OnePlus 9 Pro 5G

With Google Pixel 3XL's spontaneously bricking all over the world, I decided it's better to be proactive and just get a new phone. I was originally dead-set on getting a Pixel 6 Pro - but seeing Google's execrable response to the bricking issue, I decided never again on a Google phone.The OnePlus 9 pro is a great phone. It's a fair bit heavier than my Pixel 3XL, but that's a minor complaint. Battery easily lasts all day. Screen is lovely. Occasionally it seems like the refresh rate clashes with an app and the scrolling will flicker and glitch.The camera takes lovely picture, I just wish some of the icons in the camera interface were a bit larger/more contrasty, they can be hard to make out (us old farts can't help having weak eyesight).Other than that, it performs very nicely. The one gripe I have is with their silly insistance on making the number "1" in the clock a dark red. There is no workaround. It's hard to see the '1' in sunlight. It's just goofy to ignore all the complaints and requests to just let us make the '1' look like the other digits.Is that enough to take a star off the review? Ha. No, it's a very fine phone, regardless.

This is a fabulous phone, and why it gets 5 stars. Scren is great. Fingerprint and face unlock is great. Super fast on 5G. I'm very happy now that I have gotten it to work.But a couple of warnings:If you are a Sprint customer who thinks you are a T-Mobile customer, you are NOT! You are still on the Sprint telecommunications network, even though you are able to also use the T-Mobile towers. This phone, no matter what you do, WILL NOT ACTIVATE on the Sprint network. Not even in any kind compatibility mode. Sprint's activation and registration software and systems identifies this phone as a FOREIGN device and there is NO WAY to activate the IMEI number range this phone has been assigned on the Sprint network. Don't waste your time trying! I tried 3 different ways. Not happening!The only way I could get the phone to activate was to open up a T-Mobile account and transfer my number over. If you are a single phone line Sprint customer and do not have any balance owed on yourphone, this is an easy thing to do. And you should do it. The phone activates instantly on the T-Mobile network.But if you have any balance on your Sprint account for any of your active lines, you will need to pay all of those balances off to zero them before you can move over to T-Mobile. Again, another wonderful side affect of the Sprint and T-Mobile accounting systems not yet being compatible.Again, if you have been a Sprint customer, you are not yet a T-Mobile customer. Not until you have switched your account. At this point, this has to be done by you. And can not be done if you still have outstanding balances (lease, payments) for your phone on Sprint. T-Mobile is not doing this automatically yet. The Sprint phone support I talked to said that there may be some work starting offering deals to get Sprint customers converted over the holidays. So look for that.Lastly, two days after I bought the phone, Amazon lowered the price by $100. I chatted with the Amazon Customer support team to see if I could get a refund of the difference in prices. Again, NOT HAPPENING! It's not in Amazon's customer service policy to refund differences in prices for your purchases when they happen in just a 2 day period. I could understand a longer duration, like 5 or more days. But TWO DAYS? Really? I have had experience with a large number of brick-and-mortor retailers that would happily refund the difference in purchase price when an items prices are reduced shortly after purchase. So, be warned that Amazon does not have a customer service policy like this and seems to not have any way to offer a customer pleasing exemption.I guess I could take some comfort in the idea that my non-refunded $100 could go towards more rocket fuel for Jeff Bazos' next trip into space.

There isn’t a perfect phone out there, but this would come close. After spending two weeks with my new pine green Oneplus 9 pro, to say that I am satisfied is an understatement. First of all, the screen is so bright and colorful, even in direct sunlight. The touch haptics is just perfect and the speed of going thru the apps is so fast and buttery smooth. The warp speed charging brick that comes with the phone (you listening Apple, Google, Samsung) literally charges this phone from 20% to 90% in less than 16 minutes (unbelievable). I would say the battery life is above average and I get thru a whole day (16 hours) with still 20-30% left.But, my favorite feature of this phone is the voice to text accuracy. Now, before I purchased this phone, I visited a Best Buy store and the nice sales person let me try voice to text on this phone, the Samsung S21, and the Google 6 pro. To my surprise, the Oneplus 9 pro blew away the Samsung and Google pixel 6 in both accuracy of typing and speed. Now, it isn’t perfect, but I am very impressed with the google voice recognition. That alone was a deal breaker that leaned me toward the Oneplus.The camera in pro mode takes phenomenal pictures. Now, is it as good as an Apple 13pro or the new Samsung S22, maybe not, but I can’t tell the difference.Are there any cons on this phone. I couldn’t tell at this time and I hope that the future software upgrades don’t mess it up (recently oneplus has allowed 3 years of Android upgrades and 4 years of security updates, which is a nice bonus with this phone).So, in conclusion, I would highly recommend this phone. For what you get, 12 gigs of ram, 256 storage, 5G, wireless charging at 50W and reverse wireless charging, etc., etc, it really is a no brainer purchase.