The OnePlus 7 Pro is the most premium device the company has ever produced, and with that premium moniker comes a premium price tag. While no one expected the company to be able to deliver a phone that competes with others on every single level without raising price, it rockets that slide towards more expensive devices in a big way.
Is this the phone for you, or are the negative aspects of OnePlus’s marketing campaigns, price tags and historical controversies enough to put you off? At Android Headlines, we break our reviews into two. This review covers all the negative aspects of the OnePlus 7 Pro. Make sure to check out the ‘Good Review’ of the OnePlus 7 Pro, where we cover all the positive aspects of the phone and why it could be worth your next smartphone purchase.
OnePlus has, historically, been making the slow slide toward “proper-flagship” pricing over the years, with a regular price increase of $20-30 for each subsequent phone release. The advent of the “T” branded half-year phone releases only escalated that push, and now the OnePlus 7 Pro makes the jump by a considerable amount. While the OnePlus One started out at a mind-blowing $299, the latest OnePlus phones retail for well over $600 or $700, depending on the model you choose. We’re well over double the cost in just 5 short years, and that goes against OnePlus’s mantra of “Never Settle” in many ways.
What are you paying for with a price increase of $150 over last Spring’s OnePlus 6? Is it just an extra camera and a nicer screen, or is there more to the equation? It’s certianly not a “Flagship Killer” anymore, it’s just a flagship.
OnePlus certainly didn’t spend the extra money on water-resistance ratings, also known as IP-ratings, rather it seems to be spending the money on expensive marketing campaigns instead. They’ve created a cute marketing campaign where they “purchase a bucket”, fill it up with water and drop a OnePlus 7 Pro inside, stating that the IP-certification process is expensive and needless. While this may be partially true, especially since most manufacturers don’t fulfill warranty requests due to water damage despite offering a proper water-resistance rating, OnePlus specifically says it won’t stand behind warranty requests for water damage even though it specifically marketed the phone as able to be dropped into a bucket.
It just feels a little dishonest.
And how about that camera experience? While OnePlus has added in three new cameras, they forgot to finish development of that brand-new ultra-wide angle camera. Despite boasting the ability to record at up to 4K resolution and up to 60 frames per second on the regular and telephoto cameras, the ultra-wide camera cannot record any kind of video at all. To say this is puzzling doesn’t even quite cover what many users will likely feel when they try to record video on the OnePlus 7 Pro for the first time.
Many users will likely be concerned over the pop-up camera too, which introduces a new weak-point on phones that are already a fragile mix of glass and circuitry. A motorized camera that pops out of the device will certainly see plenty of wear and tear over the months and years to come, and the likelihood that this pop-up camera will get smacked or bashed against something along the way is pretty high.
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