OnePlus 10 Pro review

Introduction and specs

OnePlus' latest flagship offering is here. After launching in China several weeks ago, we wondered when the rest of the world would see the new OnePlus flagship. Alas, the OnePlus 10 Pro is now available outside of China, and we are having our rounds with it. It includes the flagship-grade Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, a larger battery, a new selfie camera, and an updated ultrawide camera.

On paper, these updates feel more like they should belong to a vanilla OnePlus 10, with more significant upgrades reserved for the "Pro" model. The recent rumor of a OnePlus 10 "Ultra" to arrive later this year is starting to make more sense - speculatively, of course.

Update, 26 Aug 2022: A OnePlus 10 Pro unit made its way to our HQ and we jumped at the opportunity to fill in some of the gaps left from the review. Those include the loudspeaker test, photo and video samples from the usual locations, and entries in our Photo and Video compare tools. You can find the new additions on the respective pages.

In any case, we hope to see improvements in battery life, and we're happy to finally see an updated 32 MP selfie camera module. We're also excited to test out the new 150-degree ultrawide camera, and we wonder if we'll see improvements in the main camera's image processing despite the 10 Pro using the exact same main camera as the 9 Pro.

OnePlus 10 Pro specs at a glance:

• Body: 163x73.9x8.55mm, 201g; Gorilla Glass 5 back, aluminum frame, ceramic camera cover.
• Display: 6.7" Fluid AMOLED with LPTO, 1 billion colors, 120Hz, HDR10+, 1440x3216px resolution, 20.1:9 aspect ratio, 525ppi.
• Chipset: Qualcomm SM8450 Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (4 nm): Octa-core (1x3.00 GHz Cortex-X2 & 3x2.50 GHz Cortex-A710 & 4x1.80 GHz Cortex-A510); Adreno 730.
• Memory: 8GB, 128GB; 12GB, 256GB; LPDDR5, UFS 3.1.
• OS/Software: Android 12, Oxygen OS 12.
• Rear camera: Wide (main): 50 MP Sony IMX 789, f/1.8, 23mm, 1/1.43", 1.22µm, Muilti-Autofocus: All-Pixel Omni-directional PDAF + LAF + CAF, OIS; Ultra wide angle: 50 MP Samsung ISOCELL JN1, 1/2.76", f/2.2, 150˚; Telephoto: 8 MP, 1.0µm f/2.4, PDAF, 3.3X optical zoom. OIS.
• Front camera: 32 MP, 26mm (wide), 0.7µm, EIS, fixed focus.
• Video capture: Rear camera: 8K@24fps, 4K@30/60/120fps, 1080p@30/60/240fps, 720p@480fps, EIS; Front camera: 1080p@30fps, 720p@30fps.
• Battery: 5,000mAh; 65W SuperVOOC (80W in Asia), 100% in 34 min (advertised), 50W AirVOOC, 100% in 47 min (advertised), Reverse wireless charging.
• Misc: Fingerprint reader (under display, optical); NFC; flick-detect sensor, front RGB sensor. SLA X-axis linear motor.

The display panel is the same as that of the 9 Pro. It is rated for 1300 nits of peak brightness, and it has HDR10+ support and a variable 120Hz refresh rate that optimizes battery life by switching down to as low as 1Hz. One new tidbit for the 10 Pro is Dual Calibration, which means OnePlus has color-calibrated the panel at both 500 and 100 nits - for more consistent accuracy across brightness levels.

In North America, OnePlus is launching the 10 Pro with a single memory configuration of 8GB + 128GB, though there are plans to bring the 12GB + 256GB variant to the market sometime in the future (India and EU get the 12GB + 256GB at launch). Otherwise, there's no vanilla 10 variant, and OnePlus has been mum as to why that is. We will reserve all judgments for the end of the review, so let's dive into OnePlus' flagship option and find out what makes it stand out.

Unboxing

The OnePlus 10 Pro comes in standard OnePlus packaging affair: a sturdy red box with all the essentials included. Our North American variant didn't include a protective case (despite there being a space for it in the box), but it did include a USB OTG adapter (USB-A to USB-C) for transferring data from an old device. Recent OnePlus flagships never included this in North America.

The package includes OnePlus stickers, documentation, SIM-eject tool, 65W SuperVOOC charging adapter, and USB-C to C cable.

If you were to pick up the phone in, say, India, you'd get an 80W SuperVOOC fast charger. This charger has a USB-A port instead of USB-C and is thus incapable of supporting USB-Power Delivery standard. This charger can only fast charge OnePlus and Oppo phones, but everything else will get the standard 10W, making it much less useful compared to the 65W model.