ONEPLUS HAS A TRUE FLAGSHIP in the form of the OnePlus 7 Pro, but the company hasn’t forgotten its roots in providing high-end phones at mid-range prices. Case in point, the new OnePlus 7.
Coming in at the same price as its predecessor, some £499, the OnePlus 7 is basically a refresh of the OnePlus 6T rather than an evolution like its larger Pro sibling.
While it isn’t the Chinese firm’s headline act, it’s still worth a closer look.
Design
Pop a OnePlus 7 next to a 6T and you’ll struggle to notice any differences, other than the shiny, fingerprint-magnet finish of Mirror Black model.
With the exception of a larger camera module and more prominent branding on the back, both phones are nearly identical.
That means there’s still no IP water resistance rating, though the phone has things like silicon seals to allow it to survive an accident dip in the drink.
And the slightly naff fake speaker grill on the bottom edge is still present and correct, which seems to be there just for aesthetic symmetry rather than offer anything.
Overall, this lack of design change is disappointing for OnePlus fans who don’t want to fork out for the 7 Pro.
But then again the 6T was a lovely looking big screen phone with solid build quality and neat ergonomics.
By not straying from that aesthetic, the OnePlus 7 is by default one of the nicest Android phone designs around. And the phone feels very nice in the hands, if a fraction heavier than its predecessor.
Display
Given the design of the OnePlus 7 isn’t really different to the 6T’s, you won’t be surprised to hear it also has a 6.41in AMOLED display.
The same FHD+ resolution is also present and correct, and there’s no high-refresh rate wizardry as found in the 7 Pro. We wouldn’t have turned our noses up at a higher resolution display, but there’s an argument that a price hike and hit on battery life probably wouldn’t have been worth a slightly sharper screen.
Much like the design, having the basically same screen as the 6T is no bad thing, as the latter’s display was pretty good. The OnePlus 7 delivers near enough the same pleasant mix of punchy but balanced colours, plenty of contrast, and solid brightness.
Out of the box, the colours and contrast of the 7 tend to look more natural than the default setting of the 6T.
Both phones can be set to use the cinema-level DCI-P3 colour gamut, which we prefer, though the 7 now offers more scope for adjusting the colour temperature levels for that mode, sRGB, and the new NTSC mode.
If we were forced to choose, we’d pick theOnePlus 7’s screen over the 6T’s, but there’s not a great deal in it, and both displays do a fine job of make everything from perusing emails and web pages to watching Netflix or gaming on the go, a joy.
Performance, storage and battery life
One of the main differences between the OnePlus 7 and its predecessor is its system-on-a-chip. Predictably, OnePlus has equipped the 7 with the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 as the 7 Pro.
As such, you can pretty much take what we said about the performance of the company’s flagship and apply it here.
In Geekbench 4, our review unit hit a single-score score of 3,449 and a scored 11,064 in the multi-core test. That’s basically on par with the 7 Pro.
Our handset came with 8GB of RAM, though there’s an option for 6GB; we’re not convinced that in real-world use you’d notice the difference between the amount of RAM, as OnePlus does a very good job of ensuring its Oxygen OS doesn’t bog down Android. Then again, having an extra 2GB to spare is no bad thing.
OnePlus has harped on about “the speed you need” and other such performance-related phrases for a few years, but has a reputation for delivering upon such boasts.
So unsurprisingly, the OnePlus 7 powers through pretty much anything we can throw at it, from having multiple apps on the go to smooth performance in games.
However, side-by-side comparisons to the 6T don’t show much difference between the handsets. Apps and games load a little faster with the 7, but it’s hardly a night and day comparison, particularly as the 6T was no slouch to begin with and is only half-a-year-old.
Storage comes in 128GB or 256GB guises. The former is more than enough for most people, thanks to all the cloud storage services available, but it’s nice to still have the larger option if you’re a massive photo and app hoarder.
Battery life is pretty much the same as the 6T, meaning you’ll get a good day’s use out of the phone with a mix of web browsing, social media, emails, video watching, and some gaming. A bedtime charge is still necessary, and thanks to fast charging the battery can juice up in no time.
Audio performance has been given a proper boost, with the 7 offering stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support. That results in much punchier, clearer and aurally pleasing sonics from the phone when compared to the sometimes weedy sound of the 6T’s mono speaker.
Camera
The second major change in the OnePlus 7 can be seen with the phone’s camera modules. It eschews the 16MP and 20MP dual-camera array of the 6T, and takes the 48MP lens from the 7 Pro and combines it with a secondary 5MP camera for collecting extra info like depth data for portrait pics.
As such, the 7 lacks the flexibility of the 7 Pro’s triple-camera setup, but on-paper offers a better main camera than the 6T.
Images shot in the standard photo mode, which uses a pixel-binning technique to resolve 48MP shots into 12MP photos, are pretty much the same as those on the 7 Pro. There’s a decent dynamic range, plenty of light and details are nicely picked out.
At its best, the 7 produces photos that are in the same ballpark as flagship phones. But we still feel something like the Pixel 3, or indeed the Pixel 3a, produce better images on the whole and deliver better point-and-shoot results.
The ‘pro’ mode of the camera allows for JPEGs to be captured in 48-megapixels. But like 7 Pro, there’s some odd processing at work and when zooming in reveals muddy details in the pics, almost as if the pixels have been painted in rather than neatly rendered. This is a bit disappointing as it almost makes the 48MP lens feel more like a marketing gimmick than a boost in photography chops over previous OnePlus phones, which have always done well but haven’t reached the upper echelons of phone photography.
Compared to the 6T, the OnePlus 7 takes brighter shots with more true-to-life colours, thanks to the 48MP lens letting in more light. In some cases, this means it captures more granular detail than its predecessor, though to really notice you’d need to zoom in or blow up the pics on an external display.
Low-light performance has been improved over the 6T, though the 7’s ‘Nightscape’ mode still can’t keep up with the Pixel 3’s Night Site or the low-light photography of the iPhone Xs, Galaxy S10 phones or the Huawei P30.
We found that in very bright outdoor environments, the 7 shot better colour balanced photos than the 6T, but at the same time they looked a little overexposed or washed out. The 6T’s shots in comparison presented pics of gorse bushes and parks scenes with punchier, if perhaps a tad too vivid, colours and darker shadows. We’ll play the subjectivity card here, as some might prefer the more vibrant colours of the 6T to the more natural results of the 7.
The OnePlus 7 also appears to be more conservative when it comes to applying auto HDR, while the 6T tends to be more zealous in its use.
Rear camera portrait pics with the 7 are pretty similar to the 6T’s, delivering nicely blurred backgrounds if perhaps applying the effect a little too tightly around the subject. meaning edges that you’d expect to be in focus are a little blurred. But the 7’s portrait pics are still beaten by the likes of the Pixel 3.
The front-facing camera is the same 16MP snapper the 6T has and produces pretty much the same results; that’s a good thing as the front camera of the 6T is very good.
Selfies and portrait pics through the camera contain plenty of detail and result in some nice pics suitable for social media posts or ridiculous filters. We reckon the OnePlus 7’s front-facing camera is on a level with those on flagship phones, though it lacks any dual-camera, wide-angle wizardry that most will be able to live without.
Video capture once again goes up to 4K at 60 frames per second and delivers pretty decent results. To our eyes, the 7 lets in a little more light than the 6T, but the differences aren’t that discernible. Video stabilisation is decent enough, but it’s not as good at stripping out judder like the Galaxy S10 models or the hybrid electronic and optical stabilisation of the Pixel 3.
Overall we’d say the photography chops of the 7 are very good and do improve upon those of the 6T. But you’ll need to go looking for differences, and they are still beaten by the cameras on the current crop of flagships.
If you want the very best smartphone camera, we’d suggest you go for a Pixel phone, but if that’s not a priority, the OnePlus 7’s cameras won’t disappoint.
In short
It’s clear that OnePlus channelled all its innovation into the 7 Pro, which is understandable but we’d rather have seen the company do more with its flagship-killer handset rather than make its own flagship, as that’s previously been OnePlus’ calling card.
Putting aside that slight disappointment, the OnePlus 7 is a thoroughly excellent phone. It blends a lovely design, display and UI, with powerful performance and a solid camera setup, all for a price on the £500 mark.
If you have a OnePlus 6T, we advise you to stay put as the 7 doesn’t offer enough to make the upgrade worthwhile; for that, you need to fork out more for the 7 Pro.
But for anyone looking to spend mid-range phone money and get a lot of bang-for-the-buck, then the OnePlus 7 must be considered as it’s one of the best pound-for-pound Android phones around. µ
The good
Blisteringly quick performance, lovely design, same price as the 6T.
The bad
Rear cameras aren’t as good as we’d like, only Mirror Black finish is available.
The ugly
There’s not a lot of innovation here.
Bartender’s score
8/10