OnePlus Nord 2 5G review: Affordable flagship power? By Pocket-lint

The OnePlus word 2 is here for 2021 seeking to take the challenge to the flagship market, offering a high-end experience, but for a fraction of the price. But the question is: does it succeed? I'm km button from pocket lint, and this is my review and while you're here, if you could tap that, like button hit subscribe and the notification bell, that would be brilliant when it comes to design in a lot of ways, it's very similar to the flagship, OnePlus 9. It uses the same combination of materials, a plastic frame sandwiched by glass on the front and the back. The differences are minimal. For instance, the alert slider is slightly higher up the frame and the phone's overall size is slightly smaller. Other design touches make it look like it's part of the same family as the OnePlus 9 ii, like the camera housing on the back, where the cameras have metal rings around them, giving them a purposeful look and set on a protrusion.

That's color, matched to the glass, still quite a chunky device, but it doesn't feel overly uncomfortable to use or hold day in and day out. Although our unit was the blue haze model, which is glossy and very slippery, put it anywhere, and it'll find its way to the floor, so it's probably best to have a case on it. It doesn't attract fingerprints that badly, though, which is a huge bonus for a glossy phone. We didn't find ourselves having to wipe it with a microfiber cloth, all that often plus, while it's no tip rated against water and dust. The phone is splash resistant and should survive if it gets rained on just don't go submerging it in water.

Now the north 2 has a fairly typical 1080 by 2400 resolution display on the front. That's full HD plus, but it's 90, hertz refresh rate and HDR 10 plus compatibility, add an extra bit of quality. That means in reality its bright features, high contrast levels and vivid colors. It's AMOLED, as is usual for OnePlus, now being critical. We found in its default vivid mode that it over-egged the colors quite a lot of blues.

Reds and oranges were all over saturated and unrealistic, but this became less of an issue when we switched the screen calibration to its gentle mode. It all appeared a lot more clean and natural. Now, unlike previous versions of the oxygen OS software, that's in OnePlus phones. This version doesn't seem to let you get down into the nitty-gritty of calibrations. It only gives you these two options, plus the ability to adjust the color temperature.

The one thing we've noticed, looking at mostly white screens like settings menus or google play's update list- is that when you view the screen at an angle, there is some color shift. It skews a bit towards green depending on how you're holding it, but the 90 hertz, refresh rate means animations, are fluid and responsive, but perhaps more importantly, it also has adaptive refresh rate technology. That means it doesn't waste energy refreshing when it doesn't need to so, for instance, when you're watching videos that are 25 or 30 frames per second, it refreshes at that speed on the whole for gaming and movie. Watching, though, the panel is great once it's out of vivid mode, it's bright fluid and although it doesn't quite get up to the peak brightness levels of the OnePlus, 9 and 9 pro it's more than good enough for daily use and media consumption, plus it's flanked by stereo speakers, and that adds a bit more immersion to your sound. On the software side, there are hints within the latest version of oxygen OS that show the influence of OPPO.

This is to be expected now that the two companies have joined their software and research and development teams. The settings menu looks much more similar to color OS and OnePlus switch has been dropped in favor of OPPO's clone phone app, albeit with OnePlus red and black colors. Similarly, the camera app appears to be opposed too sometimes you'll see a flash of opp, maybe in a pop-up window on the screen, but on the surface it still very much feels like OnePlus. For now. If this shows signs of things to come, we can expect oxygen OS to become more like color OS in future phones.

Now, undoubtedly, one of the biggest talking points of the word 2 is the processor inside, because it's not snapdragon. It's a MediaTek chip, specifically it's the dimension 1200 AI. In snapdragon terms, it delivers similar performance to the h70, which we know is quick and powerful in all of our testing. The phone has been zippy and responsive interface layers, glide effortlessly under our fingers and all our favorite games and apps load without any delay, benchmark it against the top tier snapdragon.8 powered phones, and you'll definitely see a difference in scores, but in daily use. It feels imperceptibly different.

It's that fast and responsive, which is great news for MediaTek, who we sure would love to shake off that impression that it only makes cheap, slow processors for budget smartphones. Furthermore, it's a serious chipmaker, and it's made a serious chip. Battery specs are the same as the most recent OnePlus flagships. That's 4500 billion powers and what's exciting, is that it uses the split dual battery design to enable really fast charging it. Ups, the ante from last year's word making use of 65 watt warp charge tech in real life.

That means you completely fill an empty battery in little over half an hour. That also means that, when your battery dies, you won't need to worry at all. If you have your warp charge, adapter with you, even plugging it in for 10 to 15 minutes is enough to give you a considerable amount of your battery and will easily get you through the rest of the day, not that battery life even gave us a cause for concern. A full battery would last us about a day and a half most of the time, with a few hours of screen time. Each day we managed to drain it on one day a couple of times, but this was on days when we had long three to four-hour group video calls on Google meet as well as our usual time spent gaming and social media browsing now onto cameras, and this is always a little of a tricky subject with OnePlus and for its camera system.

This timeout OnePlus went with a flagship quality sensor in its primary camera. That's a 15 megapixel sensor, the same: that's in the ultra-wide camera of the OnePlus 9 pro in good daylight outdoors. It can take lovely, looking colorful shots with its primary camera. Colors pop plus details and depth. Look good too.

It switches, HDR mode on when appropriate, sometimes more successfully than others, and retains the color and detail when you use the digital zoom function, so that makes it quite a versatile lens, and it's also equipped with is for better low-light performance. So that means the night mode. Shots have come out clear and relatively bright too. It's when we get onto the lower resolution ultra-wide that things get a little ropey. This is when we started to detect that it might not be quite the flagship phone.

It's trying to be colors and detail are noticeably rougher when you switch to the ultrawide and images, look flatter and noisier lacking depth too, and this is something we've seen from OnePlus in other phones before it's that lack of consistency and balance between the multiple cameras on the back we'd. Rather, it was just a single lens. At least that way, you would have a consistent experience in the end, using the word 2 as a daily device for a couple of weeks left us feeling that little else is required to have a great phone experience and that's exactly the aim. OnePlus had from a speed and performance and design standpoint, it feels virtually no different to using a proper flagship phone. The only thing that lets it down slightly again is the camera.

It's another instance of having one good primary camera and the additional one not being quite up to scratch. Still if ultra-wide photography rarely makes it into your repertoire, you'll be more than happy with the OnePlus word 2. It's going to give a mostly flagship-like experience at a fraction of the cost, but there is more competition this time around from the likes of Poco and Redmi. So it's certainly not the only competitive mid-range phone in the pond anymore, I've been cam, I'm at cam Bunsen on social media. If you have any comments or questions for me, you can use the comments down below too.

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Source : Pocket-lint