The 2021 smartphone season is starting to pick up, and last week OnePlus released its 9 series of phones, following up on last year’s OnePlus 8T and OnePlus 8 series. If you were interested in either phone, then you’ve probably read our reviews for the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro by now and weighed your various options. So, we’re curious to know if you are planning to get either.
Opinions will certainly vary, but we felt a little more critical of both the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro than the models they replaced. OnePlus’s much-hyped Hasselblad partnership sadly didn’t end up improving photography performance as much as we’d have liked, and prices continue to creep up even as the company’s software update commitment remains stuck in 2018. In the face of the Galaxy S21 series, which saw prices drop in 2021 compared to last year’s models, It’s pretty hard for us to recommend a OnePlus flagship.
Still, either phone could present the right mix of features at the right price for the right person. OnePlus is almost alone in offering an unlockable bootloader at this price point, making them the go-to phones for the root and ROM crowd, and not everyone likes Samsung’s software. That’s not to mention OnePlus’s super-fast charging, which is a surprisingly useful feature and which no other phone in the US comes near.
I can’t presume to dictate your taste to you — everyone values different things in a smartphone, as last week’s poll proves. But if you are in the market for a smartphone, are you sold on a OnePlus 9 or 9 Pro already, or will you give them a pass?
