OnePlus 10 Pro review: Not much left of the original OnePlus appeal

OnePlus is in turmoil.

The Chinese company has lost its founder, Carl Bai, in 2020and it underwent a turbulent merger with Oppo over the past year. No one outside the company knows what the future of OnePlus will look like, but its latest smartphone, the OnePlus 10 Pro, appears to be hinting at what the new era of OnePlus will look like.

OnePlus is part of a large conglomerate of smartphone companies under the BBK umbrella. Similar to how General Motors operates a group of car companies, all BBK brands choose from the same box of parts and make similar products, but they target different markets. BBK’s sister companies OnePlus Oppo, Vivo and Realme focus on China, and iQOO focuses on India. OnePlus was the western wing of BBK. Countries launched for one plus one It was the US and Europe, which made a lot of sense. The three largest smartphone markets – in order – are China, India and the United States.

Now that the Oppo merger has taken place, it’s hard to say that OnePlus is still focused on the West. OnePlus 10 Pro debuts three months ago In China it is only now coming to the shores of the United States. Even after this delay, the device won’t launch in the US with every feature intact.

The primary way OnePlus stands out from its competitors is Warp Charge, the company’s proprietary fast charging technology. OnePlus 10 Pro improves this technology by providing 80W Warp Charging. But OnePlus didn’t make a new 80W Warp charger for the US market, so US customers have to settle for last year’s charger, which is only 65W, and there’s nothing stopping OnePlus from making an 80W charger that works with the 120V power system in the US; The company simply did not.

BBK already has three other China-focused brands, so OnePlus’ prioritization for China could signal a slight pullback from the US market. Oppo’s integration also looks like a refutation of the original OnePlus strategy. OnePlus was once important enough to be an independent company under BBK, and now it is not.

The merger of OnePlus and Oppo leads to an awkward and unclear future for OnePlus as well. OnePlus and Oppo both have their own Android themes. OnePlus has traditionally stuck close to the Android design and added additional features (although the company has moved away from this strategy over time). Oppo’s Color OS, like many Chinese Android variants, is about the envy of Apple and looks like a file fake copy iOS.

at July 2021And OnePlus and Oppo announced that they will do so Merge Android variants it, saying the move will help companies produce faster updates. In December 2021 we got our first look at this unifying trend with the Android 12 update for the OnePlus 9, and it was Kind of a disaster. Just last month, Oppo and OnePlus announced a software merger was canceled.

So no, OnePlus didn’t make the 10 Pro in a month; It was created mostly under the old plan. Nobody knows what the Android 13 update plan for this phone will look like, but you’ll get three years of major software updates. Blowing up your software section and then trying to rebuild it a month before the device is released is a mess, and I can’t say I expect major updates to go smoothly while OnePlus figure out what it wants its software to be.

In this context, we present to you OnePlus 10 Pro review. The annual smartphone update cycle does not stop for anyone, even if your company is in the middle of a complete reboot.