APR 7, 2024
NimishAndAkriti
There's a new OnePlus in town. And this time it is not one of the biggies, but a more budget friendly offering starting at Rs 24,999 from the Nord series. Or wait, scratch that - the OnePlus Nord CE series. CE by the way stands for Core Experience, and refers to phones that do the basics brilliantly, and then some. The Nord CE series is a huge bestseller in the country, so the Nord CE4 has some hefty phone boots to fill. The good thing is that it seems pretty well equipped to do so!
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In terms of design, the Nord CE4 certainly looks, well, striking, We have got the very exotically named Celadon Marble edition, which is a sort of overlap of light green and white, with a marble-like effect, which we found very cool and different. That said, some folks said it reminded them of something from the construction industry, which is not quite as complimentary. It is a big phone, although pretty slim (8.4 mm) and at about 186 grams, not too heavy for its size. Don't get fooled by those three dots on the back - it has only two cameras, the third sphere is a flash with decoration! We think it looks good, really, but the green could be divisive, It comes with rather basic IP54 dust and splash protection.
Spec wise, this one ticks the core experience boxes pretty thoroughly. It comes with a big 6.7 inch FHD+ AMOLED display with 120 Hz refresh rate. All right, it is not the most insanely bright display we have seen but it does seem bright enough. It is also one of the first phones in the market to run on Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor and 8 GB/ 128 GB and 8 GB/ 256 GB RAM and storage variants. There is a massive 5500 mAh battery in there, and it charges at a staggering 100W!
Finally, there are the cameras. OnePlus has been one of the few brands that has been bringing flagship sensors even to lower price points, and the tradition continues with the Nord CE4. You get a Sony LYT 600 50 MP main sensor with OIS and a 8 MP ultrawide, as well as a 16 megapixel selfie sensor. We are putting all our photography and video money on the main snapper here, and have limited expectations of the other two - mind you, it is great to not see any of those 2 MP/ 5 MP joke "depth" and "macro" sensors. We think this one will do some very decent photography!
Rounding off everything are stereo speakers (no 3.5 mm audio jack though), and in a pleasant surprise at this price point, expandable memory - give up one of them two SIM slots and you can expand storage up to 1TB, Of course, this being a OnePlus, it runs on OxygenOS 14 on top of Android 14. A slight twist to the plot is that the usually clean OxygenOS this time seems to come with some bloatware, which is surprising. We will be putting this one through its paces in the coming days. At Rs 24,999, it is a very decent mid-segment player but will have to contend with the likes of the very good Redmi Note 13 Pro and of course, the very new Nothing Phone (2a). All queries are welcome.