Real talk time
There's no reason to use a flagship killer phone that falls short in water resistance,
Camera quality, or features like wireless charging when you can just grab one of the other half a dozen or more than half a dozen
actual flagships that are crammed into a drawer in your office
And that is the biggest reason that I've never daily driven a one plus device
Their slogan is "Never Settle"
But their shtick has always been "bang for the buck" which made them devices that were easy to recommend
But never one that I would actually keep in my pocket for the long term
"Never" I really hope that words delicious because the OnePlus 8 Pro and its little brother the OnePlus eight are getting
dangerously close to making me eat it just
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The specs of both the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro are cutting-edge
snapdragon 865 processors with 8 or 12 gigs of ram
128 or 256 gigs of high-speed UFS 3.0 storage
lightning-fast in-display fingerprint sensors
OnePlus' legendarily optimized oxygen OS Android variant, and X55 5G modems for the latest in modern mobile connectivity
That is assuming your neighbors haven't burned down all the nearby antennas. And they are just as pretty on the outside
Both the 8 and 8 Pro are aluminum and curved Gorilla Glass sandwich designs that remind me very much of a Galaxy S9 and
S9+ but with a notification slider instead of a bixby button and to be clear I
intend that comparison in a good way. The feel in the hand is absolutely
Wonderful with a subtly more rounded curve on the back and very smooth transitions from glass to metal to glass
Although that doesn't mean I don't have complaints. It's kind of my job to complain about things OnePlus' camera bump is
extremely aggressive this year with the 8 pros in particular likely to cause some discomfort for those of us who go bareback with our devices
Now it wouldn't bother me quite so much if the ridge wasn't as sharp
Making it such a strong contrast against the smooth curvy feel of the rest of the device
My other gripe is with the inclusion of a hole punch display
Last year's 7 Pro and 7T Pro used a motorized selfie camera that gave OnePlus, in my humble opinion, the best
implementation of an all screen phone. Now I understand that this was to save weight and internal space and
unofficially probably to improve the water resistance that OnePlus builds in but doesn't certify on their phones
but now we're stuck on both models, regular and Pro, with an
asymmetrical dead zone that makes me
honestly think longingly of the anxiety that I used to feel about my fear of getting a dead or stuck pixel on my new monitor
and not being able to return it
How far we've come?
At least the displays are a lot better than they used to be though
both are high refresh rate OLED panels with a thin sexy aspect ratio and
Outstanding color accuracy and HDR performance delivering a wonderful on-the-go movie watching experience
coupled with the strong clear stereo speakers
Enough of what's the same between the two devices though? Let's talk about what is different
The 8 Pro is a touch larger and about 10 percent heavier.
Now, it's not a huge difference on paper but in practice it makes them feel kind of like
His-and-hers devices it also comes with some extra features. I'm gonna start with the least important ones.
MEMC or motion estimation motion compensation
technology is that high frame rate video conversion mode that sports fans leave enabled on their TVs that makes everything look like a
Cheap soap opera at best and an artifact ridden pile of garbage at worst. It's s*** obviously
Thankfully it's turned off by default. So good job OnePlus. There's adaptive color temperature. I also turned this off
I don't like it on iPhones and I don't like it here
but what it has got that I do like is a 200 NIT brighter and
higher resolution display. Now at this kind of a size the difference between 1080p and
1440p is something that I would have to be trying to read my Google Docs in their thumbnail
Preview in order to notice, but it is there and on the OnePlus 8 Pro
it's the only way I'm aware of to have both your high resolution cake and eat your 120 Hertz refresh rate to
Yes, my friends unlike Samsung who locked out simultaneously
maxing the refresh rate and
Resolution of their s20 lineup OnePlus has allowed their users both
silky smooth scrolling and
Ultra sharp picture quality. Now, I didn't find myself noticing the 120 Hertz difference much after the initial. Whoa
Gee, this is so smooth
excitement because ninety Hertz feels pretty good, too, but
Given our next differences here the up grade two faster more
power-efficient lpddr5 am and the 210 milliamp hour bigger battery
What the hey? might as well keep it enabled.
Bringing us finally to a really really big one warp charge 30 T
30 watt charging that
Well, okay actually strictly speaking. They do they do both have that but the difference is that the 8 Pro does it
wirelessly
I Read that and I was like what?
it's true my friends if you're willing to endure the whiny fan noise of OnePlus' warp charge 30 wireless charger and
The fact that your phone will still be noticeably warm to the touch when you pick it up
In spite of the chargers built-in cooling fan
You can wirelessly charge your OnePlus 8 Pro faster than most of your friends are
topping up with a cable and a standard wall wart
And it's got reverse charging too which can be handy if you use wireless earbuds, which you will because no headphone jack there
I got that in there. There's no headphone jack. Finally
There's the camera hardware instead of a primary, ultra wide, and macro loadout the Pro gets a primary, ultra wide,
optically stabilized 3x hybrid zoom telephoto with a
Fourth color filter camera that's supposed to allow you to apply various lighting effects and filters
I don't know
I'll leave it to the instagramers to tell you how good that is because I'm not really into that stuff
As for whether the other cameras held up to my expectations
This is the one part of this review where things get a little bit tough for me
I already alluded to one plusses abandonment of their "flagship killer" positioning
And so I guess I might as well say it the 8 starts at seven hundred US dollars and the fully loaded 8 Pro
costs a thousand. now I can forgive a
solid if not industry-leading camera when you're not flirting with the
$1,000 price barrier
but when your night mode performance gets crushed by my two year old daily driver Note 9 and then
utterly embarrassed by an iPhone 11 Pro
It starts to raise some uncomfortable questions
Now the hardware itself is top shelf. I'm especially impressed by the inclusion of
two 48 megapixel sensors in the 8 Pro
1 cutting-edge model in the main shooter and a lower tier one in the wide
And I generally like OnePlus's approach to software processing. They take a
What-you-see-is-what-you-get approach to colors that I respect a lot compared to some manufacturers tendency to over compensate for poor lighting to the point
Where you end up capturing a completely different looking scene
But there are definitely going to be edge cases if you buy this device and particularly its little brother
Where you're going to be acutely aware that it is, no, not in fact an iPhone or a Pixel in your hands and
it's always going to be apparent when you're shooting video. This footage of our cat Dash shows the
inconsistency of OnePlus's on the fly white balance
And also what a blocky mess her fur turns into shows the relatively poor
processing under poor indoor lighting conditions. The ace up OnePlus's is sleeve that might counterbalance the camera for a lot of people though is
Oxygen OS. It is such an apt name for it because the switch from anything else
Feels like such a breath of fresh air
I mean
It's almost fast to its own detriment sometimes
Double-clicking the lock button to launch the camera while the display is on will lock the phone
then it's like "oh
snap
you want the camera" and it wakes the phone back up, then launches the camera all
almost as quickly as an iPhone 11 Pro just
Launches the camera app. To be clear, I'm not hating on the iPhone either. It's a really fast phone. I'm just saying that this is
darn impressive, and
It's clear that OnePlus has made the right investments over the last few years
the writing's been on the wall for the hardware race for some time phone processors just
Aren't going to get faster the way that they used to. Look at the marginal improvements from the 2018 to 2020 iPad Pros
it's all gonna be in software moving forward, and Oxygen OS with its snappiness and
All-day everyday battery management is one of the best, if not the best Android is out there
If you can afford it
Something I've never had to say before. As for me, I don't have to afford it
So the only question left to answer is; do I go for it?
Do I put a notch in my pocket and give up my headphone jack for this?
Snappy lightning fast experience.
I think I'm gonna give it a try. I use my Airpods Pros more often than anything else these days anyway, and the Galaxy Fold
Rest in peace, the YouTube app doesn't support stories, which I need for work
so I haven't been able to use that already had a notch and so I guess I kind of
kind of like moved on
I might end up moving back though
we'll see
Just like we'll see how he transitions to our sponsor this time
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So thanks for watching guys. If you enjoyed this video, you know
maybe check out what a difference a camera can make we did a
photography challenge putting a high end smartphone camera in the hands of an experienced photographer
against a high-end real camera in the hands of
Basically a novice. Me. It's a really fun video that's worth checking out