The OnePlus 9 is almost here. The official launch is scheduled for March 23 at 10 AM ET, but apparently, even OnePlus is too excited to wait. The company released some new photos of the OnePlus 9 Pro in addition to details on its impressive new display.
The display benchmarks and specs come courtesy of PCMag, which was given an early look at the results of DisplayMate Labs testing of the OnePlus 9 Pro ahead of next week's launch. Based on these results, it's shaping up to be one of the most impressive displays we've seen on a smartphone.
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First the basics: the OnePlus 9 Pro features a curved edge 6.7-inch display with a QHD resolution of 3216 x 1440 pixels. The display is an OLED panel from Samsung with specific tuning and optimizations for OnePlus that the company is calling "Fluid Display 2.0."
As some of the latest rumors have suggested, it is an LTPO (low-temperature polycrystalline oxide) panel capable of dynamically shifting the refresh rate based on the content that is being displayed. Like the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, the OnePlus 9 Pro will be able to run at 120Hz at its full QHD resolution, but it does manage to beat Samsung at the other end with a 1Hz minimum refresh rate compared to 10Hz for the S21 Ultra.
OnePlus claims that its "Smart 120Hz" is capable of reducing display power consumption by up to 50%, which should mean impressive battery life for OnePlus 9 Pro owners.
The OnePlus 9 Pro pairs its fast 120Hz refresh rate with an even faster 360Hz touch sampling rate. That's 50% faster than the 240Hz of the Galaxy S20 series, which is presumed to be the same as the Galaxy S21. This should further contribute to a seamless touch experience with the phone, but it's worth noting that we may be pushing past what is truly discernible to the human eye.
Sunny days shouldn't be a challenge for the OnePlus 9 Pro with Displaymate's tests showing a max brightness of 1,043 nits, which slots in behind the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra's 1,240 nits but well above the rest of the competition.
Color reproduction was similarly impressive in the testing with the OnePlus 9 Pro managing 139% of the sRGB color gamut, behind the iPhone 12 Pro Max (143%), but ahead of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra (135%).
Naturally, we'll be putting the OnePlus 9 Pro and the OnePlus 9 through our own display testing along with the full exhaustive set of benchmarking tests that we run for each of our reviews, but it's certainly interesting to get this in-depth look at what OnePlus has in store for us at next week's launch.
