OnePlus today finally launched the OnePlus Nord in a special AR keynote after months of hype. This is their latest smartphone to occupy the midrange market and it offers quite a lot of features for the money.
The display is the classic AMOLED screen we are used to from OnePlus and it is a 6.44 inch full HD panel (2400 x 1080) with a 90hz refresh rate. It has two cutouts for the dual selfie cameras.
It is powered by the Snapdragon 765G processor which is Qualcomm’s flagship midrange chipset that features 5G radios. There are three versions available: a 6GB RAM/64GB version exclusive to India, a 8GB/128GB and a 12GB and 256GB internal storage models.
The other interesting bit about the phone are the cameras. It has a quad camera system at the back which features useful cameras. It has a main 48MP camera with optical image stabilization which is great for the price (and the same one on the OnePlus 8), an 8MP ultrawide camera lens, A 5MP depth sensor and a 2MP macro lens. The selfie cameras include a main 32MP shooter and an 8MP ultrawide camera for ultrawide selfies.
It runs OnePlus’s Oxygen OS 10.5 on top of Android 10. It also has a 4,115mAh battery which can be topped off easily using their own 30T Warp Charger or via wireless charging. IT also a fingerprint sensor for authentication.
The pricing is also pretty interesting. The 8GB/128GB model retails for €399 (Kshs 49,404) while the 12GB/256GB version will retail for €499 (Kshs 61,786).The 6GB/64GB model that is exclusive for India was mentioned to retail for ₹24,999 (Kshs 36,169) which is a pretty good price for the phone you are getting.
This is a phone that will be competing head to head with phones like the Samsung Galaxy A51, A71, Oppo Reno 3, iPhone SE 2020 and many more. This is a very competitive price point and we’ll see whether OnePlus’ hype will allow it to ride the waves in this murky waters. It offers a fast refresh rate, a camera with optical image stabilization, OnePlus’ well known software upgrade cycle and fast charging to make this smartphone segment interesting.
