If you like your OnePlus 7 Pro or for that matter OnePlus 6, you wouldn’t buy the OnePlus Nord. One Plus 8 or 8 Pro would be your choice because you are already a part of the company’s ecosystem. If you have been using a competing brand crammed with bloatware, chances are that you have been following the Nord campaign.

OnePlus has always kept improving its phones, offering better cameras, better display, better processors, better battery life... it’s been about a better experience, an experience that one demands from expensive phones. And then in the middle of the pandemic enters Nord, the not-so-expensive OnePlus phone.

Let’s be clear, no company would launch a phone with a processor that matches the performance of units already in its stable. There is no way the Nord would cannibalise the OnePlus 8. No, OnePlus wouldn’t like to have a flagship killer in its flagship stable.

The idea is to get people who are hooked to other brands to tippy-toe over. The Nord offers a smooth and clean experience. Once hooked, it’s tough to backtrack. It’s a marketing trick and a good one.

A well-crafted device

What you get out of the box is a well-specced device. It feels fantastic in the hand, even though it’s not lightest of devices out there. Zero comprises on the design and at 6.4 inches it’s a manageable phone while the rounded corners are easy on the hands.

The best part about the OnePlus experience is the OxygenOS launcher. Without much bloatware to tackle, the user can dive into getting a flagship experience, which the company wants to promote. It’s Android with just the right amount of customisation. If there is one thing I like more than OxygenOS is the slider button on the right, which you can toggle to put the phone into silent or vibrator mode. Extremely helpful. Be it face unlock or the in-screen fingerprint scanner, zero glitches there.

Powering the device is Snapdragon 765G, which is not exactly a compromise. The top-end Snapdragon 865 is costly and no way could have OnePlus bunged that in. What the 765G entails are less capable image signal processor and slower cores but one wouldn’t feel it in day-to-day experiences.

The company has a clever trick here — forget the processor, take a look at the 90Hz screen refresh rate, which makes the smooth OxygenOS experience even smoother. It’s 5G enabled but that shouldn’t be an element driving one’s shopping choices in India.

At the same time, don’t confuse this with what Apple has done with its new iPhone SE. Apple has not compromised at all with its processor on its “cheaper” phone. The A13 Bionic is what one finds in the iPhone 11. The cameras are brilliant and night photography is wow. The experience is superlative because it caters to a crowd that can do without a big phone.

OnePlus is about the feeling of using a well-crafted device with a fluid AMOLED display, offering deep blacks and a vibrant colour palette.

This brings us to what’s so low-cost about it? And just how low is low?

A win for the selfie camera

There is a quad-camera system on the back, led by the same 48MP main camera as the OnePlus 8 (yes, there is optical image stabilisation). Keeping it company is an 8MP ultra-wide-angle camera, a 2 MP macro camera and a 5MP depth-sensor.

A few years ago, camera wasn’t exactly the company’s strength but things improved and in a big way. In daylight conditions, there is very little to fault. Although the Nord seems to have ported the primary camera from the OnePlus 8, night snaps are slightly comme ci, comme ca on the new phone. With night mode on, things improve. And the macro lens wasn’t necessary. We would have liked the phone to have a dual shooter; that way the company could have focused its efforts better on the photo front.

What we like most is the dual selfie camera. The 8MP ultra-wide lens (which is next to the 32MP shooter) makes selfie sticks redundant, thanks to the 105-degree field of view it offers. A very helpful feature when social distancing is the norm.

Video quality is also pretty good but we would have liked to see seamless switching between lenses. On a different note, it’s a missed opportunity for Pixel 4a in India as the Google phone should have had an earlier release date. After all, Pixel is about photography.
Is it for you?

Lately, it’s been difficult to gauge battery life because we are spending more time at home and on other devices. Our phones are not being used to the fullest. Yet, the Nord offers enough juices to last more than a day, which involves movie and music streaming and some gaming. Agreed that the phone comes with a few concessions, like no IP rating for dust and water resistance (though that would increase the device price a bit) or the missing 3.5mm headphone jack (face it, all companies want us to buy wireless options!), but no mid-range phone can offer everything. You have to choose what you want from a device and then go about shopping for one. The Nord is a well-balanced phone. It’s a good bargain and more importantly, a step into the OnePlus world.

The OnePlus Nord is the perfect device to draw in new customers to the company’s ecosystem The Telegraph

At a glance

Device: OnePlus Nord

• Display: 6.44-inches fluid AMOLED with 90Hz refresh rate
• Processor: Snapdragon 765G 5G
• Camera: Rear — 48MP (sensor: Sony IMX586), 8MP ultra-wide, 5MP depth and 2MP macro. Front — 32 MP (sensor: IMX616) and 8MP ultra-wide
• Storage (review device): 12GB+256GB
• Price: Rs 27,999 for 8GB/128GB and Rs 29,999 for 12GB/256GB (the 6GB+64GB model is coming in September, Rs 24,999)