The new OnePlus 8 series is here and the company has officially released the India pricing. If you are still unaware, 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.
Now let's talk about the vanilla OnePlus 8. The spiritual successor to the OnePlus 7T. Now honestly, it isn’t a huge update and the company has taken some difficult decisions to keep the price lower than the Pro variant. But does that mean you should not buy the new OnePlus 8? Let’s first dive into some of the details.
OnePlus 7T
Launched last year, the OnePlus 7T features a 6.55-inch Fluid AMOLED display with a 20:9 aspect ratio which was marginally bigger than the OnePlus 7. It came with a 90Hz refresh rate, along with a FHD+ or 2400x1080 pixels resolution. It also supports HDR10+ along with sRGB and DP3 colour gamuts. You also get features like night mode, a reading mode that reduces saturation instead of turning the display into monochrome as well as a fingerprint scanner.
The smartphone is powered by the Snapdragon 855+ processor which is a slightly tweaked version of the Snapdragon 855. You get up to 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage. In the camera department, you get a triple camera setup in a horizontal arrangement in a round module. The primary camera includes a 48-megapixel Sony IMX586 sensor with OIS, EIS and an f/1.6 aperture lens. The second camera is a 12-megapixel sensor with an f/2.2 aperture and a 16-megapixel sensor with an f/2.2 aperture ultra-wide lens. The camera offers 2x zoom and can shoot 4K videos at 60fps and up to 960fps at 720p. The front camera includes a 16-megapixel sensor with an f/2.0 aperture and fixed focus and EIS. The camera also brings in a macro mode.
The battery rated at 3,800mAh and with support for Warp Charge 30T which is said to offer 70-percent charge in half an hour. The handset will also come with Android 10 based OxygenOS right out of the box. The smartphone will be offered in two colours- Frosted Silver and Glacier Blue. As for the price, the OnePlus 7T is currently selling for Rs 34,999 for the 8GB + 128GB variant and Rs 37,999 for the 8GB + 256GB variant.
OnePlus 8
The new OnePlus 8 comes with the new and more 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.
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.
Which One Should You Buy?
In my experience, the OnePlus 7T is a fine smartphone for its cost. It runs really smooth, looks great and the camera performance seems pretty good for the asking price. I did however notice that battery life is not a strong forte for the 7T. I noticed that day-to-day battery life has dropped over the past 6 months or so, but then I have also been doing a lot of gaming due to the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown.
I think the OnePlus 8 wins on sheer battery life. That 4,300mAh battery is definitely going to last more than the 7T. I am not a big fan of curved displays though, so that is also something worth considering.
As for the price, yes there is a big difference. And considering the OnePlus 8 starts at Rs 41,999, I doubt that the company will further reduce the pricing of the last-gen smartphone. That way, OnePlus will have the OnePlus 7 sitting under Rs 30,000, the OnePlus 7T under Rs 40,000 and the OnePlus 8 taking the Rs 40,000 and above range.
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