OnePlus launch events are no less than any other cultural festival. The hype is so real that people actually spent a lot of money to attend this year’s event! But no one’s complaining, as OnePlus nailed it. It has everyone impressed with its two new devices – the OnePlus 7 and the flagship, OnePlus 7 Pro. Yes, these phones are equipped with all the modern specs you would expect – a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, a triple camera setup and literally more RAM than most laptops, but the feature that has everyone’s attention is the OnePlus 7 Pro’s 90Hz display!
This is the first time most of us have heard the term ‘90 Hz display’ because it has never boasted before by a mainstream brand. OnePlus phones are most accessible to the masses, so the higher refresh rate feature is quickly going to pick up. This means, refresh rates are going to become just as important as screen resolution, HDR, AMOLED and the rest.
So what does the refresh rate (Hz) actually mean? Are there any real advantages to it? Is it really a feature or just a gimmick? Allow us to explain.
Let’s start with the most obvious question, what does refresh rate mean? The refresh rate is a measure for the number of times a screens redraws an image. It is measured in Hertz (Hz). In simple terms, a higher refresh rate means lesser motion blur and considerably clearer image quality. Most smartphones today are equipped with 60Hz screens, irrespective of the price. Well, 60Hz is fine, and you won’t ever complain about it, until of course, you experience a 90Hz screen like the one on the OnePlus 7 Pro.
A higher refresh rate display largely enhances your smartphone experience. Scrolling through the app drawer, images and webpages becomes so much smoother. If you spend a lot of time looking at your phone screen, higher refresh rates can make your eyes feel a lot less tired. Even the gaming experience becomes sleeker. Fast-paced games such as PlayerUnknown’s Battleground, Asphalt 9: Legends are optimised to use high refresh rate screens, although you might have to turn these on manually. With it, you’ll see smoother graphics, finer details, no lag or jittering which enhances the overall gaming experience. Everything feels much more responsive.
Now, if everything is so good about higher refresh rate screens, why has it not become mainstream yet? That’s because you cannot simply put a faster screen on just any smart phone. A high refresh rate display also requires more battery and processing power to tell the device what to show on the screen. Moreover, even the display panel technology must support faster refreshing or else, everything will appear sluggish. You may hear that faster refresh rates affect battery life a bit, but since mobile processors, batteries and software optimisation have gotten better, you might only rarely experience this.
Higher refresh rate screens may sound new in the smartphone space, but it has been around for a while. Most mid-range televisions today use 120Hz screens to render smoother pictures. Besides this, higher refresh rate monitors are used largely by casual and professional gamers alike, for similar benefits.
With so many advantages of a phone running a higher refresh rate screen, we can say with a lot of confidence that it’s a great feature, not a gimmick. It is an interesting feature that has now made its way to smartphones, and we are going to see a lot more of it in the future.
With the OnePlus 7 Pro being among the first to get a 90Hz screen, it’s going to appeal to most mobile enthusiasts. In fact, it has all the bells and whistles you would expect from a high-end phone too, such as a truly and fully bezel-less OLED screen, a front-facing popup camera, a superfast Warp charging, the best processor and RAM in the market, but at just half the price of other premium smartphones! Pre-booking for the OnePlus 7 and the OnePlus 7 Pro have already begun, and you shouldn’t miss out on this opportunity.
