OnePlus Nord priced at £379/Rs 24,999 – Powerful Mid-Range Phone

OnePlus Nord launched by the company with price starting for £379 in the UK and Rs 24,999 in India and sale starting from 4th August

OnePlus has launched the OnePlus Nord, the affordable smartphone series which company had announced. OnePlus Nord, puts OnePlus back into the mid-range segment where OnePlus first started with the Flagship killer tag and later moved to Flagship mainly with OnePlus 8 Pro, which has all the top notch (or notch-less) features. OnePlus had revealed almost all of the key features on the OnePlus Nord Instagram Handle along with the #NewBeginnings documentary.

OnePlus Nord Specs

Design & Display

OnePlus Nord’s has a premium design look and doesn’t feel like a budget smartphone. Nord has a metal frame with flat display with hole punch design at the front and glass back with vertical housing for the rear Quad cameras and Dual LED Flash. OnePlus has kept its alert slider situated on the left with the power button, the volume rocker on the right.

OnePlus Nord comes with 6.44 inches 1080p Fluid AMOLED display with 90Hz screen refresh rate. OnePlus hasn’t cut cost here and provides a display on par with the OnePlus 8. The display has a hole punch design to accommodate the dual selfie cameras. The display though is completely flat unlike the curved ones in OnePlus 8 series.

OnePlus Nord has the standard in-screen fingerprint scanner but also supports the face unlock. It has USB Type-C at the bottom with the Dual SIM tray. The Nord does not have the 3.5 mm Headphone Jack. There is not official IP rating but OnePlus claims that it will survive small water splashes. This has helped OnePlus to keep the cost of the Nord down.

Performance

Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G is the chipset for the mid-range phones and OnePlus has gone with this chipset for the Nord and it is paired with 8 GB or 12 GB option LPDDR4X RAM. The storage options are 128 GB / 256 GB ( 8 GB/128 GB and 12 GB/256 GB) but there is UFS 2.1 instead of UFS 3.0 storage, which again would have helped in cutting the cost. There is also 6 GB / 64 GB configuration but only for Indian Market

The mid-range Snapdragon 765G chipset would be enough to handle the daily basic uses, but with additional RAM and all the software optimisations OnePlus says have done, would be interesting to see how it performs in intensive game and mainly in camera processing performance.

With the Snapdragon 765G, OnePlus Nord is 5G support and ready to take advantage of super fast 5G speeds.

Camera

Budget phone with 6 Cameras? – Yes, OnePlus Nord has 6 cameras, 4 at the Rear and 2 at the front. The Rear Cameras are vertically aligned the back and have standard wide lens, ultra-wide lens, depth lens and a macro lens. Even Flagship OnePlus 8 Series doesn’t 6 cameras or the dual front camera setup.

The standard main lens is 48 MP f/1.75 with Sony IMX586 sensor which is the same found in OnePlus 8 series and also has Optical and Electronic Image Stabilisation (OIS & EIS). The Ultra-wide lens is 8 MP with a field view of 119° and aperture of f/2.25, a depth lens of 5 MP with f/ 2.4 aperture and Macro Lens of 2 MP f /2.4. It supports 4K at 30 fps and 1080p at 30/60 fps.

Front Camera is 32 MP lens with Sony IMX616 sensor with EIS and aperture of f/2.45 and also an ultra-wide lens 8 MP at aperture f /2.45 with a field view of 105°. It has support for 4K 30/60 fps or 1080p at 30/60 fps.

The camera setup on paper looks to be promising one and almost flagship like specs. Ultra-wide selfie camera would be a useful feature for group shots. OnePlus has had difficult times with the camera quality in the past and would be test for Nord as well. OnePlus’ camera samples aren’t too bad, the cameras need to be tested in the daily use.

Software

Unsurprisingly OnePlus Nord has Android 10 out of box with Oxygen OS on top of it. Oxygen OS provides a very smooth experience paired with 90 Hz display. It also provides lot of customisation on top of stock android without a tons of bloatware added. OnePlus said that they have added additional optimisations to the Nord. OnePlus also said it will receive software updates for 2 years which means it will get updates at least till Android 12.

Battery & Charging

OnePlus Nord comes with huge 4115 mAh battery capacity with OnePlus Warp Charge 30T fast charging, which is said to charge the Nord from 0% to 70% in 30 mins. There is no wireless charging which was pretty much expected for a mid-range phone and has helped in cutting cost.

Price and Availability

From the New Beginnings documentary, we had always known that it will be priced below $500 mark. OnePlus has nailed the pricing for the Nord, with price starting from £379/€399/ Rs24,999. It will be available in two configurations, 8 GB/128 GB priced at £379/€399/ Rs 27,999 and 12 GB / 256 GB priced at £469/€499/Rs 29,999 in UK/Europe/India respectively. For the Indian Market, there a additional variant 6 GB / 64 GB priced at Rs 24,999.

Nord will be available to buy from 4th August 2020 and will be available in UK, Europe, India, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Availabilty in US is not yet confirmed.

Initial Verdict

It is not the first time OnePlus has tried a mid-range phone, remember OnePlus X, which did’t work out well. With OnePlus Nord, it looks promising at least on paper the specs are brilliant and is poised to rattle that mid-range segment and take on Apple’s iPhone SE 2020 or Google’s Pixel 4a whenever they release or if they release it and even give its own OnePlus 8 a run for its money. Only time will how the Nord performs and if OnePlus succeeds in the mid-range segment as well.