Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge

With the OnePlus 7 released earlier in the year, OnePlus has started producing two models of each of its flagship phones. Six months ago saw the release of the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro, and today OnePlus has announced the OnePlus 7T Pro, the high-end sibling to the OnePlus 7T that the company first revealed last month. The new phone costs £699, and will be available to buy in the UK starting on October 17th, but there’s currently no US release planned for the device.

Alongside the new device, OnePlus has also announced European pricing details for the OnePlus 7T, with prices starting at £549. The OnePlus 7T will also be available in the UK starting from October 17th. Previously, OnePlus has announced that the phone will cost $599 in the US when it goes on sale there on October 18th.

The McLaren edition features an orange and black color scheme and includes 12GB of RAM.

The final major announcement of the day is a new McLaren Edition of the OnePlus 7T Pro, which comes in a black and orange color scheme and includes 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. It will retail for £799 when it launches on November 5th.

Much like the phones released earlier this year, the big feature that distinguishes the newly announced OnePlus 7T Pro from the standard 7T is its display. The 6.67-inch QHD+ OLED display curves around the edges of the device, and because of the phone’s pop-up selfie camera, there’s no need for a display notch to contain its 16-megapixel front-facing camera. When Dieter reviewed the OnePlus 7 Pro, he described the screen as being “so large and so expansive you hardly notice there’s a phone behind it when you look at it,” and that’s still absolutely the case here.

The 7T Pro is available in a slightly lighter shade of blue than the 7T.

Back when we reviewed the OnePlus 7, we said that it was a phone that was designed to make you want to make the step up to its Pro sibling. But with the 7T devices that equation has changed, and the OnePlus 7T now has many of the features that were previously exclusive to the Pro. The 7T now has a 90 Hz display, and it’s also got a triple-camera setup as standard. The gap between the Pro and standard devices is significantly smaller this time around.

In fact, beyond the obvious design differences, you have to dig into the 7T Pro’s spec sheet a little to work out how it actually differs from the 7T. There’s no 128GB storage option for one thing, so its storage options start at 256GB, and the telephoto lens gives you 3x zoom with optical image stabilization on the 7T Pro compared to 2x with no stabilization on the 7T. It also has a 4,085mAh battery, which is a moderate step up from the 3,800mAh battery in the OnePlus 7T, and just a smidge bigger than the OnePlus 7 Pro’s 4,000mAh.

The 16-megapixel pop-up selfie camera returns from the 7 Pro.

On the rear, you’ll find a triple-camera setup with the same specs as the 7 Pro.

Otherwise, the OnePlus 7T Pro’s specs are very similar to both the OnePlus 7 Pro and the OnePlus 7T. It’s got a triple-camera rear array consisting of a main 48-megapixel f/1.6 camera alongside an 8-megapixel f/2.4 telephoto camera and 16-megapixel f/2.2 ultra wide-angle camera. These specs are identical to the 7 Pro, and the lenses are also arranged in a line, unlike the circular camera bump we saw on the 7T. The new macro mode that was introduced with the 7T is also present on the 7T Pro, allowing users to take photos from as little as 2.5cm away from their subjects.

The 7T Pro comes with very similar internals to the 7T, which means it offers a small improvement over the 7 Pro. It’s got a Snapdragon 855 Plus processor with 8GB of RAM, and it supports the new Warp Charge 30T standard that’s up to 23 percent faster than what we saw on the 7 Pro. Where the phone takes a small step back from the 7 Pro is that there’s no 5G version of the device this time around, so you’ll have to put up with a slightly older processor if you want to be able to connect to next-gen networks.

I’ve had a chance to try out the OnePlus 7T Pro over the last few days, and it seems every bit as nice to use as the OnePlus 7 Pro was six months ago. The optical in-display fingerprint sensor is still among the fastest around, battery life is exceptional, and the 90Hz display is just as smooth and vibrant as it was on the 7 Pro.

Technically, OnePlus says its Snapdragon 855 Plus processor should make its graphics rendering 15 percent faster than the OnePlus 7 Pro, but in real-world usage it was very hard to tell. When I played a couple rounds of Call of Duty: Mobile, I didn’t detect a hint of slowdown, and outside of gaming performance, the phone otherwise felt quick and snappy to use. Apps opened quickly and the camera was responsive. Its performance was hard to fault.

Battery life is another area where the spec sheet suggests there should be an improvement, but the actual benefit of an extra 85mAh of battery capacity compared to the 7 Pro is really difficult to quantify. All I know is that I didn’t come close to draining the phone’s battery during each day I used it, when I’d regularly charge the phone in the evening with 50 percent of its battery life remaining.

I haven’t had a chance to really dig into the camera features on this phone. To my eye, the photographs they produce look very similar to what we saw on the 7 Pro, meaning they look great, if not necessarily best in class. Detail levels are generally good, colors are vibrant, and the camera app switches seamlessly between its telephoto, regular, and wide-angle modes.

The only problem with the phone is that its “budget” sibling, the OnePlus 7T, is such a massive improvement over the OnePlus 7 that it hasn’t left much room for the Pro model to really flex its muscles. From where I’m standing, it looks like you have to really want this phone’s notch-less curved display to spend the extra £150 for the OnePlus 7T Pro, because so much else about the phone is so similar to the cheaper model.

The OnePlus 7T Pro takes much of what we already liked about the OnePlus 7 Pro and adds a fresh coat of paint to bring it up to speed with the OnePlus 7T. The only question is whether the 7T’s more thorough reworking makes it the better option at its cheaper price point.

Photography by Jon Porter / The Verge

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