OnePlus Nord — Review & Full Phone Specifications

OnePlus has always thrived through its online marketing and the OnePlus Nord in particular has been the focus of a ton of hype this is a true mid-ranger unlike the more expensive devices we’ve seen lately from OnePlus have they finally returned to their flagship killing roots let’s find out in our OnePlus Nord review the OnePlus Nord is an attractive mid-range phone with a premium glass back along with a plastic side frame ours is in the gray onyx finish and the looks are quite elegant

and straight forward there’s also a more flashy blue marble finish a striking color which you don’t see often on phones with its rounded edges the OnePlus Nord is quite comfortable in the hand although the frame is plastic its shiny chrome finish makes it feel quite convincingly like metal and you get a metal power button alert slider and volume rocker you do get some waterproofing too it’s the splash proofing we’ve seen before from OnePlus however there is no IP rated water or dust resistance here on the front is a 6.44 inch AMOLED display with a 1080p resolution and a fast 90hz refresh rate

unlike on OnePlus flagships it’s flat not curved and the dual selfie cameras are housed conspicuously in a pill shaped cutout at the top if you don’t mind the cutout taking up screen space this display is really nice the 90 hertz refresh rate adapts based on your content and when supported results in a high frame rate that looks super smooth you get those perfect blacks typical of an AMOLED and colors are vivid out of the box you can choose to tweak them to be more color accurate though they tend to remain a bit bluish

as far as brightness goes it’s a bit tricky even with auto brightness turned off the phone still adjusts the brightness dynamically based on your lighting and content on the screen we were able to measure a maximum of about 320 nits with the slider and 750 nits in auto mode in bright sun so no problems there under the display system OnePlus noise optical fingerprint reader it isn’t always on you can make it appear by tapping or lifting the phone though this may be changed in a future update it’s both accurate and lightning fast

there’s a cool feature based on the scanner called quick launch if you keep holding down your finger a carousel will pop up with customizable shortcuts you don’t get a notification led on the OnePlus Nord but the phone’s ambient display will show you the time and notifications just like the fingerprint reader though you’ll need to tap or lift the phone to see it OnePlus flagships have stereo speakers but the Nord has just a single bottom firing one you do get a dedicated drak audio tuner which offers some audio enhancement presets but even with those we weren’t impressed by this speaker loudness is just average and besides some balanced highs the audio quality is nothing special there is no headphone jack on the OnePlus Nord

Specifications of the OnePlus Nord

so if you want to plug in traditional headphones you will need to use a USBC adapter which we didn’t get in the box the Nord is also missing another feature that people might be looking for expandable storage you do have options for 64 128 or 256 GB on board though the user interface is OnePlus oxygen os 10.5 based on android 10. this is one of the cleanest and snappiest android uis you can find these days and this is helped too by the fast screen refresh rate it’s not quite stock android though there are plenty of additional features here as you might expect

you can choose between having an app drawer or having all of your apps on the home screen a quick swipe can take you to the oxygen os shelf which gives quick access to a toolbox weather and various shortcuts and there are plenty of visual customization options too you can change themes and settings and even mix and match visual elements to suit your taste plus if you play a lot of mobile games oxygen os has its own game optimizer tool called game space if you want to go all in fnatic mode will block notifications and restrict background activity to direct more resources toward your games powering all of these features is a snapdragon 765g chipset

this is one of the most powerful chips you can get outside of a flagship device and it also grants you the option to connect to 5g networks OnePlus did a great job here in optimizing the hardware and the Nord sits near the top of the mid-range benchmark charts even though it isn’t flagship grade the OnePlus noise performance is snappy and responsive and games run great particularly with the game mode turned on the OnePlus Nord is rocking a 4100 mAh battery nothing too huge by today’s standards even so it does a surprisingly great job with its battery life with the screen refresh rate set to 90 hertz

the Nord was able to score an endurance rating of 100 hours in our proprietary tests and the support for 30 watt warp charging which is speedy with the bundled charger we were able to take the phone from zero to 60 percent charge in half an hour on to the cameras the OnePlus Nord has a total of four on the back a 48 megapixel quad bayer main cam an 8 megapixel ultra wide angle cam a 2 megapixel macro cam and a depth sensor we’ve seen this main camera before on previous OnePlus phones and these 12 megapixel shots look quite similar in quality as well in good light there’s plenty of detail and saturated colors we like the natural looking processing even if the skies remain grainy dynamic range is quite nice thanks to the always on HDR like most quad bear smartphone cameras

Camera Features of the OnePlus Nord

you have the option to shoot in the full resolution these 48 megapixel shots are actually softer and noisier than the regular photos though you don’t get a telephoto camera like you did on some previous OnePluses like the 7t two times digital zoom from the main camera lacks detail and is a bit fuzzy and noisy portrait shots are also taken with the main camera along with a depth sensor these have excellent subject detection and separation though we noticed that covering the depth sensor didn’t change the outcome much you can take a regular portrait or a zoomed one though the digital zoom again introduces some softness

the ultrawide snapper on the Nord is a downgrade from the usual 16 megapixel ones OnePlus tends to use both in sharpness and dynamic range the results are similar to other 8 megapixel ultra wides we’ve seen in cheaper phones the 2 megapixel macro camera takes usable close-up photos you need plenty of light as the aperture is rather dim and since focus is fixed you may need to take some extra shots to make sure you get a sharp one in low light the Nord’s main camera produces photos that are quite good if not class leading the contrast colors and dynamic range are already quite good in the main mode there is still plenty of noise but that’s fine

the nightscape mode takes things even further you get a brighter exposure more detail and well-balanced contrast the mode is quite quick to shoot too shots from the ultra wide angle cam at night are predictably low in quality they are soft with plenty of noise and blown out light sources the ultrawide does support nightscape mode and it does make a noticeable difference often resulting in a usable photo one of the OnePlus Nord’s unique features is its dual selfie setup there’s a 32 megapixel main cam and an 8 megapixel cam with a wider field of view in good lighting the selfie cams perform admirably there’s good detail andsharpness and vibrant colors the ultra wide angle camera does have slightly more saturated colors

and more corner softness but between the two the overall look is similar you’re able to take a selfie video from either shooter and up to 4k resolution the quality is pretty solid but there’s no stabilization dynamic range is a bit narrow as well let’s look at 4k footage taken from the rear cameras starting with the main one at 30fps you get saturated colors and detail is good for the class dynamic range is quite okay too footage from the ultra wide cam is a bit noisier

OnePlus Nord Summary

the dynamic range is more limited but the color rendition matches the main cams quite nicely the main cam has ois and stabilization is decent if you need an even smoother result there is a super stable mode which uses a crop from the ultra wide angle cam footage straight from the ultrawide is actually relatively stable in itself even though that camera lacks OIS so that’s the OnePlus Nord you get a sleek looking mid-ranger with a high refresh rate AMOLED screen

great mid-range performance excellent battery life pretty fast charging and one of the cleanest and snappiest android interfaces around but at the same time there are things about the Nord that i’m not a fan of there’s no headphone jack or expandable storage which many people want in a mid-ranger the speaker quality here is mediocre and i wish that OnePlus had included a telephoto zoom

it’s not that the OnePlus Nord is a bad phone a lot of people would be happy with it but it doesn’t live up to all of the hype it’s not a flagship killer and even falls short of other mid-rangers you can get right now so unless you’re dead set on a OnePlus and the oxygen os experience.

Originally published at https://www.technews20-21.in on June 5, 2022.