OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro XPan feature lands

One of the biggest bits of news related to the OnePlus 9 series was the company’s partnership with Hasselblad. Non-photographers might not know the brand, but it is one of the most prestigious and legendary companies in photography history.

At first, the Hasselblad partnership just focused on color accuracy for the OnePlus 9 series. Now, though, there’s a OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro XPan feature that brings one of Hasselblad’s most iconic cameras to a smartphone.

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The new feature arrives in the Oxygen OS 11.2.9.9 update for the 9 and 9 Pro (sorry, OnePlus 9R users, but this won’t be for you). The update is rolling out today, but, as usual, it might be a while before it lands on your phone.

Once you have it, just fire up the default camera app. Swipe up to show the expanded list of camera modes and tap on “XPAN.” That will launch the OnePlus 9 or OnePlus 9 Pro XPan mode and you can start shooting!

Check some examples below and then continue on to get some nitty-gritty details about how the XPan mode works.

XPan mode samples

Here are some shots we took with a OnePlus 9 Pro. These are unedited but compressed for page loading speeds. For the full-resolution images, check out our Drive link.

The original XPan camera was designed to offer a unique panoramic shooting mode on traditional 35mm film. Without needing to swap your film roll, you could change to the panoramic mode and capture images in a very unique 65:24 aspect ratio. Conversely, you could switch back and grab traditional 4:3 images, all with one camera.

With the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro XPan mode, the focus is all on the 65:24 images. The viewfinder recreates the edge “haze” one would see when looking through an XPan. There are a few toggles on the screen, too: a swap from 30mm or 45mm focal lengths, a swap from black and white or color capturing, and an exposure dial.

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When you capture an image, an animation appears that replicates a film negative. It’s a nice little touch.

If you shoot in the 30mm focal length, you capture a 12MP image using the ultra-wide lens. The 45mm focal length uses the main lens also at 12MP. This creates images with resolutions of 7,552 x 2,798 and 7,872 x 2,916 respectively.

Obviously, the system is just pixel-binning down and then cropping the image. However, it still creates sharp-looking photos thanks to the 48MP and 20MP lenses used.

While this new feature is unlikely to be the deciding factor for a OnePlus 9 purchase, it’s a nice trick for people who already own it or those who are excited about the potential of the Hasselblad partnership.