The OnePlus 8, OnePlus 8 Pro Review: Becoming The Flagship
by Andrei Frumusanu on June 29, 2020 10:00 AM ESTBattery Life
Battery life of the OnePlus 8 Pro was a big question-mark for a lot of users given the phone’s 120Hz refresh rate. Several weeks ago I had reported on my initial power draw investigation results covering the different display modes of the screen:
Much like on the Galaxy S20 series, the OnePlus 8 Pro incurs a large static power draw penalty when switching from 60Hz to 120Hz. This is a increase in the baseline power of the phone, no matter the type of content that you’re displaying, and will even incur on a pure black screen.
OnePlus 8 Pro Baseline Power usage (Black Screen)
Whilst OnePlus does include refresh rate switching mechanisms based on scenarios such as video playback, the lack of a true variable refresh rate (VRR) mechanism that works on the per-frame basis and is implemented on the deeper OS and GPU driver levels, means that current generation high-refresh rate devices will have to suffer from a larger than usual power and battery life penalty.
In our web browsing test, we see the clear impact of the 120Hz refresh rate on the OnePlus 8 Pro as it reduces the battery life of the phone in the test by 22% compared to its regular 60Hz mode. As a note- we’re testing at QHD resolution here as generally there’s very little power benefit from using lower resolutions.
In terms of absolute results, the 9.71h of the 120Hz mode here are adequate but not great. The results fall in line with the S20+ at 120Hz, but short of the bigger battery capacity of the S20 Ultra. At 60Hz, the 8 Pro moves back in at 12.31h which is a great result and will get you through even the most extensive usage days.
Whilst many will have looked forward to the OnePlus 8 Pro results, the really interesting results belong to the smaller OnePlus 8. The phone here was able to showcase outstanding battery life figures. The 90Hz mode only has an 8% impact on the battery runtime in this test, and in the 60Hz mode the phone lasted for a staggering 14h which is amongst the best results we’ve ever measured on a phone.
In PCMark, the smaller OnePlus 8 again takes the lead in terms of longevity with its 60Hz mode. The 8 Pro also does quite well at 60Hz, and both phones lose respectively 15.4% and 16.4% of their runtime when switching over to 90Hz and 120Hz modes.
Whilst the OnePlus 8 Pro pretty much fell in line with what we’ve expected in terms of its battery life, falling in line with the 120Hz power behaviour of the S20 phones, it’s the regular OnePlus 8 which surprised a lot given that it features a slightly smaller battery, notably surpassing the efficiency of the OnePlus 8 Pro. Given its form-factor and weight, it’s easily the longest-lasting device of its class, with only other heavier, bigger battery phones being comparable in terms of battery longevity.
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Daro - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Agreed. I like google cloud ecosystem (maps, photos, etc) but the android phones are getting worse every day and iphones better.Speedfriend - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Alufan, you can't delete the Apple apps either so they have just as much bloatware as Android. And you can't change the default apps either though that change is coming.star-affinity - Sunday, July 12, 2020 - link
Quite a few of the standard apps on an iPhone can be deleted and re-downloaded from the App Store. But I guess not all – att least not the App Store app. :Dstar-affinity - Sunday, July 12, 2020 - link
att = atQuantumz0d - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
I agree, Google is all in copying spree from iOS, they killed QS tiles from Pie, they killed Filesystem from this Android 11, R. They banned so many APIs, they are even copying the OS navigation to the task switcher, the goddamned flagship Pixel is also a clone of Apple, total disaster. With Android 12 they are now against 32bit apps to slash all the back compat of Android, they put so many mandatory restrictions like App Bundles to force the Playstore deployment and added Google Sign the apps instead of the Developers. The removal of HW features and SW is going to kill Android. Many users are migrating from Android, sad. Esp on the topic of lack of updates, I do not update because I don't want to lose features but many want, and with a Linux Kernel Google can enforce but they don't they don't want people to use their existing phones for a long period and with insane $1000 pricetag for same use and throw garbage it's not going to turn out good.The freedom is being eroded just like how that CA state is in a pathetic condition from politically correct to other garbage, they even wanted to setup a search engine for CCP from backdoor, good that their own woke employees clashed against them, unlike Apple which is free to do all with CCP, if it was not for Apple I bet none of these OEMs would be in the Manufacturing of the Camera arrays and other phone mechanical engineering. Apple even put lot of money into BOE.
Arbie - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
No audio jack, no sale. Especially at $900.Quantumz0d - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
And no MicroSD slot either. This is a pure garbage phone with all cloned technology overpriced to hell, buying an S10+ is the best choice right now. It has everything that this phone cannot do, 120Hz is not at all a mandate, esp given how it destroys the phone's battery quickly, that's why Apple didn't put this yet.KompuKare - Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - link
Yes, expandable storage is must. I refuse to buy a phone where I'm totally dependent on overpriced internal storage and can't just take my card to transfer stuff.No expandable storage = automatic no-buy from me.
This will all the anti-consumer trends (lack of expandable storage, replaceable batteries, removal of audio jacks), this was started Apple and copied by Google and other anti-consumer companies.
Revv233 - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
*Scans furiously too see if it's a flagship with a headphone jack. **Skips rest of article*
Amazing they can afford the feature in budget phones.
ads295 - Monday, June 29, 2020 - link
It's not about manufacturers being able to afford to put it, it's about the target customers being able to afford to not have it on their phones. Nearly every phone manufacturer has come up with their own version of wireless gear.