OnePlus has a reputation for coming out with innovations that totally change how we use technology in our lives. The brand made us realise that fast charging our phones was an option with its iconic Warp Charge. It also made us aware of the benefits of having a clean, ad free interface with OxygenOS. It redefined smooth scrolling with high refresh rate displays when the world had barely heard of them. And now, with its partnership with Hasselblad, it is bringing a whole new dimension to photography, enabling us to do so much more with our photographs.
The OnePlus 10 Pro, the latest flagship from the house of OnePlus, comes laden with photographic muscle. It has three powerful rear cameras. The main sensor is a 48 megapixel Sony IMX789 sensor that is exclusive to OnePlus devices. There is also a 50 megapixel ultrawide sensor that can deliver not just the regular ultrawide view of 110 degrees but can actually go all the way to 150 degrees, for those fisheye views. Rounding off the trio is a 8 megapixel telephoto that delivers 3.3x optical zoom and can even stretch to 30x digital zoom if the object of your photographic attention is further away. The phone also comes with the most powerful selfie camera seen on a OnePlus flagship – a 32 megapixel shooter.
There is more to the cameras of the OnePlus 10 Pro than just hardware, though. Lying beneath those figures are features that could totally change how most of us perceive photography. The OnePlus 10 Pro comes with the OnePlus Billion Color Solution. This allows Natural Color Calibration with Hasselblad to be applied to over one billion colors. What’s more, each one of those three fantastic cameras on the back of the OnePlus 10 Pro can now shoot in 10-bit colour.
That may sound like just another number. But it actually represents a huge step forward for phone photography. The color depth of an image is measured in bits, with the number of bits showing how many colours are available in each pixel. In simple terms, the more the bits per pixel, the more colours are available. Now, most of us shoot photographs in 8-bit colour. That adds up to about 16 million colours, which seems a massive figure and might even be deemed more than enough. Of course, OnePlus did not settle at this number. When you use the OnePlus 10 Pro’s 10-bit colour option, you get to work with 64 times more colours – taking the number up to a truly staggering 1 billion colours! That’s well beyond what you would get not just on most smartphones but even some DSLRs.
What’s more, the cameras on the OnePlus 10 Pro capture photos using the DCI-P3 color gamut. This offers 25 per cent more coverage than the RGB colour gamut used on other smartphones. The net result? Photographs taken by the OnePlus 10 Pro will come with far more intricate and pleasing colours than any other phone. There will also be much lesser color banding, with smoother transitions between colours. You will never get these sort of colours from other phones.
What’s more, you can do much more with these wonderfully colourful photographs, especially if you like shooting in RAW mode. RAW mode is generally the mode preferred by professional photographers who like to edit images extensively, The more information the images have, the better the edits. On the OnePlus 10 Pro, the famous Hasselblad Pro Mode which lets you adjust camera parameters like ISO and white balance, is now available on all three rear cameras. Along with being able to tweak photo settings, the Hasselblad Pro Mode also lets you capture images in 12-bit RAW. This offers far more information and greater levels of dynamic range. And of course, it comes with Hasselblad Natural Color Solution for Mobile. You not only get a staggering number of colours in all their intricacy and natural glory , but also a truckload of image information, allowing users to process them still further.
The OnePlus 10 Pro also has a mode called RAW+. This not only lets you shoot in 12-bit RAW, but also retains the computation photography elements that OnePlus brings to regular photography. So you end up getting much better dynamic range and lesser noise, thanks to OnePlus’ computational photography magic. So you not only get all that information that comes with a RAW image but also get OnePlus’ computational photography improvements to it. This makes editing and processing images far easier. Of course, all the fantastic hardware on the OnePlus 10 Pro, including a top of the line Quad HD+ Fluid AMOLED display and the super powerful Qualcomm 8 Generation 1 processor, ensures that everything from taking photographs to editing and sharing them literally happens in a snap!
While other players focus on hardware, OnePlus has literally got into the innards of photography to make it more compelling. And the OnePlus 10 Pro is ample proof of that. The phone’s cameras deliver millions of colours more than you get on a normal camera phone. You also get amazingly natural colours courtesy of Hasselblad, and not just a RAW shooting mode but a RAW+ mode as well, complete with additional data. If you love colours, you should never settle on any other phone to capture them.