The OnePlus 7 Pro is this year’s showstopper at the company’s launch event and the new promotional page for the smaller OnePlus 7 provides ample evidence for the reason that’s the case. As expected, the handset doesn’t offer much outward variation away from the previous flagship, the OnePlus 6T. Instead, all of the big changes for the €550 device have to be looked for in the details.
On the design front, the biggest change to the OnePlus 7 may be in terms of camera placement and colors. The device will ship in a Mirror Gray, rather than the Mirror Black or Midnight Black available on the OnePlus 6T. A ‘Red’ variant will be available in both China and India as well. The camera bump on the rear panel has been resized to house the dual LED flash.
All of the other visual aspects of the gadget appear almost identical, from the forward facing waterdrop notch and slim bezels to the in-display fingerprint scanner.
The 6.41-inch display panel appears almost completely unchanged, down to the 2.5D Gorilla Glass coating. 3D Glass is used on the back panel. The scale is roughly the same too but the newer OnePlus 7 is slightly taller and lighter than its predecessor at 157.7 x 74.8 x 8.2mm and 182 grams compared to 157.5 x 74.8 x 8.2mm and 185 grams.
A deeper look
Appearances can be deceiving though and there is a lot under the hood that’s been bumped forward. Not least of all, the new OnePlus 7 features the same Snapdragon 855 SoC backed by 6GB or 8GB RAM and 128GB or 256GB UFS 3.0 storage found in the OnePlus 7 Pro.
The more premium gadget gets a 12GB option as well and there’s no 10GB option this time around. But the OnePlus 7 is going to be much faster in terms of both processing and storage speed — up to twice as fast for the latter — while being more efficient at the same time.
Behind that powerhouse is a 3,700mAh capacity battery equipped with 5V/4A Fast Charging.
The camera hardware has been moved forward too, along with software enhancements and the bump to Android 9 Pie out-of-the-box. While less impressive than what’s been packed into the OnePlus 7 Pro, that’s a two-sensor array comprised of a Sony IMX 586 48-megapixel sensor with autofocus and dual image stabilization. The aperture on that is set at f/1.7. Backing the primary sensor up is a secondary 5-megapixel fixed-focus sensor at an f/2.4 aperture.
The forward-facing camera is a fixed-focus Sony IMX 471 sensor at 16-megapixels with an f/2.0 aperture.
One final feature has made its way over from the $700 OnePlus 7 Pro in the form of dual forward-facing stereo speakers. Those are Dolby Atmos-enabled and should provide a much better listening experience compared to the OnePlus 7’s predecessor.
…and not in the US
Unlike the OnePlus 7 Pro, set to launch first globally on the US carrier T-Mobile, doesn’t appear to be coming to the US at all. There’s no version of the page built for the country and the supported wireless bands back up that implication. Those are shown only for LTE, LTE-A, GSM, and a swath of CDMA derivatives only in China, India, Indonesia, and Europe.
In fact, no North American regions are shown at all.
So users in the region will need to purchase the more expensive OnePlus 7 Pro and will need to buy that unlocked if they plan on using the device outside of T-Mobile’s network on either Verizon or AT&T.