OnePlus 9R hands-on review

Software

Our OnePlus 9R came with OxygenOS 11.2 out of the box running on top of Android 11. The software on this device is very similar to that found on other recent OnePlus phones barring a few device-specific features.

OnePlus is best known for its OxygenOS software. Over the years, the company has kept the design of its software relatively clean and simple. However, the company has moved on from having a relatively lightweight software experience to just packing in as many software features as possible.

OxygenOS 11

Some of these are useful. There's a Work Life Balance mode, which lets you pick separate device states for when you're at work or when you're home, and then depending on your location, you can pick which apps get to show notifications. The Game Space feature puts all your games in one place and also offers a bunch of tools related to games, such as how notifications are handled during gaming, display brightness control, mis-touch prevention, and haptic feedback enhancement. App locker lets you encrypt your apps and parallel apps let you have multiple accounts on the same app by creating two instances of it. You have an always-on display that can be customized and you can also set shortcuts to apps when you press and hold on the fingerprint sensor while unlocking.

Features in OxygenOS

Not all of these features will be useful to everyone but there's enough here to keep most people happy. Unfortunately, with the increase in built-in apps and features, the instances of nagging notifications have also increased. Several of the aforementioned features will throw notifications at you if you choose not to use them. Eventually, it gets annoying and the only way to get rid of them is to either set up the app or permanently disable their notifications.

OnePlus also packs in way too many Google apps these days. This could very well be mandated by Google but then again, we don't necessarily see these on other Android devices. Also, OnePlus is sticking with its decision to swap out its perfectly fine Phone and Messages apps in favor of apps made by Google. The Google apps are extremely basic and also stick out like sore thumbs in the redesigned OxygenOS UI.

But what's perhaps most concerning is the creeping monetization in the form of promoted content and brand partnerships. A lot of this is exclusive to India, which is likely why you don't hear more people talking about it but OnePlus has steadily been increasing the amount of "free" promoted content that is being funneled through its smartphones towards Indian customers.

Annoyances in OxygenOS

Most of this comes through the Red Cable Club, a membership program that requires you to make an account and then link your device. In return you get 5GB of free cloud storage and discounts from brands like Starbucks, Nike, Gaana, and more. You also get discounts on OnePlus products and an extended warranty. While this may seem fine and even beneficial but brand partnerships and discounted content is just another form of providing advertising. Also, that aforementioned free cloud storage comes from a Chinese company called HeyTap.

This can be seen in other apps as well. In Game Space, OnePlus has partnered with Cocos Play to provide free-to-play titles with ads. The company also puts game news and videos from various sources inside the app. The phone also comes with the Netflix app pre-installed and it cannot be removed. Similarly in the past, OnePlus phones sold in India would come with Amazon apps pre-installed, although that wasn't the case with our review units this year.

It's not that these practices are particularly shady or unique to OnePlus. But what's irksome about them is that first of all, they are very specific to the Indian market, which is where OnePlus has traditionally kept its prices low compared to other regions. So you're paying less to see promotional content. The other issue is that these are the sort of practices that OnePlus phones were devoid of in the past, which is what made them stand out among other Chinese brands. But clearly, that's not the case anymore.

We also have a pet peeve with the recent redesign of OxygenOS. OnePlus clearly took a lot of inspiration from Samsung's OneUI in making the title of its apps a large font size within the app and the main body of the app starting at half height for easy access. But while OneUI fully commits itself to this design, as can be seen by digging further into the menu structures, OxygenOS just uses this for aesthetic purposes at the top level of its apps. This means if you click on, say, any item in the Settings app, you no longer have items starting in the middle of the display but rather at the top as they always did, making them harder to reach. Add to this is the fact that OxygenOS is still possibly the only custom Android UI that doesn't have some form of reachability feature for making the top of the screen easy to reach.

To round things off, OxygenOS is still largely a pleasant and easy-to-use software platform. However, it isn't as clean as it once used to be and has lots of minor design annoyances that need fixing.

Performance

The OnePlus 9R features the updated Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 chipset. The primary difference between this and Snapdragon 865 is the 400MHz clock speed bump on the primary performance core and about 80MHz bump to the GPU clock speed. The 870 also supports Bluetooth 5.2 but the OnePlus 9R keeps the Bluetooth 5.1 from the 8T.

As expected, we didn't see a particularly dramatic increase in performance even in benchmarks designed to show minor differences. In Geekbench, the main improvement was in single-core performance. This should help tasks that are still lightly threaded and also for more bursty workloads. However, for some reason, the multi-core performance on the OnePlus 9R was consistently slower than the Snapdragon 865 on the OnePlus 8T. We tested this multiple times and every time the result was the same.

In the graphics benchmarks, the OnePlus 9R posted a small improvement over the Snapdragon 865 models. However, it's not going to have any noticeable improvement in performance in actual gaming, even if you factor in the CPU improvement.

As for actual usage, the performance was excellent. The combination of fast hardware, surplus memory, and a 120Hz display meant that the phone was always a pleasure to use. There's enough power here for the phone to keep feeling like new for at least a couple of years.

As for gaming, it's fine if all you're interested in is playing at 60Hz. As usual, OnePlus limits the refresh rate of most games on the Play Store to 60Hz. The only ones that can exceed that limit are a handful of whitelisted titles, such as PUBG Mobile, Fortnite, and Pokemon Go. Outside of these, even if a game does support high refresh rates on other manufacturer devices, it will still run at max 60Hz on the OnePlus 9R.

Quickly talking about the audio, OnePlus has been doing good work in this department and the speakers on the OnePlus 9R, although similar to the 8T, sound excellent. They produce a clean, clear sound and can get surprisingly loud. The two speakers are also fairly well balanced so you don't get any wobbliness in terms of volume output or frequency response.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 9
  3629
• OnePlus 8
  3399
• Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro
  3311
• Samsung Galaxy S20 FE
  3296
• OnePlus 8T
  3126
• OnePlus 9R
  3117
• Realme X7 Pro
  2997
• OnePlus Nord
  1953
• Google Pixel 4a
  1626

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 9
  1129
• OnePlus 9R
  969
• OnePlus 8
  919
• Samsung Galaxy S20 FE
  906
• Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro
  901
• OnePlus 8T
  893
• Realme X7 Pro
  756
• OnePlus Nord
  610
• Google Pixel 4a
  553

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• OnePlus 9
  715196
• OnePlus 9R
  617766
• OnePlus 8T
  576625
• OnePlus 8
  564708
• Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro
  563961
• Samsung Galaxy S20 FE
  543986
• Realme X7 Pro
  510317
• OnePlus Nord
  312794
• Google Pixel 4a
  268714

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 9
  70
• OnePlus 9R
  57
• OnePlus 8T
  53
• OnePlus 8
  52
• Samsung Galaxy S20 FE
  52
• Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro
  51
• Realme X7 Pro
  46
• OnePlus Nord
  21
• Google Pixel 4a
  17

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 9
  58
• OnePlus 9R
  49
• OnePlus 8T
  46
• OnePlus 8
  46
• Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro
  46
• Samsung Galaxy S20 FE
  45
• Realme X7 Pro
  40
• OnePlus Nord
  19
• Google Pixel 4a
  16