The new OnePlus 8 series was recently launched globally as well as in the company's hometown China. While the phone maker took a bold decision in launching the phone amidst the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, the official India pricing wasn't announced due to the nation-wide lockdown. Well, the official pricing is finally out and yes, it is very similar to its Chinese pricing. The OnePlus 8 will be sold for a starting price of Rs 41,999, while the more premium OnePlus 8 Pro will be available at a starting price of Rs 54,999. The India pricing was revealed by the OnePlus via its Red Cable Club forum.
Notably, India will be getting the OnePlus 8 in a 6GB RAM and 128GB base variant apart from the 8GB RAM + 128GB storage (Rs 44,999) and 12GB RAM + 256GB storage (Rs 49,999) variants. The base variant will exclusively be sold on Amazon India while the other two variants will be available “across all online and offline channels”, according to OnePlus. As for the OnePlus 8 Pro, the 8GB RAM + 128GB storage variant has been priced at Rs 54,999 and the 12GB RAM + 256GB storage variant has been priced at Rs 59,999. The OnePlus 8 Pro will be available via Amazon India and offline stores. The new Bullets Wireless Z earphones are priced at Rs 1,999. It is expected that OnePlus will start selling the new products in May, although there is no confirmed launch date yet.
OnePlus 8 Pro
Under the hood is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor, up to 12GB of RAM, up to 256GB of storage, a quad-camera setup taking care of the photography duties, as well as a large 4510mAh battery. You will be able to buy the OnePlus 8 Pro in Onyx Black, Glacial Green and Ultramarine Blue colorways. This is also the first OnePlus phone which offers wireless charging. And it isn’t just for the sake of ticking off the spec sheet—OnePlus calls this the Warp Charge 30 Wireless, which charges a fully discharged OnePlus 8 Pro’s battery to 50% charge in 30 minutes. And of course, if you are using the 30-watt wall charger, the 0-50% charge happens in 23 minutes. The OnePlus 8 Pro also has the Reverse Wireless Charging feature, which lets you also charge other wireless charging capable products (such as phones and earbuds) by simply placing them flat on the back of the OnePlus 8 Pro.
Apart from the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor, OnePlus is also using the LPDDR5 RAM modules, which are 30% faster than before and also consume up to 20% lesser power—all this means even faster performance with lesser battery usage.
The 6.78-inch Fluid AMOLED display has the 3168 x 1440-pixel resolution and the 19.8:9 aspect ratio. This also gets the 120Hz refresh rate, which means the display refreshes 120 times per second. Simply put, this means anything has to do with any sort of motion on the screen, will look smoother and silkier. OnePlus has also tweaked the animations in the Oxygen OS to take better advantage of these fine new capabilities. In fact, the OnePlus 8 Pro also gets the MEMC chip, often found in large screen TVs, which alter the frame rates in videos to upgrade, let’s say a 30fps video to a 120fps video, so that it looks better on this more fluid display. This display is HDR10+ compatible.
OnePlus claims that the OnePlus 8 Pro’s 10-bit colour display produces more than a billion unique colours, which they say is 60X more than standard smartphone displays. This is also expected to be a very bright display, touching as much as 1,300nits of brightness outdoors.
A lot of work has definitely gone into potentially improving the photography performance. There is a 48-megapixel main camera, there is a 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera, an 8-megapixel telephoto camera and a 5-megapixel colour filter camera. There is 3x hybrid zoom and the main Sony IMX689 sensor, as well as the telephoto camera, have optical image stabilization as well. What is new is the colour filter camera, which should allow you to add more lighting effects and colour filters to your photos—though how that works, we will only really know when we get to use the OnePlus 8 Pro. The Single Frame 3-HDR technology will surely be very relevant for high contrast photos that have a backlighting scenario.
This also supports the Wi-Fi 6 standard which offers maximum speeds of 9.8Gbps, and that is up to 2.7 times faster than the current Wi-Fi 5 standard.
OnePlus 8
The new OnePlus 8 also comes with the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor. OnePlus is offering a high-end 12GB RAM this time apart from the 8GB RAM version. Notably, this will be the LPDDR4X memory unlike the LPDDR5 RAM being offered on the Pro variant, which doesn’t necessarily make it slow by any means. Storage options include 128GB and 256GB UFS 3.0 dual-lane.
The display seems to be similar to the OnePlus 7T, but is now curved at the edges. It is a 6.55-inch Fluid AMOLED panel with 90Hz refresh rate and a FullHD+ resolution of 2400x1080 pixels. It also supports HDR10+ and is said to be ‘meticulously tuned’ color accuracy rating of JNCD around 0.4. (JNCD means “Just Noticeable Color Difference" which is an indicator for measuring color accuracy used by companies including DisplayMate). Considering the 7T offered peak display brightness of 1000nits, so we are expecting similar performance from this display.
Probably the most important upgrade is the battery. While the OnePlus 7T had a 3,800mAh battery, the OnePlus 8 offers a 4,300mAh battery. According to the company, the large battery provides 13% more battery capacity compared to the 7T. Of course, there is Warp Charge 30T which is claimed to charge from 1% to 50% in 22 minutes. There is sadly no wireless charging like the OnePlus 8 Pro.
The camera department hasn’t seen a big update. There is a triple camera setup at the back highlighted by the same 48-megapixel Sony IMX586 sensor as last year. Rest of the cameras are however different, including a 16-megapixel sensor with an ultrawide lens, and a 2-megapixel macro camera. This means that there is no telephoto camera on the new OnePlus 8. The front camera is a 16-megapixel sensor with a fixed focus.
Other important features including an in-display fingerprint scanner, face unlock, stereo speakers, Dolby Atmos support, USB-C 3.1, NFC and so on. The handset will be offered in three colours- Onyx Black, Interstellar, Glow, and Glacial Green.
OnePlus Bullets Wireless Z
OnePlus had unveiled a new pair of wireless earphones, alongside the OnePlus 8 series. Sticking to the same wireless earphones design with a connecting wire, and not moving on to the true wireless design that companies have begun adopting, the OnePlus Bullets Wireless Z offer 10 hours of playback with just 10 minutes of charging.
The Bullets Wireless Z comes with IP55 water and sweat resistance rating, Bluetooth 5.0 and fast pairing for easy usage with devices. It also comes with a magnetic attachment between its earpieces. In terms of features and specifications, the Bullets Wireless Z appear to come with the same details that the Bullets Wireless 2 come with. There are four different colours — black, blue, mint and oat, and will likely come with handsfree access to virtual assistants directly.
The only bit of detail that OnePlus has announced in terms of performance is "super low latency", which may sound interesting to gamers, but in terms of the sound quality on offer, there isn't really a lot to go on. Nevertheless, it is anyway an incremental upgrade at best, and it now remains to be seen when the OnePlus Bullets Wireless Z is launched in India as well.
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