Oneplus 8 and Oneplus 8 Pro Launch

Oneplus 8 Series Launch Event

Thanks to COVID-19, the ever grand Oneplus launch event on 14th April, 2020, began without any audience in the theatre and ques of human waves waiting outside their outlets across India, China and the US to purchase their new Oneplus devices. #together at home. 

This year’s Oneplus 8 series launch event was streamed live online with all the audiences sitting in the best possible chair at their home. The event kick-started with Oneplus’ Head of Campaigns, Tilen Pigac, addressing the people in front of their screens with a famous quote by Andy Warhol  “The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting”. He thanked people for waiting in front of their screens, hours before the event started and those chatting in the forums. He then left the announcement of another speaker joining in to make the bigger announcements. 

Oneplus 8 series launch - Oneplus 8 Pro, Oneplus 8, Oneplus Bullets Z wireless Headphones
Ryan Fenwick, Head of Corporate PR, introduced the Oneplus 8 devices

Ryan Fenwick, Head Of Corporate PR, Oneplus, came onto the stage welcoming everyone and picked up the baton. He started off bragging about the awards and accolades won by the Oneplus 7 series of phones and also revealed some stats like Oneplus is the 4th premium smartphone brand across the world with 1st in India and the fastest growing smartphone brand in the USA. Not bad for a company that is just 6 years old!

Oneplus in 2019 

It is no doubt that Oneplus had a fantastic 2019 almost in any stream for a brand to take it to their audience. They were the first to introduce QHD+ 90 Hz display in a smartphone. At CES 2019, Oneplus even launched a concept model with color shifting glass so that the camera can be effectively invisible. 

Meanwhile, Oneplus have taken some lead in the 5G game by partnering with some of the pioneers of the industry like E&E in the UK, and T-mobile in the USA. Speaking of the stints with T-mobile, they have also joined hands for the Oneplus 7t 5G Mclaren edition in the USA. It is worth noting that Oneplus ranks 3rd in the 5g branded smartphones in the US. Understanding the future, it seems that Oneplus is all in 5G now. 

Oneplus 8 Pro 

The first launch of the event was the biggest flagship device the company has ever released – Oneplus 8 Pro itself. The newest ultra premium phone in the flagship Oneplus 8 series is top-notch. In almost every department right from design to display, camera to performance to OS, this is the most powerful product oneplus have ever created. 

Oneplus 8 series launch - Oneplus 8 Pro, Oneplus 8, Oneplus Bullets Z wireless Headphones

Oneplus 8 Pro Design 

The tagline “Beautiful to behold” elaborates the importance of design and finish offered by the company. Oneplus 8 Pro comes with a curved glass back with two differently finished variants. You have the regular glossy finished variant which is beautiful but the matte frosted glass finish looks just amazing. Both the variants are silky smooth to touch and hold from any angle. 

Oneplus credits the CMF – color, material and finish approach for the better finish they were able to achieve. Oneplus believes that this approach dictates the in-hand feel of a phone which in turn influences your feelings about the device. It is true that the design of a phone connects emotionally with the audience to create a reference point. 

Oneplus 8 series launch - Oneplus 8 Pro Design Features

The details offered in the product tells us a story how they have gone through 100’s of iterations to bring up this beauty alive which is almost as close to perfect as possible. An average user picks up the phone 200 times a day and every time when you pick up this device, you will feel the work of art went into this device. 

Speaking about the appearance, this year, there are three Oneplus 8 pro color variants. While the ultramarine Blue and Onyx Black are the usual Oneplus colors, Glacial Green is the newest Oneplus 8 Pro Color option. IMHO, this new teal green kinda finish looks better than the rendered leaks before the launch. Oneplus believes this Glacial Green color option will change one’s mind from their usual favorites, black and blue. Oneplus claims that this color with its silky matte frosted feel is vivid during the daytime and soothing in the evenings. 

Oneplus 8 Pro Display

An average user touches and swipes a phone for at least 2000 times a day. That said, Display is not only the most important part in a smartphone but also the highly used part. If there is one company that knows this better, that must be Oneplus. Oneplus 8 Pro comes with the highest specification display on any phone which not only does ur daily tasks well but when you play games, watch movies, this display will blow your mind. 

Oneplus 8 series launch - Oneplus 8 Pro Display Features

Oneplus 8 Pro comes with a 120 hz refresh rate, 6.78” AMOLED display with QHD+ resolution at 513 ppi. 120 hz refresh rate of Oneplus 8 pro means that the display refreshes 2 times faster than the 60 hz display of the iPhone 11 pro. Also It can hit 4096 levels of different brightness with a super peak brightness of upto 1300 nits

Oneplus 8 series launch - Oneplus 8 Pro vs iPhone 11 Pro Max refresh rate comparison
Oneplus 8 Pro has 2x the refresh rate of iPhone 11 Pro Max

It comes with sensors in the front and back of the phone for the smoothest automatic brightness adjustment. With a swift touch response time of 24.6ms and 240 hz touch sampling rate, the touch feedback is immediate.  

Displaymate, the leading authority in display quality testing, awarded Oneplus 8 Pro with the highest display performance grade rating of A+ with 13 performance records, more records than any smartphone currently on the planet. 

HDR videos will get richer in Oneplus 8 Pro, thanks to the display with 10-bit color depth support. This helps us to view 1.07 Billion colors whereas in a usual 8-bit color depth, you can see only 16 million colors in most smartphones. That’s like, a 100% increase than the other phones out there in the market. 

Oneplus 8 Pro comes with a JNCD~0.4 which means the colors you see on the phone are practically identical to the same colors that you see in real life. Just Noticeable Color Difference(JNCD) is just like your golf score; the lower the JNCD, the better it is. Any JNCD below 1 is imperceptible to the human eyes, and in OP8 pro, JNCD is as low as 0.4 

Most videos, unless directed by Ang lee,  are at 24 or 30 fps. The gorgeous 120 hz smooth display in oneplus 8 Pro takes advantage of this with the help of a chip, as small as a grain of a rice. This custom made MEMC chip (motion estimate motion compensation),  basically inserts one or more additional frames after each original frame in the video to make the lower frame videos much smoother. You can also tweak it for 60 fps or 120 fps as per your liking. And the best part is, you can turn it off, if you dislike it.  Good job, Oneplus!!

Oneplus 8 Pro Camera

Oneplus 8 Pro comes with a Quad Camera setup in the rear featuring a main lens, an ultrawide lens, a telephoto lens and a color filter camera. The main lens comes with a 48 MP camera with an f/1.7 aperture, and Sony IMX689 sensor with OIS.  Sony IMX689 is a larger sensor which comes with dual native iso, usually found in professional cinema cameras which reduces noise in low light. It has 2*2 OCL – OnChip Lens, which gives power to detect horizontal, vertical, diagonal textures to give more accurate focus even in the dark. 

 The UltraWide camera is a 48MP lens with F/2.2 aperture and Sony IMX 586 sensor offers a full 120 degree field of view. For the record books, Oneplus 8 Pro has the largest UltraWide camera in the industry now. This UW camera lens adds another advantage with its night shots which is not present in many other flagships. This also acts as the macro shooter with the help of the software. 

The third is an 8MP Telephoto camera with F/2.2 aperture and OIS. It helps to get a much useful three times of hybrid zoom but the 30 times of digital zoom which seems like a marketing gimmick. The fourth camera is the unique color filter 5MP camera which enables to express the artist within, through lighting effects and filters. 

The 3.8mm tiny punch hole front camera(16MP, f/2.45 ) replaces the motorised pop-up camera of the Oneplus 7 Pro series. This makes the phone lighter but the major reason why OnePlus might have opted for this type of front camera is to get IP certified. Oneplus 8 Pro gets the IP 68 certification which makes the phone water resistant upto 1.5m for 30 min.

Videos from Oneplus 8 Pro are also on a different level, thanks to the hybrid image stabilization techniques combined with OIS and EIS. It includes 3 high precision microphones that reduce noise when shooting a video to capture clear stereo audio. Audio Zoom lets us zoom in on the sound that you wish to amplify. Audio windscreen kicks-in automatically to reduce the wind noise when you are recording outdoors. 

Oneplus 8 series launch - Oneplus 8 Pro vs iPhone 11 Pro max night shots comparison
Night shots on Oneplus 8 Pro vs Iphone 11 Pro MAx

Shooting in the heavy backlight becomes easier with Oneplus 8 Pro as it gets help from an advanced sensor technology known as 3 HDR technology. It weaves 3 different exposures into one single frame with a higher dynamic range filling both shadows and well-lit areas for clearer and more colorful details.  

Oneplus 8 Pro Performance

Powered  by the Snapdragon 865 mobile platform, Oneplus 8 pro comes with upto 12 GB of LPDDR5 Ram which is almost 30 % faster than the previous generation, with 20% lower power consumption. It gets a maximum of 256 GB UFS3.0 storage facility. The device also gets Wi-Fi 6, which improves 40% faster peak internet speed that will be delivered four times faster in crowded areas. 

Oneplus 8 Pro Features

Gaming in Oneplus 8 Pro 

By offering top of the line specs and an immersive 120 hz display, Oneplus believes Oneplus 8 Pro is the best gaming phone around in the market. New and improved Haptic motor with stronger vibrations will bring more life to your gaming feel. Stereo speakers with exciting high quality sound is something amazing that Oneplus has done here. 

Oxygen OS

With 5.5 million community members, Oneplus has one of the biggest tribes in the tech world and if it is famous for one reason, that is going to be for the Oxygen OS. And in some areas, Oxygen OS on top of Android is doing better than the vanilla Android experience on the Google Pixel lineup of smartphones. Co-created with the community, this lightweight seamless software experience lets you breathe easier with more choice and less hassle as the smoothness has been pushed to the next level. 

Oneplus claims that around 280 new optimisations have been added to make the navigation and scrolling smoother and more fluid than ever before. Dark theme is also refreshed for Oneplus 8 pro so that it consumes lesser energy and is also easy on the eyes. It comes with a set of new dynamic wallpapers that changes with the weather outside. 

Oneplus 8 Pro Battery

Oneplus 8 Pro comes with a bigger battery capacity of 4510 mAH, the biggest in any Oneplus devices. Despite the huge display, it manages to last 10 percent more than Oneplus 7T versions. We all know that Oneplus will offer WARP Charge 30, their fast charging solution to go from 0 to 60 percent within 30 min. But Oneplus has surprised everyone by also including the ground breaking WARP charge 30 Wireless

Isolated charging Pumps on the charging dock allows them for a higher charging power at 30 W. Warp wireless direct charging architecture on the phone uses a customized chip to better communicate between the wireless charging dock and the phone to get improved charging efficiency. WARP charge 30 wireless is really fast that can give us 50% of the total power in just 30 minutes. But this is only compatible with the Oneplus wireless charging dock. 

Also reverse charging is now possible with Oneplus 8 Pro but at a meagre 3W reverse charging speed which is kind of a letdown but it is what it is. 

Associations With Google and Amazon

Over the years, Oneplus and Google have partnered to deliver a ton of new features and one such new feature for the Oneplus 8 Pro is Live Caption which lets us provide video and audio captions at the same time. Oneplus and Google One have worked together to give us an extended 100gb of storage – which is of course, chargeable with a 3 month free trial. 

Oneplus has also joined hands with STADIA, Google’s new cloud gaming platform, to enable Stadia gameplay in Oneplus 8 series of phones initially and later on to all the older Oneplus devices. 

Oneplus 8 series also worked with Amazon to make it Alexa ready so that it can be your other choice for voice service. All you have to do is just download the Alexa app, and start asking to listen to music, make phone calls and more. 

Oneplus 8

The session was next followed with the introduction of the next device in the Oneplus 8 lineup. 

The vanilla Oneplus 8 comes with an impeccable polished design, vibrant smooth display, flagship performance, and the best of the all,  5G – all in a sleek compact form factor. Oneplus is always known for the amount of attention paid for the details of design, optimised software to be as fast and as responsive as possible, refined hardware that some differences are really hard to notice. 

Oneplus 8 series launch - Oneplus 8  features

It is the same with the Oneplus 8 as well with its Compact design, Glossy or next gen matte frosted glass finish, 90 hz fluid display, triple camera system, snapdragon 865, and warp charge 30T. The differences between the devices are huge; Huge enough that it let us write a separate article about it. To read the difference between Oneplus 8 and Oneplus 8 Pro, click here. 

Event Continuation 

The event also included a short cameo from Pete Lau, Founder and CEO of Oneplus. In his short stint, he thanked Verizon for partnering with Oneplus in the 5G arena. Ryan, continued the event by giving us a glimpse of their 5G tech in North America. It seems that Oneplus with Verizon launches Oneplus 5G UW device, that will exclusively run on the Verizon 5G ultra wideband network. This further strengthens Oneplus’ presence in the USA and Canada. 

After a formal short speech from Cristiano Amon, Head of Qualcomm, thanking Oneplus, the event furthered with the accessories launch. 

Accessories 

Oneplus Bullets Wireless Z Headphones 

Oneplus announced their all new wireless headphones, the Bullets Wireless Z. While a complete charge will give us a peak usage of 20 hrs, a nominal 10 minute charge will give us 10 hrs of playback time. This super lightweight wireless headphones with incredible low latency comes in four different colour options. The Oneplus Bullets Wireless Z headphone colors are: Black, Blue, Mint and Oat. 

Oneplus 8 series launch - Oneplus Bullets Z wireless Headphones
Bullets Z wireless headphones

Oneplus 8 Sandstone Cases

Another accessory that enthuses any Oneplus user is their cases. Apart from the regular Sandstone black, the bumper case is now branching out with different new colours like Cyan and Smoky Purple. With the vibrant Sandstone color case for Oneplus 8 series, comes another pleasant surprise in an artistic form. 

World’s most famous and well-known street artist Andre Saraiva, who has worked with brands like Louis Vitton, collaborated with OnePlus and designed 3 new cases. They are unique only for Oneplus 8 series; each one will come with an NFC card. As there will only be 10,000 of them in this limited edition Oneplus 8 series cases, keep a tab on the Oneplus’ official channel.

Oneplus 8 Price  

Oneplus 8 Pro price in the USA ranges from $899 for the 8+128 GB, Glacial Green Model. The top end model of the Oneplus 8 Pro price in the USA is $999, similar to that of the starting variants of Samsung s20 series. As far as the price is concerned, it is clear that Oneplus has targeted Samsung devices. 

Oneplus 8 series launch - Oneplus 8 Pro Price in the USA
Picture shows the Oneplus 8 Pro price in the USA. Checkout table below to find the Oneplus 8 Pro price in India

It seems that the Chinese company is looking to keep up its spot in India with an aggressive pricing. Thanks to the Make in India initiative, Oneplus 8 series are coming at a much cheaper price to Indian customers, like a loyalty bonus for their trust in this brand.(That’s another way to see it!!). Below are the details of Oneplus 8 series’ price in India and in the USA. 

DeviceVariantOneplus 8 series Price in the USAOneplus 8 series Price in India
Oneplus 8 Pro8 GB RAM and 128 GB Storage, Glacial Green$899Rs.54,999
‘’ “12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage, Onyx Black, Ultramarine Blue$999
Rs.59,999
Oneplus 8 6+128 Glacial GreenRs.41,999
“ “8+128 Glacial Green, Onyx Black$699Rs.44,999
“ ‘’12+256 Interstellar glow $799Rs.49,999
Oneplus Bullets Wireless Z HeadphonesColor options: Black, Blue, Mint and Oat$49.95Rs.1,999
Oneplus 8 series launch - Oneplus 8  Price in the USA
Picture shows the Oneplus 8 price in the USA. Checkout table below to find the Oneplus 8 price in India

Where to Buy Oneplus 8 Series? 

In NA(US and Canada), these devices are sold via more channels like T-mobile, Verizon, OnePlus.com and Amazon.com. All types of sales begin on April 29th. 

In Europe, while the pre-orders were already started from April 14, Open sales only starts on April 21.  

In India, Amazon.in and Oneplus.com are taking care of the sales while a few small outlets are also joining hands this time with Oneplus to increase the direct showroom sales. 

Crackables

The event finally ended with a charity cause from the Oneplus, Crackables 2.0. Crackable, the crypto puzzle game that over half a million of us have played before, is back by popular demand. It also started on April 14th while the grand finale is on May 7th, which will be live streamed. While the winners can clean up a maximum of upto $10,000,  OnePlus have agreed to match that with the additional $10,000 that will be given to a charity supporting those affected by COVID-19.  

Final Word

Let us hope that the next Oneplus event which will be the T-version of the same device with different marketing gimmicks will be launched in front of a live audience without any pandemic on the planet. Cheers People. What do you think about this special coverage? What do you think about the devices actually? Share them in the comments. You know that I read them all.  #Stay Safe. #Stay at Home. #Take Care. 

About the author

Arunyuvaraj

I'm Arunyuvaraj, a techno freak, fascinated about the world of science. I would love to share my knowledge about new gadgets, tech products and automobiles with my friends. Through this blog, I aspire to help more friends.

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