OnePlus 10 Pro Review: Subtle Polishing True Flagship

1. Introduction, Unboxing, and Design

OnePlus these two years began to shift, from inside to outside, including marketing, is no longer previously small and beautiful. Is this good? The author can only say that each has its benefits, before with the OnePlus phone others do not know what brand, now finally is some visibility, such as inviting spokesmen, camera co-branding, replacement ColorOS are to the public, to enhance sales, publicity is also very different from the previous way.

Rarely, the product itself still maintains the usual style of the OnePlus, exquisite shape taking into account the feelings, excluding software aspects, the author personally feels that the OnePlus 9 Pro should be one of the best flagship phones last year, weight and feel are not to be picked.

Many Android phones, OnePlus may not be the strongest performance, but to say that the shape of the experience, and OnePlus not a few fight, the flagship generations adhering to the boss Pete Lau that “feel really XX good” no compromise.

This year is the ninth year of the OnePlus cell phone, found on the positioning of the high-end flagship, this road is very difficult to go, but the brand came out, the global market and Samsung Apple to fight, in the Indian market is sitting on the top of the high-end flagship chair.

For the brand established nine years, the transformation of the inherent style is not simple, but with the assistance of the OPPO tree deep roots, the OnePlus cell phone is quite smooth, successively launched OnePlus 9 series, OnePlus 9RT, and other models, as well as this time to talk about OnePlus 10 Pro.

The OnePlus 10 Pro has two colorways, Black and Green, each with a different back cover process, of which black is silk glass process 3.0, and green is the new starburst glass process, the one in the author’s hands is green.

The front of the OnePlus 10 Pro is still designed with a perforated screen and a micro-curved form, similar to its predecessor, with good bezel control and the short-focus fingerprint recognition, which had been the subject of many complaints in the previous generation, is finally gone, and the recognition area has been changed to a normal, customary area.

The hole-dig screen design is not unexpected, the current top screen can not overcome the under-screen camera, there are bound to be trade-offs, not to mention that most users are now gradually accepting the hole-dig, where OnePlus 10 Pro premiered the dual brightness color calibration, based on the regular high brightness calibration, the new low brightness calibration, can be interpolated between 100nit-500nit brightness processing, regardless of the brightness level, maintaining a uniform color regardless of brightness.

In terms of parameters, the OnePlus 10 Pro is still a top specification, with a Samsung AMOLED screen on the front, supporting 2K+ resolution and 120Hz LTPO adaptive screen refresh rate, native 10bit color, peak brightness 1300nit, while some scenes achieve a 1000Hz extreme touch sampling rate.

In this way, it seems that there is not much difference with the previous generation. The focus of the upgrade is LTPO 2.0 technology. The so-called 2.0 is to further improve the delay. The first thing to understand is that LTPO technology lies in the variable refresh rate, which controls high to low refresh rate, but this process has delays and also produces lag, while the OnePlus 10 Pro reduces the 700ms delay to 75ms, and 1Hz back up to 120Hz to Almost 0 latency.

The other is to use variable refresh rate to achieve power saving strategy, different applications adapt to different refresh rates, such as information flow sliding is 120Hz, watching video adjusted to 30Hz, screen stopping adjusted to 1Hz, typing switch to 120Hz, typing gap quickly inverted to within 10Hz, to achieve power saving purposes.

AOD has also been upgraded, most of the current common rest screen display is running at 30Hz refresh rate, OnePlus 10 Pro is achieved 1Hz, a total of 25 patterns support, it is said that the rest screen scene single scene power consumption is reduced by more than 30%, it has not been pushed yet, I hope the subsequent push to older models.

The back of the phone is the biggest change in the shape of the OnePlus 10 Pro. The back cover is a new starburst glass process, which does not stain fingerprints while increasing the flashing highlights, and then there is the lens module, which is also a more controversial design before the release.

The rear lens module area extends to the middle frame, to say that the current mainstream design of cell phones are rectangular layout, change is the lens position is different, OnePlus 10 Pro this design is quite rare, three lenses and flash parallel arrangement, which flash is also around design, and the lens arrangement is not inconsistent.

As for whether it looks good or not, it depends on personal aesthetics, in short, the recognition is there, is unforgettable, if I choose, I choose OnePlus 9 Pro.

The lens protection area is made of 3D nano-microcrystalline ceramic material, after 25 days of the production cycle, after 20 processes, and the frame is almost integrated, tight seams, and is not particularly protruding, in the hands is a premium texture, OnePlus phone workmanship no spray, exquisite is finished. The package comes with an 80W charger, protective case, and stickers.

2. System

OnePlus 10 Pro running Android 12-based ColorOS 12.1 official version, not part of the big version update, but added some small features, try to all say before already there is not much space.

ColorOS 12.1 overall animation is not too much change, where OnePlus the phone has once hydrogen OS icon, not the native icon, the time display is also with OnePlus unique logo, such as the number 1 is red.

ColorOS 12.1 adds dynamic memory compression and unified memory management technology to AI storage compression, making the background application cache performance 30% higher, while with the support of AI resource scheduling technology, the overall smoothness of the machine is increased by 6% and the frame drop rate is reduced by 10%, which is claimed to be stable and smooth for 36 months.

Display, OnePlus 10 Pro does not support video dynamic frame insertion technology, rather unexpected, the reason may be LTPO 2.0 technology to allow video adjustment to 30Hz, so the direct cancellation of this feature there is no need to be so extreme, completely can put a switch, so that users can choose their own.

Like the previous generations, vibration is the OnePlus 10 Pro main highlight, equipped with a new custom X-axis linear motor, volume compared to the previous generation increased by 14%, the amount of vibration increased by 47%, is currently the largest amount of Android phone horse vibration, and relies on electromagnetic force drive, compared to pure electric drive start and stop faster.

And adapt the O-Haptics vibration system, adding more than 130 kinds of vibration, such as the system interface of the switch, typing vibration, camera shutter, etc., in addition, to support the “peace elite”, “Honor of King” high-quality vibration.

It is worth noting here that the vibration comparison is OnePlus 9 Pro, however, the OnePlus 8 Pro vibration amount is also better than OnePlus 9 Pro, but OnePlus 10 Pro vibration can indeed, compared to previous generations have significantly improved, there is one said one vibration feedback is cool.

Privacy is common permissions control, application lock, etc., the new clipboard management, to prevent applications from viewing the contents of the clipboard, in addition to the system split, privacy stand-in, and other functions.

3. Performance and games

The core configuration, the OnePlus 10 Pro equipped with a Snapdragon 8 Gen1 processor, with LPDDR5 memory + UFS 3.1 super-speed flash memory, three sets of basic nothing to see, the key is heat dissipation.

The machine is claimed to be the strongest heat dissipation efficiency in the history of OnePlus, built-in VC even a thermal plate, copper graphite sheet, graphite sheet, heat dissipation silicone, metal frame, and other five heat dissipation materials, the use of heat source dispersion stacking design of the heat dissipation structure, the formation of a heat dissipation channel, heat dissipation area reached 34119mm², comparable to a large half of A4 paper, to create a three-dimensional space cooling system.

The first thing you need to do is to take a look at the score. The actual test shows that the AnTuTu runtime of OnePlus 10 Pro is 1019819 (with high-performance mode turned on), nearly 1.02 million, compared to the runtime of Xiaomi 12 Pro, the GPU scores of both are almost the same, the difference is that the CPU score of OnePlus 10 Pro is slightly ahead, it seems that the frequency is pulled higher than Xiaomi 12 Pro, but the absolute performance is the same.

In terms of storage, the OnePlus 10 Pro is equipped with UFS 3.1 flash memory. The measured sequential read speed is 1802.8MB/s, and the sequential write reaches 1246MB/s, which is a normal performance.

Then look at the gaming performance, is the main upgrade of OnePlus 10 Pro, equipped with HyperBoost full-link game stable frame technology, said to be the new inflection point of the hand game experience, the power of the joint 4 R&D base, a collection of a variety of AI algorithms, took two years to polish.

There are mainly three core technologies, respectively, graphics heterogeneity, GPA extreme stable frame, O-Sync overclocking response, which graphics heterogeneity is mainly the CPU and GPU sent graphics instructions for refinement and disassembly, and then re-allocate resources reasonably, such as group combat to provide higher performance.

GPA extreme stable frame is well understood, is a technology to stabilize the frame rate, O-Sync overclocked response is an exclusive custom low latency chip to enhance the touch response, such as “Peace Elite” game to achieve faster open mirror, compared to the previous generation to achieve 60Hz, 90Hz full scene coverage, low brightness scenes are also supported.

Honor of King

For the Honor of kings MOBA game, the higher load is the group battle scene, a single person with a line basically can not use high-frequency operation, so the Snapdragon 8 Gen1 is fully competent, the test scene for the dream world chaos, group battle frequency is high, but still able to 90 frames stable not a card, during the frame drop is due to switching interface, half an hour no heat, the average temperature of 36.7, the highest temperature 40.3.

Genshin Impact

Then is the delightful “Genshin Impact”, the early stage can still be stable to 60fps, the subsequent body heat began to drop the frame to 40fps, relatively speaking, OnePlus 10 Pro can maintain 60fps for a long time but want to keep the high frame rate, almost no phone to do, on the one hand, the phone heat limit, on the other hand, maybe optimization reasons, measured half an hour average temperature 40.5, the highest temperature 44.5.

Peace Elite

The mainstream game “Peace Elite” has a unique optimization, open 90fps almost stable into a straight line, heat is not obvious, the average temperature of 37.8, the highest temperature of 40.6, but to the late seems to have locked frame situation.

4. Camera and Photography

Camera, OnePlus 10 Pro is still and Hasselblad name brought the second generation of cell phone imaging system Hasselblad image 2.0, the rear lens is 48-megapixel main camera (exclusive custom IMX789, 1/1.43 inches) + 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle (custom 150° ultra-wide) + 8-megapixel telephoto (3.3X optical zoom, OIS + electronic anti-shake) three cameras. The camera supports 4K/120 fps shooting, and a 2MP black-and-white lens has been cut compared to its predecessor.

Since it is named after Hasselblad, it has the unique Hasselblad Natural Color Optimization, upgraded to 2.0 with over 500 core scenes of color optimization to better match Hasselblad’s signature color performance. In addition to data specifications to achieve the shooting – storage – display of the full chain of 10-bit processing, you can straight out of 10-bit color depth photos.

Daytime sample photos

Note in advance, the author’s local weather for many days in a row cloudy and hazy, as well as dense fog, shooting environment is extremely poor, but also helpless, and the camera is in pre-tuning, so it does not represent the final actual performance.

Overall, the OnePlus 10 Pro has improved compared to its predecessor, with details restored in place, relying on the advantages brought by the main camera, the dynamic range is wide enough, but brings more noise, zooming in to see the obvious, further improvement is needed.

Another 50-megapixel wide-angle lens shot by default with 12 megapixels, the default 110° conventional, can be manually opened 150°, but unfortunately the lack of the main camera Hasselblad color, telephoto is also the same.

Speaking of telephoto lenses, this is an 8-megapixel lens, equivalent focal length of 77mm, support optical stabilization and f/2.4 aperture, the specifications look good, support 3.3X optical zoom, but to 30X zoom is the use of cropping, not as good as the periscopic telephoto brings the advantages of ultra-long distance shooting.

Night sample photos

Unlike the daytime scenes, the dynamic range of the night scene of the OnePlus 10 Pro is smaller, the overall exposure level is excellent, and the detail reproduction is rich, the color reproduction is a bit unsatisfactory, which is expected to be caused by the foggy weather, but after opening the night scene mode, the color reproduction is very accurate, and the imaging speed is acceptable.

5. Battery life and charging

OnePlus 10 Pro is equipped with a 5000mAh battery, which is unexpected, there are few flagship models with such a large capacity, mainly because of weight reduction and fast charging, but the OnePlus 10 Pro has achieved both, weighing 200.5g, which is worthy of praise.

The stress test is a built-in feature of the AnTuTu review, which tests the stability of the device’s performance by performing high-load calculations, requiring the CPU to perform a large number of calculations, so the power consumption is greater compared to video, daily use, and other scenarios.

In the superpower consumption test, the OnePlus 10 Pro persisted for 170 minutes, or open 2K+ 120Hz scene, this achievement is not to say that the Snapdragon 8 Gen1, or in many Snapdragon 888 models is also enough top, so it can be seen that the 5000mAh battery capacity does have the advantage of long battery life. If not for the Snapdragon 8 power consumption problem (or switch 1080P), it is expected that the OnePlus 10 Pro can have better battery life performance.

This result is based on the CPU is fully loaded all the time, and taking into account our daily use and screen time, this data is converted to a multiple, resulting in a continuous battery life of about 6 hours for the OnePlus 10 Pro.

In terms of charging, the OnePlus 10 Pro supports 80W wired fast charging, with two modes to choose from, the fastest 32 minutes to 100%, while supporting 50W wireless fast charging, 47 minutes to 100%.

After the actual test, the OnePlus 10 Pro took 31 minutes from 1% to 100%, and the official data is not much different, including 9 minutes to charge 44%, 15 minutes to charge 66% power, this speed is not slow, after all, is a large 5000mAh battery.

6. Summary

The OnePlus 10 Pro is still stacked with materials, but the rare thing is that the software tuning, further enhances the hardware strength, also known as “polishing”, while the shape is very recognizable and impressive, is a high-end flagship with almost no shortcomings.

The new machine was released before Pete Lau discussed what is a true flagship, he believes that three points rely on material, seven points rely on polishing, which is very reasonable, in fact, the OnePlus 10 Pro also has a clear label, seeking stability.

The overall look of the OnePlus 10 Pro, although stacked materials, but not enough extreme, if you do not consider the shape, more like a routine upgrade of the previous generation, or more focused on the experience, stable into the stacked materials. The idea is to have a configuration with no shortcomings and a delicate body, with mature technology all in one, this concept coincides with Apple.

And other cell phone brands are different, OnePlus emphasis on flagship publicity at the beginning of its founding, over the years the erection of high-end tone has been deeply rooted in people’s hearts, so without too many scary first technologies, but also to the real flagship, as Pete Lau said the real flagship theory, author agree with part of the quote before the Internet to see a very appropriate sentence: “The phone with good parameters does not necessarily work well, but the phone that works well must be the one with the best parameters.”

There is no doubt that the high-end tone erected by OnePlus is very successful, heaps of material enough, parameters look good, not to mince words, OnePlus 10 Pro has an excellent experience, but always feel the lack of so much innovation, it is not obvious today, but also with parameters and experience to make up, but for a technology company, the only way to step forward is to continue to innovate.

Note: This review was originally published on AnTuTu Benchmark by Tangzheng.