The OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro are here, fancy Hasselblad camera tech in tow

We’ve been expecting OnePlus to announce its OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro handsets, alongside some fancy Hasselblad camera tech, for some time now. The launch event took place last night and saw the handsets revealed, as well as the brand’s very first smartwatch with a robust set of features. But we’re not here for the smartwatch, as cool as it undoubtedly is.

We’re here for the camera tech, which isn’t jealous of Huawei’s close relationship with Leica at all. And the OnePlus 9 range… well, we wouldn’t kick that camera out of bed.

+1 OnePlus 9

Odds are you’ll be familiar with the OnePlus handsets’ camera hardware, at least a little. The 9 Pro is the big body of the bunch and features a 48MP main camera sensor made in conjunction with Sony. It’s flanked by a 50MP ultra-wide and an 8MP telephoto that adds 3.3x optical zoom — which is the same feature included in the recently-announced Galaxy A72, though OnePlus definitely has the superior camera here (no matter what Samsung tells you).

That’s because, OnePlus claims, the company’s found a way to reduce edge distortion, a feature you’ll only need if you take your cameras seriously. And they don’t come much more seriously than Hasselblad, which is providing colour correction and a Hasselblad Pro mode that gives users control over ISO, focus, exposure time and other minutiae. In addition, the OnePlus 9 Pro shoots 12MP RAW images which can be edited on-device, the same way you can on Hasselblad’s own cameras. The camera setup also records at 8K, if needed, at 30fps.

Those pesky other specs

On to the more traditional camera front, the internals for the OnePlus 9 Pro are as follows: there’s a Snapdragon 888 at its core, buoyed along by either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of storage. The 6.7in panel is an LTPO Fluid2 AMOLED screen running at 120Hz with a max brightness of 1300 nits. It might not look quite as crisp as Samsung’s Super AMOLED but you probably won’t notice the difference. The refresh rate is variable, however, and can drop as low as 1Hz if that’s all that’s needed.

There’s a 4,500mAh battery in place, which tops up from empty in just 30 minutes thanks to OnePlus’ Warp Charge 65T tech. With the company’s own wireless charging pad, you can get to full in about 45 minutes.

The standard OnePlus 9 shares many of the same internals — the processor and RAM options are the same, but the display is shrunk to 6.5in. The 50MP ultra-wide sensor is the same too, but there’s an older 48MP main sensor carrying the weight.

Pricing is available for the handsets overseas, with the OnePlus 9 starting at about R11,000 and the 9 Pro from R14,400. Local pricing and availability aren’t known at this time but it should crop up soon.