OnePlus 8

For some reason, it took OnePlus quite some time to announce its OnePlus 8 in India.

Users have the choice to acquire the phone in Interstellar Glow, Glacial Green, and Onyx Black.

Much like last year, we are looking at OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro with the former closer to OnePlus 7T with similarities like no support for wireless charging, a triple camera setup on the rear, 90Hz refresh rate, and 6.55-inch Fluid AMOLED screen.

With the Pro version, what you have are 120Hz refresh rate, quad-camera setup, wireless charging, and a QHD+ display.

Screen

With OnePlus 8, we have a 6.55-inch Super AMOLED panel with aspect ratio of 20:9, resolution of 2,400 x 1,080, and refresh rate of 90Hz.

This phone has one of the best displays we have ever seen on smartphones, with amazing color fidelity, dynamic range, and peak brightness.

There is nothing to complain about the color rendition, which has just the right amount of contrast all while maintaining lots of details. With the Vivid mode, you will have visuals to pop even more than that.

A high refresh rate is the new standard of smartphones in 2020 and OnePlus take the credit for being the pioneer. With 90Hz screen, you can expect a leap in smoothness compared to 60Hz screen.

OnePlus 8 is also the first of OnePlus phones to have a curved display, maintaining the immersion even when you view it off-axis.

Chipset

True to OnePlus’s practice, even its more budget-friendly phone is powered by the latest chipset and plenty of RAM. What we have here is the Snapdragon 865 with at least 6GB of RAM.

And as you may expect, no app can make the OnePlus 8 lag or stutter. Gaming isn’t a problem either.

RAM

The 6GB/12GB version will set users back Rs 41,999, for more RAM and storage, you can go for the 8GB/128GB variant at the price of Rs 44,999. The top-of-the-line 12GB/256GB is priced at Rs 49,999.

That much RAM makes for a competent phone for gamers. If you want to be absolutely sure, go for the 12GB RAM variant.

Battery

OnePlus 8 draws power from a 4,300mAh battery, which leans toward the bigger side. However, it doesn’t mean we will have a longer battery life here. Users may expect a screen-on-time from 6 to 7 hours with 90Hz. Things seem to improve when switching to 60Hz, but expect a noticeable change in smoothness caused by this sacrifice.

OnePlus 8 supports Warp Charge 30T, which bears no significant difference to the Dash Charge introduced with OnePlus 3.

Phones with a cheaper price from Realme for example, offers much faster charging speed, which is a real letdown for smartphone at this price point.

With the charger in the box, it takes the phone 70 minutes to go from 0% to 100%. On the bright side, the charging speed doesn’t slow down when you play games or do some heavy tasks.

Camera

When rumors started circling about a new sensor, fans were eager to see a more capable camera setup, but as it turns out, all the excitement is reserved for the OnePlus 8 Pro.

OnePlus 8 has a more modest triple camera setup similar to what we have on OnePlus 7T, with 48MP f/1.75 Sony IMX586 main camera, a 16MP ultra-wide snapper, and a 2MP macro shooter.

However, for some, the cameras of OnePlus 8 cannot match those of OnePlus 7T, as it features a telephoto lens with 2x zoom, which is helpful in more situations.

Some unwanted news about the cameras are the oversharpening tendency of the primary camera, which usually bumps up the contrast too much. This might result in better photos in some situations but in others, it makes images seem unrealistic.

However, the white balance works just fine, but when you take pictures in bright enough environments only. The dynamic range is also great.

When you take pictures, the images will be taken with the pixel-binned mode of 12MP, with improved dynamic range. However, few differences are shown here.

The secondary ultra-wide snapper sees no improvement either. However, it still boasts minimal barrel distortion and accurate colors. As you may expect, the light sensitivity and dynamic range are not as good as those of the main camera, but the temperature and color parity is still maintained here.

The macro lens is nothing to write home about either. Users will struggle to get it focus. Even after you are done with that, you will have to manually adjust to have enough light for the photos. Even if you do these two tasks perfectly, the results can still seem disappointing as 2MP isn’t enough to add many details in.

That is not all, as the plane of focus is too thin, areas with high contrast will have chromatic aberration, making it even more challenging to click a good shot.

On the bright side, OnePlus 8 performs much better in low light. The phone can produce photos brighter than in real life, and you do not have to adjust anything as this feature is also with the auto mode.

However, the Nightscape doesn’t do much good as it needs low luminescence to work properly. Noises are to be expected but to make up for that, you will have plenty of details in pictures.

Our advice for users of OnePlus 8 is to use the Nightscape every time you are in a low light situation as it adds more details in, prevents clipped highlights from happening, and gives you some sort of night-time HDR photo.

In short, OnePlus 8’s cameras are fairly disappointing, given its price in India. With that much money, you are right to expect something extra if what you want is the best camera phone available.

The phone does its job with point-and-shoot, but do not put your hope on anything else other than that.

Our only hope now with the camera department is a software update that can fix some of the issues.