OnePlus has released its flagship for 2021 — the OnePlus 9 pro, and this time it comes with all the bells and whistles, and the price tag to match it

When Oneplus released its first phone back in 2014, it was touted as the flagship killer, a reputation cemented by the company’s subsequent devices. The mantra was simple — great specs, with a clean operating system at unbelievable prices, when compared to the competition.

In the past few years though the company seems to have deviated from that path and instead of releasing flagship killers, they have started developing flagships. The OnePlus 8 series, especially the 8 pro had all that was expected from a flagship, an official IP rating, wireless charging and even a good camera system. And for the flagship features customers had to shell out flagship money. 

As for the specifications the OnePlus 9 series boasts of being powered by the latest Snapdragon chipset, the 888 with a 120 Hz display with a quad camera setup. The new camera setup has a 48 MP main shooter with a 50 MP Ultra-wide camera, an 8 MP telephoto lens and a monochrome camera, making it comparable to some of the best camera setups in the industry.  Along with them the OnePlus 9 pro also has additional features like 65 watt charging with 50 watt wireless charging capabilities. Features that the OnePlus 9 along with the IP rating, reverse wireless charging and telephoto lens also misses out. 

The cheapest phone of the series, the OnePlus 9R however, manages to miss out many features — uses the snapdragon 870 instead of the 888, IP rating and wireless charging– present in its pricier siblings and manages to stay within the budget price range. 

Now with its latest series the company seems to want to play in the big leagues and compete against the Goliath’s of the flagship world. The OnePlus 9 pro, above and beyond all the expected features of a flagship boasts a camera system developed in collaboration with  Hasselblad, a well renowned camera company. 

And the collaboration extends not just to the flagship OnePLus 9 pro but also the OnePlus 9. 

Hasselblad is well known amongst tech enthusiasts as the company that developed the camera systems used in the Apollo missions and thus a collaboration with OnePlus is sure to pique people’s interest in the latters latest device. 

However, if past such collaborations between camera manufacturers and mobile phone brands are anything to go by, this latest collaboration is not something consumers should have high hopes from. On the contrary, the most that can or should be expected from the new camera system is improvements, which anyway are expected year after year from latest devices. 

So what exactly is it that consumers are going to be paying for? Well, the best we can assume is that OnePlus is finally charging consumers the price of owning a flagship that comes with all the features we have come to expect from the latest and greatest devices. And now being the third largest smartphone brand in the country OnePlus is no longer a flagship killer, even though it may cost significantly less than the flagships from Apple and Samsung, it is now — as was expected — a flagship manufacturer in itself. And the rising prices of their devices prove just that. 

OnePlus 9 pro – 64,999 (for 8 GB RAM and 128 GB storage)

OnePlus 9 – 49,999 (for 8 GB RAM and 128 GB storage)

OnePlus 9R – 39,999 (for 8 GB RAM and 128 GB storage)