May 14, 2019. The OnePlus 7 Pro launches today at $669, and Pete Lau said something on stage that required more courage than it appears: he stopped calling it a “flagship killer” and started calling it a true flagship. The 6.67-inch QHD+ AMOLED at 90Hz. Pop-up front camera eliminating the notch entirely. Triple rear camera system. 4000mAh battery with Warp Charge 30. Snapdragon 855. These specifications match or exceed the Samsung Galaxy S10 at $230 less. The 90Hz display is six months ahead of anything Samsung or Apple is shipping, and it shows: after an hour of use, returning to a 60Hz panel feels like a downgrade. OnePlus has genuinely pioneered something.
The flagship problem
“True flagship” carries different community obligations than “flagship killer.” A flagship killer is expected to be great for its price. A flagship is expected to be great, full stop. The camera system on the 7 Pro is receiving mixed reviews this week: some publications rate it below the Pixel 3a’s computational photography despite the 7 Pro’s $400 price advantage. The haptic feedback is being noted as inferior to the Galaxy S10’s. Both of these are details that a $350 device audience would not penalize. A self-described true flagship audience at $669 will notice and mention them in every comparison.
The Google Pixel 3a launched last week at $399 with computational photography that is objectively better than the 7 Pro’s camera at $270 less. The Pixel 3a does not have 90Hz or Warp Charge or 12GB of RAM. But the thing people buy camera phones for is the camera, and the camera on the $399 Pixel is making the $669 OnePlus 7 Pro’s camera look overpriced in the camera column of comparison reviews. OnePlus has always exploited the gap between what its phones can do versus what comparable phones cost. That gap is closing from the other direction, and the camera gap in particular is one OnePlus needs to close if “true flagship” is going to mean something more than “high-spec near-flagship at a fair price.”
For now: the 90Hz display is real, the design is exceptional, and the price is still fair for what you get. The 7 Pro is the most technically impressive OnePlus device yet. Whether the camera gap is a temporary lag or a structural limitation of OnePlus’s approach to computational photography is the question that the next product cycle will start to answer.
Part of OnePlus: The Complete Story, my full history of OnePlus from founding to the Realme merger.