After drip-feeding out details about its new flagship phone over the last week, OnePlus has finally revealed the OnePlus 10 Pro in China.
Even now, there’s still a few things left to mystery, such as its launch price when it goes on sale in China on Jan. 13 or when it will be available elsewhere. (OnePlus has only said it will launch globally later in 2022.) But what we do know is that with powerful specs and sharp cameras, the OnePlus 10 Pro could be one of the top phones released in 2022.
These details OnePlus dropped up until now confirmed that the OnePlus 10 Pro would pack the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset and run on the company’s OxygenOS 12 (based on Android 12), which folds in “feature-rich” parts of Oppo’s ColorOS for the first time.
That’s still true and we now know the phone will pack the Snapdragon X65 modem, which supports more 5G networks, frequencies and bandwidths along with increasing the maximum download speeds to 10Gbps. While you probably won’t hit that cap with today’s carriers, the new X65 should provide faster and more consistent 5G speeds. The OnePlus 10 Pro also will have up to 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and up to 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage, which are the same specs as last year’s OnePlus 9 Pro.
The 6.7-inch OLED display is the same size as its predecessor’s. It has a maximum 120Hz refresh rate that makes browsing the internet or gaming very smooth, though it adaptively cranks the rate down to even 1Hz (or one frame per second) during low-demand tasks to save battery life. The phone comes in two colors: a seafoam Forest Green and matte Volcanic Black.
OnePlus has confirmed that its new phone will inherit last year’s rear camera setup, too: a 48-megapixel main camera, an 8-megapixel telephoto camera and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera with a maximum 150-degree field of view. The 10 Pro will get an improved 32-megapixel camera, which should take sharper photos than the 16-megapixel selfie camera on its predecessor.
As the second generation of OnePlus phones to have Hasselblad-tuned cameras, the OnePlus 10 Pro’s photo capabilities have been refined in a handful of ways. First is an improved Pro Mode that takes photos in 12-bit RAW+, a new format that combines the rich data capture of RAW with on-device image processing to give shots more accurate colors. When taking more casual photos, all three rear cameras have 10-bit color for over 1 billion possible hues.
Hasselblad’s influence can also be seen in Master Mode, which offers three filters tuned by professional photographers and artists that making shooting fashion, wildlife and urban spaces look more stylized and unique. For video, the new Movie Mode lets you tweak settings like ISO, shutter speed and white balance even while recording for tight control on focus and lighting.
The 10 Pro’s 5,000mAh battery is the biggest on a flagship OnePlus phone yet, but it’s the 80-watt wired charging that will make it stand out from the competition. The company claims it will bring the phone from 1% up to full charge in a very specific 32 minutes. The phone also supports up to 50-watt wireless charging, which will recharge a similarly nearly dead phone in 47 minutes, OnePlus estimates.
On paper, the OnePlus 10 Pro seems like it will be a strong contender among the best phones in 2022, though we’ll have to wait until we can test it at an undetermined later date for an as-yet-unannounced price.
