The Upgrade

Review: The OnePlus 7 Pro Hits the Android Sweet Spot

It’s not the best device on the market, but the price and performance is right

No notch, no laser-cut holes, no ungainly chin — just unblemished, AMOLED screen. That’s what you’re getting with the OnePlus 7 Pro, the upcoming flagship phone from a Shenzhen-based company best-known for Android devices that offer competitive features at a “midrange” price.

Don’t mistake the OnePlus 7 Pro as a no-frills update, though. As with Samsung’s Galaxy S10 line, the OnePlus 7 Pro hides the fingerprint sensor under the lower third of the screen. And for the selfie camera — the one that Apple’s carved out a notch for — OnePlus settled on something risky.

We put our smartphones through hell — can a pop-up camera survive all of it?

The pop-up, 16 MP selfie camera is a surprisingly solid piece of engineering.

Hidden along the top edge of the phone is a physical pop-up camera module that, as soon as you tap the selfie camera button in the camera app, rises up out of the body with the slight sound of mechanical gears whirring. OnePlus isn’t the first to do something like this, and it surely won’t be the last. Still, I had my reservations: We put our smartphones through hell — can a pop-up camera survive all of it?

In short, the camera is tougher than I expected. But before we dive into specifics, let’s step back a bit and take a good look at the OnePlus 7 Pro, out May 17 with a starting price of $649. It’s a gorgeous Android handset that I’ve used for the last couple of weeks.

Familiar, but good design

In some ways, the OnePlus 7 Pro is simply a larger version of all those other beautiful slab phones. It has a familiar-looking aluminum edge, Gorilla Glass 5, and three cameras on the back.

There are actually four cameras in this picture: three on the back, plus that pop-up selfie cam; This slider button has three positions.