OnePlus has announced an official release date for its next phones: the OnePlus 9 series will be formally announced on March 23 at 10am ET. It is also confirming a partnership with Swedish camera manufacturer Hasselblad to improve the devices’ camera systems – something that has been leaked and has been suggested previously.
Rumors have so far pointed to the announcement of a OnePlus 9 Pro with a 1440p 120 Hz curved screen, 45 W fast charging and wireless reverse charging. OnePlus’ reference to the “series” product launch appears to confirm more than one device debuting later this month. There is also the confirmation of 5G, which is not surprising in this year of our lord 2021.
As for the partnership with Hasselblad, the details are not very promising. The two companies agreed to a three-year agreement to “co-develop the next generation of smartphone camera systems for future OnePlus devices”. This includes the next 9-series devices. For starters, companies claim to have adjusted the color rendering of the cameras to look more natural.
The 9 series will also use a new Sony IMX789 sensor and offer 12-bit RAW image capture, which also includes the Samsung S21 Ultra and the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max. It is a good step forward to capture and retain this large amount of data and is useful for post-processing.
But a standard RAW file – even if it’s 12-bit – still loses the benefits of computer photography that you’ll enjoy taking a normal JPEG image with the native camera application. It would be even better to offer something like Apple’s ProRAW, which combines the benefits of these computational techniques and the capture of RAW images. This does not seem to be what OnePlus is describing here, but we have contacted you to ask and will update this story accordingly.
It is fair to treat this Hasselblad partnership with some skepticism. OnePlus is far from the first smartphone manufacturer to partner with a legacy camera brand, and the results of previous partnerships were not very important. This is not even Hasselblad’s first partnership with a phone manufacturer. The company previously lent its name to a MotoMod that was more or less just a point-and-shoot camera that was unattractive. In that case, at least, the results of that joint venture will go to the phone itself – not to something that is connected to it.