Dealmaster: The OnePlus 7 Pro for $549 may be the smartphone deal of the year

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Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster is back with another round of deals to share. Today's deal is headlined by a $150 discount on the OnePlus 7 Pro, a device we called the "fastest, best-designed, best-value Android phone" on the market earlier this year.

The deal applies to unlocked models-which work on Verizon and GSM networks like AT&T and T-Mobile-and brings the phone down to $549. OnePlus says this is their official Black Friday discount for the holiday season, and our own Android guru Ron Amadeo told the Dealmaster it will likely go down as the "smartphone deal of the year."

You can read Ron's review from this past May for the full details, but the short take is that the OnePlus 7 Pro was already a good value at its standard going rate of $699. Despite being a large phone, it's been efficiently designed, with no notches or overly large borders blocking the the 6.67-inch 3120x1440 display. The in-display fingerprint reader and pop-up selfie camera only add to that efficiency, and both work well. That display supports a 90Hz refresh rate, too, which makes operating the device feel noticeably smoother across the board. The Snapdragon 855 processor, 8GB of RAM, and UFS 3.0 storage keep general performance as snappy as a top-of-the-line phone should. The triple-camera system on the back isn't the absolute best on the market, but it's still a great value for the price. And the "Oxygen OS" software remains a uniquely clean and useful take on Android.

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