OnePlus bucked its own trend of prioritizing the West when it launched the OnePlus 10 Pro in China first in January 2022. Now it’s March, and finally, the wait for a global successor to the excellentOnePlus 9 Pro is almost over, with the global version of the 10 Pro popping up at MWC 2022, and lined up in front of a vibrant billion-color fishtank no less.
Looking at the specs, the OnePlus 10 Pro shares a lot of similarities with the OnePlus 9 Pro while overhauling its design, and upgrading the internals. Specifically, the camera hardware is identical around the back, but the Snapdragon 888 of last year’s OnePlus flagship is now a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset.
With everything from the phone’s release date to pricing yet to be confirmed though, and little more than a hands-on with it on the show floor to go by, what do we make of the phone’s interesting new design and familiar everything else?
OnePlus 10 Pro design and screen
We enjoyed the OnePlus 9 Pro’s look and feel – it was polished, premium, and felt like a flagship smartphone. That said, it didn’t make any bold statements. This time around, OnePlus has leveled up its bold statements and has added a giant camera surround that wraps around one side of the phone and extends just over halfway along the back.
While renders and photographs make the OnePlus 10 Pro’s back look a bit disjointed, in real life, it looks absolutely fine. In fact, the black version looks better than fine, with the textured backing elegantly set against the contrasting shine of the glass camera system.
Available in either Emerald Green or Volcanic Black, both versions of the OnePlus 10 Pro feature a prominent Hasselblad insignia that’s emblazoned vertically along its camera surround.
The phone’s finish is also a matte texture, with the black version being reminiscent of the OnePlus One from 2014, whilst the way it wraps around the side of the phone even makes us think back further to the unibody HTC One S, and of course older iPhones
As for the screen, it’s an identically specced panel to what we saw last year from OnePlus 9 Pro andOppo Find X3 Pro – a 6.7-inch, 120Hz refresh rate display with a 1440 x 3216 resolution, and a 525 PPI pixel density that makes it mightily sharp. What’s new about it is the tech under the hood. The second-generation LTPO can now increase the refresh rate range spanning from 1Hz to 120Hz, so should result in greater power-saving potential.
With a peak brightness of 1300 nits, and Gorilla Glass Victus protecting the screen, the display specs say all the right things, and indeed in the flesh, it looks like it delivers the goods on first impression.
Cameras
In the little time we had with the OnePlus 10 Pro’s camera, the core Hasselblad experiences are very similar to those of the OnePlus 9 Pro and the new Oppo Find X5 Pro. That means there’s a Hasselblad shutter sound, Hasselblad image tuning, and a few other features, but the camera hardware is very much what we saw last year, and that hasn’t got anything to do with Hasselblad.
The OnePlus 10 Pro’s main camera is a 48MP resolution Sony IMX 789 with a 1/1.43-inch sensor size, 1.12-micron pixels, a seven-element lens, OIS, an f/1.8 aperture, and a wide 23mm focal length equivalent.
The phone’s 50MP ultra-wide camera appears to be the same as found on theOPPO Find X5 Pro. It’s powered by a Sony IMX 766, 1/1.56-inch sensor, another seven-element lens, including a freeform lens to minimize distortion, and is matched with an f/2.2 aperture, 14mm lens.
Missing out on an excellent periscope telephoto camera, as found on thePixel 6 Pro and theSamsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, the OnePlus 10 Pro’s doesn’t upgrade last year’s 8MP telephoto camera. It features the same 1-micron pixels, an f/2.4 aperture, and a roughly 70mm focal length (making a 3.3 times zoom system).
One camera that is upgraded is the selfie camera, with the OnePlus 10 Pro doubling the resolution from 16MP to 32MP.
OnePlus 10 Pro specs
The main upgrade phones announced at MWC seem to be getting over their predecessors is power, with the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor in everything from theHonor Magic 4 Pro to Realme’s new GT 2 Pro. It’s little wonder that’s what the OnePlus 10 Pro gets too, complete with either 8GB or 12GB RAM.
One other area the 10 Pro does better than the 9 Pro is battery capacity and wired charging speeds, with the phone sporting a 5000mAh cell – 500mAh more than last year’s flagship. Its charging speeds also outperform most phones on the market, with 80W wired charging and 50W wireless charging. While Xiaomi’sMi 11T Pro outperforms its wired charging with speeds of up to 120W, and Honor’s just unveiled its 100W wireless charging flagship, OnePlus’s new champ wipes the floor with the best from both Apple and Samsung.
OnePlus 10 Pro: Early verdict
The OnePlus 10 Pro does feel very familiar on paper. It takes safe steps to upgrade a host of specs, without shaking up the formula too much and changing elements like camera sensors or screen size or resolution. Of course, a huge amount comes down to software, so we’re not writing it off as a OnePlus 9 Pro knock-off just yet.
To be fair to OnePlus, the design is totally different, and we’re also excited to see the latest version of OnePlus’s Oxygen OS with Android 12. Last year, Hasselblad helped the OnePlus 9 Pro become one of thebest camera phones we’d tested, and a fantastic choice at its price. Can the 10 Pro leave such a good impression? Check back for the full review to find out.
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