OnePlus 10 Pro: New Camera Bump But… Fewer Cameras

There’s no shame in going back to the drawing board, something OnePlus wholeheartedly agrees with. The company plans to re-sketch their OnePlus 10 series even if, something tells me… the design will annoy plenty of people. 

OnePlus 10 Pro: Camera Design

OnePlus 10 Pro won’t look anything like the OnePlus 9 Pro, at least when you’re looking at the back of the phone. Prototype renders show a completely redesigned camera bump that’s more square than rectangular. And yet… it’s not the camera island we’ve seen on iPhones. 

In fact, it will remind you of the one on Samsung Galaxy S21 since it blends with the edge of the device. In an attempt not to copy the other though, OnePlus nudged the whole bump downwards so it won’t wrap around the top, just around the side. 

It’s a peculiar one and one of many different takes on rear camera design we’ve seen of late. Not everyone will love it, not at first, but if the rest of it fits the bill… it’s gonna be something users overlook eventually. 

OnePlus 10 Pro: Why Fewer Cameras?

What’s even more interesting than OnePlus’ call to make the bump wider is their decision to cut a camera out. Remember how the OnePlus 9 Pro debuted with a quad – main, ultrawide, tele and mono? Well, OnePlus 10 Pro is gonna launch with a triple camera. 

If you ask me, the monochrome lens is getting the sack. OnePlus won’t ditch the ultra wide, nor the tele since there’s talk of a periscope that is in the works with 5x optical zoom.

The camera hardware is gonna be backed up by Hasselblad software enhancements, of course. OnePlus is in an ongoing partnership with them – an expensive one, by the way – to become camera gurus. With the OnePlus 9 Pro, they introduced natural color tuning and color calibration. 

Basically, that enabled photos taken with the phone to look as realistic as possible and to be edited as much as the user pleases. In Pro mode, users get to adjust ISO, focus, white balance and save their results as RAW files. 

All of this will come back to the OnePlus 10 series, as well as, hopefully, other improvements. We’re in the second year of the OnePlus collaboration with Hasselblad so we’re hoping to see major improvements, real differentiators on the phone camera market. 

OnePlus 10 Pro: Strong Chip, Decent Storage

What else do we know about the OnePlus 10 and 10 Pro? Both phones are likely to stay in the 6.7-inches display range. OnePlus 10 Pro will likely sport a 120Hz refresh rate just like its predecessor.

Under the hood, the Pro version is bound to come with the latest from Snapdragon. The 898 chip or well… the Snapdragon 8 gen 1 as they want to name it now.

Either way, we’ll have powerful, flagship phones on our hands, no doubt about it. 

There will be 8/12GB of RAM, which is nothing to complain about. Sure enough, you’ll have decent storage – about 256GB – although, forget about getting more. We don’t think OnePlus is gonna give us a card slot – they didn’t do it last year, after all. 

OnePlus 10 Pro: New OS, Battery

The phones are going to run on a blend of ColorOS and OxygenOS. Oppo and OnePlus merged so it makes sense to have their OS do the same. However, OnePlus did say there will be a branding difference between the phones of the company so you still get the feel of a OnePlus phone.

As for upgrades, some will definitely go to the battery department. OnePlus is said to bump the battery cell to 5,000mAh which is starting to be the norm for most flagships these years. 

That’s not all! Charging speeds will also see an increase. We’re talking 125W fast charging from the 65W OnePlus 9 Pro offered.

OnePlus 10 Pro: Release Date, Price

We will know more about it next month since the phone is not going to launch this year. We expect the OnePlus 10 series to show up next January – February, roughly at the same time as the Samsung Galaxy S22.

No one has said a word about price so we have no idea if the company will cut users some slack and slash prices or if their Hasselblad collaboration will make that impossible.

What I can tell you is that a year ago, OnePlus 9 Pro sold for more than $900! Our hope is the price will drop to $850 but I either way, this will be a pricey phone.