR
toggle.This isn’t ideal, and
while it could be that the
48-megapixel mode doesn’t
support ~DR, this is never
made explicit.
Thankfully,the camera’s
video capabilities are
considerably better.The
footage looks rich and
vibrant, filled to the brim
with details and colours that
appear to pop right out of the
screen. Unlike the juddery-looking Xperia 1’s
video (page 44), the ònePlus 7’s 60fps
shooting mode is silkysmooth –and Sony’s
phone costs almost twice as much.
UNDER PRESSURE
Despiteitsproblems,andthefactthatònePlus
hasn’t updated the physical design of the
phone,the ònePlus 7still possesses all the
credentials to competewith the best-value
phones on the market. It costs alittle less
than £500, includes the fastest Snapdragon
chip around and has abattery that lasts for
ages. 48-megapixel photography is aletdown,
but shooting at 12 megapixels is fine.
Whether or not the ònePlus 7can
continue the company’s reign as undisputed
value-smartphone champion is currently up
in the air,however.Now that other
manufacturers, particularly Xiaomi, have
muscled in so strongly on its territory,
ònePlus’s reign could be at an end. And if
handfuls of new problems don’t stop coming
in with each iteration, that end could come
sooner than ònePlus or its fans would like.
NathanSpendelow
