OnePlus 9 series: what to expect

2021-04-18

OnePlus has a grand event planned for tomorrow, March 23. It will unveil the OnePlus 9 series, the first products from its new partnership with medium format camera maker Hasselblad. The company will also unveil its first smartwatch.

Here’s a summary of all the official info that was posted leading up to the event (there was plenty). We’ll use rumors and leaks to supplement it where there are still gaps.

Three phones

The OnePlus 9 series will have at least three members – vanilla, Pro and an affordable R version. And we’ll see all three of them at tomorrow’s event. We’ll focus on the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro here as those have been the stars of the company’s teaser campaign (and plenty of leaks).

We’ll still come back to the OnePlus 9R to cover what we know about it.

Hasselblad enters the smartphone segment

OnePlus and Hasselblad signed a three year partnership and committed $150 million in R&D funds to develop better mobile camera systems. We know that the OnePlus 9 series will feature a Natural Color Calibration system developed by legendary camera maker. The Pro Mode on the phones will feature Hasselblad-developed image processing and will be able to output 12-bit RAW images.

As for the hardware, that comes from Sony. Both OnePlus 9 phones will use a 48 MP Sony IMX789 image sensor for the main camera with Digital Overlap HDR and full-pixel omnidirectional autofocus. It will be able to record 4K videos at 120 fps. The ultra wide camera gets the 50MP IMX766 module, which is behind both the wide and ultra wide lenses on the Oppo Find X3 Pro.

OnePlus has elected to skip over the periscope lens for this generation (perhaps, it’s something we’ll see with the inevitable T-phone). From what we’ve heard, the Pro will have a standard telephoto lens with 3x magnification. Here are some official photos from the three cameras:

If we’re reading the tweets right, the vanilla OnePlus 9 will skip the zoom in favor of a microscope camera:

LTPO display with 1-120 Hz adaptive refresh rate

OnePlus will become an early adopter of LTPO panels and the AMOLED display on the OnePlus 9 Pro will be able to dynamically adjust its refresh rate from 1 Hz to 120 Hz. It will be a curved 1440p+ panel with 10-bit color support, which already received an excellent A+ mark from DisplayMate.

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The panel will have very low touch latency too, thanks to a high touch sampling rate. Unofficial info points to a 6.78” curved display with 1440p+ resolution. The Always On Display will save power by throttling down to 1 Hz.

As for the OnePlus 9, there’s no official info yet, but we expect to see a 6.55” 1080p+ panel with 120 Hz refresh rate (likely non-adaptive).

Upgraded wired and wireless fast charging

The OnePlus 9 Pro will support 65W wired charging, which can fill the battery from zero to 100% in just 29 minutes. The company will also launch a new 50W wireless charger that can accomplish the same task in 43 minutes.

The OnePlus 9 is much more restrained and only supports wireless charging at 15W. Still, it would be the first non-Pro to offer wireless charging, so it’ still an improvement.

Both phones should be powered by 4,500 mAh batteries and should include the 65W wired charger in their retail package.

Snapdragon 888 running OxygenOS (mostly)

Both premium OnePlus 9 phones will be powered by the Snapdragon 888 chipset paired with LPDDR5 RAM. The Pro model will feature the new OnePlus Cool Play technology, which promises to keep the 888 running a couple of degrees cooler than the chipset inside a Galaxy S21 Ultra.

There will be some software reshuffling in China – the phones will adopt Oppo’s ColorOS (replacing HydrogenOS). This will not affect global units, which will continue to run OxygenOS (starting with Android 11).

New colorways

Two colors – Winter Mist (violet) and Morning Mist (silver) – were shown officially. They are for the vanilla OnePlus 9 and the 9 Pro, respectively.

Earlier today, CEO Pete Lau detailed the story behind Pine Green:

Leaks add a few more colors to the palette - Black for the OnePlus 9 and Pro, plus Blue for the vanilla model.

2 years of warranty

The company promised 2 years of warranty for the OnePlus 9. This probably won’t have an impact on regions like the EU, which already mandates that for new products, but it’s still great news for millions of users.

OnePlus 9R, one for the gamers

There were plenty of rumors about a lite OnePlus 9. Such a phone is coming under the OnePlus 9R name and it will be unveiled on the 23rd alongside the other two.

It’s a “premium-tier” device with a focus on mobile gaming. To that end, the company is teasing add-on shoulder buttons for the phone. And the hashtag reveals that this will be a 5G-connected phone, but it’s not clear how it will be positioned in relation to the Nord series.

We heard that the OnePlus 9E will be powered by the Snapdragon 690, however, we’re not sure if the 9E is the same phone as the 9R.

OnePlus Watch follows the Band

The company will unveil its first smartwatch, predictably called the OnePlus Watch. It will have a circular body and it will not run Google’s Wear OS. Instead, it will feature proprietary software, perhaps an souped up version of the OnePlus Band software.

According to rumors, the watch will measure 46 mm in diameter and will be available in standard and LTE versions. With 4 GB of on board storage, we expect some music playback ability. The watch is expected to have an SpO2 blood-oxygen sensor in addition to the standard heart rate sensor. With its own version of Warp Charge, the watch will get a week’s worth of juice in just 20 minutes.

The latest rumors peg the OnePlus Watch cost at around €150 in Europe. It will be available in two colors, silver and black (and note the silicone wrist strap).

A while ago a Cyberpunk 2077 edition of the watch leaked, but we haven't heard about it since (and the game didn't have the smoothest launch, so this might have been scrapped).