OnePlus’ best phone isn’t coming to the US

Fresh off the announcement of the OnePlus 7T last month, OnePlus is announcing a mid-cycle upgrade for its slightly higher-end smartphone, the OnePlus 7 Pro, and it’s launching the OnePlus 7T Pro. For both this mid-cycle “T” release and the original release that happened six months ago, the story is the same: the 7 and 7T have a camera notch and a flat display, while the 7 Pro and 7T Pro have a motorized pop-up camera and a display that curves along the edges.

OnePlus has been playing strange games with its device availability these past two generations. The company’s January launch saw the camera-notch OnePlus 7 come to Europe and the pop-up camera OnePlus 7 Pro come to the US, and for this release, OnePlus isn’t bringing the OnePlus 7T Pro to the US.

What’s new

So what’s actually new? Like the OnePlus 7 to OnePlus 7T transition: not much. The primary motivator for this release seems to be an upgrade from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 to the slightly faster Snapdragon 855+. The 855+ is the same chip as before, just clocked a bit higher. The CPU is moved from 2.84GHz to 2.96GHz, and the GPU gets a more significant bump from 585MHz to about 673MHz. Overall, expect a 4% faster CPU and a 15% faster GPU.

Besides that, the baseline spec has been updated. The OnePlus 7 Pro started at 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage with options for more, but the 7T Pro has one main spec: 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Like the 7T, you get a battery that charges 23% faster while being a whopping 2% more battery than the 7 Pro: 4085mAh versus 4000mAh. The one other spec option is a OnePlus 7T Pro “McLaren Edition,” which comes with 12GB of RAM and a black and orange color scheme.

The cameras are mostly the same as the 7 Pro: There’s an 8MP main camera, a 8MP 3x telephoto, and a 16MP wide-angle on the back. The one change is the addition of the OnePlus 7T’s macro mode, which lets you focus on object from as little as 2.5cm away. Other than that, the phone looks identical to the OnePlus 7 Pro.

The OnePlus 7T Pro launch event was in London, so for now we only have UK dates and prices. The base model ships October 17 for £699, and the McLaren Edition with 12GB of RAM ships November 5 for £799.

Leave a Reply