OnePlus launched its most expected OnePlus Nord CE 3 smartphone in India last month along with the Nord 3. It is a major upgrade from last year’s Nord CE 2, since this gets a better display, faster SoC, better camera, bigger battery and faster charging. Is this worth the price? Let us dive into the review and find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- OnePlus Nord CE 3 5G (12GB+256GB) in Aqua Surge colour
- 80W SUPERVOOC charger
- USB Type-C Cable
- Protective case
- SIM ejector
- Quick Start Guide and Warranty Information
Display, Hardware and Design
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 5G sports a a 6.7-inch (1080 x 2412 pixels) Full HD+ curved AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch sampling rate and 394 PPI. The display is bright since it has up to 950 nits peak brightness. It offers good colour output since it has 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, and the sunlight legibility is good as well. You can select from vivid, and Natural screen colour modes.
The phone has a 2160Hz high-frequency dimming technology. In dark environments (brightness below 90 nits) where DC dimming can’t work, the phone will automatically switch to 2160Hz PWM dimming mode to maintain accurate colors on display with a more comfortable eye experience.
The phone also has HDR 10 support, which works for YouTube, but it doesn’t work with Netflix. You can enable video HDR boost from display settings, which increases the colors when playing SDR videos to make them look like HDR.
The phone doesn’t have a notification LED, but this has an always-on-display that shows contextual info and notifications all day or as per schedule. There is also music playback option in the always-on-display with the Spotify integration. If you double-tap the AOD, the music player becomes an interactive panel with play, pause, and forward buttons. It also recommends 4 playlists you may like and also real-time food delivery updates.
The phone has ultra narrow bezels. Thanks to COP Ultra packaging technology, the phone has 2.37 mm ultra-narrow chin. The side bezels are as thin as 1.47mm. It has X-axis linear vibration motor.
The phone has a tiny punch-hole that houses a 16-megapixel camera. Above the display, there is an earpiece on the top edge that doubles up as a secondary speaker. It has an in-display fingerprint scanner.
Coming to button placements, the power button is present on the right along with volume rockers. The Dual SIM slot with a hybrid SIM slot, primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are present on the bottom. The secondary microphone, IR Blaster and vent for speaker are present on the bottom. It drops the 3.5mm audio jack which was present in the Nord CE 2.
The Aqua Surge color that we have has a plastic back has a glossy glass-like finish, and the phone also comes in Gray Shimmer that has a metallic effect. The phone is just 8.23mm thick and weighs 184 grams. It also has IP54 for dust and splash resistance, similar to the Nord 3.
Camera
- 50MP rear camera with Sony IMX890 sensor, f/1.8 aperture, OIS
- 8MP 120° ultra-wide camera with Sony IMX355 sensor, f/2.2 aperture
- 2MP macro camera with f/2.4 aperture, LED flash
- 16MP front-facing camera with f/2.4 aperture
The phone has a same camera setup as the Nord 3. The camera UI in the OxygenOS 13.1 is familiar. There is Pro mode with RAW option, Extra HD, Panorma, Macro, Flim, Slo-mo, Time-Lapse and Dual-View video. There is Bokeh Flare portrait option for photos, and there are no filters for video. The rear camera offers 12.5MP output after pixel binning, and the front camera images are 16MP in size.
Daylight shots came out well, thanks to the 50MP sensor, and the dynamic range is better with auto HDR. There is AI mode which recognizes different photo scenes and automatically adjusts camera settings to make boost the colours. 2X is good, but as you zoom in you lose details even though you get up to 20X zoom. The portrait mode is decent and the 2MP macro camera is useless, so it is recommended to use 2X with the normal camera.
Low light shots are good with a lot of details and less noise. The night mode is useful, but it takes a few seconds to process. There is also a tripod mode. The front camera also does a good job in daylight. The bokeh shots good with decent edge detection.
Check out the camera samples
It can record videos in up to 4K 60 fps, slow motion 1080p at 120fps, 720p at up to 240 fps, and the front camera can record 1080p 30fps videos. Ultra-wide camera shooting and Portrait video mode and HDR / AI Highlight video with the main camera are limited to 1080p 30 fps.
There is OIS and EIS which does a good job, but EIS is limited to 1080p. There is ultra-steady mode which is limited to 1080p 60fps.
Software, UI and Apps
It runs Android 13 based OxygenOS 13.1 out of the box. It has Android security patch for June 2023. The phone will get 2 Android updates and 3 years of security updates, similar to older CE series phones. OxygenOS 13 adds Aquamorphic design, intuitive iconography, new card-style layout for the UI, Smart AOD, Large Folders, dynamic home screen widgets, and more.
Apart from the usual set of realme apps and Google apps, it comes with Prime Video, Netflix, and Spotify. There is also an IR remote app since this has IR blaster.
Out of 12GB LPDD4X RAM, you get 11.03GB of usable RAM, and about 5GB of RAM is free when default apps are running in the background. It also has DRE or dynamic RAM expansion feature, which uses the built-in storage as RAM. This has up to 12GB of additional RAM expansion. Out of 256GB, you get about 221GB of free storage. The phone uses UFS 3.1 storage, and we got sequential read speeds of, 1567.24 MB/s.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
It has an in-display fingerprint sensor that unlocks the phone quickly, but it is not as fast as a physical fingerprint sensor. You can add up to 5 fingerprints. You can also use the fingerprint for app local and payments in apps. Furthermore, you can change the fingerprint animation and also disable it, and also enable quick launch option to launch apps directly from the lock screen by holding the fingerprint. The phone also has face unlock feature.
Music and Multimedia
YouTube Music is the default Music Player. It has Dolby Atmos which works with headset and has customizable Smart, Movie, Game and Music modes. It doesn’t have FM Radio support. Audio through the stereo speakers is good without any distortion even in full volume. Audio through earphones is good as well.
This has Widevine L1, so that you can play HD content on Netflix and other streaming apps. It supports HDR content on YouTube, but doesn’t work on Netflix or Prime Video.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 5G has support for n1/n3/n5/n8/n28A/n40/n41/n77/n78 Network Bands in India. It has 4G Wi-Fi and VoLTE, with support for Carrier Aggregation on 4G. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz), VoWiFi / Wi-Fi calling support, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS / GLONASS / Beidou. It has OTG support and also has NFC support. Moving on, the call quality is good, and we did not face any call drops and the earpiece volume was loud. Google dialer is default.
The OnePlus Nord CE 3 5G’s body SAR is 0.912W/Kg and head SAR is at 1.171/Kg, which is well under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) in India.
Performance and Benchmarks
This is one of the first phones to be powered by Snapdragon 782G 6nm Mobile Platform, with boosted GPU and CPU performance compared to 778G and 778G+. This has Qualcomm Kryo 670 CPU that brings higher performance up to 2.7 GHz compared to 2.5 GHz in the 778G+. There is Adreno 642L GPU, which promises up to 10% faster graphics rendering compared to 778G+. Other specifications remain the same.
It has 4 x A78-based Kryo 670 Performance CPU clocked at 2.7GHz and 4 x A55-based Kryo 670 Efficiency CPUs clocked at up to 1.80GHz. The Adreno 642L GPU offers a smooth gaming performance even in graphic intensive games. The phone gets a bit warm on intensive gaming or when recording 4K videos for long, but it doesn’t too hot.
The phone has a 4129mm² large vapor chamber cooling area and the company says that it has used materials like graphite to help keep the phone cool.
We did not face any issues or frame drops in the graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact. It reached maximum 40º in our testing indoors in Wi-Fi, but this might vary outdoors in 4G. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
As you can see, it is better than the Snapdragon 778G and Dimensity 7050-powered phones.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 5000mAh (typical) built-in battery, compared to 4500mAh in the Nord CE 2. It lasted me more than a day with mixed Wi-Fi and 5G use and dual SIMs. I got over 4 and half hours of screen on time with close to 2 day of use mostly on Wi-Fi and in 120Hz. The phone has support for 80W SuperVOOC Charge, compared to 65W in the CE 2. It can charge up to 50% in about 13 minutes and up to 100% in about half an hour with the bundled 80W charger.
There is a new battery health option that shows the battery capacity. There are 15 temperature sensors and a bespoke charging chip, so it promises 1,600 full charging cycles from the phone that’s equivalent of fully charging, and fully discharging the OnePlus Nord CE 3 5G every day for four years.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 26,999 for the 8GB + 128GB, the OnePlus Nord CE 3 5G is a worthy successor to the Nord CE 2. There is an increase in price compared to the older models, but almost all things have been upgraded. Wish this had a glass back for a premium look and feel.
Alternatives
The iQOO Neo 7 is the direct competitor that offers fast MediaTek Dimensity 8299 SoC at Rs. 1000 more for a better gaming experience. The POCO F5 is also a good option with a much faster Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 SoC since it is available in the similar price range during sale.
Pricing and availability
The OnePlus Nord CE3 is priced at Rs. 26,999 for the 8GB + 128GB model and the 12GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 28,999. It is available from Amazon.in, OnePlus online store and offline stores.
It will be available from Amazon.in, OnePlus online stores, offline stores starting from July 15th. There is also bank discount.
Pros
- 120Hz AMOLED display is brilliant
- Smooth performance
- Main camera is good
- IP54 ratings
- Good battery life with fast charging
Cons
- Average ultra-wide and macro cameras
- Plastic back