Last year's excellent OnePlus 7T Pro (one of our "phones of the year") came stacked with features, but one of its biggest triumphs was its screen. Bright and clear, the Among them, it had a 90Hz refresh rate, which provides super smooth motion when gaming and motion while scrolling. Well, the OnePlus 8 looks set to beat it, with one of the most advanced displays on a smartphone yet.
An announcement from CEO Pete Lau on the OnePlus community forum (opens in new tab) revealed OnePlus had just completed work on a smartphone screen with a 120Hz refresh rate.
"At OnePlus, we believe that every part of our device should provide the best experience possible to our users," said Lau.
"OnePlus has once again cooperated with Samsung Display to tailor a unique AMOLED display with the most rigorous specs in the industry, including a breathtakingly smooth 120 Hz refresh rate."
WHAT IS REFRESH RATE?
Put simply, refresh rate is how often the screen refreshes itself. Similar to frame rate in films, the higher the refresh rate, the smoother motion becomes. A low refresh rate and you'll start to see the phone lag behind as your finger drags across the smartphone. A high refresh rate will cause the images to be more responsive, following your finger with less and less delay.
Higher refresh rates mean smoother motion onscreen, whether that's on video, in games or just swiping up and down apps. If you ever feel like apps run slightly slower on an older phone, as you swipe up on Instagram and it judders as it follows your finger, that's why.
The phone screen is also set to pack incredible brightness
Other features
The phone is also said to pack incredible brightness reaching more than 1,000 nits. For context, a 13-inch MacBook Pro has a screen that maxed out at 548 nits. The screen supports over 1 billion shades of colour and includes MEMC technology, a screen tech found in high-end TVs to insert additional frames into videos in order to increase the smoothness. We just hope the battery's up to scratch.
The interesting part of this statement is although OnePlus pioneered the new technology, it was developed in collaboration with Samsung. This is nothing new: Samsung frequently collaborates with other smartphone makers, but the timing is interesting: considering the Samsung Galaxy S11 is due out in a matter of weeks, could we see one of the models sporting a 120Hz refresh rate? Time will tell.
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