Build Quality and Design
And here it is: the OnePlus 9 Pro 5G in Morning Mist. Don't get confused though—that's just OnePlus's fancy way of saying silver.
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OnePlus 9 Pro 5G in Morning Mist
There are two other OnePlus 9 Pro colorways: Pine Green and Stellar Black. The variant featured in this review will be Morning Mist (as pictured). However, do keep in mind that not all colorways are given the same finish. The Pine Green variant sports a double-layered matte finish, while Stellar Black sports a frosted single-layered matte finish, which are both extremely different in terms of look, feel,
and function compared to Morning Mist's mirror-like, smudge-collecting, glossy glass finish. So, again, do keep these differences in mind when reading or watching the various OnePlus 9 Pro reviews you come across, as the look and feel of one color variant cannot be said to be the same for the others.
Although, I do have to admit that I'm really glad OnePlus sent me this Morning Mist color variant. Silver-colored tech is generally my preferred color variant for my technology. There's just something so aesthetically pleasing to me about silver devices. Do you like silver-colored tech too? Let me know in the replies!
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OnePlus 9 Pro 5G in Morning Mist: Closeup of the Top-Half of the Back
The overall design of the OnePlus 9 Pro is...
familiar, to put things nicely. It's not a particularly exciting nor unique look. But that's also not really a bad thing.
Both the front and back sides of the phone are made out of Gorilla Glass, and the entirety of the frame is made out of metal—including the buttons. The only prominent and immediately-noticeable application of plastic on the OnePlus 9 Pro is the plastic protective mesh sitting in front of the earpiece. But with how minor of a part this is, I think it's safe to say that we can forget about that on the topic of this phone's build materials. This means that the OnePlus 9 Pro can pass off as a glass and metal phone, which is good since plastic exteriors on a smartphone at this price premium should never be a thing. That's a pill that some premium smartphone manufacturers—like Microsoft with their plastic-framed Surface Duo, for example—still need to swallow. But let's save the talk about price premiums for a little bit later.
The sides of the phone are amazing to hold, especially along the long edges. The way that the glass front and back spills over those edges makes it feel as though the glass is melting into the frame. The OnePlus 9 Pro sports some very nice-feeling rounded corners as well, and they don't dig into your palm too much when handling the device, so the comfort factor in this smartphone still exists.
Now, unfortunately, this curving of the glass along those long edges
does worsen the structural integrity of the phone by making it much more prone to major damage if the impact of the drop in question makes direct contact to the glass parts of said edges. Fortunately, if you're one of those people who
never drop your phone, then you got nothing to worry about. But coming back to the topic of design, glass is glass. And for a lot of people, the texture of glass might not be very easy to grip. Glass is a smudge-collecting, fragile, slippery material, so if you can't keep your grip on glass, then this design should be a concern to you. Don't drop it!
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OnePlus 9 Pro 5G in Morning Mist: This is what it looks like in-hand from afar.
But although the OnePlus 9 Pro is sensitive to damage, it has a very nice-looking and presentable structural design. For many people, the design of OnePlus 9 Pro may scream "fashion over function," but, overall, we can still come to appreciate how the design of OnePlus 9 Pro has...
- A pleasant look and feel, and
- The necessary build materials required to—at the very least—stand a change against violent and vigorous bends.
Although this design might not do so great with drops, this application of metal and glass will definitely hold up against reasonable forms of bending.
On another note, I do have some beef with the design choices made specifically for the Morning Mist color variant. Particularly with the gradient on the back of the phone. OnePlus intended for the gradient to resemble fog on a glossy mirror, as to honor their nature-inspired theme going on across the lineup's colorways. But the problem is that the lower-half of the gradient, where the mirror effect begins to stand out, only works best when there's no subject reflecting onto it. Most of the time, the back of your phone isn't going to look like Figure A. It's going to look like Figure B. And even more so like Figure C, emphasizing the reflections of your fingers much more than other glass sandwich phones.
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Figure A: The OnePlus 9 Pro in-hand with a mostly reflection-free back.
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Figure B: The back of the OnePlus 9 Pro, out of hand, heavily reflecting its surroundings.
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Figure C: The back of the OnePlus 9 Pro in-hand, reflecting my fingers.
And the sharpness of the subjects that are sometimes reflected into the mirror-like lower-half of the gradient does not contrast very well alongside the flat, nonreflecting light greys of the upper-half of the gradient. Now, of course, everyone's tastes are different, and this perception of color and neumorphic design will always be inconsistently subjective; however, if it were
me, I would have made the entire back of the OnePlus 9 Pro—including the colored area of the camera bump—either a complete mirror finish or a completely flat light grey color. But not both. Not a gradient fading between the two. And my reason for this would be to maintain consistency across the OnePlus 9 Pro's design. The only problem with my solution, however, is that it wouldn't exactly fit the "morning mist" theme that OnePlus was trying to apply across their phones. So, in that case, if OnePlus liked this feedback, but would be also insistent on keeping this shimmering grey-to-mirror gradient for the purpose of maintaining that nature-inspired morning mist theme, then my final form of feedback would be to at least make the glossy mirror finish on this gradient somewhat frosted, or somewhat more translucent than it is right now.
Sides of the OnePlus 9 Pro
Leftmost Image: The device's LEFT side.
Centermost Image: The bottom of the device..
Rightmost Image: The device's RIGHT side.
Looking around the device, we can see buttons, microphone cutouts, and a USB-C port. Unfortunately, there's no headphone jack on the OnePlus 9 Pro, which may be the one thing that makes or breaks some people's decision to buy this phone, but what this
does have is an alert slider.
And I
love the alert slider.
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OnePlus 9 Pro 5G in Morning Mist: Closeup of the Right Side — Focus on the Alert Slider and Power Button
The alert slider makes volume control in tight situations so convenient. This is a feature that all smartphones should have, no questions asked. Kudos to you, OnePlus, for being one of the few premium Android smartphone producers to rock a physical alert slider.
So, overall, the OnePlus 9 Pro isn't something we haven't seen before. It's your traditional glass sandwich, but elevated in some ways. In the case of Morning Mist, the design might come off as boring or uninspiring to some people, but a lot of us need to understand that
this still looks pretty good. It doesn't need to look special to
be special. Now, you can't say that about
every smartphone, but, in the case of the OnePlus 9 Pro at least, this design works just "well enough" to give you a premium-feeling phone. And I'm okay with that. OnePlus didn't really need to do anything more with this 9 Pro colorway.
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