OnePlus 7 Pro boasts a 90Hz screen and a retractable camera
If you've shopped for an Android phone within the past six years, chances are you've come across OnePlus. The Shenzhen, China-based phone maker — the brainchild of former Oppo Electronics CEO Pete Lau and Carl Pei …
Context & Ripple Effects
The OnePlus 7 Pro marks the moment the Shenzhen maker — founded by former [[a:|Oppo]] CEO Pete Lau and Carl Pei — stopped competing on price alone and started shipping hardware firsts: a 90Hz display and a motorized, notch-free selfie camera. It is the opening data point in a refresh-rate arms race that the related coverage traces step by step, from the OnePlus 7T keeping the 90Hz panel to the hole-punch OnePlus 8 lineup and the 120Hz OnePlus 9 generation.
The retractable camera is the more fragile of the two bets: within a year OnePlus swapped it for hole-punch cutouts, while sister-brand Oppo pushed the display race further with the €1,199 Find X2 Pro's Quad HD+ 120Hz screen. Six years on, the 2025 OnePlus 15R ships with a 165Hz OLED — high refresh went from OnePlus's differentiator to table stakes.
First-order effects
- OnePlus's flagship pitch shifts from 'flagship specs at a discount' to spec leadership: the 90Hz panel and pop-up camera give it a display-smoothness and screen-to-body story rivals at the same price lacked at launch.
Second-order effects
- Oppo answers within a year with the Find X2 Pro's 120Hz Quad HD+ panel, pulling the shared supply chain toward high-refresh screens, while OnePlus itself abandons the mechanical camera for hole-punch cutouts in the OnePlus 8 — the pop-up mechanism proving too costly in thickness and durability.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern in the coverage holds, high refresh rates commoditize entirely — from a 90Hz headline feature in 2019 to a 165Hz default in a $700 mid-premium device by 2025 — while mechanical camera hardware disappears from flagships in favor of fixed cutouts.
The trend: Smartphone display refresh rates are climbing from differentiator to commodity — 90Hz to 165Hz in six years of OnePlus flagships — while mechanical camera mechanisms give way to fixed hole-punch designs.