The OnePlus 9 Professional (starting off at $969.ninety nine) delivers a streamlined flagship expertise to T-Mobile and Verizon subscribers, lastly catching up to its competitors. The phone itself is light in the hand, and the user encounter is weightless as very well. The cameras take knockout photos in quite a great deal all problems and the built-in rapid charging is the finest we have witnessed. The Galaxy S21 Extremely scores a bit superior in our battery and wi-fi radio testing, is effective with Samsung’s outstanding S Pen stylus, and its digital camera gives killer optical zoom, so it just edges out the nine Professional to be our Editors’ Decision amongst flagship smartphones. Continue to, the OnePlus nine Pro is remarkable. If you want a prime-notch, loaded cellular phone that will make your coronary heart sing, you might be now spoiled for selection.
The OnePlus Promise Is Finally Recognized
OnePlus was at the time a enterprise that built a single terrific cellular phone at a time. Now it has a total line of phones at T-Cellular (and vendors these kinds of as Google Fi, Metro, and Mint Cellular that use T-Mobile’s networks): the $969.99 OnePlus nine Pro, the $729.99 OnePlus nine, the $299.99 OnePlus Nord N10, and the $179.ninety nine OnePlus Nord N100. They all share the OnePlus philosophy, which suggests speedy, tasteful application and a streamlined bodily style.
Cameras have usually been the a single spot OnePlus tended to slide at the rear of Samsung and Apple, so OnePlus designed a deal with Hasselblad for shade tuning and acquired a new sensor from Sony. As a consequence, the 9 Pro’s rear digital camera stack stands out from the competition. It may not have remarkable optical zoom like the Samsung Galaxy S21 Extremely, but it presents numerous additional opportunities for artistic expression. In addition to the regular huge and extremely-vast lenses you’ll obtain on most telephones, OnePlus included an XPan method that results in photos in a sixty five:24 structure.
The OnePlus 9 presents related overall general performance to the 9 Professional but methods down a bit on screen, camera, and radio high-quality, and it does not combine tremendous-quick wi-fi charging. If you really don’t mind those people downgrades, you can preserve $240 and get an even more compact and lighter mobile phone. See our overview of the OnePlus nine for all the particulars.
Mild, Modern Structure
The nine Pro’s foundation design has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The 12GB/256GB model expenses an additional $100. There is no memory card slot. The mobile phone is completely sized, measuring 6.forty two by 2.89 by .34 inches (HWD) and weighing 6.9 ounces. Which is a small wider than the 2.8 inches we use as the cutoff width measurement for modest telephones, but it’s noticeably lesser and lighter than the Galaxy S21 Extremely, and narrower than the OnePlus eight Pro. Of the a few, the nine Professional is the least difficult to use with a solitary hand.
Three sights of the OnePlus 9 Professional, showing the inexperienced and silver circumstance alternatives.
The OnePlus 9 Professional arrives in green or silver.
The style and design, very in tune with OnePlus’ “burdenless design” philosophy, is trim and classy. The phone’s body is rounded, with the regular OnePlus mute switch on the left side and the Hasselblad-branded digital camera module on the again. The camera does not adhere out nearly as considerably as the latest Samsung camera bumps do (for the reason that it would not have a giant periscopic zoom lens in it). The front-facing digital camera is a hole-punch on the higher left corner, just like on the eight Professional.
The cellphone has an IP68 ranking for h2o and dust resistance, and comes in two hues. If you’re not heading to place your mobile phone in a case, we like the matte pine inexperienced superior than the mirrored silver morning mist glass back again, which appeals to greasy fingerprints. Our evaluate unit came with a black carbon-fiber circumstance that built that problem moot. (You will find a 3rd, black cell phone, but OnePlus tells us it will never be marketed in the US.)
The back of the OnePlus 9 Professional in silver
The mirrored again of the silver scenario is a fingerprint magnet.
As opposed to the Galaxy S21 Ultra and current iPhones, your OnePlus mobile phone comes with a cable and a 65W charger. Luxury! There is certainly a purpose: OnePlus utilizes proprietary USB-C chargers. Nevertheless the mobile phone will demand from any USB-C source, it’s going to only reach its best charging speeds with the involved adapter.
There’s no headphone jack or USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter in the box. That reported, the 9 Professional athletics aptX, aptX Hd, LHDC, and Sony’s LDAC Bluetooth codecs for exceptional wi-fi audio. If you decide for OnePlus’ Buds Professional earphones, you can expect to get tailored faucet functions alongside with 24-bit/96kHz audio at up to 900kbits/s. If you’re on the lookout at other wireless earbuds, glimpse for a pair with LDAC considering the fact that it really is more extensively out there and gives the optimum-resolution audio shipped over Bluetooth.
As for the onboard speakers, the audio top quality is superb. Twin stereo speakers produce audio with a peak volume of 98dB and a stunning little bit of mid-bass. For voice calls, which have a most quantity of 81dB, the mobile phone supports the finest voice codec at the moment obtainable, Hd voice with EVS.
A Vibrant, However Battery-Conserving Display
The dazzling and crisp 6.7-inch, 525ppi, 3,216-by-1,440-pixel display screen can be dialed back to 1080p in the phone’s configurations if you want to conserve battery lifetime. The show utilizes a rather new technologies referred to as reduced-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) that cuts down energy intake and gives mobile phone companies much more control in excess of refresh charges. It’s the exact technologies that powers Apple’s Iphone thirteen Professional models as effectively as the Samsung Galaxy S21 collection.
The LTPO display of the OnePlus nine Professional, exhibiting an graphic of clouds
The LTPO screen aids help you save electrical power.
This is a top rated-of-the-line OLED exhibit with a bonus: It is really quite visible in direct daylight. A screen protector is preinstalled we failed to remove it from our check device. According to DisplayMate Labs tests, the 9 Pro’s screen set to Vehicle Brightness mode beats the eight Professional, the Galaxy S20 sequence, and the newest iPhones in ambient light-weight, but not the Galaxy Observe twenty Ultra. The nine Professional also increases the highest coloration gamut in its vivid screen manner, which helps it manage coloration saturation in out of doors lighting.
Substantial brightness manner outcomes
Besides in brightness and shade, the 9 Pro’s show just isn’t very easily distinguishable from other the latest prime-of-the-line OLED panels. The real news is energy optimization, as the LTPO panel dynamically—and imperceptibly—changes its refresh fee from 120Hz all the way down to 1Hz to preserve vitality. Look at out our in-depth exclusive for far more on the show.
Coloration shift final results
Amazing Velocity and Simplicity of Use
OnePlus telephones are usually quick, and the OnePlus 9 Pro is no exception. It truly is run by a prime-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. It scored a bit far better than the Galaxy S21 Extremely on Geekbench, with solitary-core scores all-around 1125 and multi-main scores all-around 3700. Which is a 24% enhance on single-core benefits and a twelve% raise on multi-main outcomes more than the OnePlus eight Professional. None of these telephones can surpass the Apple iphone 12, though, which scored 1596 SC and 4049 MC with its Apple A14 processor.
The Snapdragon 888 delivers a lift in graphics overall performance, as well. On the GFXBench Car Chase offscreen benchmark, the nine Professional scored about 70fps, with 37fps onscreen in WQHD method and 58fps onscreen in High definition mode. That is a main leap up from the eight Pro, which scored 51fps offscreen and possibly 26 or 45fps onscreen based on display screen resolution.
See How We Exam Phones
These benchmarks don’t acquire into account OnePlus’ software, which incorporates a bunch of functionality enhancements. In our working experience with OnePlus phones, they really feel like the speediest Android phones, even a lot quicker than Google Pixels (specifically due to the fact Google started off utilizing midrange chipsets in its flagships with the launch of the Pixel five).
The cellular phone operates Android 11 with OnePlus’ OxygenOS enhancements, and OnePlus claims it’s going to get updates as considerably as Android 13 together with bi-every month stability updates for a few several years. For a flagship, that’s a tiny disappointing, particularly because Samsung provides at least three many years of computer software updates on its spending budget A series styles.
Web Site in a charging cradle exhibiting a match.
Significant-end online games play properly on the nine Professional.
OxygenOS has generally experienced a bunch of nice touches, this sort of as the ability to install two copies of social-media apps for different accounts, a location to transform display screen color based mostly on ambient mild, and a Zen method that quickly disables the phone’s most distracting capabilities. With this model, OnePlus provides RAM compression that it states boosts the quantity of applications that can stay in memory with saved condition. Our check unit experienced no issue retaining 7 applications in memory, even with the big RAM-hog Genshin Affect at the again of the line.
To examination cooling, which OnePlus states it is really improved over former types, we ran a processor-pumping app called CPU Throttling Examination on the 9 Pro, the Galaxy S21, and the 8 Professional for fifteen minutes. At the ten-minute stage, the 8 Pro’s general performance took a sharp dive to about 80% of peak. Both of the more recent phones have been nevertheless maintaining closer to ninety% functionality at that time. Following thirteen minutes of pumping the processor, the Galaxy S21’s performance efficiently declined to a little about 80% of peak, whilst the nine Pro remained in the ninety% selection. Last but not least, the nine Pro’s overall performance declined significantly at almost exactly 15 minutes as the mobile phone attempted to great alone down. Through the examination as a total, the nine Professional and Galaxy S21 carried out at 87–88% of max efficiency, when the 8 Professional was down at 78%.
Gaming functionality is amped up with a 360Hz contact response level, but only in four applications: PUBG Cell, Phone of Responsibility, League of Legends, and Brawl Stars. OnePlus claims it will work on introducing 360Hz touch assistance to extra games. That would unquestionably help this feature increase from a curiosity to a differentiator. The Samsung Galaxy S20 telephones provide a 240Hz contact sampling amount Samsung isn’t going to give a spec on the Galaxy S21, but we assume it’s the same.
Ultra-Tremendous-Mega-Quick Charging
The pair of batteries in the 9 Pro full 4,500mAh. That’s quick of the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s 5,000mAh, but OnePlus has a assortment of software methods up its sleeve to retain the phone charged—so a lot of that we’re not even sure all of them arrived into use during our tests.
On our common battery examination, functioning a YouTube video clip around Wi-Fi at whole screen brightness, the cellphone lasted for 8 hours, 50 minutes in WQHD resolution and 9 hrs, forty minutes in Hd. Show brightness issues a good deal to battery everyday living: Choose the brightness down to seventy five% and those people figures jump to twelve hrs, forty minutes on WQHD and 13 hours on High definition. That’s a lot shorter than the Galaxy S21 Ultra (11 hrs twenty minutes) and the Galaxy S20 FE (twelve several hours thirty minutes), but you should really have no troubles receiving as a result of a day of average use.
But there’s more to this battery than fulfills the eye. To begin with, the display screen slows down to 1Hz when you happen to be searching at static content material, this sort of as an e-mail you are mulling about or a site of an e-reserve. That can be a large ability saver. OnePlus also has a track record for shedding fewer electrical power to history procedures than Samsung does. If you use seventy five% display screen brightness most of the time, you can expect to almost certainly get much more than a working day of battery everyday living from a single cost.
OnePlus 9 Pro with USB-C Port in emphasis
The Warp Charge 65T charger can absolutely recharge the nine Professional in about thirty minutes.
The 9 Professional also has by significantly the fastest charging speeds of any mobile phone we have at any time tested. It comes with a Warp Cost 65T USB-C charger, which rates the nine Pro from % to 20% in six minutes and to a hundred% in just 36 minutes. That’s twice as quick as any modern Samsung telephone expenses. If you use a 3rd-celebration charger, the mobile phone will charge at up to 18 watts, with correspondingly longer demand moments.
The real breakthrough is in OnePlus’ new Warp Charge 50 wi-fi charger, a $69.ninety nine accent cradle that plugs into your current Warp Demand 65 adapter to deliver 50-watt wi-fi charging for the 9 Professional, or fifteen-watt Qi charging for any other device. In tests with the Warp Cost 50, the nine Pro went to 29% in 11 minutes and 100% in forty six minutes. Other phones, which includes the 9, just take between ninety minutes and two several hours to wirelessly cost entirely.
This all matches with OnePlus’ tactic to mobile phone ability: It could not have the biggest batteries in town, but it can refill them the quickest.
All the 5G Trimmings, for T-Cellular and Verizon
Like other Snapdragon 888 telephones, the nine Professional uses a Qualcomm X60 modem, which works with all of the features T-Mobile and Verizon intend to use in the upcoming few decades, such as new airwaves and aggregation strategies. It has Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6 as very well, but not Wi-Fi 6E (unlike the Galaxy S21 Extremely).
T-Cellular is the only carrier offering the 9 Pro, but if you get an unlocked design from OnePlus or a retailer, it will also work on Verizon. If you consider to use it on AT&T, OnePlus claims it will only hook up to 4G.
OnePlus nine (remaining) and OnePlus 9 Pro (ideal).
OnePlus 9 (remaining) and OnePlus 9 Pro (ideal)
The OnePlus 9 Professional has all of the new systems being integrated into T-Cell and Verizon’s networks, together with CBRS, C-band, and millimeter wave.
This is a one-SIM phone, with no eSIM solution. With a T-Cellular SIM in, the mobile phone enabled Wi-Fi calling, “clever 5G” (which turns 5G on and off to conserve battery), and twin-channel network acceleration (which takes advantage of Wi-Fi and 5G at the exact same time if required). With an AT&T SIM in, as envisioned, the cellphone utilized only 4G and lacked Wi-Fi contacting.
The massive spec change concerning the nine and the 9 Pro is that the 9 Professional has mmWave. T-Cellular at this time only uses mmWave in seven cities, and is most likely to roll it out in tremendous-crowded spots: sports stadiums, concert halls, convention centers, and the like. It really is a might-be-pleasant, not a ought to-have. It can be is much more fascinating on Verizon, which has mmWave in the facilities of far more than 70 metropolitan areas now.
We examined the 9 and the 9 Professional in opposition to the Samsung Galaxy S21 with 86 rounds of checks utilizing Ookla Speedtest application in New York Metropolis, in a variety of network situations. (Editors’ Notice: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag’s publisher.) More than seventeen assessments, the Galaxy S21 turned in the very best performance, the nine Professional got a enhance from mmWave to come in second, and the 9 dropped to 3rd. Across a variety of non-mmWave assessments with combined sign good quality, the Galaxy S21 came in initially position all over again. In a standalone T-Cellular mid-band “ultra capacity” place, on the other hand, the three telephones executed nearly identically.
If you might be outside a big city, you might be almost certainly most anxious about weak-sign effectiveness. In our checks, the Galaxy S21 showed the strongest 4G RSRP sign 29 periods the 9 Professional was strongest 26 moments, and the nine was strongest 22 times. So the Galaxy S21 wins the moment once again, however not by a lot. Over six rounds of screening in a weak-signal space, the Galaxy S21 confirmed more robust signal only 3 of the times, but the nine Professional had two sign dropouts. The Galaxy S21’s edge is slight but visible.
Blinding You With (Shade) Science
Imaging collaborations aren’t new for smartphone brands. Huawei has partnered with Leica for a long time the Zeiss name is plastered on the back of smartphones from Nokia, Sony, and Vivo. Hasselblad’s only prior US partnership was with Motorola on its clunky but able Genuine Zoom Moto Mod, but the nine collection provides Hasselblad back again to the smartphone marketplace in triumphant design. The 9 Professional is capable of taking extraordinary pictures with just about every lens.
The 48MP main lens has an f/1.8 aperture, optical graphic stabilization (OIS), and electronic picture stabilization (EIS). There’s also a 50MP ultra-large lens with an f/2.2 aperture, and a 8MP telephoto lens with an f/2.four aperture, as perfectly as a 2MP monochrome sensor. You’ll find all the usual flagship bells and whistles on the nine Pro: dual LED flash, multi-autofocus with omnidirectional Phase Detection AF (PDAF), Laser AF (LAF), and Distinction AF (CAF). A massive fifty-megapixel ultra-large lens normally takes attractive reduced-gentle photographs. There’s also 8K movie at 30fps and 4K at up to 120fps, and super-gradual motion at up to 480fps in 720p.
Back again of OnePlus nine Pro with camera in aim
A large fifty-megapixel extremely-broad lens takes wonderful minimal-light images.
For the most element, the camera application is intuitive and simple to use. The shutter button is a Hasselblad-branded orange, and it can make a unique Hasselblad shutter seem. Our only criticism is that we located Tilt Change manner a bit clunky and tricky to use.
Photo of rooftop with eco foliage
The OnePlus 9 Pro’s slide update enhanced very low-light-weight efficiency.
Some of the nine Pro’s most important camera capabilities are in the computer software. Hasselblad labored intently with OnePlus to update its color science and create added characteristics for professional smartphone shooters. In car and Pro modes, colours are heat, with reds and blues receiving a wholesome saturation increase when yellows and greens to be a small undersaturated. Since OnePlus and Hasselblad place a major emphasis on the nine series’ shade science, we as opposed the nine Pro to a number of other flagships and uncovered it stood up exceptionally very well to the competitors.
Apple seriously enhanced its colour science with iOS fourteen and the Iphone twelve. The place the 9 Professional tends to saturate reds and blues, Apple focuses far more on boosting luminance, so the Apple iphone 12’s images are inclined to search a minimal additional real to everyday living than the nine Pro’s.
Position shots from the nine Professional and the Galaxy S21 Ultra facet by facet and you can quickly acknowledge the variation among the two cameras. OnePlus will take a lighter hand with boosting saturation and other computational adjustments Samsung is substantially additional aggressive. In a single of our check shots, a dreary March sky captured on the Galaxy S21 Ultra out of the blue turned blue. The nine Pro was a great deal extra correct in its over-all representation of the scene.
Facet-by-facet pictures of a setting up beneath a cloudy sky in the photo on the left, the sky seems to be blue
The photograph shades from the nine Pro (ideal) are additional precise than the types delivered by the Galaxy S21 Ultra (left).
In Pro manner, you can change ISO, concentrate publicity time, white balance, and a number of other options. There’s also the possibility to shoot in twelve-little bit Uncooked structure, which gives 64 occasions the shade info of the 10-little bit Uncooked on other flagships.
The ultra-huge 50MP lens is a Sony IMX 766 sensor that is drastically bigger than the just one in the Apple iphone twelve Pro Max. In our exams the lens did a terrific career in both of those dazzling and low light. Shots are crisp with fantastic depth of subject and solid background detail.
Facet-by-aspect extremely-large-angle shots of a creating
Ultra-wide-angle photographs are a major gain for the 9 Professional (right), which produces much a lot less edge distortion than the Galaxy S21 Ultra (remaining).
Our pictures taken with the major lens have been extraordinary as nicely. In good light-weight, the 9 Professional retains its personal towards other flagships, with sensible depth of field and rarely any loss of wonderful detail.
In the tumble of 2021, OnePlus delivered a key update to the camera’s software program. Take a look at shots present far more exact white stability and are crisp without staying oversharpened, a common issue with most smartphone cameras. When we reviewed the images at whole size, the pics remained crisp and experienced fewer noise.
The app is also faster in common and there is significantly less shutter lag. It is a slight transform, but it helps make a significant change when having photographs with motion.
A snowy rooftop with quite a few sculptures and other objects
The major lens can take major-notch shots even in muted gentle.
But where the digital camera truly excels is in minimal mild. The principal lens did effectively, as anticipated. Our exam photographs with the slide update remained crisp with an enhanced texture-to-sounds ratio. The significant advancement, nonetheless, was with dynamic range and total scene precision. The two worked in conjunction to create a much more sincere reflection of the minute.
And while we have been specially bowled around by the ultra-large lens’ general performance in our initial checks, the digital camera update just designed matters greater. All of the advancements we observed in the primary lenses were apparent in our extremely-broad exam shots. These improvements, merged with the absence of distortion, tends to make the OnePlus nine Pro’s ultra-wide lens the most effective we have analyzed.
A cityscape at night time, with lights reflecting off a damp street
Ultra-large lower-light-weight illustrations or photos are lovely, with shockingly tiny distortion.
We didn’t notice a great deal enhancement in our shots with the telephoto lens soon after the program update. The OnePlus nine Pro’s telephoto lens is better than what you can come across on its predecessor, but it continue to doesn’t assess with the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra’s. At decrease zoom concentrations, our examination shots had a great deal of depth, nevertheless there was some expected loss of detail in the distance.
Facet-by-aspect pics of illustrated signals at 30x zoom.
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra does a a great deal far better position at 30x zoom.
As we bumped up the zoom, even so, we begun to see substantial blur and sounds when in comparison with the similar picture taken on the Galaxy S21 Extremely. The unnatural sharpening we found in our unique examination photographs, on the other hand, has been considerably improved.
Facet-by-aspect 10x zoom pictures of a stop indication
Whilst the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra has an edge at 10x zoom, the 9 Professional does a solid task with its recent tumble camera update.
Smartphone macro lenses are seldom worthy of applying, but here the nine Pro definitely stands out. Our macro photographs ended up a lot sharper than anticipated, and leagues far better than images taken with the 8’s 2MP macro lens.
A image of pink and environmentally friendly macarons on a white plate
Macarons, in macro.
The monochrome sensor functions in tandem with the primary sensor to get gorgeous black-and-white images with heaps of depth and inky blacks. Huawei integrated a comparable characteristic for a long time and then suddenly removed it, resulting in an outcry from smartphone shutterbugs. If you knew and loved that feature, the nine Pro’s resurrection of it will delight you.
Black-and-white photo of general public artwork installation in which a huge white sculpture of a hand grabs a tree trunk
The monochrome lens normally takes reliable black-and-white images.
The greatest, and most spectacular, change to the OnePlus 9’s camera, on the other hand, is the addition of XPan manner. It’s a attribute that mimics Hasselblad’s now-discontinued XPan cameras to produce an impression that’s reminiscent of individuals you’d acquire with its 30mm and 45mm lenses.
The photos are cropped to a sixty five:24 component ratio. It can be a dramatic seem that provides you a complete new way to notify tales, and evokes photos of film stills. There are choices to shoot in shade as very well as black and white.
It can be tricky to overstate just how significantly room XPan provides for creativeness. four:three and 16:9 component ratios are so ubiquitous, that it will take a conquer to get used to all the distinct issues you can do in the format.
Panoramic shot of a Catholic rectory at evening.
XPan mode will allow you to get remarkable pics in a one of a kind component ratio.
We analyzed XPan in numerous lights situations and it performed completely. Our examination pictures had been immersive and crisp, with outstanding dynamic array. Depth of area is great as very well.
Black and white image of a mid-century building
Monochrome photos in XPan mode look gorgeous.
Hasselblad’s exclusive shade science for XPan also creates an completely diverse experience that’s very similar to shots shot on Kodak Ektachrome or Fuji Provia slide movie. Our images confirmed less distinction and additional organic hues that nearly seem to be a little undersaturated considering that we have grow to be so accustomed to more than-saturation on smartphones.
Decommissioned switching station with festive lights
Portraits and scaled-down scenes look improved with the 30mm focal-duration setting in XPan mode.
On the front of the 9 Pro, you are going to locate a 32MP lens. It performs incredibly properly in any lighting situation. There’s a minimal background blur in our shots, which is to be anticipated. Foreground detail and depth of industry, even so, are place on. Portrait manner works devoid of a hitch as perfectly. Our check shots had a pure bokeh and ideal depth mapping in each shot.
A selfie of a bearded white man in glasses and a cap
Selfies are specific and crystal clear.
One particular Smaller Move Shy of the Crown
The OnePlus nine Professional is an outstanding telephone. At $970, it retains its possess versus the somewhat a lot more expensive Galaxy S21 Extremely and Apple iphone twelve Professional. It would not fairly match the Galaxy S21 Extremely on digicam zoom or network overall performance, but it is lighter and sleeker, it has some distinctive digital camera tips, and there is certainly that renowned OnePlus speed and stylish software package. That amazing rapid charging and the battery-conserving display also make a huge difference in working day-to-working day use. The nine Professional is improved than the OnePlus eight sequence in every single way, so the upgrade is simply warranted. It only fails to nab our Editors’ Alternative award due to the fact the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is even far more superb and can be applied on any provider. The nine Pro and the Galaxy S21 Ultra collectively at present outline the Android condition of the art. Based on your priorities, both will provide you incredibly effectively for the upcoming couple many years.
