A price-for-money powerhouse – Firstpost

Professionals:

Sturdy construct with IP65 ingress safety

Newer design feels slimmer

Highly effective processing {hardware}

Even the bottom variant comes with sooner 256 GB storage

Sharp and shiny AMOLED show

Good digital camera efficiency, one secondary digital camera lastly will get an improve

Spectacular battery backup

Newest Android, fluid UI, 4 years of OS updates

Cons:

Colors will be iffy in pictures captured in low mild

Suboptimal placement of fingerprint scanner

Quick charging not quick sufficient for OnePlus requirements

Score: 4/5

Worth: Rs 42,999 onwards

OnePlus telephones with the R suffix have been fairly formulaic over the previous few generations. Borrow the design from their present flagship cellphone, use the processor of the earlier era flagship, stick the 50MP + 8MP + 2MP digital camera trio on the again and you’ve got the brand new OnePlus R cellphone. The OnePlus 13R lastly bucks that development to an extent. However one factor the 13R hasn’t tampered with is the worth this sequence presents. What’s new right here, what’s good about it, what’s not? Let’s discover out.

OnePlus 13R Design: A distinct design that makes the cellphone slimmer but sturdy

Barring the round digital camera island on the again, the OnePlus 13R has a really distinct design as in comparison with the OnePlus 13 in addition to the 11R and 12R. The rounded aluminium body is now changed by a flat one and the identical goes for the show edges. If something, it borrows design queues from sure Nord telephones, not in a nasty approach. It makes the cellphone really feel a tad slimmer, and it’s, with out compromising on the durability. The burden nonetheless exceeds 200 grams by a small margin however the weight distribution is even. The cellphone will get an IP65 rated ingress safety, making it mud and splash resistant.

The all matte end on the body in addition to the glass again retains the physique largely freed from fingerprints and smudge marks and makes the cellphone look elegant. The 13R is available in two color choices – Astral Path (onerous to explain) and Nebula Noir (very darkish grey) and each look good; we obtained the latter for assessment.

The proper edge has the quantity rocker and the ability button, whereas the left edge hosts the alert slider.

The button accessibility is ok, however I wouldn’t say the identical in regards to the in-display fingerprint scanner, which is inexplicably positioned too near the underside edge.

OnePlus has been getting the location of the scanner spot on (an inch and a half above the underside edge) for generations, which made it ergonomic. Right here, it’s essential stretch your thumb to entry it when utilizing the cellphone one-handed. This was a very pointless change. The ultrasonic scanner on the OnePlus 13 makes approach for a less expensive optical scanner on the 13R; it’s fairly responsive although. A SIM tray, speaker and a USB-C port will be discovered alongside the underside edge. An IR-blaster is current on the highest edge to make use of the cellphone as an IR distant management with sure TVs and units.

OnePlus 13R Show: Glorious show for the section with HDR assist

The OnePlus 13R has an identical sized 6.78-inch show as its predecessor, however not like the 12R, the show right here is totally flat and doesn’t curve close to the perimeters. The decision remains to be the identical with 2780 x 1264 pixels and is now protected by a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 7i. The LTPO4 show has a variable refresh fee ranging between 1 Hz to 120 Hz for a flicker-free expertise and higher energy effectivity. It mechanically adjusts the refresh fee relying on the content material kind so long as you set it to Auto or Excessive. Commonplace setting limits it to 60 Hz, whereas Excessive allows you to alter app-specific refresh fee and override the system default.

The show has a peak brightness of 4500 nits and is sufficiently shiny even open air and for consuming HDR content material. Talking of HDR, the 10-bit show is compliant with HDR10+ in addition to Dolby Imaginative and prescient, with Extremely HDR picture assist. Watching HDR movies from Netflix and Prime Video on the OnePlus 13R display screen is extremely fulfilling. The color accuracy is sort of good too. You get three display screen color modes – Pure, Vivid and Professional, together with color temperature changes.

Whereas the Pure mode is basically color correct and simple on the eyes, some could discover it just a little uninteresting. In that case, you might strive one of many Professional modes – Cinematic or Good, particularly the previous. Vivid mode isn’t dangerous both however has barely boosted colors in the event you want it that approach. When utilizing Vivid, use a hotter color temperature choice for higher outcomes. There are extra show tweaks to mess around with in case you are recreation for it. All in all, the 13R show is sort of spectacular and customisable.

OnePlus 13R Efficiency: Highly effective processing {hardware}, ample quick storage

Staying true to custom, OnePlus has opted for Qualcomm’s final era flagship, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. No complaints there as it’s nonetheless amply highly effective for nearly any process you throw at it. You get two variants of the OnePlus 13R, one with 12 GB LPDDR5X RAM and 256 GB inner storage, whereas the opposite presents 16 GB RAM and 512 GB storage (our assessment unit). Each variants have UFS 4.0 storage, which I appreciated, not like up to now the place the bottom variant (128 GB) had slower UFS 3.1 storage.

There’s nothing new to report in regards to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It has been round for a 12 months and now solely surpassed in uncooked efficiency by its successor, the Snapdragon 8 Elite and Mediatek’s flagship Dimensity 9400 chips on Android telephones. We ran just a few artificial benchmarks to gauge its efficiency, and see the way it compares with its predecessor. In Geekbench 6, the OnePlus 13R scored 2195 and 6532 within the single-core and multi-core checks respectively, much like the the OnePlus 12 with the identical SoC. The OnePlus 12R with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip might go as excessive as 1470 and 4355 respectively.

The PCMark Work 3.0 benchmark rating was once more greater at 12437 with the 12R scoring 10847. To check the gaming capabilities, we ran the Wild Life Excessive and Photo voltaic Bay checks from the 3DMark suite. Within the former, the 13R scored 5013 with 30 FPS common, whereas the OnePlus 12R might get to 3633 with 22 FPS. Within the Photo voltaic Bay benchmark the 13R managed a rating of 8707 with 33.11 common FPS, which is even greater than that of the OnePlus 12, 8255 with 31.39 common FPS. The actual world gaming efficiency of the 13R was additionally top-of-the-line round, with even the newest of video games working and not using a stutter at excessive settings.

The cellphone didn’t warmth up an excessive amount of both after half-hour of gaming. There was completely no lag in everyday operations with a number of apps open concurrently; no surprises there. This cellphone has two audio system, one behind the earpiece and the opposite on the base of the cellphone. Collectively they produce a surprisingly loud and punchy sound output with good stereo separation. The cellphone is Bluetooth 5.4 compliant and has dual-band WiFi with assist for a/b/g/n/ac/6/7 requirements. The decision high quality and reception have been completely advantageous through the course of our testing and the cellphone helps eSIM.

OnePlus 13R Battery efficiency: Strong battery backup however charging might have been sooner

The battery capability has seen a big soar from 5500 mAh on the 12R to 6000 mAh right here with none vital increment in weight or thickness of the cellphone (in reality the 13R is slimmer). This may be attributed to the brand new Silicon Carbon cell used on this cellphone. It helps 80W quick charging and the corporate bundles an 80W SuperVOOC charger alongside. Given the upper capability battery right here, we did count on the charging instances to be greater however not as excessive as we recorded.

Even after enabling Sensible Speedy Charging from the Battery part underneath Settings, it took the bundled charger and cable 70 minutes to take the cellphone from 1% to 100%. Should you disable it, it takes 5 additional minutes, so may as nicely go away it on. I additionally tried utilizing an older 80W OnePlus charger with this cellphone, and the charging instances have been fairly related. The corporate states a determine of 52 minutes for a full cost, and whereas 70 is certainly not a deal breaker given the big capability battery, underneath an hour can be good to see. Most likely a future software program replace can repair that.

The charging instances could also be a tad gradual for OnePlus requirements, however the battery lifetime of the OnePlus 13R gave us no motive to complain. It lasts between a day and a half to 2 of reasonable use with minimal gaming. We already know that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip is as energy environment friendly as it’s highly effective. So these numbers didn’t shock us. In fact, prolonged gaming periods will drain the battery sooner, however it would nonetheless last more than most telephones.

OnePlus 13R Digicam efficiency: Good cameras for the section however there’s scope for enchancment in low mild

As I discussed at the beginning, the final three generations of OnePlus R sequence telephones had a 50MP major + 8MP ultra-wide + 2MP macro digital camera mixture. Digicam division on the OnePlus 13R sees a noticeable improve within the type of a 50MP telephoto digital camera with an ISOCELL JN5 sensor rather than the lengthy redundant 2MP macro shooter. Although modest, the 2X optical zoom it presents is useful and helps in portrait pictures too.

The 50MP major digital camera on the 13R has a Sony LYT-700 sensor with OIS (optical picture stabilisation). The 8MP ultra-wide digital camera from earlier than has been retained and so is the 16MP selfie digital camera; neither have auto-focus. Just like its predecessors, the 13R isn’t blessed with Hasselblad’s color tuning or portrait pictures methods. Let’s have a look at how good the cameras really are.

The first digital camera clicks some wonderful photographs with spectacular dynamic vary in good lighting. Colors are near pure and pictures exhibit a great quantity of element. The principle digital camera does a greater than respectable job in low mild pictures too. Whereas the small print are fairly good and noise is saved in verify, sure color shades like yellow aren’t all the time reproduced precisely in low mild even with Night time Mode enabled. Thoughts you, the picture doesn’t look dangerous in any respect so long as one doesn’t examine it to the precise topic or lighting.

Curiously, the colors captured by the ultra-wide digital camera are much more correct in low mild. Nonetheless, the 8MP sensor can not seize as a lot element as the opposite two cameras. Identical is the case in nicely lit situations too. The age of 8MP cameras is behind us, and about time OnePlus seems to be to improve them on a few of their tier 2 telephones at the least if not the extra inexpensive ones. The ultra-wide digital camera lacks auto-focus and can’t be used for macro pictures. Nonetheless, the telephoto digital camera will be.

The telephoto digital camera right here is sort of versatile. Although the optical zoom is modest at 2X, it may be used to seize some good portrait photographs, some respectable macros and is sort of useful in low mild too. The portrait photographs have good foreground and background separation, particularly with human topics, and likewise works fairly nicely with different topics like flowers. The macro photographs might have achieved with a bit extra sharpness however they’re very a lot usable and positively higher than what the 2MP cameras on its predecessors might ship. The selfie digital camera is serviceable at greatest.

Transferring on to movies, the 2 50MP cameras can document movies in 4K decision at 30 or 60 FPS. The opposite two cameras go as excessive as 1080p at 30 FPS. The OnePlus 13R doesn’t assist 8K video recording. Tremendous slo-mo 1080p and 720p movies will be captured at as much as 240 and 480 FPS respectively. You get OIS and EIS assist to compensate for shaky arms solely on the primary digital camera. Captured 4K footage seems to be respectable and could be very a lot usable however lacks the distinction and vibrance of extra excessive finish telephones.

OS and consumer interface: Newest Android with fluid consumer interface, with many extra updates promised

The OnePlus 13R runs the newest Android 15 with OxygenOS 15 out of the field. OxygenOS is just about ColorOS now with a few minor OnePlus extras thrown in like fonts and themes. Having mentioned that, it’s fluid, freed from adverts or extra bloatware and stays top-of-the-line Android UIs round with a handful of tweaks to customize it additional. The UI is easy, lag-free and simple to grasp even in the event you haven’t used a OnePlus, Realme or Oppo smartphone earlier than.

You now get a bunch of AI instruments built-in like ‘circle to look’ and some picture modifying choices like AI Eraser, much like Magic Eraser discovered on Google Pixel units. One can count on additional additions and enhancements as the corporate has promised 4 years of Android updates and a pair extra years of safety updates for the 13R from the date of launch to maintain it safe and related for lengthy. Samsung and Google commit 7 years for his or her flagship telephones, however 4 main Android updates isn’t dangerous in any respect for a cellphone promoting for about half their value.

Remaining phrases:

The OnePlus 13R is priced at Rs 42,999 for the 256 GB storage variant and Rs 47,999 for its 512 GB variant, with a one 12 months guarantee on the system and lifelong guarantee on the show in case you get the inexperienced traces problem. We appreciated the truth that the bottom variant of this cellphone has 256 GB storage, and that too UFS 4.0. As well as, you get flagship-grade processing {hardware}, a smooth design, sharp show, competent cameras, wonderful battery backup and at the least 4 main Android updates, making the 13R a great funding for years to return and a straightforward suggestion for its aggressive price ticket.

For OnePlus 13R alternate options, you might verify our
high smartphone picks underneath Rs 50,000.