Is It Worth Upgrading to the OnePlus 9?

OnePlus is known for making flagship smartphones that you can purchase without burning a hole in your pocket. The Chinese smartphone maker has gained immense popularity in recent years among smartphone enthusiasts throughout the world. One of their biggest launches this year is the OnePlus 9.

The smartphone costs $729 in the US, which is over $100 more expensive than its predecessor, the OnePlus 8. However, when compared to some other flagship smartphones in the market, the phone is still cheaper. Let’s find out whether the smartphone justifies its price tag, and is it worth upgrading to the OnePlus 9?

Cameras

OnePlus has been hyping the cameras of the OnePlus 9 a lot, as they have been tuned by the famous Swedish camera manufacturer, Hasselblad. The two companies have worked together to develop "Natural Color Calibration", which allows the cameras on the smartphone to capture accurate and natural-looking colors.

The OnePlus 9 features a triple camera setup at the back, with a 48MP Sony IMX689 primary sensor with f/1.8 aperture, a 50MP Sony IMX766 ultra-wide lens with f/2.2 aperture, and a 2MP monochrome lens with f/2.4 aperture.

You can record 8K videos at 30fps, and 4K and 1080p videos at 30/60fps. The front camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps. Both the front and the rear cameras support gyro-EIS (Electric Image Stabilization).

On the front side, the phone has a 16MP Sony IMX471 selfie shooter, with an f/2.4 aperture. It captures wide-angle photos and videos.

Performance

Talking about another important aspect of a smartphone, its performance, the OnePlus 9 is powered by the latest Snapdragon 888 mobile platform, which is Qualcomm’s flagship processor for smartphones this year. The chipset powers almost all Android flagship smartphones launched in 2021.

The Snapdragon 888 is based on a 5nm architecture—for comparison, its predecessor, the Snapdragon 865, was built on a 7nm architecture—therefore, you’ll get better performance, along with a reduction in power usage.

The CPU is paired with the Adreno 660 GPU, so gaming on the OnePlus 9 would not be a problem. The smartphone can run pretty much every game or task you throw at it quite easily.

Display

The OnePlus 9 has a 6.55-inch Fluid AMOLED display, with a screen resolution of 1080x2400 pixels. It has a refresh rate of 120Hz. If you're upgrading from a smartphone with a 60Hz display, you'll notice the difference while using the OnePlus 9, as animations and scrolling are much smoother.

The display on the OnePlus 9 is flat, with slim bezels on all four sides. Thanks to the HDR10+ certification, it produces vibrant colors and offers better contrast. Also, using the smartphone under direct sunlight would not be an issue, as the display supports a maximum brightness of up to 1100 nits.

If you have small hands, the OnePlus 9 will make reaching the corners of the screen a bit easier, as it has an aspect ratio of 20:9.

Design and Build

OnePlus smartphones are pretty good when it comes to their design and build quality. The OnePlus 9 is no exception to it. The only downside of the phone is that OnePlus has used a polycarbonate frame instead of metal this time. This could be a letdown for a few people, but overall, the phone feels great in hand.

The OnePlus 9 comes in three beautiful colors: Winter Mist, Arctic Sky, and Astral Black. Its dimensions are 160x74.2x8.7 mm, and the phone weighs 192g.

There's Gorilla Glass 5 for protection on the back and the front side of the smartphone, which is now old. OnePlus first used it on the OnePlus 6 back in 2018. Almost all other flagship smartphones launched this year either come with Gorilla Glass 6, or the newer Gorilla Glass Victus.

Well, you still need to put up a case or a screen protector on your smartphone for better protection against scratches and accidental drops, no matter what sort of protection it already comes with.

Battery and Charging

The OnePlus 9 gets its juice from a 4500mAh battery, which should be sufficient to keep the phone running for a whole day. But if you run out of battery with no or little time to charge your phone, there's when its ultra-fast charger will help you.

The phone supports 65W "Warp Charge 65T" fast charging technology, allowing it to charge from zero to 100 percent in just 29 minutes. It also supports 15W wireless charging, which probably a few people are going to use, as it will charge the phone at a much lesser speed.

User Interface

OnePlus' OxygenOS is considered as the best custom UI by many people. It is lightweight, well-optimized, and comes with minimal changes. It also allows you to deeply customize your phone and its home screen, and you don't need to install any third-party launcher to do the same.

The OnePlus 9 comes with OxygenOS 11 on top of Android 11. You can expect up to two years of regular software updates and up to three years of monthly security patch updates from OnePlus.

The 120Hz display on the smartphone also takes full benefit of the well-optimized UI, making the phone smoother and faster.

Storage, Pricing, and Availability

OnePlus 9 is available in various storage options depending on where you're buying it from. In the US, only a single variant of the smartphone is available with 8GB LPDDR5 RAM, and 128GB UFS3.1 storage. Elsewhere, you can find variants with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The phone doesn't have a memory card slot.

The phone costs $729 in the US. Interestingly, there's a T-Mobile version of the smartphone available too, and it comes with an IP68 rating for protection against water and dust.

Should You Upgrade to the OnePlus 9?

For $729, the OnePlus 9 is undeniably an impressive device. As mentioned above, it comes with a lot of features and offers some notable upgrades over its predecessor.

If you're upgrading from a 2020 flagship smartphone, you might not find many reasons to get the OnePlus 9. But, if you are upgrading from a smartphone that is more than a year old, the OnePlus 9 is definitely worth buying.

And if you don't mind spending some extra bucks, you can consider buying its bigger sibling, the OnePlus 9 Pro.

source https://www.makeuseof.com/oneplus-9-worth-upgrading/