OnePlus 7T Pro long-term review

Design

The most striking thing about the OnePlus 7T Pro design is just how big the phone is. The phone is a good bit taller than the iPhone 11 Pro Max and even a hair taller than the Galaxy Note10+. The latter two devices are supposed to be big as that's their differentiating factor against their smaller versions. But in the case of the OnePlus 7T Pro, it is big just because. There are hardly any phones in its class that are taller than the OnePlus 7T Pro, and the only one we can think of right now is the newly announced Galaxy S20 Ultra.

Apart from being taller, the OnePlus 7T Pro is also a fair bit heavy. At 206g, it's one of the heaviest smartphones in its class, if not the heaviest. Unfortunately, none of these are positive attributes, at least when it comes to ease of use or portability. The phone is too large and too heavy to use comfortably. We thought it would get easier with time but it never did. The weight alone is agonizing and you're constantly aware of it whenever you're using the phone. It is especially noticeable when you're using the phone over your face in bed. We never actually dropped it on our face but the mere thought of the damage that would cause made us put it down and go to sleep.

The massive size doesn't help, either. It just makes the phone more difficult to use, especially when you have to reach the top edge for notifications or the side edges for navigation gestures. One-handed typing also becomes a chore.

The OnePlus 7T Pro is also not water and dust resistant, at least not officially. By the looks of it, OnePlus has put in all the necessary precautions to ensure no dust or water gets in but hasn't gotten the official IP rating so you're not sure how much trust you should put in all the supposed safeguards.

All of this is a shame because the OnePlus 7T Pro is a beautiful device. The curved edges of the screen, the complete lack of any notches or holes, the simple yet elegant camera module on the back, and the stunning shade of blue all make this a truly great looking phone, even a year since its release. It shows that it is indeed possible to make a high-end "Pro" device and not have it be ugly or boring.

Display

The OnePlus 7T Pro has a 6.67-inch AMOLED display, with a resolution of 3120x1440, 19.5:9 aspect ratio, and 90Hz refresh rate and is one of the best displays on any smartphone on the market today. It has excellent color calibration when using one of the calibrated profiles, the resolution is as high as anyone will ever need, and the 90Hz refresh rate perfectly complements the powerful hardware. You also aren't required to run the display at 1080p to get the full refresh rate of the panel, which is always a good thing in our books.

What makes the screen even nicer is that it has barely any bezels to speak of and there's no visible front camera. The camera is hidden using a pop-up mechanism, a trend we had started to like but has seemingly met an untimely demise in favor of the far more unsightly hole punch design.

There are two things about the display that bothers us. The less bothersome one is the fact that the phone has a curved display, which warps some of the content around the edges and doesn't make it look good, even if the phone itself looks nicer. We know Android manufacturers love their curved displays, so it's not a trend that's going to go away completely any time soon, but we hope the next generation of OnePlus devices at least have a smaller radius to the curve.

The more bothersome thing is just how easy it is to hit the edges of the screen and trigger something unintentionally. We found ourselves constantly hitting something on the side of the screen while stretching our thumb to reach something on the other end. Even the top and bottom sides aren't immune to this. Holding the phone by the top edge causes the screen to frequently interact with your fingers at the top, and the bottom edge is triggered by the pinkie finger you use to prop the phone up in your hand.

As amazing as the display is otherwise, these two are rather serious issues that constantly hamper the usability of the device, and we hope OnePlus addresses them in their future smartphones.