OnePlus 10 Pro went for first sale in India on April 5, 2022. The smartphone is meant for people looking for a very premium device with top of the line specifications. Like every year, this ‘Pro’ model from OnePlus is the flagship device of the series and packs the most powerful Qualcomm chipset for mobiles with the most advanced thermal cooling system in place. This year, OnePlus is also expected to launch a new ‘Ultra’ device and it would honestly be fun to see how OnePlus plans to top the OnePlus 10 Pro with the new ‘Ultra’ model. Note that it is a rumour for now and might not really happen so let us shift our focus back to the OnePlus 10 Pro and see how the device is.
OnePlus 10 Pro Review: Design and Body
Ok, so I have little mixed feelings about the design of the smartphone. I will tell you why. OnePlus 10 Pro is unlike any other OnePlus smartphone I have ever seen. It comes with a very big camera bump with Hasselblad branding and a curved screen display. The device is available in two colours — Emerald Green and Volcanic Black. The one I am holding is Emerald Green and the colour on this matte finish is just refreshing and very cool. I say mixed feelings because I love the colour, finish and the overall feel of holding the smartphone in my hands but I dislike the fact that the front resembles a lot with the Oppo Reno7 Pro. It’s not an exact copy, but the front doesn’t excite me a lot until we talk about the display.
The SIM tray is at the bottom along with a stereo speaker and a Type-C port. On the right, you will get the power button and the alert slider. Volume rockers are on the left and there is no 3.5mm audio jack which is the trend with all the flagship devices today. It is pretty light to hold and pretty comfortable to be used by a single hand. The camera layout at the rear is something new and kudos to OnePlus for coming up with the design.
OnePlus 10 Pro Review: Display and OxygenOS 12
The display has become a prime factor while determining whether a smartphone is premium or not. With the OnePlus 10 Pro, users get a 6.7-inch QHD+ Fluid AMOLED LTPO 2.0 display. The good thing with an LTPO display is that it will help with elongating the battery life of the device as it switches between 120Hz to 1Hz depending on the type of content that’s on the screen. To keep the device extra safe, there is Corning Gorilla Glass Victus on top of the screen. The display isn’t on QHD+ resolution by default. You can change it by going to the display settings. I haven’t used the device on QHD+ resolution a lot because I am pretty comfortable with the FHD+ resolution mode which helps with longer battery life. The maximum brightness OnePlus 10 Pro can support is 1300nits which is decent. Everything’s ultra-smooth with the display of the OnePlus 10 Pro. It comes with support for 480Hz of touch sampling rate ensuring that your gaming experience is top of the class. Watching a video is good enough even on the FHD+ resolution setting. There’s a beauty to curved displays. It just feels very premium and stylish and makes OnePlus 10 Pro a distinct flagship.
I am a fan of OxygenOS but I would keep this as neutral and objective as possible. I have had the first proper stable experience with OxygenOS 12 based on Android 12 with the OnePlus 10 Pro. Compared to OxygenOS 11, it is a very different experience with the OxygenOS 12. First of all, the OxygenOS 12 feels a lot like the ColorOS. The OnePlus Shelf is redesigned and comes down when you swipe down from the top right. For the notification window, you have to swipe down from the top left. The app icons feel more like the app icons of ColorOS which is not necessarily a bad thing, but only something that I have noticed. OnePlus is also offering a Theme store to users with a lot of free as well as paid themes inside. Subtle changes to the colours of notifications are visible with Android 12. Currently, the OnePlus 10 Pro that I am using is running on OxygenOS 12.1. You can again expect a very clean experience with the OxygenOS 12. There’s just a Theme Store that you will get to see new in terms of pre-loaded apps on the device.
OnePlus 10 Pro Review: Performance and Battery
The performance is where the real test of the device is. The OnePlus 10 Pro will get fairly hot when you put it on the edge. This is because of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen1 inside. The company said that it has equipped the device with a better thermal cooling system, but if you are using the OnePlus 10 Pro aggressively for gaming, there will be moments when it heats up. Even while recording or using the camera for long periods will heat up the device. It is still way better than what I was expecting. Any device with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen1 is bound to heat up. The way the OnePlus 10 Pro has handled the overheating is something that I like. There are no lags or delays. For the first time in years, it feels like OnePlus has launched a flagship with no bugs, display, or overheating issues. The OnePlus 10 Pro feels like a complete device from the go. You can play the best and most demanding games on this device without worrying about anything. There’s also a RAM boost feature which you can activate to ensure optimum utilisation of RAM. You can also expand the RAM by up to 7GB which is way more than what most users will ever need. However, to expand the RAM, there should be free internal storage. The device comes loaded with LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 internal storage ensuring that everything moves fast. Even if you are a heavy smartphone user, you don’t need to worry about the battery a lot. This is because the device comes with 80W wired fast charging. You won’t know when your device goes from 0% to 100%. Unlike other companies, OnePlus is packing the charger inside the box. The OnePlus 10 Pro also supports 50W wireless charging, but for that, you need to purchase the wireless charger separately. It packs a 5000mAh battery which is pretty decent for a flagship. I did not game much on the OnePlus 10 Pro. But with the limited experience I have had with the device so far, it will be a pretty good gaming experience with the OnePlus 10 Pro. Talking more about the performance, let’s see how the camera of the device is.
OnePlus 10 Pro Review: Camera
The OnePlus flagships in the past have produced some really good camera systems. But over the years, OnePlus hasn’t really been able to deliver what’s expected from it in the camera department. The cameras were good, but they didn’t have a differentiating factor and were not able to compete with the flagships of Apple and Samsung. This time with the OnePlus 10 Pro, OnePlus has done an amazing job. I am still not a fan of what this device does in the Night Mode, but apart from that, the Hasselblad partnership has worked well for OnePlus. You can take images in 10-bit colour mode, fisheye mode (150-degree view), 30x zoom and do so much more. The device also supports 4K recording at 120fps and 8K recording at 24fps, which is decent. The layout of the camera app is the same as in previous OnePlus phones (looks similar to what you see on Oppo smartphones). There’s just so much one can do with the camera of the OnePlus 10 Pro. I am attaching the camera samples below. (Note that images are compressed a little.)
OnePlus 10 Pro Review: Price and Conclusion
The OnePlus 10 Pro is available in two memory variants — 1) 8GB+128GB and 2) 12GB+256GB. The company is also offering a discount of Rs 4500 on purchase via an SBI credit card. In my overall view, the device is certainly expensive, but it is worth it. The camera performance along with the display, the design, and everything else about the smartphone is really good. I just wasn’t impressed a lot by the Night Mode. On a side by side comparison with the iPhone 13 Pro Max, the image captured by the OnePlus 10 Pro in Night Mode didn’t come across as half good. But then there’s a huge price difference between the OnePlus 10 Pro and the iPhone 13 Pro Max. This is certainly a device you can boast about if you own it. The OnePlus 10 Pro will let you do anything and everything a smartphone is made for. With the Android 12, the UI has become even more beautiful and something I have really grown to love.
