OnePlus 10 Pro initial review: A great looking flagship phone

OnePlus took the unusual move of initially launching the OnePlus 10 Pro in China, rather than launching this phone globally.

Over the past year, we’ve seen what looks like a greater influence of Oppo over the hit offshoot OnePlus. Where originally we were told that there was no crossover between OnePlus and Oppo, there’s been a change of flavour lately.

We caught up with OnePlus at Mobile World Congress 2022, with the phone launching in China in January, and due to launch elsewhere in the second half of March 2022.

Design and build

163 x 73.9 x 8.55mm, 200.5gVolcano Black and Emerald Forest coloursGorilla Glass 5 rear

The OnePlus 10 Pro pays homage to previous OnePlus devices with a premium finish. It’s a glass back – Gorilla Glass 5 to be precise – but there’s a silky matte finish, reminiscent of the sandstone finishes of the past.

There are two colours, Volcano Black and Forest Green, and the black has shimmer to it – it’s easy to see why it was called Volcano Black and it really is an attractive colour. In addition to the Emerald Green, there’s also a white version in China, but we don’t know if this is launching elsewhere.

The camera expands, with a huge squared section on the rear housing the lenses and meeting the edge of the phone and wrapping into the frame. Have we seen that before? Yes, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra did similar in 2021.

But we think this is an attractive design, nicely curved edges on the back providing a comfortable grip: on this size of device you don’t want squared edges that cut into your fingers and we like that Hasselblad branding across the camera.

Flip the phone to the front and there’s a nice display, curving towards the edges with a punch hole camera top left, while the frame carries the alert slider, still a relatively unique feature and one that OnePlus fans are quick to promote.

Display

6.7-inch AMOLED displayGorilla Glass VictusLTPO 120Hz dynamic refresh3216 x 1440 pixels, 525ppi

There’s a 6.7-inch display on the front of the OnePlus 10 Pro, with curves towards the edges to make it manageable with one hand.

This is an LTPO AMOLED panel, we suspect the same as the Oppo Find X5 Pro, and it offers dynamic refresh rates up to 120Hz. That means it can change the refresh to suit the content, with the idea being it’s always using the best refresh rate for your content, from 1-120Hz.

First impressions of the display are good. It’s a great size, and colours came across nice and punchy, but it’s too soon to determine the overall performance based on a short time on the show floor at Mobile World Congress.

If it’s anything like the Oppo Find X5 Pro – which we suspect it will be – then we think it will be a great overall experience.

The display is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus, which should help to keep some of the scratches at bay.

Hardware and performance

Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, 8/12GB RAMUp to 512GB storage5000mAh battery, 80W wired charging, 50W wireless

We can’t just the performance of the OnePlus 10 Pro just yet, but this is one of the latest devices to offer the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 so we’re sure it will offer blistering performance. There are likely to be options for 8 or 12GB RAM, but the configurations outside of China are yet to be confirmed.

The same can be said for storage, which we expect to be 128, 256 or 512GB.

On the power front, there’s a 5000mAh battery in the OnePlus 10 Pro and this is supported by 80W wired charging and 50W wireless changing, so it’s good and fast to fill it up again. There’s something of a charging race going on pushing faster and faster speeds and while OnePlus (or Oppo) isn’t offering that on this generation of devices, we can’t see anyone complaining about the performance here.

What we don’t currently know is how long it will realistically last, but previous performance from OnePlus flagships have been good, so we have high hopes.

Some of that will come down to software optimisation and we didn’t have time to really explore the software offering, so that will have to wait for a full review closer to launch day.

Cameras

Triple rear camera:48MP main, 1.12μm, f/1.8, OIS50MP ultrawide, 0.64μm, f/2.28MP telephoto, f/2.4, OIS, 3.3x32MP front, f/2.4

There are three cameras on the rear of the OnePlus 10 Pro in that eye-catching design. Here there’s a difference, on paper, to the sibling phone from Oppo, with OnePlus using different hardware across the camera.

While Oppo pushes the messaging around its MariSilicon NPU/ISP, OnePlus leverages the association with Hasselblad. We wouldn’t read too much into these things, as we’ve seen from Leica, Zeiss and other branding, often it doesn’t make much of a difference. You don’t find such branding on Samsung, Apple or Google devices…

But what we have here appears to be a sensible selection of cameras, there’s no trashy macro lens to bump up the numbers so we hope they’re all going to be useful. Of course, we haven’t had the opportunity to test the performance of these cameras, but we’re hoping for a decent result.

One fun thing is the fish-eye lens. We’re all used to having an ultra-wide camera on the back of the phone, but OnePlus now has the option to tap through to a 150 degree view. It’s software generated, but gives a fun fish-eye effect.