OnePlus Nord review 😍👌

The build quality is very good for a phone with a polycarbonate body. There's Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and back, which is reassuring. I quite like the Blue Marble colour on the Nord unit that I've been using, as it looks refreshingly new. There's also a more subdued Grey Onyx colour. Well, I personally like Blue Marble. Because it looks unique in hands unlike other colours But I also find it somehow similar to the colour of iphane SE 2020.

OnePlus Nord design and Look

It's been a few days since Oneplus officially launched the Nord, and it's time to take a closer look at how it fits into today's mid-tier smartphone segment. The Oneplus Nord starts at Rs. 24,999 for the 64GB Amazon-exclusive variant, but this is only going on sale in September. If you don't want to wait, you have the option of the higher-priced variants which will be available starting from August 4. The good news is that even the top-end variant doesn't breach Rs. 30,000, and this is the one we'll be testing today.

And one more to be noted that you are not given the choice to expand the storage.

The OnePlus Nord ships with the usual set of accessories that we've come to expect from a OnePlus phone. There's a silicone bumper case, a Type-C cable, a fast charger, and of course, stickers.

OnePlus Nord specifications

The OnePlus Nord is one of the first few phones to launch in India with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G SoC. This new chip was announced last year along with the flagship Snapdragon 865 SoC, but has only just started to make its way into phones. This SoC has an integrated Qualcomm X52 5G modem and is built on the 7nm process. It promises better processing capabilities and up to 30 percent faster graphics rendering than to the Snapdragon 730G.

The Indian version of the OnePlus Nord supports only the N78 5G band, compared to the European version, which supports more bands. This means you could have some compatibility issues with service providers abroad that don't operate on the N78 band.

-        In India, OnePlus is offering three variants of the Nord. There's an Amazon-exclusive variant with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage for Rs. 24,999; the one with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage is priced at Rs. 27,999, and 12GB of RAM with 256GB of storage will cost you Rs. 29,999.

OnePlus Nord performance

According to OnePlus, the Nord is supposed to deliver the same fluid and snappy response as its flagship phones, and I have to say, it does a very good job. With regular usage, I found it hard to actually tell any difference between the OnePlus Nord and a OnePlus 8. The interface felt very snappy, apps loaded and closed quickly, and jumping between apps was quite effortless. The touch sampling rate is said to have increased to 180Hz from 120Hz on the OnePlus 7 Pro. However, it's still lower than the 240Hz touch sampling rate of the 8 series.

The OnePlus Nord did a great job handling today's graphically demanding titles such as Asphalt 9: Legends and PUBG Mobile, using the highest visual settings in each title. Gameplay was smooth and I didn't notice any unusual heating either. Fortnite ran well at the 'Epic' quality preset, but for some reason, the frame rate was capped at 45fps. There's no 90fps support for now, like you get with the OnePlus 8 series.

OnePlus Nord cameras

Cameras are another area where OnePlus could have skimped, but didn't. The OnePlus Nord has a total of six cameras — four at the back and two in the front. The main rear camera is the exact same one that you'd get with the OnePlus 8. The company has even kept the optical stabilisation, which is good to see. The other three are an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 5-megapixel depth sensor. A higher resolution for macros would have been more useful, in my opinion. For selfies, you get a primary 32-megapixel Sony IMX616 camera and a secondary 8-megapixel wide-angle camera.