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OnePlus 9 Review: History Repeats Itself

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OnePlus 9 Review: History Repeats Itself
Over the past few generations, OnePlus’ non-Pro smartphones have often been neglected in favour of the Pro models. The feature disparity between the OnePlus 7 and 7 Pro is still the best example to date. Things did improve slightly with the 8 series, but higher prices have also meant that the non-Pro models don’t offer as much value for money. With this year’s 9 series, OnePlus’ much-hyped Hasselblad partnership extends to the OnePlus 9, and isn’t limited to the 9 Pro, which is great.

 

Add to that the improved sensors, same charging speed, and same display refresh rate as the 9 Pro, and the OnePlus 9 looks like a great upgrade to the OnePlus 8. However, at its new higher starting price of Rs. 49,999, is it better value than OnePlus’ own 8T and 8 Pro? How does it fare against the competition from other brands? Time to find out.

OnePlus 9 price in India and variants

OnePlus sent me the 12GB RAM variant (with 256GB of storage), which is priced at Rs. 54,999. There’s also a variant with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage priced at Rs. 49,999. The OnePlus 9 has the same LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage as the 9 Pro. There are three colours on offer — Astral Black, Arctic Sky, and Winter Mist — but the latter is only available if you choose the top-end variant. The pastel lilac hue of the Winter Mist trim looks pretty but the glossy finish attracts fingerprints very easily.

OnePlus 9 design

In my first impressions of the OnePlus 9, I mentioned that for the first time, the company has used a polycarbonate frame for its flagship number series. We’ve recently seen Samsung make the same compromise with the construction of its non-Plus or non-Ultra flagship smartphones. I wouldn’t care so much if the OnePlus 9 was priced similar to the OnePlus 8T’s launch price, but that’s not the case, which makes this extremely disappointing. It’s puzzling why a brand aspiring to make a name for itself in the premium smartphone segment would take such a backward step.

Having said that, the OnePlus 9 still feels solidly built and the plastic frame does look like metal, even though it’s not. The only silver lining here is that it’s much lighter (183g) and slimmer (8.1mm) than the 9 Pro and even the 8T. The alert slider and buttons have good tactile feedback, similar to the ones on the 9 Pro. OnePlus has retained Corning Gorilla Glass for the front and back of the phone. At the bottom, you get a USB Type-C port, dual-SIM tray, and speaker.

The OnePlus 9 looks good but would have felt more premium with a metal frame, rather than plastic

The OnePlus 9 has a similar 6.55-inch AMOLED display as the 8T. It’s not an LTPO OLED screen like the one the 9 Pro has, which is fine considering the much lower cost. It has a full-HD+ resolution, is HDR-certified, and supports a 120Hz refresh rate. You also get an in-display fingerprint sensor, which despite its awkwardly low placement, works very well. The 9’s display is flat, unlike the curved edges on the 9 Pro, but the borders are evenly slim all around. There’s a hole-punch cutout for the selfie camera in the upper left corner.

The camera bump on the back isn’t very pronounced and has a similar shape as the one on the 9 Pro, minus a few sensors. The OnePlus 9 doesn’t look too different to the 9 Pro overall, which is a good thing now that we’ve all gotten used to it. The plastic frame still bugs me in the back of my mind, considering how much it costs, and is something which shouldn’t have been compromised. The box contents are similar to those of the 9 Pro, except for the case, which is transparent rather than opaque.

OnePlus 9 specifications and software

The OnePlus 9 uses the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G SoC as the 9 Pro, and in India, it only supports two 5G bands compared to more in other regions. This aside, the step-brotherly treatment rears its ugly head once again. In India, the OnePlus 9 does not receive an IP rating for dust and water resistance, and neither does it get wireless charging. OnePlus continues to reserve these features for its Pro model in India, but not in all parts of the world.

The OnePlus 9 sold in Europe and North America supports 15W Qi wireless charging, which also makes it slightly thicker and heavier compared to the model sold in India. If you’re in the US and purchase the OnePlus 9 via T-Mobile, it will carry an IP68 badge. There is a rubber gasket around the SIM tray even on the Indian model, which seems to indicate some level of water ingress protection, but make of that what you will.

oneplus 9 review display sides qqq

The OnePlus 9 (bottom) has a flat display compared to the curved sides of the OnePlus 9 Pro (top)

I think OnePlus should have given the 9 an official IP rating, and at least basic wireless charging in India, if not 30W wireless charging like the 8 Pro. I might even have been okay with this had the pricing been lower, but it’s not.

The other features are similar to those of the 9 Pro. Both models feature Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, multiple sensors and satellite navigation systems, stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos, an updated haptic engine, and a better cooling system for the SoC. They also have the same 4,500mAh battery along with 65W fast charging.

Software is taken care of by OxygenOS 11, which is based on Android 11. My unit received a few updates post launch, and overall, the experience has been better than with the 9 Pro, which still has some bugs that need to be squashed. Hyper-Touch, which bumps the display’s touch response to 360Hz in certain games, is one of the few features that is missing in the 9, but the software is otherwise more or less identical to that of the 9 Pro.

OnePlus 9 performance and battery life

Performance has been very solid right from the get go. The OnePlus 9 is a more comfortable phone to live with than the 9 Pro or even the 8T. The lower weight and thickness help in achieving a better in-hand feel, and the flat display pretty much rules out accidental touches. The 120Hz refresh rate makes any gesture feel snappy and fluid. It will drop down to 60Hz in certain apps, in order to save power. The display is excellent – colours are vibrant, brightness is very good, and viewing angles are more than satisfactory.

oneplus 9 review slim qqq

The OnePlus 9 has a slim profile, making a bit more ergonomic to use than the OnePlus 9 Pro

The earpiece and the bottom speaker offer a very good stereo effect, and the volume level is good. Sound quality is similar to what I heard from the 9 Pro, which makes gaming and video consumption a real treat. Just like the OnePlus 9 Pro, the OnePlus 9 can handle even the most demanding games in the Google Play Store. It doesn’t get too hot, since everything is rendered at full-HD+ and not QHD+ like on the 9 Pro. Titles such as Asphalt 9: Legends and Call of Duty: Mobile looked fantastic on the phone’s display.

The OnePlus 9 delivers very good battery life; a bit better than the 9 Pro in fact, in my opinion. Our HD video battery loop test ran for an hour longer too, clocking in nearly 17 hours. With typical use, which included a bit of gaming, video watching, and random social and Chrome usage, I was easily able to go one entire day and a bit more before having to charge this phone. You can kill the battery in under a day with heavy camera use and gaming, but in most cases, it’s safe to assume you’ll get a full day’s worth of use on one charge. Even when you do run low on power, the OnePlus 9 charges incredibly quickly thanks to the 65W charger.

OnePlus 9 cameras

The cameras on the OnePlus 9 are a big upgrade compared to its predecessor’s mainly due to better sensors. There’s of course the whole Hasselblad partnership as well, but for the 9 series, the benefit is mainly seen in the colour tuning of JPEGs and not much else. The main 48-megapixel sensor is lifted from the OnePlus 8 Pro, with the added benefit of Hasselblad’s colour science. However, OnePlus has removed optical stabilisation, which I think was an odd choice. The 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera has the exact same sensor and lens setup as on the 9 Pro, while the third camera is a 2-megapixel monochrome sensor. The OnePlus 9 lacks a telephoto camera, which means all magnification is strictly digital.

Landscape shots taken during the day packed in very good detail and colours, and often matched up to the quality of photos taken with the OnePlus 9 Pro. The ultra-wide camera captured excellent detail too, with minimal distortion around the edges. However, unlike on the 9 Pro, the camera app doesn’t automatically engage the ultra-wide camera when you close in on a subject. You’ll have to enable macro mode manually.

OnePlus 9 main camera sample (tap to see larger image)

OnePlus 9 ultra-wide camera sample (tap to see larger image)

OnePlus 9 macro camera sample (tap to see larger image)

Close-ups had good sharpness and colours too, but every once in a while, I noticed the subject had soft focus or that the area in focus wasn’t exactly what I had selected when taking the shot. It’s a bit of a random occurrence, and I’m hoping this can be fixed through a software update. Both the rear cameras do good jobs in low light with landscape shots, but close-ups require a bit of effort to capture well since there’s no stabilisation to compensate for minor hand shakes. Detail and colours are a bit weaker compared to what the 9 Pro produces.

OnePlus 9 low-light selfie camera sample (tap to see larger image)

OnePlus 9 Nightscape sample (tap to see larger image)

The selfie camera is the same one used for the OnePlus 9 Pro, and it’s decent but not great. You can get some pleasing selfies during the day if you angle the camera just right, but for the most part, images look fairly average and the quality dips further in low light.

With most OnePlus flagships of the past, the cameras got a little better after a few software updates, and the OnePlus 9 has already received a bunch of them since it launched. After updating the 9 and 9 Pro to the latest Oxygen OS 11.2.2.2 (at the time of this review), here’s what I observed. Both the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro continued to aggressively sharpen textures, which causes a bit of fringing along the edges of objects if you magnify the images all the way. The OnePlus 9 still produced slightly better details in landscape shots compared to the 8 Pro, despite having the same sensor. However, close-ups remained a bit hit-or-miss with the OnePlus 9, as even though it may seem as though you’ve got a good shot in the viewfinder, the final photo might not match up to that.

oneplus 9 review compare ww

The OnePlus 9 tends to struggle with close-ups every now and then, which isn’t a problem for the 9 Pro or 8 Pro

The OnePlus 9 has similar video capabilities as the 9 Pro. It can shoot at 8K 30fps, but 4K recording is limited to 60fps and not 120fps like on the 9 Pro. Video quality is good in the daytime and even low-light footage is clean and relatively free from noise. However, the electronic stabilisation causes a bit of jitter in the video, which is more pronounced at night. The OnePlus 9 can shoot HDR video too, but this needs to be enabled manually, unlike on the 9 Pro which can engage it automatically based on the scene.

The OnePlus 9 did give me an overheating warning when shooting 8K video, but this was after recording a third consecutive clip (8K videos are limited to five minutes per clip). The phone eventually stopped recording during the fourth clip; slightly better than the 9 Pro, which usually stopped mid-way through the second clip.

oneplus 9 review cameras ss

The OnePlus 9 has the same ultra-wide camera as the OnePlus 9 Pro 

Verdict

Since the OnePlus 7 series, each non-Pro OnePlus model has been meant to cater to mainstream buyers, while the Pro model was for those who want it all, with the appropriate prices. With the 9 series starting at Rs. 50,000, it appears that both models are now being targeted at the premium segment. OnePlus has gone as far as to introduce a third model this year for the Indian market, the lower-priced OnePlus 9R, which comes in to bridge the “value” gap between the OnePlus Nord and the OnePlus 9. So, should you be spending your money on the OnePlus 9?

If it’s just the latest Qualcomm SoC you crave, then the pricing is not that bad. Other phones with the Snapdragon 888 SoC such as the Asus ROG Phone 5 also start at the same price. When compared to the OnePlus 8T, the OnePlus 9 has better ergonomics and rear cameras, which for some would be worth the premium.

If I had to choose between the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 8 Pro for Rs. 5,000 more, I’d go with the 8 Pro. The latter might not be as slim or light as the 9, and its ultra-wide camera performance is a bit weaker in some cases, but it has a sharper display, an aluminium body, an optically stabilised main camera, IP68 rating, and 30W wireless charging. The OnePlus 8 Pro also looks and feels a lot more premium than the OnePlus 9.

I can’t help but feel an acute sense of déjàvu after reviewing the OnePlus 9, as it’s the same sentiment I had after testing the OnePlus 8. The 9 is a good smartphone in its own right, but hard to recommend when you have the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G and OnePlus 8 Pro selling for around the same price. Plus, with the OnePlus 9R in the picture, the OnePlus 9 seems to be stuck in limbo for the time being.


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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox


Microsoft is teaming up with Inworld AI to create game development tools for Xbox, enabling developers to create characters, generate entire scripts and quests, and more. The multi-year deal brings an AI design copilot and an AI character runtime engine to the forefront, both of them being totally optional to use and to varying degrees. Of course, the use of AI in art has been criticised by many for simply lacking originality, in addition to running the risk of fewer jobs for artists — a growing fear among many considering the alarming number of layoffs seen at game studios this year in an attempt to cut costs.

“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”

The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.

Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.

Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.


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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It

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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It


BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is a state-owned telecommunication company in India. Earlier this year in May, the government said that the firm started rolling out 4G services in the country. By December, the networks were said to be upgraded to 5G. However, at the India Mobile Congress, BSNL chairman P K Purwar said that the company will launch 4G services in December and then roll it across the country by June 2024. The chairman added that the 5G upgrades will take place after June next year.

In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.

To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.

Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.

The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.


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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed

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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed


Realme GT 5 Pro’s launch date is not far away. The Chinese smartphone brand on Tuesday (November 7) confirmed the arrival of the new GT series smartphone in its home country. The Realme GT 5 Pro is teased to come with a display with over 3000 nits of peak brightness. It is also confirmed to pack a larger heat dissipation area for thermal management. The handset will ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come as a successor to the Realme GT 5 that debuted in China in August.

Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.

The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.

For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.

The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.


The Motorola Edge 40 recently made its debut in the country as the successor to the Edge 30 that was launched last year. Should you buy this phone instead of the Nothing Phone 1 or the Realme Pro+? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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