OnePlus has announced the official facial launch date for its next phones: the OnePlus 9 series will be officially announced on March 23 at 10am ET. It is also confirming a partnership with Swedish camera maker Hasselblad to improve the camera system of those devices – something that came out earlier and was hinted at.
Rumors have so far drawn attention to the announcement of the OnePlus 9 Pro with a curved 1440p 120Hz display, 45W fast charging and reverse wireless charging. OnePlus’ “series” product launch reference seems to confirm more than one device later this month. There is also the confirmation of 5G, which is not surprising in this year of our God 2021.
The details of the Hesel Slabled partnership, the details are not very promising. The two companies have agreed on a three-year deal “to co-develop the next pay generation of smartphone camera systems for future OnePlus flagship devices.” It includes the next 9-series devices. For a start, the companies claim to have tweaked the color reproduction of the camera to make it look more natural.
The 9-Series will also use the new Sony IMX789 sensor and offer 12-bit RAW image capture, including the Samsung S21 Ultra and the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max. This is a great step towards capturing and retaining this huge amount of data, and it is helpful for post-processing.
But a standard RAW file – even one that is 12-bit – will not lose the benefits of computed photography that you will enjoy taking regular JPEG images from the original C camera My app. It would be better to offer something like Apple’s Pro, which combines the advantages of computational technologies and RAW image capture. It doesn’t look like OnePlus describes it here, but we’ve reached out to ask and will update this story accordingly.
It is appropriate to treat this Hell Slabled partnership with some skepticism. OnePlus is far from the first smartphone maker to partner with the Legacy Camera brand, and the results of the previous partnership have not been very good. This is also not Hell Slablad’s first partnership with a phone manufacturer. The company previously lent its name to Motomod which was more or less just an underwhelming point-and-shoot camera. In this case, at least, the results of this joint venture will go to the phone – not to anything that connects it.
