OnePlus has long made flagship devices for people with a high-end taste in smartphone design. The OnePlus 9 Pro embodied that philosophy, packing an excellent camera and lightweight software into an elegant shell. Unfortunately, the OnePlus 10 Pro ($899.99) feels like a step backward. It’s a beautiful phone with excellent cameras and fast charging, but its current software is aesthetically and functionally inferior to competing Android handsets. That’s a big deal if you, like me, have used OnePlus phones in part because of their sleek software. Ultimately, the $999.99 Samsung Galaxy S22+ remains our favorite Android phone for its equally impressive hardware and smoother software experience.
Premium Build Quality
The OnePlus 10 Pro is currently the company’s only flagship—it doesn’t offer a more basic OnePlus 10 (a would-be successor to the OnePlus 9), and the supposed OnePlus 10 Ultra remains a rumor. Its $899.99 price is right in line with other flagships, at $100 less than the Galaxy S22+ ($999.99) and $100 more than the iPhone 13 ($799).
The 10 Pro measures 6.42 by 2.91 by 0.34 inches (HWD) and weighs 7.1 ounces, almost identical to the 9 Pro (6.42 by 2.89 by 0.34 inches, 6.9 ounces). The phone is available in either a matte black or a cool greenish-blue finish.
OnePlus keeps some of the design touches from the 8 Pro and 9 Pro—the front-facing camera still sits in the upper left corner of the screen, the mute switch remains on the right rail, and the colorful always-on display continues to show the time in bold type. But, on the back, a black glass bump wraps in from the edge to showcase the three lenses and flash of the square camera stack. This design flair is new, attractive, and unique. The phone uses Gorilla Glass Victus material on the front and Gorilla Glass 5 on the back, and carries an IP68 rating, which means it’s effectively waterproof and dustproof.
The 6.7-inch, 3,216-by-1,440-pixel, 120Hz LTPO OLED display is extremely sharp, peaks at 1,300 nits of brightness, and supports 10-bit color. Being an OLED panel, the blacks are extremely black. There are several different color modes: The default Vivid has slightly bluish whites and very amped-up colors, Cinematic is a bit warmer, and Brilliant appears to use the entire 10-bit gamut. There’s an overall color temperature slider, and even modes to accommodate for different kinds of color blindness. That kind of flexibility is one reason people come to OnePlus.
The screen can dynamically adjust its refresh rate, and drop it to just 1Hz to save battery when you view static content. (That isn’t something you can control, however—the screen automatically ramps up again when you scroll, so it doesn’t feel slow like an ebook reader.) The phone’s under-display optical fingerprint sensor has a relatively small target area, but works quickly and well, even with a somewhat damp finger.
The handset features dual speakers in the usual places, on the bottom edge and near the top under the screen. They sound a bit tinny, but perform within our expectations for a phone. A USB-C port on the bottom handles charging and data transfers.
OnePlus sent two cases alongside our review unit: a black Sandstone one that gives the phone the feel of an old OnePlus One ($24), and a Quantum Photography case that makes it look like you can see inside the back of the phone ($39).
Software Stumbles
The OnePlus 10 Pro’s software doesn’t unlock the full speed of the phone’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset in its default power mode. It seems to perform slower by design, and actually benchmarks worse than the OnePlus 9 Pro. The OS throws up a warning about power consumption when you switch on Performance Mode, but this setting brings the handset’s performance in line with other Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phones like the Moto Edge+ and the Galaxy S22+.
OnePlus said in a statement to me that this is all on purpose, but I don’t trust it. After all, if you aren’t delivering full speed in benchmarking apps, when do you deliver it?
According to the company: “By default, the OnePlus 10 Pro provides the performance you’d expect from a OnePlus device while reducing power consumption and heat dissipation. The OnePlus 10 Pro matches each app with the most appropriate performance it needs. When high performance mode is enabled on the OnePlus 10 Pro, the device’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor runs at full speed to provide the best performance possible.”
This is just one of the problems with the phone’s Android 12-based OxygenOS 12 software. What’s clearest from the geto-go is that it’s also an aesthetic disaster.
OxygenOS 12 tosses away years of thoughtful, minimalist design in favor of ideas from Oppo’s much heavier ColorOS (as seen on the Oppo Find X5 Pro). As 9to5Google succinctly phrased it, “If you do not like Oppo’s ColorOS, then you will not like OxygenOS 12.”
Years ago, OnePlus’ Pete Lau said his priority was to make the smartphone experience “burdenless,” and until now OnePlus delivered on that promise. OxygenOS 12 is a big step away from that ethos, and the differences are obvious. Just for starters, the interface defaults to larger app icons with rounded-square backgrounds and a heavier, bolder implementation of the OnePlus Sans font; swiping down from the top of the screen confusingly opens a widget shelf half the time; and the search bar in the app drawer is more cramped. It’s just a cascade of bad visual choices. If I encountered OxygenOS 12 on OnePlus’ low-cost Nord phones, I’d be more charitable. But OnePlus flagships have always been about speed and elegance.
OnePlus needs to reject all of these Oppo-esque elements. Fortunately, Lau said that he’s heard user complaints and OxygenOS 13 will look and feel a lot more like OxygenOS 11 when it comes out later this year.
“As discussed by OnePlus in February, with OxygenOS 13 we want to deliver an experience that long-time OnePlus users will be familiar with while ensuring it upholds hallmarks of OxygenOS, like a fast and smooth experience, burdenless design, and ease of use,” the company said in a statement.
We do like some of the phone’s software features, like a work-life balance mode that aims to hide your Slack notifications when you’re off of work, and a Zen Mode that prevents you from using your phone for a set amount of time, except for making emergency calls. You also get three different variations of dark mode.
The phone is guaranteed three major Android version updates and four years of security updates. That’s better than Motorola (two Android updates), but not as good as Samsung (four Android updates) or Apple (at least five iOS updates).
Competitive Network and Battery Performance
OnePlus plans to sell an unlocked version of the phone, but the T-Mobile model is your best bet based on its network support. Verizon hasn’t certified the phone yet, and the OnePlus 10 Pro gets only 4G on AT&T at the moment. Like the OnePlus 9 Pro, the phone supports Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6, but not the Wi-Fi 6E standard.
The US model comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. It’s a single-SIM phone that supports all of T-Mobile’s and Verizon’s sub-6GHz bands including C-band 5G, but not millimeter-wave. That missing support would be a bigger deal on Verizon’s network, but T-Mobile hasn’t prioritized millimeter-wave 5G as much.
Network performance slightly trails behind the Galaxy S22+. The OnePlus 10 Pro typically recovered a few seconds after the Samsung handset when I brought the two phones in and out of several dead zones and weak-signal areas for testing.
I got 10 hours of video playback time at full brightness from the 10 Pro’s 5,000mAh battery. That’s a bit short of the Galaxy S22+’s 10 hours and 30 minutes, but longer than the 9 Pro’s 9 hours and 40 minutes and is sufficient for a full day of regular use. The phone charges much more quickly than any Galaxy S22 device or iPhone—with 65W charging from a dead battery, the phone reached 22% in five minutes, 41% in 10 minutes, and a full charge in just under 40 minutes. And yes, you get a power adapter in the box.
The phone also supports 50W wireless charging via the same $69.99 Warp Charge 50 dock that works with the 9 Pro. With this accessory, the battery reached 21% in 10 minutes and 100% in about an hour. The 9 Pro charged more quickly with this dock, but the Pro 10 still offers a faster wireless charging rate than any non-OnePlus phone released in the US.
Cameras: A New Look
OnePlus’ latest Hasselblad camera system is quite good, and offers some modes that you can’t find on Samsung and Apple devices. And while the night mode still isn’t quite as effective as the one you get with flagship Samsung or Pixel phones, it’s within striking distance.
The phone’s main camera is a 48MP f/1.8 lens that takes 12MP photos by default with pixel binning. There’s also an 8MP f/2.4, 3.3x telephoto lens, as well as a wacky 50MP ultrawide sensor on the back. The 50MP camera defaults to 12.5MP photos with a 110-degree field of view, but also has 150-degree and fish-eye modes that deliver super-wide, purposefully distorted images.
In testing, OnePlus’ camera software seems to amp up colors in photos even more than Samsung’s. Some people won’t like this, but I absolutely love the effect.
The OnePlus 10 also offers a bunch of extra features that may excite serious shutterbugs, including 10-bit HEIF color capture, DNG RAW capture, a special LOG capture pro video mode, and the XPAN video mode (a welcome carryover from the OnePlus 9 Pro). These features are all for people who prefer to edit their photos and videos rather than just look at or post them.
The night mode works a bit quicker than Samsung’s equivalent, which is convenient. One downside, however, is that it’s only available for the primary lens—any zooming you do in night mode is the digital kind that fuzzes out images pretty quickly.
The standard ultrawide mode uses an aggressive straightening algorithm to prevent the edges from slanting. But the main appeal is a new 150-degree ultra-ultrawide mode that can make anything look like a video from the 1990s.
This ultra-ultrawide mode is really fun to use, as is the optional fisheye mode (though I’m not sure either is entirely useful). You can simulate the effect on other phones with various apps, but this is the real deal.
The phone doesn’t offer a dedicated macro lens or mode, but it still does very well with close-ups. A macro shot I took with the main lens turned out sharper and clearer than with the Galaxy S22+.
Time to Step Back
The OnePlus 10 Pro is a lovely piece of hardware with a brilliant screen, innovative cameras, and fast charging. But its software needs a lot of work and is the primary reason you’re not seeing a higher score at the top of this page. This isn’t just an aesthetic problem, either—OnePlus really needs to improve whatever is going on with performance management. In the past, I would trust OnePlus to fix these issues (it used to be a responsive, nimble company that quickly pushed software updates in response to user feedback), but the “post-Oppo” OnePlus is a different beast that seems more interested in aligning with its parent company (BBK) than producing the best possible US flagship.
A few weeks ago, I moaned about how the US phone market is getting boring and that there isn’t any real competition for Samsung’s Galaxy S22 lineup. New flagships from OnePlus and Motorola phones have launched since then, and each has notable strengths, but neither dethrones the Galaxy S22+ as our Editors’ Choice winner. The S22+ offers the best combination of high-end hardware and consistent software, making it the flagship Android phone to beat.
