By Md Waquar Haider New Delhi, June 11 : Touted as the best premium device coming your way early this year, OnePlus 8 series was impacted (like other brands) by Covid-19 related production issues. The die-hard OnePlus community in India eagerly waited for the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro that succeed highly-successful OnePlus 7T and OnePlus 7T Pro. And the reason was obvious. Riding on its OnePlus 7 series, OnePlus led the Indian premium smartphone market in 2019 with 33 per cent market share. The company became the first-ever premium smartphone brand surpassing 20 lakh shipments in a year in the country. The OnePlus 8 series phones feature 5G support, have up to 12GB RAM, latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC and features a quad rear camera setup (OnePlus 8 has triple rear camera system). The OnePlus 8 Pro starts at Rs 54,999 for the base model of 8GB RAM+128GB storage and Rs 59,999 for the 12GB RAM+256GB model. It is time to see what OnePlus 8 Pro (8GB RAM+128GB) in unique Glacial Green colour has to offer. In terms of design, the device scores 10 out of 10. The front is dominated by the large 6.78-inch display which curves over each vertical edge, with a metal frame that runs around the circumference of the body. The device features a circular punch-hole camera cutout in the top-left corner of the screen. The cameras are placed vertically at the back and the camera bump is more pronounced. At the bottom, you will find a USB-C port, speaker and SIM card tray (which does not support microSD card as usual in new OnePlus devices). The volume rocker is placed on left and on the right, power button and signature OnePlus notification slider sit neatly. The phone has a 6.78-inch QHD+ (1440x3168 pixels) Fluid AMOLED display along with up to 120Hz refresh rate, 19.8:9 aspect ratio, and a 3D Corning Gorilla Glass protection. It also features a 10-bit colour panel and an HDR10+ rating. The device features an amazing display and if you have no option but to stream movies on smartphone only, you would definitely enjoy it. Thanks to advanced motion algorithms, videos can be viewed at an elevated frame rate of up to 120 frames per second (fps) with reduced motion blur and crisper clarity. The device is powered by a Snapdragon 865 chip with Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System, which enables staggering multi-gigabit 5G connectivity and advanced Wi-Fi 6 performance. The smartphone comes equipped with up to 12GB of cutting-edge LPDDR5 RAM for up to 30 per cent faster memory speed and improved power efficiency by up to 20 per cent. Fortnite ran flawlessly, so did PUBG. We pushed the graphics up to HDR and the frame rate to extreme and did not notice any lag. The Fortnite experience got elevated with 90fps thanks to OnePlus partnership with Epic Games. Playing the popular battle royale game at 90fps, as opposed to a previous peak of 60fps, was simply awesome. The OnePlus 8 Pro runs OxygenOS based on Android 10 and has a bunch of improvements under the hood to make sure that the phone makes good use of it. The 4,510mAh battery remained alive for 10 to 12 hours with active usage. It comes with a Warp Charge in the box, which can give you 40 per cent of battery in about 20 minutes of charging. The 48MP main camera features an advanced Sony IMX689 sensor with a large 1/1.4-inch sensor size, enabling users to capture more light. The primary camera sensor is accompanied by an 8MP secondary sensor that has an f/2.44 telephoto lens and OIS support, paired with a 48MP tertiary sensor that includes an f/2.2 ultra-wide-angle lens. The camera setup also includes a 5MP "Colour Filter" camera sensor that brings artistic lighting effects and filters. Moreover, the smartphone offers 3 times hybrid support and 4K video recording at 30/60fps. The video quality, again, was decent as it handled details and colours well. We found camera performance impressive in various lights. The low-light performance was good and it was capable of producing bright images using a dedicated night mode. For selfies, the OnePlus 8 Pro has a 16MP Sony IMX471 sensor at the front along with an f/2.45 lens and 1.0-micron pixel size which produces impressive selfies. Conclusion: Although the price is a bit on the high side for OnePlus fans, OnePlus Pro is worth the wait. The late arrival does not make any impact and the premium Android community in India has another true flagship out there. (Md Waquar Haider can be reached at waquar.h@ians.in) /IANS