OnePlus has today announced two new ‘budget’ smartphones under their Nord badge: The N10 5G and the N100. They follow the original OnePlus Nord device that retails for €399 (Kshs 51,000) and has better internals. The N100 is more interesting due to its £179 price tag which is roughly Kshs 25,000 and I’ll concentrate on it.
The OnePlus Nord N100 has a 6.52 inch 720p display with 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 3 glass. It has 64GB of UFS 2.1 storage that can be expanded and features 4GB of RAM. It also has a 5,000mAh battery that can be charged quickly using 18W fast charging which is good to see.
The camera system is pretty basic at this price range. It has a main 13MP camera with a f/2.2 aperture, a 2MP macro lens and a 2MP bokeh lens. The selfie camera is a 8MP sensor with a f/2.0 lens. These cameras top out at 1080p at 30fps, both the selfie and primary cameras.
My favourite part of the phone is that it runs on the Snapdragon 460 system on a chip. This midrange CPU is 70% faster than the Snapdragon 450 that is found on the Huawei Y7 Prime 2019 and its power cannot be ignored. Other key features include having a USB-C port and dual stereo speakers which is rare at this price range.
This phone is pretty basic at this price and we have seen much cheaper phones that have more RAM, better screens and match it on battery capacity. Also, the price may be inflated when it is imported to markets like Kenya so it will be more expensive than the Kshs 25,000 estimated price range when you convert from the official price figures.
The OnePlus N100 seems like a phone that would make headlines outside the African and possibly the Indian market. I believe this is one phone that you might not buy due to how intensely competitive the sub Kshs 30,000 smartphone market is in locations like Kenya.
