Never mind the OnePlus 10 Pro, I think I'll now be waiting for the OnePlus 10 Ultra, if the rumors of its existence are true. And these new renders only make the Ultra look even better.
The renders, made by Jermaine "Concept Creator" Smit and published by LetsGoDigital, are based on a patented OnePlus design that was recently revealed. That means there's a little guesswork involved in figuring out exactly what an Ultra OnePlus phone would be like, but it seems totally plausible and fits in with what's been rumored so far.
The big change with this alleged OnePlus 10 Ultra is that it swaps out the flash module and the OnePlus 10 Pro's 3.3x optical zoom camera for one large periscope telephoto camera. Concept Creator marks the zoom as 5x magnification, typical for periscope cameras, but they can manage higher zoom levels. The Galaxy S22 Ultra, for example, is believed to feature a 10x optical zoom camera.
As a result of the new camera, the flash has been moved into the top right corner of the camera bump. The top two cameras on the OnePlus 10 Pro — the 50MP main camera and 48MP ultrawide camera — seem to have remained the same on this OnePlus 10 Ultra design, as you can see below. However, OnePlus could make the Ultra even more powerful by increasing the sensor size or resolution, something we wouldn't necessarily be able to see from the outside.
One possible extra for the OnePlus 10 Ultra's camera system would be the MariSilicon NPU designed by partner company Oppo. The two firms exchanged many hardware and software components even before their merger last year, so the rumor that Oppo's new photography-focused chipset would appear on a new OnePlus phone makes a lot of sense.
The front of the phone looks much like the OnePlus 10 Pro we already know we're getting, aside from the display. The 10 Pro's screen is curved, whereas the one on the patent and the renders is flat. Curved screens can make phones with larger displays more comfortable, but other people find them irritating to use due to the increased likelihood of touching the display by accident.
There are currently no specs leaks for the OnePlus 10 Ultra, if it even exists at all. The rumor about the periscope camera is after all only based on the design of the phone and the shape of the camera opening, not an explicit claim about the camera itself. But if this phone exists, we'd expect it to feature a 120Hz LTPO 2.0 display, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset and 80W charging just like the OnePlus 10 Pro.
While the OnePlus 10 Pro is fully official, it's only available for purchase in China right now. A U.K. and U.S. release is confirmed, but OnePlus hasn't given us any indication of time yet. with the launch likely still a few months away, there's time for more details to come from the rumor mill, be it about a OnePlus 10 Ultra or the currently M.I.A basic OnePlus 10.
