OnePlus 7 Pro or OnePlus 7: What Does ‘Pro’ Offer For its Price?

Here’s a quick look at how the OnePlus 7 is different from the OnePlus 7 Pro, both of which just launched in India.

OnePlus has launched two new phones for different kinds of audiences, depending on how much you want to pay. For this, you have the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro, which hopefully means there won’t be a ‘T’ version in 2019.

While the OnePlus 7 has been priced at an aggressive Rs 32,999 for the base variant, the company has gone beyond its safe space, by pricing the 7 Pro at Rs 48,999 for the 6GB + 128GB model. Consumers are likely to question the value of the ‘Pro’ version, especially when it goes up against Apple and Samsung in its truest sense.

Yes, there’s more on offer, but a price tag of Rs 58,000 is not affordable for most existing OnePlus phone buyers, who are looking at value-for-money in the first place. Here’s a quick look at what you get with the 7 Pro, and how the company has managed to price the OnePlus 7 aggressively.

Design - Difference an Understatement

The One Plus 7 borrows its design elements and language from the 6T and there’s no better way to put it. The screen size and the resolution is the same, which means there’s a tiny water drop notch that hosts the front camera. The display profile is simple, thin bezels on the side and bottom chin is visible too.

Talking about the OnePlus 7 Pro, everything is different from anything OnePlus has made till date. It gets a 6.67-inch screen with edge finish and the resulting design is as impressive as most flagships in the market. The notch has been removed and you get a pop-up camera on the front.

Another big difference with the 7 Pro is its weight at 206 grams, making it bigger and heavier to hold, and we’ve already felt the impact while using it. For OnePlus 5 or 5T users, this could be a big change of ergonomics. 

At the back, you can choose between metallic and glass finish variants, where you’ll come across three cameras, another first for the brand, and no fingerprint scanner as expected. So, clearly you can see the difference between the 7 and 7 Pro is huge and we’re only talking in terms of design as of now.

Power - Plenty on Offer

As per the specs sheet of both the devices (shown above), OnePlus has not differentiated between the 7 and the 7 Pro by a lot. It has the same upgraded Snapdragon 855 processor, with RAM options ranging up to 8GB for the 7, and a staggering 12GB with the 7 Pro.

Storage wise, you can choose variants with space up to 256GB for both the phones, which understandably increases the price of the device. 

OnePlus is also the first company to pack the 7 series with UFS 3.0 port on its standard Type C unit. This works out to a good effect while playing files on the device and transferring data as well. This might not matter to most people, but it’s worth highlighting nevertheless.

All this simply means both the phones are equally powerful when it comes to performance, and unless you’ve figured out the best way to utilise 12GB RAM on a phone (my laptop runs on 4GB RAM even now) you’ve got nothing to worry about how the devices will behave in day-to-day tasks.

OnePlus 7 carries the same 3,700mAh unit as of the 6 and 6T, but this time it is equipped with the Warp Charger. The 7 Pro has been loaded with a bigger 4,000mAh battery with the same Warp Charge tech, that claims to offer 10 hours of battery life with a 10 minute charge.

This includes regular social media usage, internet surfing, long hours of PUBG Mobile, and catch up on a Netflix show or two.

Cameras - The More, the Better?

Using the new processor has allowed OnePlus to bump up the megapixel count of cameras on both the phones. You get a primary 48-megapixel and 5-megapixel secondary unit on the 7, which does sound impressive on paper at least, but we’ll have to test to see its capability.

This new sensor, IMX 586 to be precise, has been seen on phones across different segments, and OnePlus will hopefully offer imaging quality worth the prices of these phones.

OnePlus 7 Pro houses three rear cameras, the main one being the same 48-megapixel unit as on the 7. The added price tag also brings in a telephoto and ultra wide lens, which again, has become a flagship requisite in 2019.

Again, we haven’t spent enough time with the phone to give a straight answer, but more on that in our detailed camera comparison soon.

Worth the ‘Pro’ for OnePlus?

Looking at all this, and the prices, OnePlus 7 Pro does seem to be stepping into the unknown. The top variant with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage (what!) costs Rs 58,000 in the country and that’s entering the Apple-Samsung territory big time.

The phone has the internals to match the best in the market, software has always been a strong suit for OnePlus and we can say the same for its charging capability.

But, flagship phones need to have IP rating, which the 7 Pro doesn’t. It is also expected to have a top-end camera, but we’ll reserve our verdict on that till we test it thoroughly. Most people at the launch were sceptical of the phone’s pricing and in the coming weeks we’ll know if the company got it wrong or not.