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The best OnePlus phone deal on Prime Day isn’t the 10 Pro

The OnePlus 10 Pro is on offer as part of Amazon’s Prime Day 2022, but we’re not going to suggest you buy it, because if you dig around a little more, there’s a better offer on a different OnePlus phone. The OnePlus 9 Pro may be a phone from 2021, but at $699, it’s yours for a very good price, and you get the top version the company made.

The OnePlus 10 Pro and OnePlus 9 Pro's camera modules.
Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

OnePlus has reduced the OnePlus 10 Pro to $799 for Prime Day, but for this you get the 8GB/128GB model and not the top — and recently released — 12GB/256GB version. For that, you’ll have to pay $969. The $699 OnePlus 9 Pro has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage space, but we’re not recommending it because of the RAM. It’s the additional storage that’s important here. Neither OnePlus phone has a MicroSD card slot, so you’ve only got the internal storage to rely on. It’s a good plan to get as much as possible.

But, you’re about to say, shouldn’t you always get the latest model of a phone if you can? Yes, absolutely, but there isn’t a massive amount of difference between the OnePlus 9 Pro and the OnePlus 10 Pro. They both share basically the same screen, a 6.7-inch AMOLED, and have essentially the same rear cameras too. Each has a 48-megapixel main camera and a 50MP wide-angle camera, plus an 8MP telephoto camera. The only thing the OnePlus 9 Pro is missing is the 150-degree wide-angle mode. It’s cool, but it’s not a reason to buy.

Hasselblad has tuned both cameras, and although it’s a newer version of the camera brand’s software on the OnePlus 10 Pro, again it doesn’t add so much that makes it worth buying over the OnePlus 9 Pro. We tested the 9 Pro and the 10 Pro, along with the OnePlus 8 Pro, to see how the camera on the company’s most recent phones compared. The OnePlus 10 Pro came out on top, but when you look at the results, you’ll see there often isn’t much to choose between them.

The software on both is the same, OxygenOS 12 based on Android 12, and OnePlus promises three major Android updates for both phones. The OnePlus 9 Pro has already used one of them up, but that still leaves two to go. The biggest difference between the two is the processor, as the OnePlus 9 Pro has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, while the OnePlus 10 Pro has the newer Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Both are flagship processors, so speed is guaranteed, and neither have a problem playing the latest games.

The two phones are similar enough that price becomes a major factor when choosing between them, and a $270 saving over the equivalent OnePlus 10 Pro means the OnePlus 9 Pro becomes great value even when you take its age into account. The $699 OnePlus 9 Pro is just one of the smartphone deals on Prime Day 2022, but it’s a definite recommendation from us if you’re set on a OnePlus phone. Why not see if there is a good Prime Day smartwatch deal at the same time?

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Andy Boxall
Senior Mobile Writer
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
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