Samsung’s new Galaxy S20 is the talk of the town, with a triple-camera offering and the latest Qualcomm chipset. But the OnePlus 7T Pro has its own charms featuring a great display, speedy charging, and – most importantly – a slightly lower price tag.
The S20 is the newer beast of the two, just announced by Samsung and on sale from March. The OnePlus 7T Pro came out at the tail-end of last year and you can grab it today if you’re desperately in need of a new handset.
Read our reviews of the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro
Still weighing up the options? Here’s a full breakdown on how the two compare.
At a glance
- The S20 is on sale from March and will set you back £799 or £899 if you want 5G – you can grab the OnePlus 7T Pro today for around £699, but there’s no 5G option here.
- Screen-wise, the 7T Pro is slightly larger with a 6.67-inch, QHD+, fluid AMOLED display. The S20 still has a fair-sized screen at 6.2 inches, and also boasts QHD+ and OLED properties.
- Refresh rate is a big seller for both phones: the 7T pro has a 90hZ refresh rates. The S20 can go all the way up to 120hZ, but that’s scaled back to 60hZ when you’re using the phone’s QHD+ setting.
- Both phones have a trio-camera set-up. The main snapper on the 7T Pro is built on a 48-megapixel sensor. On the S20, the wide-angle camera is 12-megapixels, but the phone’s 64-megapixel telephoto makes a big difference to images.
- The OnePlus 7T Pro has a slightly bigger battery at 4085mAh – Samsung’s S20 is packed with a 4000mAh cell.
Specs and camera
You might think that the OnePlus 7T Pro would win the camera round, given that it has a 48-megapixel main camera against the S20’s 12-megapixel wide-angle. But Samsung’s 64-telephoto f/2.0 lens makes a real difference to images – when our phones guru got his hands on the gadget, he said that his demo shots were fairly impressive.
Conversely, the 7T Pro handles well-lit scenarios fairly well and can take some nice macro shots, but it fails when it comes to low-lit scenarios. In our reviewer’s words, “the overall [camera] package still isn’t industry leading in a few areas.”
To compare the nitty-gritty, the S20 has a wide 12-megapixel lens, an ultra-wide 12-megapixel and a 64-megapixel telephoto. The 7T Pro has 48-megapixel main lens, 8-megapixel telephoto and a 16-megapixel ultrawide rear camera.
But there’s also a big difference in selfie-cam options – the 7T Pro has a satisfying 16-megapixel pop-up cam, leaving the screen notch-free, whereas the S20 has a 10-megapixel sensor smack bang in the middle of its display.
When it comes to chipsets, the S20 has got Qualcomm’s latest installed, the Snapdragon 865. The 7T Pro has the fairly-recent Snapdragon 855 – but we’d expect the 865 to be more power efficient.
Both phones come with 8GB RAM as standard but upgrading to the 5G version of the S20 will net you an extra 4GB. The 7T Pro wins on storage, though – it has 256GB compared to 128GB on the S20.
The phones both have excellent displays, with the OLED screens delivering bright, colourful images. There’s a slightly bigger bezel on the S20 and a punch-hole camera on the front too, whereas the OnePlus 7T Pro has an uninterrupted screen that wraps around the sides. This isn’t a universally loved feature though, as it can make the phone a little harder to handle.
The refresh rate on both is also excellent. The S20’s 120Hz refresh rate makes everything appear very smooth, but unfortunately this is knocked off whenever you use the QHD+ resolution in full, dropping down to 60Hz. The OnePlus mobile manages to bang out 90Hz with the QHD+, which will take a toll on your battery but makes everything very pretty.
Related: Best Samsung phones
Battery life and charging
As we haven’t run full tests on the S20, it’s difficult to know how battery life would compare. The S20 has a slightly smaller cell at 4000mAh, but given that it knocks off its high refresh rate when the QHD+ is activated, it might last a bit longer than the battery in the 90Hz 7T Pro.
Thanks to the custom Warp Charge 30T installed on the 7T Pro, the phone takes just under an hour to fully charge. We haven’t tested it yet, but we’d expect similar results from the 25W fast charging on the S20.
Look and feel
The S20 is a swish-looking mobile, with a lot of glass and curves thrown in. The OnePlus 7T Pro looks…kind of the same to be honest. As a lot of flagships go down the metal and glass route, it gets harder to tell the phones apart.
Sadly, both phones are missing a headphone jack, but Samsung is throwing in a free pair of Galaxy Buds if you pre-order the S20.
Cost
The 7T Pro is currently £699. The standard S20 is £799, but that goes up to £899 if you want 5G and some extra RAM.
Opening thoughts
The S20 probably just wins the specs-war here, mainly thanks to the new Qualcomm chipset and an impressive camera offering. Order now and you’ll get a free pair of buds thrown in.
However, if that 90Hz refresh rate is important to you then maybe OnePlus 7T Pro is the route to go down. The S20 has that tempting 120Hz offering, but the fact that you can’t combine this with the QHD+ resolution might give OnePlus the edge in this category. Plus, the 7T Pro comes with the juicy extra storage.
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Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
