ISSUE 65 • ANDROID ADVISOR 77BUYING GUIDEof view. There’s a very slight fishbowl effect, which
actually looks worse than it is thanks to the curved
screen, but otherwise this does a good job.
Finally, and more excitingly, the bottom camera
is an 8Mp telephoto, with OIS and up to 3x optical
zoom – while you can go up to 10x hybrid optical and
digital zoom. This isn’t quite into the 5x optical zoom
territory of the Huawei P30 Pro (in fact this whole rear
camera setup is almost identical to the regular P30),
but it is capable of some sharp zoomed in shots.
The software underlying all that hardware has
had an update too, and the newly dubbed UltraShot
algorithm is clearly an attempt to catch up with the
competition – it’s fair to say OnePlus has never been
renowned for its photography prowess.
Despite additional computational work – the
camera makes greater use of multiple shots to extract
more information and enrich images – photos
process more quickly. This is especially the case in
a revamped take on Nightscape, OnePlus’s take on
a flash-free low light mode. This is now in the same
league as the P30 Pro and Pixel 3 for low light photos,
with astonishing sharpness and colour drawn out of
even the darkest environments.
In general, photos are crisp and I’ve been impressed
by the dynamic range the camera is capable of, while
colours tend to be fairly accurate. That can mean
photos look slightly muted if you’re used to the heavily
saturated shots taken by Huawei and Samsung’s latest,
but will deliver if you prefer something that looks
more true to life. The optical zoom is comparable to
the results in the P30, and actually yields a little moreISSUE 65 • ANDROID ADVISOR 77BUYING GUIDEof view. There’s a very slight fishbowl effect, which
actually looks worse than it is thanks to the curved
screen, but otherwise this does a good job.
Finally, and more excitingly, the bottom camera
is an 8Mp telephoto, with OIS and up to 3x optical
zoom – while you can go up to 10x hybrid optical and
digital zoom. This isn’t quite into the 5x optical zoom
territory of the Huawei P30 Pro (in fact this whole rear
camera setup is almost identical to the regular P30),
but it is capable of some sharp zoomed in shots.
The software underlying all that hardware has
had an update too, and the newly dubbed UltraShot
algorithm is clearly an attempt to catch up with the
competition – it’s fair to say OnePlus has never been
renowned for its photography prowess.
Despite additional computational work – the
camera makes greater use of multiple shots to extract
more information and enrich images – photos
process more quickly. This is especially the case in
a revamped take on Nightscape, OnePlus’s take on
a flash-free low light mode. This is now in the same
league as the P30 Pro and Pixel 3 for low light photos,
with astonishing sharpness and colour drawn out of
even the darkest environments.
In general, photos are crisp and I’ve been impressed
by the dynamic range the camera is capable of, while
colours tend to be fairly accurate. That can mean
photos look slightly muted if you’re used to the heavily
saturated shots taken by Huawei and Samsung’s latest,
but will deliver if you prefer something that looks
more true to life. The optical zoom is comparable to
the results in the P30, and actually yields a little more