OnePlus 10 Pro review: upgrading the wide-angle camera

No model has been released without a Pro designation this year. If that doesn’t change, the suffix on the OnePlus 10 Pro is pretty much useless. With its predecessor, the telephoto camera was the added value of the Pro version. This year, the partnership with Hasselblad and sister brand Oppo provides more photo options.

C’est chic

The OnePlus 10 Pro only comes in two colours. My test device is black, and there’s also a green model. While I still miss the sandstone back from the early days of OnePlus, I’m perfectly happy with the 10 Pro.

The back is made of Gorilla Glass 5, but I barely notice it. It’s matt and glitters subtly when you move it. The surface feels slightly rough. Definitely not like glass. Fingerprints won't stick to it. The metal frame extends around the back of the camera bump, incorporating the three lenses and flash.

On the front, you’re looking at a 6.7-inch AMOLED display, which provides a 3216 × 1440-pixel resolution and a refresh rate of 120 Hertz. It looks good and is bright enough even in sunlight. The sides are rounded slightly, but not so much that it bothers me. However, the high refresh rate comes at a price. In the settings, the 10 Pro tells me that changing it to 60 Hertz can add about 6.5 hours of battery life. For context, at 120 Hertz and its current 76 percent battery level, the smartphone should last another day and eight hours.

There’s a fingerprint sensor in the display, which usually recognises my finger quickly and reliably and unlocks the OnePlus 10 Pro. However, once my hand was very cold, and nothing worked at all. I could only enter the passcode – or use face recognition. It sounds strange, but gloves ultimately help when using the fingerprint sensor.

A very good camera

OnePlus’ collaboration with Hasselblad, which started with the 9 series, continues with the 10 Pro, and «Natural Color Calibration» has been further developed into a «Billion Color Solution». This means that the smartphone can now take photos in 10 bit rather than just 8 bit. It sounds like a small change, but it means 64 times more colours. The OnePlus 10 Pro also extends the conventional sRGB colour space to the P3 colour space.

The main camera of the OnePlus 10 Pro features the same 48-megapixel Sony IMX 789 sensor as the OnePlus 9 Pro. What’s more, the wide-angle camera has 50 megapixels and a new image sensor, the Samsung Isocell JN1. The 8-megapixel telephoto camera enables a 3.3x zoom and the Sony IMX 615 on the front-facing camera delivers 32 megapixels, double the resolution of the 9 series. It’s the same sensor as the OnePlus Nord 2 (article in German).

10 bit

10 bit is not an entirely new addition to smartphone photography. Oppo, which shares a parent company with OnePlus, making the two more closely linked, offered it with the Find X3 Pro. Colleague Dominik Bärlocher was enthusiastic at the time, but also pointed out its big problem. Few monitors beyond the original smartphone are capable of displaying the images in 10 bit.

The problem is still there. The P3 colour space is still not a widespread standard for monitors. The .heic file format is also not yet a standard in all computer operating systems, but it can be opened anywhere with the right tools.

In order to take 10-bit photos, I have to go into the settings of the OnePlus 10 Pro. I did so for the test and took photos in both 8 and 10 bit, fully aware that I can't see them both on my monitor. However, the big disappointment came when looking at the smartphone display. Even with the P3 colour space activated, I can't see any differences in the colour display to trigger as much enthusiasm as Dominik describes with the Find X3 Pro.

I can't show you the pictures in this article, but you can download them here and – provided you have a suitable screen – make your own comparison. If there are any benefits when it comes to post-processing, let me know.

XPan

I’m much more enthusiastic about XPan. I’d describe it as a better panorama function. Instead of panning the smartphone over the panorama as usual and trusting the software to put together a proper picture, I get a photo in panorama format at the push of a button. XPan can’t do 360 degrees, but I don’t miss that.

XPan also premiered on an Oppo smartphone. Using the Find X5 Pro, Dominik discovered his preference for black and white shots taken with XPan and showed that narrow fields of view are good for more than just panoramic shots.

Wide-angle specs

Compared to the OnePlus 9, the 10 Pro’s wide-angle camera has a smaller viewing angle. With distortion correction, it’s only 110 degrees instead of 120. However, the wide-angle shots are still high quality. They move on par with the main camera – which is still a rarity.

If you go without the distortion correction, the OnePlus 10 Pro offers a larger viewing angle: 150 degrees, if you don't mind curved edges and corners in your photos.

The smartphone also offers a fisheye effect, but it’s software-based and falls into the «nice gadgets for playing around» category.

Colour and contrast

Colours are also no problem for the OnePlus 10 Pro in 8 bit. They look natural in the shots. Depending on the weather, they’re grey and dreary or brightly coloured – at least if the subject is colourful graffiti.

Strong contrasts aren’t a problem. You can pick out the shadow at the edge of the graffiti, but it’s not significantly darker than the rest of the image.

Zoom

At 3.3× zoom, I don't see any loss in quality. On the contrary: I think the picture looks better than if I enlarge the same section of a standard picture taken with the main camera. The quality is usable for social media up to 10× zoom, but it decreases after that. The maximum available 30× zoom is only an option if there’s no other option.

At night

At night, you’ll notice bigger differences between the main and the wide-angle camera. The main camera brightens up more and gets more sharpness into the image. It’s also striking how differently the cameras display the beams of light from the fair.

This continues in night mode, which offers more details and brighter images overall.

Selfies

The colours in selfies look less vibrant compared to photos from the main camera. However, the level of detail is very high and portrait mode works very well, even with just one lens. You can see this in comparison with portrait mode with the cameras on the back, where there’s also a clear difference in colour.

Restrained hardware

OnePlus uses Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 on the 10 Pro, equipping it with either eight or 12 gigabytes of RAM. That’s more than enough computing power for everyday use – [even when limited] (http://www.heise.de/news/OnePlus-Leistungs-Drossel-soll-sich-bald-abschalten-lassen-6146419.html) to conserve battery power (article in German).

My test device with 12 gigabytes of RAM scored 987 points in single-core mode of the Geekbench 5 CPU test and 3,341 points in multi-core mode. In the graphics tests, OpenCL scored 5,854 points, while Vulkan amassed 5,406 points. If these figures seem low to you, there’s a high-performance mode in the battery settings of the OnePlus 10 Pro. Activating it boosts the CPU test scores to 1,259 and 3,474 points respectively, bringing it in line with other devices using Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, such as the Xiaomi 12.

The OnePlus 10 Pro’s 128 or 256 gigabytes of storage can’t be expanded with a microSD card. There’s only room for two SIM cards in the card slot.

I still really like one small switch on the OnePlus: the «alert slider» on the side of the case. The 10 Pro also allows me to switch back and forth between ringing, vibrating and silence. Adjusting the type of notification on a smartphone doesn’t get any easier.

Software with work-life balance

With OxygenOS 12.1, the OnePlus 10 Pro has a comparatively neat user interface that runs on Android 12. The Netflix app is the only bloatware on the smartphone, while OxygenOS has some extensions. These include virtual memory, three dark modes and a work-life balance function. The latter enables you to define apps and settings for specific times, places and Wi-Fi networks, such as blocking Instagram during work hours and making yourself unavailable to colleagues after work.

OnePlus provides its top smartphones – including the 10 Pro – with Android updates for three years and security updates for four years.

Superfast charging

The OnePlus 10 Pro supports SuperVooc fast charging technology. The 80-watt power supply provided can fully charge an empty battery in just over half an hour. According to OnePlus, the smartphone can charge with enough energy for a day in 15 minutes. Since the battery will rarely be completely empty, this probably happens very often. Even if you quickly get ready in the bathroom in the morning, the 5,000 mAh battery (actually, it's two 2,500 mAh batteries) will keep you charged for the day. For me at least, this is ample on a typical day when fully charged – and if not, the smartphone doesn't have to be plugged in for long.

You can also charge the OnePlus 10 Pro wirelessly, with up to 50 watts available via a charger that supports AirVooc. Reverse wireless charging also allows you to charge other devices.

Verdict: sign me up

The OnePlus 10 Pro is a very good smartphone with an excellent design, display and finish. The cameras produce great images – even if shooting in 10 bit hasn’t yet offered any visible benefits. The hardware has more than enough power – even with the throttling, which can be switched off if necessary. Fast charging is convenient, the battery life is long enough, and I still like OxygenOS. I’d just like to have it all in a more compact device.