The OnePlus 10 Pro is a capable smartphone with a high-end processor, a vibrant display, and a big battery. But is the OnePlus 10 Pro waterproof? This is a question that's important to ask of any smartphone you're considering buying. No matter who you are, accidents happen. Maybe you get stuck outside in a rainstorm. Perhaps you knock your phone in the sink. You might be at the pool and accidentally jump in the water with your phone in your pocket. Whatever happens, there are plenty of situations where having a waterproof smartphone is essential.
For its part, the OnePlus 10 Pro checks many boxes for its $899 price tag. Its Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset is one of the fastest mobile processors available in 2022. The 6.7-inch AMOLED display with its 120Hz refresh rate is a joy. The 5000 mAh easily lasts for more than a day per charge and is quickly refueled with 65W charging. Add all of that together with 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and Android 12, and you end up with a well-rounded smartphone that's cheaper than competing phones from Samsung and Apple.
However, the OnePlus 10 Pro doesn't offer these flagship specs for $899 without cutting a couple of corners. Some of its compromises are expected. There's no microSD card slot for expandable storage, nor is there a 3.5mm headphone jack. But that's not all the OnePlus 10 Pro doesn't have. Depending on where you buy the phone, the OnePlus 10 Pro may not be waterproof. Of the two versions of the OnePlus 10 Pro available in the U.S., only one of them has an IP68 rating. This is a downgrade over the OnePlus 9 Pro, which had IP68 waterproofing as a standard feature for every model. Likely to save money, OnePlus has decided to scale things back with the 10 Pro.
Only The T-Mobile OnePlus 10 Pro Has An IP68 Rating
If you're interested in the OnePlus 10 Pro and want the official waterproof rating, you'll need to buy the phone from T-Mobile. At least in the United States, only the T-Mobile version of the OnePlus 10 Pro has IP68 protection. That IP68 rating signifies the 10 Pro's durability against dust and water. The 6 means the OnePlus 10 Pro is fully dust-tight, while the 8 represents its ability to survive in up to one meter of water for up to 30 minutes. An IP68 rating is the industry norm for waterproofing and the same protection offered on the Galaxy S22, iPhone 13, and other handsets.
What does that mean for the unlocked OnePlus 10 Pro? While it doesn't carry the same IP68 rating, OnePlus says that "water resistance and durability testing were applied to all variants of the OnePlus 10 Pro to ensure they can easily cope with sweat, moisture, and light drizzles that are regularly encountered in our daily lives." In other words, there are no physical hardware differences between the T-Mobile and the unlocked OnePlus 10 Pro. Regardless of which version you have, each one should be able to survive water accidents just the same.
As we've seen with other OnePlus phones, OnePlus has omitted an IP68 rating for the unlocked 10 Pro as a cost-cutting measure. Getting IP68 certification for a smartphone costs money. Even if two versions of a phone are designed the same, the one with an IP68 rating is more expensive to manufacture than one without it. So while both models of the OnePlus 10 Pro should have the same level of waterproofing, only the T-Mobile model is certified for that protection. It's an annoying situation, and at just a dollar shy of $900, IP68 really should have been a given for all models of the OnePlus 10 Pro.
Source: OnePlus