OnePlus 9RT 5G hands-on review

Camera

The OnePlus 9RT has a triple camera system on the back consisting of a 50MP f1.8 main wide camera, 16MP f2.2 ultra-wide camera, and 2MP macro camera. On the front is a 16MP f2.4 camera. The phone can record 4K 60fps video from the wide and ultra-wide camera on the back and 1080p 30fps video from the front camera.

As a side note, our review unit had the lens cover for the ultra-wide camera (middle) warped around the edges. You can see this in the image above. We are not sure what impact this may have had on the image quality, but hopefully, it was minimal.

The camera app is different from the one found in OxygenOS 11 and OxygenOS 12. It's similar to the one on the Nord 2 but with a few extra features added in.

The UI is similar to the camera app on Oppo phones. You have the mode list at the bottom, and you can scroll to switch between them. Additional modes are found at the end under the More button. There's no swipe-up drawer available with all available modes. That's a shame as it was much more convenient than this more button.

Camera app

The rest of the options are available at the top of the screen, and more can be accessed by pulling down on the viewfinder. Here you can also find the option to go to the settings.

The camera app on the OnePlus 9RT has a lot of options. The pro or Expert mode, as it's called here, is very comprehensive. You get all the manual controls but also the option to shoot in RAW on both the wide as well as the ultra-wide lens. On top of that, there's also a RAW+ option, which is similar to the RAW mode on Pixel phones or ProRAW on iPhone Pro models.

In fact, you also get a pro mode for video recording. Called Movie, this mode offers recording videos in 21:9 with manual control over ISO, shutter speed, white balance, and focus. You can even enable a log profile, which shoots with a logarithmic gamma curve instead of the typical linear curve. This captures a flat image with a lot more dynamic range that is ideal for color grading.

While all of these options are great, the app can still be frustrating to use. The settings in the Expert mode have a tendency to constantly reset as you switch between lenses. The RAW settings are also not retained and reset back to JPEG the next time you open the camera app. The tiny digits for the ISO, shutter speed, and white balance values also make it hard to see the exact settings you've dialed in. It's as if whoever designed the app has never actually used a camera in their life.

Moving on to the image quality, the main 50MP camera on the back produces respectable quality images. The color reproduction is mostly accurate. It does tend to miss occasionally, particularly while trying to white balance the image as the colors tend to have a green cast to them, but no camera is accurate 100% of the time. It's certainly a far cry from previous OnePlus phones, which tended to miss more often than they got it right.

Wide camera samples

The resolution and detail are also decent. These are still just 12MP images, so there isn't a ton of room to crop in, but if that's not your goal, then you should be fine. There also isn't too much oversharpening going on, and the noise levels are also usually under control.

The dynamic range is decent, but as with other OnePlus phones, there is a tendency to crush shadow details slightly. We are not sure why OnePlus has a habit of doing this, as it doesn't make the images aesthetically appealing and only hurts them technically.

The low light image quality is decent. The night mode is certainly very effective and recommended for shooting in the dark.

Night mode off • Night mode on

Still, all things considered, we were generally happy with the images coming out of the main camera on the OnePlus 9RT.

The ultra-wide camera is fine for a one-off use, but it isn't the best ultra-wide camera we have seen. In some ways, it was better than the main camera, wherein it often had more accurate white balance and also didn't crush shadow detail as much. However, the level of detail in the images was very low despite the 16MP resolution and there was a fair amount of distortion in the lens.

Ultra-wide camera samples

Low light image quality with the ultra-wide is very poor. You have to use the night mode, and even then, the quality is often not usable.

Night mode off • Night mode on

But while the ultra-wide camera is usually passable, the dedicated macro camera is just there to beef up the camera count. Its photo results are barely passable - for a webcam. They can really learn a trick or two from the competition over at Xiaomi which are doing a far better job with their telemacro cam.

Macro camera samples

Before moving on to video recording, we want to touch briefly on the RAW+ capture for the wide and ultra-wide cameras. It seems this mode stacks multiple exposures to create a final image. We did not see much evidence of increased dynamic range in the images compared to the standard RAW files. However, the RAW+ images were vastly cleaner in comparison; you could get away with sensitivities as high as ISO 6400 in the RAW+ mode and still get usable images, while anything beyond ISO 1600 was too noisy with the RAW files.

The video recording on the OnePlus 9RT is pretty decent. You can capture up to 4K 60fps on both the wide as well as the ultra-wide cameras on the back and retain digital image stabilization. There's also an ultra steady mode, which records in 1080p 60fps only. As mentioned before, there's also a pro mode with manual controls and log recording.

The 4K video from the 50MP camera is good quality. The color reproduction, detail, and dynamic range are all quite good, and there's no significant degradation of quality when switching from 30fps to 60fps.

You need to keep an eye on the video recording settings as they could change when you switch modes or lenses, and this once again comes down to the camera app's inability to maintain settings for particular modes and cameras. OnePlus also once again chooses to record videos in the Rec. 601 color standard instead of the more common Rec. 709, which could cause some color issues when viewing the videos on other devices.

The videos from the ultra-wide camera are less impressive but still fine for most uses. The level of detail is much less, and there's a hazy quality to the image, but the quality is still usable if shot in good lighting.

The ultra steady mode is captured using the primary 50MP camera with a further crop for increased digital stabilization. The stabilization wasn't as impressive as we'd have liked, and the loss in resolution and detail didn't make it seem worth it unless you were shooting in particularly shaky conditions.

Lastly, we want to mention the pro or Movie mode. As mentioned before, you can adjust settings such as ISO, shutter speed, white balance, etc for video. This, however, proved less useful than we had initially imagined. While we do like the idea of having manual control over the shutter speed to dictate the look of the video, unfortunately, it's simply not possible to do this without additional filters for the lens.

For example, since the phone shoots only at 30fps in this mode, we'd ideally want to set the shutter speed to 1/60th of a second for the best look. Unfortunately, even with ISO set all the way to the lowest value, the image is just far too overexposed to be usable without resorting to using some sort of ND filter.

The Movie mode also restricts you to shooting in 21:9 (3840x1728) with no standard 16:9 option. You also only have 30fps with no 60fps or the more appropriate 24fps option.

As for the log recording, it also had limited use. While it was fun to mess around with the footage in post, and we have provided a sample of a quick edit above, the fact is that the tiny smartphone sensor simply cannot take advantage of this feature designed for larger cinema cameras. There really isn't that much more dynamic range in the image, and the highlights are largely irrecoverable.

Overall, the camera performance on the OnePlus 9RT is decent. The camera app is frustrating with its inability to remember settings and clumsy UI, and the macro camera is a genuine abomination. However, the ultra-wide camera is decent, and the main 50MP camera is very good, so for the most part, users should be happy with the overall experience.