OnePlus 9 Pro Review: Newest Camera King With Hasselblad

Since the OnePlus 7 laid the foundation with a good screen, the OnePlus has been firmly on the throne of domestic mobile phone screens. From the perfect full screen at 90Hz to the 2K 120Hz 10bit motion frame pupil screen, the OnePlus mobile phone screen can make people unforgettable every time.

At the same time, OnePlus has always made its debut with its flagship killer name. Image, as an essential part of the composition of flagship elements, is naturally indispensable. As the screen reaches the top, video has always been a key development direction of OnePlus.

Recalling last year’s OnePlus 8 Pro, with dual main cameras, exclusive customized IMX 689 and innovative infrared photography gameplay, OnePlus has made its own image configuration for the first time impressive, and it is the first echelon of domestic mobile phone photography. He also gained a firm foothold, and he could be called an outstanding existence.

Time has come, and the baton has officially come to the hands of the OnePlus 9 series. Can it continue the status of the screen king, and will there be new breakthroughs? Especially the high-end OnePlus 9 Pro, as an unreserved flagship, all expectations are focused on it. What height can it reach?

A top-notch good screen arrived as scheduled. This time, the screen of the OnePlus 9 Pro is still one of the best screens of its generation. Based on the excellent foundation of the previous generation 2K 120Hz 10bit motion frame supplement, based on the new LTPO material, the screen of the OnePlus 9 Pro brings two major breakthroughs.

One is to realize the adjustment of 1Hz-120Hz adaptive refresh rate, which solves the contradiction of high power consumption caused by high resolution + high refresh rate.

The other is the overclocking response. By increasing the synchronization frequency between the screen and the processor, the “following feel” is doubled.

In addition to the “good screen”, as always, the image specifications of the OnePlus 9 Pro are also extraordinarily powerful, bringing a set of rear camera hardware with no dead ends for daily photography.

The main camera is further upgraded to IMX 789, which not only has the outsole, dual ISO and the strongest focus but also improves the video performance by the way. The wide-angle continued the dual-main camera strategy, using a larger IMX 766 and a rare free-form surface lens. While taking photos in low light is better, it can effectively eliminate the distortion effect brought by the traditional spherical wide-angle lens. In addition, there is also a 3.3x telephoto for zooming and a black and white lens for shooting black and white photos with distinct levels.

In addition to the hardware specification upgrade, the image has a new surprise: the joint name with Hasselblad, which has 80 years of camera history. The shortcomings of the OnePlus have never been in the hardware. The cooperation with traditional camera manufacturers such as Hasselblad can use the rich experience that Hasselblad has accumulated in aesthetics to help OnePlus find the right direction in the expression of image style and colour.

In addition, the changes in this generation of systems are also worth mentioning. OnePlus 9 Pro will officially be equipped with ColorOS 11, which is deeply integrated with hydrogen OS. Under the simple UI and smooth high-brush animation of Hydrogen OS, ColorOS, which is more convenient and practical in daily life, is put as the kernel. This time, the OnePlus 9 Pro will be more useful in the hands of ordinary people who are not geeks.

As for the core configuration, the CMF design of the back cover, the feel of the whole machine, etc., the flagship configuration of the Snapdragon 888 does not need to be said. The 65W wired fast charge and the upgraded 50W wireless fast charge also make the charging speed full, and the remaining appearance ID, etc. Part of OnePlus has always been a model representative of the flagship.

What’s more, this generation has not only micro-curved screens but also smoother silk glass craftsmanship. To borrow a quote from Boss Liu: “The hand feels really XX.”

Design & Appearance

The packaging of the OnePlus 9 Pro series still uses OnePlus’s distinctive big red box body, but the slight change is that this time the mobile phone box no longer uses pure black fonts and instead uses hot stamping text. It can be seen that Plus the important position of the 9 series. What we received is the family bucket set, which, in addition to the phone itself, has a wireless charging charger and a Kevlar case (and a watch). Pull up the lid of the box, revealing the black box inside, and you can see the Hasselblad logo.

Take out the OnePlus 9 Pro body; the front design is still a full screen with a hole in the upper left corner. It is worth noting that the design of micro-curved surfaces is adopted this time, and the display areas on the left and right sides of the screen will not be bent, and all content can be displayed normally.

The earpiece is directly above the screen, and the OnePlus 9 Pro uses a two-in-one earpiece and speaker design. When playing audio, the earpiece sounds at the top.

On the back, we received a black version made of a special silk glass material, and the glass surface was corroded with a special potion, adding countless tiny hexagonal pyramid crystals on the surface. Although it is made of glass, it has a frosted texture. It feels like glass to the touch, and there is no need to worry about fingerprints.

OnePlus 9 Pro uses a rear-mounted four-camera matrix shape. The two main cameras are IMX 789 and IMX 766, and the two side by side below are black and white lenses and 3.3x telephoto lenses. In addition to the flash on the right, there is a colour temperature sensor and a laser focusing module.

The upper and lower ends of the fuselage, the bottom is Type-C interface (supports USB 3.1 data transmission), speaker opening and SIM card slot; the remaining two small holes are microphone openings.

On the side and the power button and the volume button, there is also the iconic three-stage switch of OnePlus. It can be seen that the middle frame, including the middle frame, is made of frosted material, which makes the OnePlus 9 Pro a different texture when holding the bare machine.

The box comes with a 65W super-fast charging and power cord, which is connected by a double C-port wire and supports a maximum of 65W output. In addition, it is compatible with the 45W PDO protocol and 45W PPS protocol.

We also received a new version of the 50W wireless charging dock. Compared with the previous generation, in addition to the power increase, the biggest improvement is that the wire of the wireless charger has finally been changed to a style that is common to the mobile phone charger, supporting plugging and unplugging, and the original one-piece In comparison, the wiring is more convenient, and the shared power supply is also more environmentally friendly.

Cameras

As the pinnacle of impact imaging, the OnePlus 9 Pro came up with four magic weapons; one is the OnePlus | Hasselblad Imaging System, the other is the exclusive custom main camera IMX 789, the third is a wide-angle free-form surface lens, and the fourth is a wide-angle lens. CMOS IMX 766 with outsole.

Since its inception, hardware has always been a strength of OnePlus, but in imaging, as computational photography has become more and more mainstream, OnePlus also urgently needs to form mature training standards on imaging algorithms to establish its own style.

If OnePlus was crossing the river by feeling the stones in the past, then the joint name with Hasselblad this time undoubtedly pointed out the direction for the next image development of OnePlus. With the rich experience accumulated by traditional camera manufacturers over the past 80 years, OnePlus can continue to learn in the process of cooperation with Hasselblad, avoid detours, and provide users with a mature imaging system.

This time, OnePlus and Hasselblad’s imaging system has brought about two major changes, one is Hasselblad’s natural colour optimization, and the other is Hasselblad’s professional camera. The former brings better colours to the photos taken directly from the mobile phone, while the latter refers to the professional model, and strives to restore the original professional process of the camera to the mobile phone.

Hasselblad natural colour optimization

For a long time, the imaging styles of different brands of mobile phones are very different. Most of the time, mobile phone photography is not 100% restoring the truest colours, but showing engineers’ colours are the best. It’s bluer when shooting the sky, greener when shooting plants, and the colour is more vivid and salivating when shooting food… For different scenes, different colour schemes are used to make the photos you take the best.

Of course, there are also manufacturers and users who prefer accurate restoration. For example, the iPhone series tend to pursue authenticity. This is suitable for each person.

On top of the Hasselblad colour optimization blessing, the OnePlus 9 Pro does not blindly pursue colour adjustment or so-called optimization, but on the basis of natural restoration, it is appropriately strengthened, pursuing a balance, not to mention RAW Can be used for deep excavation.

This time the Hasselblad natural colour optimization is like this. After professional calibration of the sensor, OnePlus and the Hasselblad camera, the Hasselblad ambassador carried out objective and subjective adjustments for hundreds of scenes, from hue to saturation and brightness. There are adjustments and strive to restore the colour performance of Hasselblad on the OnePlus 9 Pro.

Hasselblad professional camera

Based on Hasselblad’s UI style, OnePlus has developed the Hasselblad Professional Mode, bringing many options of professional cameras to mobile phones. Users can freely adjust all core parameters, including detailed values ​​such as ISO, exposure time, and white balance.

In addition, the professional camera this time also supports the peak focus function. With its assistance, you can better judge whether the focus is accurate according to the edge of the image during manual focus.

Of course, the professionalism of Hasselblad Pro Mode is not limited to the surface. In this mode, the OnePlus 9 Pro can directly shoot original DNG RAW films with 12bit colour depth. In this mode, not only does it have the same colour performance as a Hasselblad professional camera, but the high colour depth will also bring more freedom for the user’s post-processing. 8bit straight out late stage compared to 12bit RAW late-stage (note the transition of the sky in the upper right corner).

8bit colour depth contrast 12bit colour depth after post-processing the colour fault

Compared with the traditional 8bit colour depth, the common and more high-end 10bit colour depth is 64 times that of it, and the 12bit colour depth supported by OnePlus 9 Pro has achieved as much colour delicacy compared to the 10bit colour depth. The 64-fold improvement is just like high-resolution pictures have a larger cropping space; high-colour and deep pictures also have the same advantages in post-production space. 12bit colour depth RAW can still ensure continuous and uninterrupted colours after post-retouching, which is especially important when shooting large-area solid-colour scenes such as the starry sky.

Customized main camera IMX 789

This time, the OnePlus 9 Pro is equipped with an exclusive custom main camera, IMX 789.

By closing any two of the four pixels under one lens, the phase focusing of all pixels in any orientation is achieved.

Traditional dual-core focusing is not good for horizontal focusing performance.

From the specification point of view, its characteristics are very similar to the previous generation IMX 689. It adopts 2×2 OCL photosensitive technology, has the strongest omnidirectional focusing and low-light shooting capabilities in the current mobile CMOS, and supports HDR video shooting and dual native ISO.

The biggest change in IMX 789 is the size. The ratio of IMX 689 is traditional 4:3, the CMOS size is 1/1.43 inches, and the single-pixel size is 1.12 microns.

IMX 789 is further enlarged on the basis of the former; the ratio has become 16: 11, and the size has come to 1/1.35 inches, which is equivalent to IMX 689 stretched to both sides.

Therefore, when taking pictures, IMX 789 will work with a 4:3 format. At this time, the area of ​​the CMOS involved in imaging is exactly the same as that of the IMX 689; that is to say, it is equal to an IMX 689 when taking pictures. The only difference is that this CMOS is more powerful and supports 12bit colour depth original film output in professional mode.

The purpose of the larger size is to improve the video shooting effect. At a ratio of 16:11, IMX 789 can use more effective CMOS for video shooting.

A larger area of ​​effective CMOS can improve the video’s quality and make it possible to shoot 4K 120Hz video. In addition, it also supports up to 8K 30Hz video shooting, two high-standard video blessings, so that OnePlus 9 Pro has a larger post-editing space in video creation, which is very convenient for shooting various materials.

3. Freeform lens and IMX 766

On the OnePlus 9 Pro, the dual main camera configuration also continues, and the wide-angle lens has greatly improved both the CMOS and the lens quality. Upgraded from IMX 586 to IMX 766, the wide-angle lens has also been further developed in the direction of large pixels at the bottom, which can bring better low-light shooting effects.

On the lens, the OnePlus 9 Pro is also equipped with a free-form lens that has just emerged in the field of mobile phones. Compared with the traditional spherical lens, the curvature of the free-form lens surface is continuously variable, and there is no requirement for symmetry. Through the irregular free surface, it can ensure that the light is irradiated perpendicularly to the sensor. Picture distortion is reduced to a minimum.

According to tests, this time, the OnePlus 9 Pro achieves an ultra-wide viewing angle with an equivalent focal length of 14mm, while the distortion is only about 1%, which is far lower than 20% of a conventional wide-angle lens. And, thanks to the blessing of the free-form surface lens, the effect of the wide-angle macro function when used is closer to that of the dedicated macro lens, and there will be no serious distortion.

Real shots

After Hasselblad’s natural colour grading, the OnePlus 9 Pro main camera gives people the biggest look and feel, as the name suggests, that is nature. OnePlus 9 Pro does not deliberately brighten the picture and pull the saturation dazzling. The imaging style is more simple and elegant. The blue sky in many photos is the best proof.

At the same time, the OnePlus 9 Pro will also enhance the strong red and yellow of the main part of the picture, similar to the later method of partial colour processing, highlighting the theme through colour.

The night scene experience is also similar to the performance of the IMX 689 in the impression. The full-pixel Omni-directional focus brought by 2×2 OCL technology is not sloppy even in the dark night environment.

The imaging style is as mentioned before. Hasselblad Natural Colors is particularly fond of prominent colours such as red and yellow. While the overall colour palette is more elegant, these colours will be highlighted and particularly conspicuous.

Wide Angle

With the wide-angle lens under the free-form surface lens, the distortion of the corners is almost imperceptible, and it truly achieves both horizontal and vertical and large viewing angles. In addition to the correction of the corner distortion of the free-form lens, the IMX 766 also greatly improves the wide-angle imaging quality of the OnePlus 9 Pro in the night scene.

The most important point is that under Hasselblad’s tuning, the wide-angle and the main camera’s imaging styles are almost identical, realizing the unity of the post-photographic style.

Telephoto and black and white lens

The telephoto of the OnePlus 9 Pro has been slightly increased this time, with an 8-megapixel 3.3x telephoto, allowing ordinary users to have more camera options for taking pictures when travelling.

The 2x focal length itself can be perfectly covered by the high-pixel IMX 789 through digital zoom, and compared with the 2x focal length, 3.3x is more suitable for shooting close-ups of the scene. For shooting various flowers, green plants, and landmarks while travelling, the 3.3x focal length can cover the normal viewing range to meet the telephoto use’s needs in these scenes.

As for the black and white lens, although it is not necessarily more interesting than the previous generation of infrared photography, it can be regarded as a stylistic supplement that is better than nothing. Remove the CMOS Bayer filter, only accept the brightness information of light and dark, black and white photos can filter out the interference of colours, and better show the interaction and layering of light and shadow.

Video shooting

OnePlus 9 Pro supports 4K 120-frame shooting, which means that the original material can be slowed down by up to 4 times in the later stage, and it supports 4 times the size of cropping. At the same time, the edited finished product can still guarantee high quality and smooth 1080P 30 frames. Experience.

Screen

In the screen part, the screen of the OnePlus 9 Pro still supports the luxurious parameters of 2K 120Hz 10bit, upgraded to the latest E4 luminescent material, and the brightness is also increased to as high as 1400nit. The official ultra-high-precision calibration ensures that each OnePlus 9 Pro pixel can present the most accurate and natural colours. Through the image quality enhancement engine, it can improve the image quality of low-resolution videos and improve the smoothness of the picture through the MEMC frame supplement function.

However, our main focus this time is on two new features: adaptive refresh rate and game overclocking response.

Adaptive refresh rate

OnePlus 9 Pro uses a brand-new LTPO OLED, which realizes the new function of the adaptive refresh rate.

On the traditional LTPS OLED, due to the high leakage current of the LTPS, it is necessary to constantly refresh the screen and supplement the charge to maintain its normal working state, and the adaptive refresh rate cannot be realized.

Under the new LTPO technology, the addition of IGZO material greatly reduces the leakage current, thereby greatly reducing the refresh rate’s lower limit. The screen of the OnePlus 9 Pro only needs to be refreshed once per second to complete the charge replenishment, and the adaptive refresh rate synchronization of 1Hz-120Hz is thus realized.

Because of the self-luminous nature of the OLED screen, its power consumption is mainly concentrated on each refresh of the screen panel’s pixels—the lower the refresh rate, the lower the power consumption. Therefore, in daily use scenarios, whenever you pause the sliding screen when you read content, the refresh rate will automatically decrease to save power and then increase when you slide to achieve an infinite change between 1Hz-120Hz.

Therefore, its power-saving is also reflected in daily use scenarios, and there is almost no improvement in heavy use scenarios. According to each person’s habit of using the machine, its power-saving effect is also different, and you need to actually feel it by hand.

Game overclocking response

The game overclocking response is based on the additional benefits of LTPO hardware. This technology can increase the screen’s synchronisation frequency and the processor by 3-6 times, shorten the game delay by 25ms to 30ms, and greatly reduce the response time of the screen.

In the past, when it comes to control and hands, we often mentioned OnePlus, but this time, the OnePlus 9 Pro will bring a more hands-on experience.

The top is O-Sync on, and the bottom is off.

Sixth, performance: a variety of scheduling modes to meet different needs, the ultimate mode is comparable to the game flagship.

For a long time, OnePlus’ performance scheduling has been unexpectedly radical, and the performance is fully released in running time-sharing, and it can even compete with the game flagship. However, in this generation, the scheduling of the OnePlus 9 Pro has become much more conservative, and daily use pays more attention to the balance between performance, heat generation and power consumption.

Theoretical performance test

Master Lu

In the mobile phone test of Master Lu, the OnePlus 9 Pro scored 875146 points, ranking 8th in overall performance.

GeekBench

GeekBench generally, will use GeekBench 5 as a benchmark reference. OnePlus 9 Pro has a single-core score of 1099 and a multi-core score of 3449, which is the normal level of Snapdragon 888.

Androbench

OnePlus 9 Pro has a continuous read speed of 1540 MB/s and a continuous write speed of 404.46 MB/s, which is the normal performance of UFS 3.1. The encryption algorithm of the Snapdragon platform will cause the test speed of UFS 3.1 to below, so the comparison speed between different platforms is not of reference significance.

GFXbench

Compared with the previous test results of the Snapdragon 888 flagship, in the first few tests of GFXbench, the scores of the OnePlus 9 Pro were very good, but in the second half, the running scores of the OnePlus 9 Pro began to gradually lag behind the reference. Template, this should be mainly due to the conservative scheduling of the OnePlus 9 Pro.

Game performance test

Glory of the King

Playing “King of Glory” with the highest picture quality, the OnePlus 9 Pro has never been able to reach the full frame of 90FPS, but the frame rate stability is good, with an average frame rate of 79.9FPS.

The Peaceful Elite

OnePlus 9 Pro has not yet adapted to the high frame rate mode of “Peace Elite”, so we chose the high-load HDR HD+60 frame mode for testing. The whole frame rate is basically above 59FPS except for small fluctuations, and the average frame rate is 59.4 FPS.

Ace fighter

Since “Ace Warrior” will force the frame to be locked at 60 when the character is waiting for resurrection, in order to avoid interference, the data is filtered, and only the frame rate of the battle is displayed.

“Ace Warrior” is highly compatible with high frame rate mode, the average frame rate can reach 118FPS throughout the game, and the optimization is also very good.

The original god

We set the highest image quality +60 frame mode for “Original God” and perform performance testing according to the path shown in the figure.

The performance of the OnePlus 9 Pro in “Original God” is relatively bad. Caton appears more frequently, and you can see that the fluctuations in the second half are particularly frequent.

However, in the author’s opinion, this is not to say that the performance of the OnePlus 9 Pro is not enough, but because of the optimization of the game.

Earlier, we came to a conclusion-“Original God” is currently a CPU game on the Android side and basically does not take up GPU performance too much.

One plus 9 Pro is one minute after the “Original God” game started, the super-large core and the large core are directly sabotaged, and only the small core is fully loaded, so it is natural that there will be a stutter under scheduling.

In both the theoretical performance test and the actual game test, the core temperature of the OnePlus 9 Pro under the heaviest load of “Yuan Shen” and GFXbench did not exceed 51 ℃. In sharp contrast, the core temperature of those models with excellent running scores tends to reach as high as 76°C in the test. This shows that the OnePlus 9 Pro has strict temperature control and conservative scheduling strategies. I don’t know that the system’s scheduling in the game scene can be improved when it is officially released.

Read Also: OnePlus Watch Officially Released to Support NFC and Blood Oxygen Detection

Battery

Charging

Under the 65W super wired flash charge, the OnePlus 9 Pro only needs 10 minutes to charge 46% of the power, and it takes about 27 minutes to fully charge.

The 50W super wireless flash charging is also very fast, and the charging power is very stable throughout the whole process. In about 43 minutes, power can be increased from 1% to 100%.

Endurance

The battery capacity of the OnePlus 9 Pro is 4500mAh. It consumes 8% of the power when watching videos online for 30 minutes. Video life is expected to be about 6.5 hours. Although the LTPO screen saves power, the effect needs to be reflected in daily use scenarios, so the battery life performance of the OnePlus 9 Pro in this type of heavy test has not changed much.

Verdict

Once Yijia debuted in the name of flagship killer, and the so-called flagship killer naturally competed with all-around strength, including performance, screen, image, and charging. Prior to this, although the OnePlus mobile phone’s influence system was also outstanding, there was still a gap between it and the peak, and it was far less prominent than the screen. This OnePlus 9 series, is precisely in the field of imaging outside the screen. Work hard again, and climb to a new peak after the screen.

The rear camera system of the OnePlus 9 Pro has improved hardware while practising the dual-main camera strategy.

The main camera goes a step further, strengthening video shooting capabilities and adding 12bit professional post-production capabilities. The wide-angle lens has made rapid progress. The addition of a free-form surface lens and the larger IMX 766 have improved the image quality of the wide-angle lens. The telephoto has been slightly upgraded to meet the daily needs of long-distance photography.

The only thing that may be regrettable is the black and white lens. For the imaging flagship, it seems a bit redundant and not as interesting as the previous generation infrared filter lens. In this imaging system, it can only be said to be better than nothing.

The improvement of images cannot rely solely on hardware stacking, and algorithms are also very important. This time, the joint name of OnePlus and Hasselblad also really worked.

Camera manufacturers have a wealth of experience, and this is precisely what mobile phone manufacturers lack. A photo goes from the CMOS collection of light to the processing of the imaging system, to filming, to the complete process of colour correction. With the help of camera manufacturers, mobile phone manufacturers can have a deeper understanding and be able to offer users a more mature imaging system and bring a better shooting experience. In addition to images, the OnePlus 9 Pro is still the uncompromising screen king.

The variable refresh rate of the LTPO screen was a new feature that many digital fans dreamed about last year and finally came to us this year with a full body of 1Hz-120Hz.

Although the increase in battery life of the variable refresh rate depends more on the user’s daily mobile phone habits, its effect can only be determined after personal experience. However, as long as you are not refreshing the phone screen constantly, then its effect will be reflected.

Finally, let us return to the starting point. OnePlus is still the flagship killer we are familiar with, and all aspects of the hardware configuration are very attractive. What’s more gratifying is that not only the hardware stockpiling, OnePlus is also more mature, and it has begun to use multiple hardware and software. The addition of ColorOS this time is the best proof. With the easy-to-use ColorOS, it combines with the hydrogen OS, which is the most suitable for high-brush environments, plus the Hasselblad blessing, for the meticulous polishing of the colour and the imaging system. This time, the OnePlus 9 Pro will truly “out of the circle”, not only known for its screen machine king but also to become a new video machine king recognized by people.