So you hunkered down to hibernate after Christmas day, ready to sleep off all the food and drink, safe in the knowledge that nothing would happen in the mobile phone world for a few weeks, right? Well put down that last slice of pie: Here’s everything there is to know about the flagship OnePlus 10 Pro.
Oh, this isn’t a leak, by the way. Ahead of the annual CES 2022 tech event, OnePlus has been drip-feeding us pieces of information on its next top-end phone. We already know what it looks like – see the image above – and that it’s launching in China on January 11, and now we also know its entire specs list.
The specs list shows largely what we’d expect for a top-end 2022 smartphone: the OnePlus 10 Pro will have the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, LPDDR5 RAM (which basically means really fast RAM), Android 12 with OxygenOS 12 laid over the top, and NFC.
Regarding cameras, it’ll have a 32MP front snapper with a 48MP, 50MP and 8MP trio on the back – we’d imagine those are main, ultra-wide and telephoto cameras respectively, but that wasn’t confirmed. This is the second generation of OnePlus phone that camera company Hasselblad has worked on, and we know they’ve done something for the OnePlus 10 Pro, but what that is, remains to be seen. (Is a Hasselblad camera a big deal? Some would say yes.)
We don’t actually know the screen size, but we can make a good guess, because we know the phone’s dimensions are 163 x 73.9 x 8.55mm. The OnePlus 9 Pro measured 163.2 x 73.6 x 8.7mm, almost identical dimensions, so we can safely assume the screen will remain at 6.7 inches. The display will have a 120Hz refresh rate.
We’re impressed by the battery size, because not all flagships get 5,000mAh power packs, and its powering speed is impressive too at 80W. That’s alongside 50W wireless charging and also reverse wireless powering, though we don’t know a speed for that.
All in all, that’s an impressive and thorough specs list – but we’re not ready to get excited just yet.
Analysis: three things about the OnePlus 10 Pro we need to learn
A smartphone is more than a collection of specs, and whether you should buy it doesn’t just depend on its internals.
While the OnePlus 10 Pro sounds super powerful, we’re not ready to get excited just yet; there are three key things we still need to learn before our skepticism makes way for… no skepticism.
First is the camera, and we’re not talking about the resolution or lenses, but the Hasselblad influence. The camera company worked on the OnePlus 9 series, but provided only a light touch, and we were always aware that they’d have a bigger hand in future generations of OnePlus phone.
So we want to know… what exactly? What expertise has Hasselblad brought to the OnePlus 10 Pro to make it a supreme camera phone? Will there be extra photography modes, or improved scene optimization, or bespoke lenses, or something else entirely?
The OnePlus 10 Pro is far from the only smartphone to have multiple high-resolution rear cameras, and we’ve previously seen that phones need a lot more than that to take great pictures. So until we know what Hasselblad has contributed, we remain wary.
Next is the OnePlus 10 Pro price, and for this writer, that’s the make-or-break aspect of any smartphone. No matter how great a mobile’s specs are, if it’s not priced competitively, it doesn’t deserve your time of day.
The mid-range phone market is incredibly competitive, with medium-priced mobiles offering similar specs to what the OnePlus 10 Pro has, and the premium phone market has struggled to keep up. We’ll need to see a very tempting price on the new top-end OnePlus phone if it’s going to impress us.
The final thing to know about before you consider buying the OnePlus 10 Pro is a bit of a cheat answer, but we still think it’s valid: It’s the standard OnePlus 10.
OnePlus hasn’t shared much information about the standard model in its new family, and we don’t expect it to launch on January 11 like the Pro, so it’s somewhat of a mystery compared to the top-end model.
And it could end up being the better phone. It’ll be cheaper than the Pro – that’s just how phone series work – and it might end up having quite a few of the same specs and features. Depending on how different the phones are, the vanilla model could be a better buy for most people than the Pro.
We might find an answer to the first of these questions on January 11, when the OnePlus 10 Pro will debut in China, but for global pricing and information on the standard OnePlus 10, we’ll have to wait even further. Stay tuned for more information though, in case the company decides to share even more information ahead of time.
