OnePlus 8 Pro is a smartphone from OnePlus. It has most of what you want, and then a bunch of extra things too, like wireless charging, which a certain kind of enthusiasts absolutely demand. But still, OnePlus has added some weird feature that frankly no one asked for. It’s a genuinely great phone, it just sits a bit behind the best, like by a hair, you know.
Design
At first glance, the OnePlus 8 Pro doesn’t look totally different from the OnePlus 7T Pro in design , but a few small tweaks make the 8 Pro nicer to hold, and also nicer to use in daily life. It’s a few millimeters longer, not as wide, and a bit thinner too. The corners have slightly different curvature , and it’s 7 grams lighter at around 200 grams, so it feels just a touch more manageable.
I personally prefer the OnePlus 8 Pro over the OnePlus 7T Pro, like by a noticeable distance. It doesn’t feel clunky, or awkward in the hand and it’s generally easier to pick up and keep using. Of course it’s still a large device, and the edges taper down to a sort of point. If you grip it from certain angles, that can become uncomfortable, surprisingly.
Even with it being a real upgrade over the OnePlus 7T Pro, the 8 Pro still ends up in the same conversation as the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus and Huawei P40 Pro. It can’t claim the crown for the most ergonomic phone in 2020 though. The competition feels lighter, and more agile, in hand. OnePlus also follows Huawei pretty closely with a matte coating on the back, which is a good move. It doesn’t pick up fingerprints easily, and the curved 3D glass looks really sharp. In that glacial blue shade you see in the image, it turns aquamarine in some lighting, like it’s changing moods or something.
On the front, OnePlus uses a punch-hole selfie camera for the first time. Like most examples, it’s something you don’t notice after using the phone for a while. The motorized pop-up selfie camera extraction on the OnePlus 7T Pro is instrumental in making the entire 8 Pro more compact and handy. It also means that the phone can be sealed and given an IP68 waterproof rating, despite the company’s utter negative position towards this feature in the past.
Perhaps the only disappointing design feature of the OnePlus 8 Pro is the size of the camera bump on the back. It protrudes more than the 7T Pro, is perhaps twice as thick as the Samsung Galaxy S20 Pro bump, and has sharp edges that could scratch other items if it rubs against them in a pocket. This trend continues on the thin and crisp volume rocker, although the drop-down slider for notification alert status changes has a great texture to it. However, despite these nitpicks, the OnePlus 8 Pro is one of the best-looking phones you can buy.
Screen
That 6.78-inch Fluid AMOLED display, with a 3168 x 1440 resolution, lands around 531 pixels per inch, so the details look pretty sharp . It comes with a sturdy 120Hz refresh rate, which makes the scrolling feel more seamless, and it can also help with eye fatigue, kind of in a subtle way. Then there’s also 240Hz touch sampling, for quicker reactions when gaming and that sort of thing. Still, it needs some extra software little adjustments to nail the touch accuracy inside the OS , especially toward the edges where it can get a bit weird.
OxygenOS has options to enhance colors and enable motion smoothing. With the color enhancements in play, the display is still natural but with slightly more vibrant colors. It never reached the saturation level of the Galaxy S20 Plus. I kinda enjoyed the crisp whites showing on the OnePlus 8 Pro screen, it outperformed the S20 Plus too and even beat the Huawei P40 Pro. Outside, in this bright sunlight, the white man still looked like a freshly laundered bed sheet , even when it felt like everything was going a little washed out. Motion smoothing is less successful because it’s inconsistent, looking great one minute and artificial the next. I ended up turning it off – it’s enabled by default.
The screen appeared exactly right in front of my eyes with color enhancement and smooth motion, and I enjoyed watching movies on the OnePlus 8 Pro. The bezels are, pretty much minimal, and even though the punch-hole camera kind of breaks the vibe on the screen it never actually becomes intrusive. The display still ends up as one of the standout features of the OnePlus 8 Pro, no doubt about that.
Camera
The OnePlus 8 Pro camera is a bit… strange. In general, everything seems normal. So the 48-megapixel main camera has Sony new IMX689 sensor, with optical and electronic image stabilization, and it’s kinda paired with a 48-megapixel wide angle sensor, plus an 8-megapixel telephoto sensor after that. That means 3x zoom, 4K video recording, and various modes, including night mode and super macro.
The fourth sensor on the OnePlus 8 Pro is the Color Filter camera that inverts the colors in your photos.
Even OnePlus isn’t sure. In press details, the Color Filter camera is described as a way to stand out from the crowd and show off your unique style. You can also do this by standing in the street and howling at the moon, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.
Photos were taken with a color filter to remove greens, reds, and blues, leaving light browns, blacks, whites, and beiges. Think it sounds ugly? You will be right, most of the time. It’s not that the Color Filter doesn’t take interesting pictures because it can, in a nuclear wasteland fashion. I’m just not sure how often I want to use it. It’s hidden away in a menu, so it’s not even visible, and therefore will be forgotten – and that’s probably a good thing.
It’s not a disaster all the time , Shooting at the sun can still give you some kind of atmospheric shots. But otherwise it makes my local park look like a bizarre alien landscape , like totally out of place.
When I saw the OnePlus and McLaren concept phones at CES 2020 , I was really hoping that the electrochemical camera feature would actually show up on the OnePlus 8. Still though, instead of that, we got the Color Filter sensor, and honestly it wasn’t a worthy replacement. Calling it quirky fun would be a decent description, but more accurately, it’s an added gimmick to hide the fact that there’s nothing new here other than the main sensor being used to improve.
Otherwise, I like the photos taken by the OnePlus 8 Pro. Dynamic range is great, saturation is decent, and I’m impressed with how effective the night mode is. It brightens the scene very effectively and also works with wide-angle cameras. I don’t understand the inclusion of a Color Filter, and if it is removed from the equation, leaving the camera exposed is relatively normal for a flagship Android phone these days.
Software and battery
The 4,510mah battery on the OnePlus 8 Pro is a superstar. Admittedly, I only use Wi-Fi most of the time, but that doesn’t make the performance less impressive. Mode I can’t believe that moderate all day from 8 am to midnight uses only 25% power, I didn’t charge the phone, and overnight, it went into Sleep mode on its own, where it minimized power consumption, so it only used 4% of the battery the entire time I slept. From 8 am to 3 pm the next day, it remained at 53%. I end the day with 5% around midnight after a few voice calls and at least an hour of video calls.
Its great performance and charging are also very fast. The included Warp Charge 30T brick and cable take up a flat battery to 55% in 24 minutes. It continues to charge in an hour fully. A new feature for the OnePlus 8 is optimizing overnight charging times by learning your habits and only fully charging the battery a short time before you normally wake up. It works well for me and should help drain the battery-less over time.
OnePlus has added wireless charging to the OnePlus 8 Pro, a welcome addition that should have come a long time ago. It pulls to 50% in about 30 minutes. Despite supporting the Qi standard, to get OnePlus’ fast wireless charging, you’ll have to buy a OnePlus wireless charger, which costs £80 or £70. Admittedly it’s beautiful, but it’s a huge expense. Other Qi wireless chargers will work if you don’t buy them but only offer slow charging speeds.
This fast charging has another little cost, the OnePlus wireless charger actually has a built in fan, and it can spin itself away when you put the phone on that upright stand. It feels fine enough when it’s just sitting on my desk, but I’m not sure I’d be as ok with it if I was trying to sleep or whatever.
The OnePlus 8 runs OxygenOS 10.5 , which is based on Android 10, and honestly it’s almost the same as OxygenOS 10 you get on the OnePlus 7T Pro. There are some tweaks for dark mode , plus Google One support. A load of live wallpapers have been added and they do look really good. OxygenOS is one of those skins that still feels… pretty top tier, and getting it again just reminds me why I liked it in the first place.
It’s genuinely quick, it doesn’t drown you in pointless apps, and overall it feels nicely put together. The sliding display, plus Google Assistant controls, are useful, like for news and weather updates, and there’s quick access to your own Assistant page with personalized info. I also like that subtle haptic feedback, it feels better than most phones I tried, even down to that little vibration when someone answers a call.
That said it isn’t perfect. The lack of an always on display is kinda a letdown even if you can tap the screen to pull up the info. OnePlus says the always on thing is still under development, but it really baffles me how it took this long , honestly. I also ran into a problem where the screen edge was too sensitive. A software update helped a lot, but it’s still not right. Even the Settings search feels dumb, it’s not very “clever,” so it’s harder to hunt down hidden options, like Dark mode, which they call Tone.
Anyway, these are small irritations, and like the rest of the phone, the battery life and the software experience are among the very best you can grab right now.
Performance and gaming
The OnePlus 8 Pro comes with a Snapdragon 865 chipset and an X55 5G modem , along with an impressive 12GB of RAM. Because of the whole social distancing thing, I was not able to properly test the 5G piece ,so I just stayed on 4G and made calls like normal. Calls are crystal clear, and it’s easier to put the speaker in your ear than it was on the Galaxy S20 Plus. Here are the benchmark results before we look at gaming.
Geekbench 5: 3,352 Multi-core / 890 single-core
3DMark: 6,589 (Volcano)
These are higher results than the Galaxy S20 Plus with the Samsung Exynos chip inside and slightly higher than the Oppo Find X2 Pro with a similar capacity. The OnePlus 8 Pro has two gameplay modes, a standard mode and a hardcore Fnatic mode (because it was developed with the e-sports team of the same name), which boosts CPU, GPU, and RAM turn off everything unnecessary at the same time.
I didn’t notice anything different playing Asphalt 9 Legends, DariusBurst SP, and Vectronom with Fnatic mode on and off. The 120Hz refresh rate makes Asphalt 9 Legends look great. The screen’s 19.8:9 aspect ratio means you have to play DariusBurst in a smaller window if you want to see everything going on, which is a problem for many phones of all sizes and shapes the same similar. The phone stays completely cool during gameplay.
What about OnePlus 8?
The OnePlus 8 Pro is like the new flagship phone for 2020 , and it released right alongside the OnePlus 8, which sells for $700 or more, but feels smaller. That other model comes with a 6.55-inch Fluid AMOLED display, a 90Hz refresh pace , a triple-lens camera with no Color Filter sensor, a smaller power cell, no wireless charging, and only a basic splash resistance. The look overall is pretty similar, yet it is lighter and thinner, so it is easier to handle with one hand, or just for everyday use.
OnePlus 8 Pro Ultramarine Blue, 5G Unlocked Android Smartphone U.S Version, 12GB RAM+256GB Storage, 120Hz Fluid Display,Quad Camera, Wireless Charge, with Alexa Built-in: Buy it now
OnePlus 8 Pro (5G) Dual-SIM IN2023 256GB/12GB RAM (GSM + CDMA) Factory Unlocked Android Smartphone (Ultramarine Blue)- International Version: Buy it now
OnePlus 8 Pro 5G iN2020 128GB 8GB RAM (GSM Only, No CDMA) – Glacial Green: Buy it now
OnePlus 8 Pro 5G IN2020 128GB 8GB RAM (GSM Only, No CDMA) International Version (Onyx Black): Buy it now
Tech Reviewer & Product Analyst
Định Bia has spent over 10 years testing consumer electronics with a focus on smart technology. He work as a product advisor at Biareview where he helped customers find the right devices for their needs. He personally tests every product featured on this site using a consistent evaluation framework covering quality, durability, and value. All reviews are based on experience, not influenced by the manufacturer.
