OnePlus always captures the attention of people with their “Never Settle” branding, but over the years they seem to have switched that out and have become more of a premium brand, especially with their wider range of smartphones.
But the question that I had, heading to this review of the OnePlus 9, is that has OnePlus finally settled?
In this article, I will be giving you my full review of the OnePlus 9 5G, yeap, the Non-Pro variant, so keep watching!
Unboxing
Let’s start with the unboxing.
In typical OnePlus fashion, the box comes in a longer form factor and the box comes in red. With OnePlus 9 5G in the middle and co-developed by Hasselblad down below. Then at the back, you will find the specs and variant of the phone.
Opening the box, inside the cover of the box, you will find the User Manuals and also the SIM ejector pin. Then, you will find the phone itself. Underneath, you will find the soft clear phone case with the “Never Settle” branding over there as well. Next, there is the USB-C To USB-C cable and the 65-watt Warp Charging Brick.
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Specs
Next, let’s take a look at the specs.
The OnePlus 9 comes with the Snapdragon 888 5 nm Chipset with 5G support as the name clearly mentions. It has the Adreno 660 GPU. Then the variant that I have is the 12 gigabytes of RAM with 256 gigabytes of UFS 3.1 storage.
It comes shipped with Oxygen OS 11, where the current update when I did this review is version 11.2.5.5.
Build Quality
Alright, looking at the design and build, the moment I opened the box and looked at the phone, I was very surprised with the design, and no, it was NOT in a good way.
As the phone just looked… boring, without any uniqueness to the phone, this Astral Black color finish also made the phone super hard to see that famous Hasselblad brand and even trying to see the OnePlus logo, you need to angle the phone towards the light, only then you can see it.
The phone also was surprisingly very light too, where some may like that, but for me, I felt like it made the phone feel like it was not as solid as a flagship smartphone, where although I loved the OnePlus Nord, this felt like it was OnePlus Nord version 2.0.
At the back, the phone is made out of Corning Gorilla Glass 5, with a quite slippery finish, so I would recommend for you all to put the clear phone case since it comes inside of the box, which makes the phone have a better grip.
Now this same Gorilla Glass 5 is also for the front panel, where it features the hole punch cut camera towards the left side of the screen and the fingerprint sensor is placed towards the bottom of the screen, something which I was NOT a fan of, since it is not the natural position when holding the phone. But yes, this does come down to muscle memory but still I prefer it to be in the middle instead.
Speaking of the rear once again, the camera bump is quite on a thin side, which is nice, BUT if you place the phone on a surface it does still wobble, so keep that in mind.
As for the phone’s ports and buttons, down below other than the USB-C port, you will find the dual SIM card slot, and one of the two stereo speakers as the other is right at the earpiece area.
Then on the right, is the amazing alert slider to switch between Silent, Vibrate and Ring, which for the life of me I don’t get why other smartphones do not follow this as I found it extremely useful. And you will find the power button below there. Then on the left, there are the volume rockers.
Display
As for the phone’s screen, it has a 6.55-inch Fluid AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 pixels HDR 10+ with a 120Hz refresh rate.
I have to say that the screen was great when I was using the phone daily. It had nice colors both when just browsing the web and also watching videos on YouTube and Netflix as well.
And speaking of Netflix, it has the Widevine L1 certification with HDR10 capabilities to view HDR content which was great to know and with Dolby Atmos support, it was indeed a very good experience which I will do a sound test for you all later in this video.
Cameras
Now if you guys don’t already know, that the OnePlus 9 series is the very first collaboration with OnePlus and Hasselblad, which apparently gives better color calibration and an orange button for the camera app…errr…okie… but let’s first check out the specs.
Rear Camera Specs
So the OnePlus 9 comes with:
- a 48-megapixel f/1.8 23mm Wide Lens,
- a 50-megapixel f/2.2 14mm Ultrawide lens, and
- a 2-megapixel f/2.4 Mono camera
It was kind of weird that OnePlus has decided to forgo the telephoto lens which the Pro variant had, hmmm maybe to save cost….oh well.
48-megapixel Mode
Starting from the high 48 Megapixel mode, the images did turn out great like how you would see in other flagship smartphones, with its extremely detailed pictures even when zoomed in close.
Main Lens
Then pictures for the main lens was great, as I could see a huge difference in the overall color and contrast, the overall saturation wasn’t overpowering, which was nice and it kind of reminded me of photos taken on the Pixel phones, so finally there is no need to get the Gcam app for the phone.
Ultrawide Lens
Then looking at the Ultrawide shots, here is where the phone really shines as this Ultrawide lens is surely one of the best that I have seen, probably even the best, compared to other flagship smartphones, with a very nice focal length and amazing image quality with no barrel distortion on the edges.
Portrait Mode
As for the portrait mode, here is where again I had great results with another set of great quality photos as well, where these shots were taken with the rear camera facing towards my face and portrait mode for subjects was great as well.
Macro Mode
Then as for the Useless Mode…er I mean Macro Mode, the images was decent, with just OK focusing modes to get those close up shots if you are into this particular mode.
Night Mode
Next, looking at the night mode shots, the Nightscape Mode on the OnePlus 9 didn’t disappoint as usual with great highlights and shadow balance with very low noise on the images as well and you can use this Nightscape mode both for the Ultrawide and the Main lens as well.
Front Camera Specs
Next, looking at the front camera, the phone has a 16-megapixel f/2.4 Wide lens and here is where, if the rear camera has the color calibration and technology of Hasselblad, then the front camera has the technology of…Hassel-BAD.
As you guys can see, 9 out of 10 images taken for the selfie camera made my skin tone look like I was hibernating in a cave and never seen the sun for months, with super pale colors for the skin tones.
If you are lucky and the Sun Gods are on your side, you will get great images, but most of the time especially for backlit situations, you just can’t get close to the amazing quality that the rear camera has.
While the edge detection was great on the portrait mode but once again, the skin tones were totally off and washed out.
Video Recording
As for the video recording, the One Plus 9 records up to 8k 30 frames per second, where I have to say that the video quality was really good.
But here is the thing, first of all, it took me about 12 to 13 seconds of recording and then there was a message to say it was overheating and then it stopped recording and then second of all, the phone struggles to even playback the video when I tried to playback the video on the phone itself.
So why even have 8k recording on the phone right?
Then when it comes to 4k recording, the video quality was also really nice, with amazing image stabilization, although some people were complaining about not having OIS but I didn’t see any issues with that.
BUT, once again, the 4k video mode was great but it will give you the overheating warning and it will stop recording halfway.
But mind you, it was NOT as hot as other smartphones like *cough* Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra, but it gave such a warning and stopped recording. So this reminds me of the Canon R5 camera which did the same, where it kind of thermal throttle without the camera being actually really warm.
Then when it comes to the front video recording, what’s weird is that you have absolutely no idea what the recording resolution is as OnePlus said, “nope, I am not going to give you recording options for that”
Where it records up to 1080 up to 30 frames per second, where if the light is on your side, the video quality is great, but there was this video exposure issue and if you are in a backlit situation, it looks…… Hassel BAD
Audio
As for the phone’s speakers, it comes with stereo speakers where the overall sound quality was great with Dolby Audio.
I have to say that this is one of the few smartphones which had a great bass to the speakers, nice audio separation but the output was not the best at only 92.8 dB.
Battery
As for the phone’s battery, the OnePlus 9 comes with 4500 milliamps of battery with fast charging up to a massive 65 watts, where as seen in the unboxing that the charger comes inside of the box, but the wireless charging is capped at 15 watts compared to 30 watts for the OnePlus 9 Pro.
In terms of the amount of screen on time that I got, based on me using the phone, I got an average of 5 hours and 55 minutes to 6 hours when I was at 10 percent battery with dark mode turned on, which I have to say that I was overall very impressed with the battery life.
Software
Looking at the phone’s software, as mentioned the OnePlus 9 comes with Oxygen OS 11 with the current version of 11.2.5.5 during the time I was reviewing the phone.
Where in this case, Oxygen OS has always been one of the top Android skins, where navigating through the menu system was as straightforward as it gets, but the haptics of the phone was…in a lack of a better word….felt cheap, but other software features like the Quick Launch feature was also great as well.
BUT what I don’t like and don’t get is that now, if you swipe from the middle of the screen, it brings you to another weird menu instead of the notification shade, which I couldn’t find an option to do that, so I didn’t get why that was changed or when that was changed, but other than that I have no complaints about the overall software experience.
Gaming
Next, when it comes to gaming, on Genshin Impact the game ran smoothly at the highest settings and at 60 frames per second, there was just a bit of a micro lag during the Ultimate Animation times or when there were lots of subjects on the screen.
After about 5 minutes the phone was warm to the touch and the battery started to drain then after about 13 minutes there was a notification of the dimming screen to reduce the temperature where it went from 38 degrees to 44 degrees and the battery went from 50% to 45% very quickly.
Then on PUBG Mobile, it ran great with graphics set to UHD and frame rate to Extreme without any issues whatsoever, there were no heating issues even after 15 minutes of gaming and no battery drain issues as well and the overall temperature only rose from 35 degrees to 38 degrees.
Conclusion
So in conclusion, the OnePlus 9 is a phone that has lots of good and equally some not-so-good things about the phone as mentioned in this review.
In my humble opinion, I still think that OnePlus has lost its plot slowly losing its core features of being a great smartphone brand with a super great price like how the Poco series was and still currently known to be.
With a retail price of RM3,699 for this 12 gigabytes of RAM with 256 gigabytes of storage, there are seriously plenty of choices available which you could get for that price point.
But if you really wanna get it, I would recommend for you all to get it from Direct D, as not only there are lots of varieties of phones available over there but they are also THE BEST when it comes to having lots of freebies thrown in with any purchase of the smartphones sold by them, but their excellent after-sales service is currently the best that I have experienced in Malaysia thus far.
Purchase OnePlus 9 here: https://www.directd.com.my/oneplus-9
Alright guys, with this, do let me know if you are planning to get the OnePlus 9 or you would prefer to spend the money on something else instead? Do let me know in the comments section below!
