OnePlus 12 Review: “Never Settle” For Less Than Rs 70,000

What makes this phone stand out is its price, because it is more affordable than all the other flagships.

If 2023 was a year of redemption for OnePlus, 2024 could be the year it starts imposing its will on the smartphone market. In 2023, it cemented its place amongst the big three in India's premium smartphone space with superb offerings like the OnePlus 11, the OnePlus 11R and the OnePlus Open, which really was its masterstroke.

The OnePlus 12 is no reinvention like the OnePlus Open. It is more of a doubling down on the direction OnePlus found with the OnePlus 11. It stays true to the company’s original concept — the flagship killer.

If the OnePlus 11 felt stylistically underwhelming, well, the OnePlus 12 remedies that and then some. It’s also more affordable than almost all the current Android flagships, providing a pristine user experience at a reasonable price.

A Green Marble That You Can Love

OnePlus has refined and tweaked the design of the OnePlus 11 to create this new phone. The camera island on the back has been streamlined and now looks stunning while not being overly intrusive or causing the phone to wobble on a flat desk.

OnePlus has learnt from the Marble White edition of the OnePlus 11 to craft this new green stone-like finish for the OnePlus 12, and it looks very impressive. Of course, it is not stone but Gorilla Glass Victus on the back.

This also makes the OnePlus 12 feel like the sturdiest OnePlus phone I have tested yet. It has a sense of heft that I have not felt since the OnePlus 7 Pro. However, this means it is almost as heavy as the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Vivo X100 Pro at 220 grams, and it’s quite chunky at 9.2mm thick. This is a minor indiscretion, considering its massive battery and huge vapour chamber for heat dissipation.

The aluminium frame blends in with the curved screen quite seamlessly, with the volume and power buttons along with its alert slider on the sides.

OnePlus has upgraded the water and dust resistance to IP65, but this still falls short of the IP68 standard that most flagships have. Still, unless you leave this phone submerged in water for a long time, this will not be a huge issue. It gets aqua touch technology which means you can use the screen even when it is wet. Another nicety that OnePlus embraced last year was an IR emitter, which has allowed me to control my home appliances.

The Brightest Display on a Phone

With 4,500 nits of peak brightness, the new LTPO AMOLED 120Hz panel of the OnePlus 12 is the brightest panel on a smartphone by a long shot. It can reproduce 1 billion colours, and supports Dolby Vision as well as HDR 10+ — and it is safe to say it is right up there with the iPhone 15 Pro Max, Pixel 8 Pro, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra in terms of overall quality.

The curved screen of the OnePlus 12 is easily the brightest, but I’d put it in second place after the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, and that’s saying a lot. It also gets Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which makes it hard to scratch!

Safe to say, I thoroughly enjoyed watching movies like Napoleon, The Marvels, and even shows like Slow Horses on this phone on a long-haul flight.

Reading was strain-free, while typing long emails was engaging, thanks to OnePlus’s signature haptic feedback, which is pretty much the best in the business.

This display was also excellent for long play sessions of Asphalt and Call Of Duty Mobile. The stereo speakers did a good job and sounded loud and clear.

Suffice to say, this phone is primed for content consumption.

The in-display optical fingerprint scanner is very reliable and works pretty quickly but you rarely use it since its face unlock feature is rapid.

A Hypercar Masquerading as a Grand Tourer

The international version of the OnePlus 12 is slightly different from the Chinese version. In India, we’ll only be able to buy it with 16GB of DDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. Yes, saying “only” is hilarious because, in China, this phone gets up to 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. The SoC is the same — the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is there in the new iQOO 12 and the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

OnePlus has developed a massive vapour chamber; the biggest one it has ever put on a phone, which it says makes this phone smoke the competition. The OnePlus 12 feels fast and fluid, something its Oxygen OS UI has always been known for.

Gaming feels like a breeze on this phone. My long Call Of Duty Mobile sessions went by stress-free, and the phone remained cool. It performs well even in synthetic benchmarks.

All of this is expected. OnePlus is known to nail performance with its premium phones. Its software is usually highly optimised, and Oxygen OS 14 is no different. It even supports Microsoft’s Phone Link software for synergy with Windows PCs. But this is no Samsung DeX!

OnePlus isn’t making tall claims with software support — you get the usual three years of OS updates and four years of security patches.

Reliable Cameras

OnePlus has armed its latest flagship with a camera array that’s similar to what the OnePlus Open has — though not identical. It is headlined by the Sony LYT-808 sensor, but this is a version which is tailored for candy bar phones, not foldables. The primary camera has a 50-megapixel resolution with an f/1.6 aperture and is optically stabilised. Then there is the much-lauded Omnivision OM64b sensor for 3X telephoto shots, with a 64-megapixel resolution, and finally, a very usable 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera with a 114-degree field of view.

These are very good specs, and the cameras perform as expected, working in concert with the Hasselblad tuning. They take good photos when given good lighting and struggle a bit in darker situations, especially when compared to what you can get out of flagship phones like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and yes, the Vivo X100 Pro. But that is fine because this is a more affordable phone.

I do have to say the Vivo X100 which costs even less does spar with the OnePlus 12, and comes out on top, possibly due to the superiority of its Zeiss optics or Vivo’s additional V2 chip.

The Hasselblad branding means you get an assortment of tricks — like a more natural colour calibration that I really liked. There’s a very impressive portrait mode with realistic cutouts, and also the very fun and cinematic XPAN mode.

There is a big leap in video recording performance, which is a spillover from the gains made with the OnePlus Open. This phone can take very usable cinematic shots. It can capture videos at 10-bit HDR, and its portrait video mode produces some of the nicest results, ones along with the iPhone and the Vivo X100 Pro. There’s a dedicated film mode, which is also going to be very fun to play around with. You can shoot video at 8K 24 frames per second, but 4K video quality is what has taken a massive leap.

The 32-megapixel selfie camera is decent, but it is not in the same league as that of the iPhone 15 or the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Mind-bending Battery Life

The one area where this phone might just leapfrog the competition is battery life. It has a massive 5,400mAh battery, which just refuses to die. In my time with it, I managed to run this phone on a single charge for more than 30 hours, thrice. It also is one of the fastest charging phones in the world, juicing up fully in less than 30 minutes, thanks to its 100W Super VooC charger. It also has the same 50W wireless charging tech as the Vivo X100 Pro. It pulls ahead of Apple and Samsung’s offerings in this department.

Call and network quality was par for the course. I tested the phone in San Jose, California, and New Delhi on a Jio SIM. No red flags! 

Verdict

The OnePlus 12 is a lovely phone for anyone looking to upgrade to a top-shelf 2024 flagship-grade phone. It has the performance, the looks, the refined software, and the battery life.

It is just not meant for someone looking for the best cameras. Don’t get me wrong, its Hasselblad cameras are indeed very capable — but are they the best in the business? No.

What makes this phone stand out is its price, because it is more affordable than all the other flagships. It undercuts them, and how, living up to many of its predecessors’ well-earned reputation of being a flagship killer!