At a starting price of Rs. 49,999, the OnePlus 9 will most likely be more popular than the OnePlus 9 Pro. You get most of the features of the 9 Pro, including the Hasselblad influence for the camera, but in a slimmer and lighter body. Here are our first impressions of the OnePlus 9.
The OnePlus 9 Pro is the company’s hero product for 2021 and will probably be getting most of the spotlight, but we shouldn’t forget the regular OnePlus 9 which could be the more popular of the two thanks to its starting price of Rs.49,999. It gets a lot of new features, some borrowed from the 9 Pro, while others are brought forward from the OnePlus 8T ( Review). Overall, it looks like it could be a good upgrade over last year’s OnePlus 8. There’s one major area in which it actually takes a step backwards, but we’ll get into that in a bit. Our review of the OnePlus 9 Pro should give you a detailed understanding of where the more expensive of the two models stands in the grand scheme of things, and whether you should consider buying it. Spoiler alert: it’s yet another excellent flagship, just like the OnePlus 8 Pro, and is only let down by its selfie camera. The OnePlus 9 shares many of the same features as the 9 Pro, including the new 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera, Hasselblad colour tuning, and Snapdragon 888 SoC. I’ve been using the OnePlus 9 alongside the 9 Pro, and while there’s quite a bit of testing left to be done on the lower-priced model, here’s what I think about it so far. Before we talk about its design and features, let’s get one thing out of the way, which will surprise many. This is probably the first OnePlus number series phone to have a polycarbonate body instead of aluminium. It still looks great, but the switch to plastic definitely seems like an attempt to cut costs. Samsung has done this with the Galaxy Note 20 and, more recently, the Galaxy S21, which both have plastic backs instead of glass.
