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| OnePlus Nord official photo (Photo Source: OnePlus) |
OnePlus has just recently released a budget version of its OnePlus 8 smartphone called the OnePlus Nord for at the price of only $400. which is aimed at the more price-sensitive consumers that are unable to afford the more expensive flagship OnePlus 8/8 Pro which launched at the price of a whopping $700. But is this new flagship killer phone from OnePlus truly worth the asking price or should you save up for the OnePlus 8 instead? Let's find out.
OnePlus Nord design & build quality
Unlike many other budget-oriented phones that skimp out on the build materials being mostly composed of plastic that make their phones feeling a bit cheap, the OnePlus Nord uses a glass back and front-finish a material mostly only used for the more expensive flagships which give the Nord a pretty premium feel and make it quite nice to hold in your hands.
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| OnePlus Nord official photo (Photo Source: OnePlus) |
One thing to keep in mind is that the side rails of the phone are still made up of plastic instead of metal while the buttons are made up of actual metal which was probably done to save cost.
The front and back of the phone feature Gorilla Glass 5 impact resistance which gives the phone an extra layer of protection. There are quad cameras at the back which have similar layout and design to OPPO smartphones not very surprising since they're owned by the same company.
One thing that may put off a lot of people is the front square selfie camera notch at the top left corner of the phone that can be very distracting, this is a huge downgrade from both the non-noticeable small hole punch camera in the OnePlus 8 and the hidden popup camera in the OnePlus 7, although they do try to hide the camera notch when you're in your phone home screen or when you open your settings top bar the notch becomes visible again when you try to open apps, especially one's with white backgrounds.
Unlike the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro, the Nord doesn't have color accuracy certifications but it does support HDR10+. The overall pretty gorgeous looking display even if doesn't have the highest resolution and highest refresh rate found in flagships is still pretty good. There is also other flagship features missing like no IP68 certified water resistance nor any kind of wireless charging.
OnePlus comes in two colors at launch bright teal and gray onyx but teal seems to be the main color of the Nord as it's the main color used OnePlus's marketing materials and is also the color of the wireless OnePlus earphones. While it's up personnel preference which color is better but regardless both colors look pretty great.
OnePlus Nord Specs
The OnePlus Nord has some pretty surprising specs for a budget smartphone, the screen is a full-HD+ 6.44 inch 1080x2400 AMOLED display which is a godsend because many other budget phones on the market comprised on that and instead use a regular IPS or TN display which has have horrible brightness and picture quality.
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| OnePlus Nord official photo (Photo Source: OnePlus) |
The biggest new feature of the display, however, is the 90Hz refresh rate which up until now was mostly unheard of in budget phones, this makes both browsing and play games extremely smooth and snappy there is less input delay between your input commands and the operating system performing that action so as a result apps open extremely quickly.
The general hardware in the OnePlus Nord includes a Snapdragon 765G SoC a chip that was announced last year along with much more powerful Snapdragon 865 SoC but has only now been started actually be used in new phones releases. While nowhere near the performance of the Snapdragon 865 it's still 30 percent faster in the graphical rendering than the previous Snapdragon 730G SoC.
The phone comes with either 12GB of RAM or 8GB RAM with 64GB, 128GB, or 256GB of UPS 2.1 internal storage depending on what version you buy, sadly there is no expandable SD card slot so you'll be stuck with the base built-in internal the phone comes with.
Sadly inbuilt loudspeakers on the phone are not dual stereo speakers their mono only so sound quality is not as good as other phones but they're still decently loud and the don't sound too bad.
Also disappointing but expected that phone does not have any kind of headphone jack which is not really surprised since OnePlus stopped having headphone jacks in the phones since the release of the OnePlus 6T, so if you want to use headphones/earphones you'll still be forced to use either use the OnePlus wireless earphones that come with the phone or buy a USB Type-C to 3.5mm jack adapter.
The phone comes with a WARP fast charger that fully charges the phone from 0% to 100% in just under 50 minutes, so take notes Apple.
There are 4 quad cameras on the back of the phone the first is a 48MP IMX586 image sensor by Sony with an f/1.75 aperture lens with a 0.8 μm pixel size and OIS and EIS support. The second camera is an 8MP ultra-wide camera with a field of view of 119 degrees. The third camera is a 5MP depth sensor and an f/2.4 aperture lens. And last but not least is a 2MP macro sensor camera with an f/2.4 aperture lens.
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| OnePlus Nord official photo (Photo Source: OnePlus) |
But despite the many cameras lenses you're mostly only going to be needing to the first two cameras for most of your photos as the last two cameras are rarely necessary.
On the front, the OnePlus Nord has two selfie cameras under a large hole punch cutout at the top left corner of the phone. The primary camera is a 32MP Sony IM616 image sensor with an f/2.45 aperture focus lens with 0.8μm pixel size and EIS. The second camera is an 8MP wide-angle camera with 105 degrees and an f/2.45 aperture lens.
While the primary camera supports up to 32MP, images are downscaled to 8MP by default on the phone. The OnePlus Nord's new Nightscape mode which stacks images over a longer period of exposure works on the main ultra-wide-angle rear camera but not on the front selfie cameras.
Photos from the main rear camera have very good color accuracy with very great detail preservation and very little edge smoothing for a budget smartphone this is very surprising. Also while zooming 2x from the main rear camera there is very little impact in the quality of the photo which is surprising because most phones especially budget ones that have extra zoom features have a massive impact on the quality of the photo while using the feature but although detail does become less sharp while using 2x zoom due to the lack of a physical telephoto lens found on traditional digital cameras, the OnePlus Nord somehow still retains most of its overall picture quality even while fully zoomed in.
Recording videos on the phone is also pretty decent the phone's front camera supports up to 4K video resolution at 60fps. Ultra Steady mode allows or gimbal-like camera stability while recording a video walking around. The camera supports an aspect ratio up to 21:9 which allows the user to record cinematic videos. Slow-motion videos are also supported up to 1080p 240fps. What's very disappointing is that slow-motion videos are not supported on the front selfie cameras so those people who wanted record slow-motion selfie videos for their youtube channels and other types of blogs you're sadly out luck and might want to look elsewhere.
OnePlus Nord OS & Software
The OnePlus Nord comes with the latest version of Oxygenos running at Android 10 which if you don't know is a type of Android operating system which is a bit different from the stock Android OS found on phones from Google, Motorola, and other smartphones manufacturers.
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| OnePlus Nord official photo (Photo Source: OnePlus) |
Oxygenos generally runs much faster than stock Android even on budget tier phones like the OnePlus Nord combine that with the Nord's 90Hz AMOLED display and 8GB of RAM makes the phone perform multiple actions a day at blazing fast speeds. Actions like scrolling through webpages on Google, Twitter, and Facebook, launching apps, replying to calls and messages, and gaming are all lag-free even if you're doing all those listed things at the same time.
There also other small additional features like answering calls by raising the phone, the ability to customize the look of your app icons, and also hidden partition in the app drawer where every app on your phone is listed for any apps you choose to not have in the main drawer display.
5G is also supported on the new OnePlus phone which while is not of much use right now as 5G is not available to the general public yet but is good for future-proofing 3 or 4 years down the line when 5G networks do become available as using 5G will allow you to achieve over 300Mbps which is 4 times faster than most average home wifi speeds allowing to download multiple GB files in just an under a few minutes and stream at 4k 60fps with ease.
Conclusion
Overall the OnePlus Nord is a pretty decent flagship killer it spots many features usually only exclusive to flagships like the 90Hz AMOLED display, very quick fast charging, all-glass premium design, 8GB of RAM, 5G support for future-proofing and ultra-wide camera support. While comprising on areas like the camera, having a mono loudspeaker instead of stereo which impacts the sound quality, no IP68 water resistance, no expandable storage, and lack of wireless charging. But asking price of just $400 I say it's worth getting.
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