Finally, OnePlus has a new mid-range smartphone. The company began its journey in the world of phones with inexpensive flagships for a specific audience of geeks who understood the stuffing and were ready to pay for little-known devices. Over the years, OnePlus’ fame grew, technology fans still demanded the best and top-notch from the company. As a result, the fancy OnePlus 7 or 8 have caught up in price with smartphones from more famous manufacturers. Geeks began to swear more and more often, recalling the old days when OnePlus released less expensive devices.
OnePlus Nord presented: it’s realme, but with OxygenOS
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It became more difficult to operate with the phrase “flagship killer”, so the company decided to find a new way and try its hand at the middle class. There are plenty of offers here, so I’ll try to find reasons to love the brand new OnePlus Nord. Friends from Biggeek.ru, thank!
A lot of glass and a little plastic
Finding original design features in a mid-range phone in 2020 is an almost impossible mission, all for a blueprint. Therefore, I will try to find interesting details that set OnePlus Nord apart from the general background.
First of all, I’ll highlight the lever on the left side, thanks to it you can switch sound modes, there are three of them: silent, only vibration, all notifications.
The phone has small frames on the sides, the “chin” is unobtrusive, in front you can pay attention to the dual front camera. It is located in the left corner, which is a rare technique seen on last year’s Samsung Galaxy S10, but this season Samsung has abandoned the idea.
The phone is perfectly assembled, the dimensions are usual, the weight is moderate, OnePlus Nord is not very heavy, but comfortable. In terms of sensations, the smartphone is ambiguous: the back is covered with Gorilla Glass 5, but there is a plastic frame on the sides. It is a pity that not metal, so the sensations would be even more pleasant. But you also have to sell flagships! Therefore, keeping the chain of command, OnePlus has a glossy rather than matte surface. Of course, it gets dirty and smudged, like all such coatings.
You need to remember that on the right side under the lever for switching sound modes is the power key, and if you hold it down, the voice assistant starts. For some reason, intuitively, I want to get the volume rocker on the right, but this is already a trifle and a matter of habit.
In the era of coronavirus, when you have to wear a mask when visiting cafes or shops, you suddenly start to appreciate fingerprint scanners. There is also face unlock in OnePlus Nord, the method is fast, but not secure, but I really liked the simple and effective sub-screen fingerprint scanner. It works instantly and so quickly that you don’t pay attention to its presence.
Slim bezel display
A factory film is glued on the screen, it covers Gorilla Glass 5 from minor scratches. If you enable gesture control, the film will get in the way, it’s not very convenient to slide your finger along the edge of the screen.
The screen itself is flat, without bends on the sides, it has an excellent margin of brightness and pleasant color rendition. AMOLED has several preset color profiles and I liked the natural tones mode.
The phone offers a choice of 60Hz or 90Hz mode, in the latter case the power consumption is slightly higher, but this is compensated by very smooth animation in the menu. However, not all games support 90Hz, so keep that in mind.
The new middle class is like the old flagship
Until recently, OnePlus smartphones received the most powerful hardware: as much fast memory as possible and the flagship Qualcomm 800 series processors. But top-end processors are getting more expensive from year to year, which inevitably leads to an increase in the cost of phones. As a result, buyers are increasingly choosing less powerful, but more affordable smartphones.
OnePlus Nord has a decent filling: the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G processor easily copes with any games with high settings, there is no overheating, the performance drop is noticeable only after the fifth cycle of the throttling test.
OnePlus Nord is powered by Oxygen OS, the operating system resembles “bare” Android, it is extremely laconic and fast. OnePlus is also worth praising for its good localization, I did not notice any problems with the transfer of characters.
My test smartphone has 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal memory, there is no microSD slot. If it seems that there is no life with this amount of memory, you can look at the version with 256 GB of memory and 12 GB of RAM. And for the most undemanding buyers, there will be an economy version with 6 GB of RAM and 64 GB of built-in. I note that OnePlus Nord has support for 5G networks, high technologies went “to the people”, but in Moscow they failed to test the work.
The phone has a single speaker located on the bottom end next to the USB Type-C port, there is no headphone jack with a 3.5 mm jack. Choose wireless headphones, especially since OnePlus has its own interesting developments:
Review of OnePlus Bullets Wireless 2 headphones: two ringing bullets
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The kit comes with a large charger, a 30W Warp Charge power supply that fully charges the phone in an hour.
I was satisfied with the autonomy of the phone, on one charge I got about six hours of active screen. At the same time, there were no special shamanism, I did not turn off additional functions, I just used it and enjoyed it.
There are many cameras, but one would be enough
Let’s start with the main camera, which migrated to OnePlus Nord from the top OnePlus 8. It is 48 megapixel, by default the phone takes pictures in 12 megapixels, but you can set the maximum mode in the settings.
In excellent lighting, the main camera takes bright, vibrant images, here’s an example using HDR:
Indoors with dim lighting also works well:
You can also practice in creative modes, I wanted to highlight one light bulb against the general background:
A specialized night mode stitches together several pictures into one, the phone performs the operation quickly and you can shoot handheld:
A separate 5MP module is responsible for processing the depth of the frame. Most likely, as usual, the main work is done by software, but in any case, things are going well with portraits:
There is also an 8 megapixel ultra-wide-angle module, which in general does not shine with anything special. There is no autofocus, the detail is low, the noise reduction system is strong, the colors are unclear.
If desired, you can use night mode, shooting at ultra wide angle, but the quality is also not impressive. If you try to take a picture in a room with dim lighting, you get something like this:
A separate lens for macro photography is a good idea in theory, but it’s 2020 and a phone with a 2 megapixel module is not suitable for close-up photography of small details.
There are not so many smartphones with a dual front camera, the second camera helps when shooting group selfies, the thing is convenient and useful. It has lower resolution and worse quality than the main self-portrait module.
As a result, we get a phone with a good front-facing camera, a solid main camera and a bunch of optional and not very useful modules.
Prices
There were no official sales of OnePlus Nord in Russia at the time of the review. In Europe it costs 399 euros, which is about 470 dollars. Considering that prices in Russia are usually calculated as for Europe, then we add 20% VAT and we get 480 euros. At the current exchange rate, this is about 42,000 rubles.
Nevertheless, you can find OnePlus Nord on sale, offers on Yandex.Market start at 40,000 rubles. However, in India, where the phone originally debuted, it costs about 27,000 rubles. Therefore, it remains only to wait for the price reduction, while this is a novelty. As an example, OnePlus 8 can be cited, which is announced at a price of 700 euros, but on Yandex.Market, Chinese versions are sold for 42,000 rubles.
