OnePlus 10 Pro offers up one of the best displays on a smartphone right now, with high-end power and performance, outstanding battery life, a fluid user experience and a unique design.
I’ve been testing one for the last few months and it’s yet another great flagship from the Pete Lau firm.
The phone was released in China back in January and this seems to have lessened the impact of its global launch from a PR point of view.
But in terms of the tech on board, OnePlus 10 Pro is one of the most affordable devices carrying the top-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip.
Design and build
OnePlus 10 Pro on sale in a gorgeous Emerald Forest – green proving to be this year’s en vogue colour on smartphones – and a more subtle but equally stylish Volcanic Black.
My review unit is the former and it’s gorgeous. As ever, the firm includes a tough transparent protective case in the box at no extra charge.
The phone sports an eye-catching new design, with the rear of the device housing a new mirror-polished metal camera island that curves in from the phone's edge and extends past the centre of the unit.
There are four well-spaced circular elements: three camera sensors and a dual-LED ring-shaped flash.
The rest of the back of the phone is a textured glass that's great at repelling fingerprints.
The thin, colour-matched, metal frame sports a polished finish offers stylish contrast.
The back is protected by Gorilla Glass 5 while the front is protected by the tougher Gorilla Glass Victus.
The OnePlus alert slider which I love is present and correct. Still amazing that after all these years no other Android manufacturer has copied this great feature.
There is no official IP68 certification on this unit in Europe but there is in America where the phone has the same build and there is visible protection around the SIM tray and buttons. That's good enough for me.
On the whole, OnePlus 10 Pro is a thick but light device that is comfortable to hold and use.
Display
The stunning 6.7in QHD+ display is one of the best you can buy – it supports 10-bit colour depth, HDR10+ and 1300 nits of peak brightness.
The colour calibration is designed to show accurate hues at two separate levels of brightness, unlike most other phones which are only calibrated at one level.
Outdoor visibility and viewing angles are both superb.
Every time I pick up the phone and look at the screen I think 'wow'.
There’s a 120Hz refresh rate with LTPO2 Fluid AMOLED technology that enables the refresh rate to go from 1Hz to 120Hz as needed.
This improves power efficiency and thus battery life.
Cameras
Camera quality is not as consistent across the three rear shooters as it might be, but images from the main wide angle camera are generally excellent.
The shooter has a large 1/1.43in 48MP Sony IMX789 sensor with an f/1.8 lens, 23mm focal length and optical image stabilisation.
And it’s got second-gen Hasselblad colour science and the Hasselblad Pro app.
The ultrawide has a smaller sensor than last year’s 9 Pro but the new lens can capture stills at an expanded 150-degree field-of-view. It’s a great feature that I enjoy using but there’s no denying it is a hardware downgrade compared to the 9 Pro.
The telephoto lens has 3X optical zoom and while useful it is not as high quality as the zoom on iPhone 13 Pro, Pixel 6 Pro or Galaxy S22 Ultra. And it’s not great in lowlight.
Video is stable and can be captured in 8K at 24fps or in 4K at up to 120fps. The 32MP selfie camera is largely pleasing.
Some features will only appeal to photography nuts like me. The ability to shoot stills in RAW (and videos in LOG) from last year has been expanded by the inclusion of RAW+.
This pairs a RAW image with OnePlus' post-processing; granting you the ability to tweak the uncompressed image data, without quality loss. And you can share RAW+ images instantly too.
There is also an option to capture shots with 10-bit colour depth (superior to the 8-bit you get on most other flagships).
This camera system isn’t on a par with S22 Ultra or iPhone 13, but those devices do cost hundreds of euro more.
Supervooc charging
One of the best features is the 80W Supervooc charger in the box which can refuel your 10 Pro from zero to 100 per cent in 33 minutes.
You can also wirelessly charge it at 50w from zero to 100 per cent in less than 50 minutes.
One quibble would be that the 80w charger uses USB-A to USB-C rather than the USB-C to USB-C approach of last year’s 65w charger which I find very useful for charging all manner of other devices quickly. The same does not apply to the 80w Supervooc charger.
Performance
OnePlus 10 Pro runs OxygenOS 12.1 atop Android 12. It is as clean and fluid an experience to use as you might expect.
The usual array of useful customisation options are included, while haptics have been improved to deliver a more pleasing and tactile user experience.
My review model has 256GB of hast UFS 3.1 storage and a hefty 12GB of RAM.
Benchmark scores match other 2022 Android flagships with the same chip, and there are options to push the power to the max with a high performance mode and a RAM boost.
The device handles the most intensive games easily but with high performance mode and pro gamer mode both switched on, it can get quite hot after about 20 minutes of use.
In the past, I’ve found OnePlus phones are zippier than flagships with the same configurations but that is less noticeable in everyday use in 2022.
But make no mistake, 10 Pro has all the power and speed you will need.
Other features
The speakers are sufficiently loud, the fingerprint scanner is fast and reliable.
OnePlus 10 Pro will get three years of Android OS upgrades and four years of security patches.
Verdict
This an excellent value for money device with so many brilliant features; one of the best Android phones you can buy.
Pricing
OnePlus 10 Pro costs €899 (128GB/8GB) or €999 (256GB/12GB) from oneplus.com/ie
