OnePlus 8 Review
There’s no doubt that the OnePlus 8 is a fast smartphone with smooth refresh rate. Despite the good performance, the phone is more affordable than the regular version of Samsung Galaxy S20. Here are more details about the phone:
Design and display
The OnePlus 8 is arched around the sides that mirrors the look on the front. It should feel nice in your hand and the matte glass on its back should give an overall pleasant feel. You may notice that the OnePlus 8 feels well balanced and light. Because it’s quite narrow, the phone is comfortable to hold with just one hand. On paper, the 6.5-inch display is staggering large for a phone, but the 20:9 aspect ratio ensures proper width and adequate screen real estate. With 2400 x 1080 resolution, objects on the screen are sharp with 402 ppi of pixel density. If you love playing games, the 90Hz refresh rate ensures smooth animation on the display and the navigation feels buttery-smooth.
Camera and audio
The primary 48Mp sensor on the back captures 12Mp images by default. With the pixel binning technology, four 12Mp images are bundled to produce a sharp 48Mp photo. Regular photographs look good enough and the phone does wonder with the HDR feature enabled. Because there’s no dedicated telephoto camera, you get no optical zoom. You may choose to do limited digital zoom, but this will degrade photo quality. The phone could apply only disappointing bokeh and it struggles when handling depth. Although there’s a 2Mp macro sensor, it is quite forgettable. On the plus side, the ultra-wide camera could take great landscape shots and keep moving objects within the frame. Videos look sharp with great dynamics, but colors can be slightly skewed and oversaturated. The bottom-firing stereo speakers give you meatier bass and mid-range, but they don’t act well enough as tweeter.
Hardware and software
Inside, the OnePlus 8 is a high-end device with Snapdragon 865 SoC and 8GB RAM/128GB internal storage or 12GB RAM/256GB internal storage. There’s nothing to complain, because you get the fastest performance possible with an Android device today. The OxygenOS works and looks like stock Android 10, except for a few under-the-hood changes and some extra features. Opening apps, downloading files and browsing websites are lightning fast. OnePlus adds some special optimization for the 5G data connectivity. OnePlus 8 has an algorithm to dynamically 4G connectivity to save power. For simple online activities like web browsing and opening email, the phone will switch to the more efficient 4G. When downloading a file, users can enable dual-channel acceleration by combining WiFi and 5G data connectivity.
Conclusion
OnePlus 8 has ergonomic design and fantastic display with smooth refresh rate. The overall performance is solid and there are some meaningful extra features from OnePlus. Unfortunately, its camera quality still lags behind the competition in the flagship market segment. There’s no microSD slot for storage-demanding users who may find the 128GB option insufficient. The macro sensor is next to useless and there’s no telephoto camera. Speakers have decent bass, but still sound quite harsh.
