Reviewing Oneplus Nord

 

- In this article I'm going to review oneplus nord. Stay tuned. Hey, what is up guys Ayush here. If you're new to this blog let me just give you guys a quick background about me. My name is Ayush Shrivastava.  Back in 2014 OnePlus entered the smartphone segment with OnePlus One, and it was a very reasonably priced smartphone with flagships pecifications. Over the years, they kept on launching newflagship killer smartphones every 6 months, but they could not sustain the same low entrylevel price that the OnePlus One came at. So the prices of their phones went up witheach new phone, to a point where the price of their latest flagship smartphone the OnePlus8 Pro has reached Rs.60,000. For some time now, they have not had a mid budget smartphone, and people willing to choose them over the competition were asked to pay well over Rs.35,000 for a OnePlus smartphone. Other manufacturers had a few of their own offerings in the 20-30k Rs. price bracket, while OnePlus did not have anything to offerin that price range. To fix this gap, they came up with the OnePlusNord. It’s a mid budget smartphone with a starting price of Rs.27,999. There is supposed to be a 25K Rs. variant of the Nord as well, but that has not yet gone on sale, so I will consider its currentprice as the starting price. and here is my full review of the OnePlus Nord. Some of you might be aware, that I have uploaded  about the OnePlus Nord since I got it. Those include Unboxing, Camera Review, G camvs Stock Camera comparison, speed test with some of its competitors, and of course Detailed Camera comparisons with other phones. While making all these videos, I got to usethis phone thoroughly and know all the ins and outs of it. Now this is not a review unit. I have purchased it with my own money, soI am under no obligation, timeline or pressure from OnePlus for making this video. All the thoughts and opinions in the videoare my own, after using this phone for over a month. OnePlus managed to create the same hype withthe Nord that they did with the OnePlus One. But a lot more people are aware of the brandnow than may be 5-6 years ago, so there were a lot of eyeballs eagerly waiting for OnePlusto unveil this new smartphone. When we finally saw it, the design didn’treally impress a lot of us. We had seen this type of back, camera moduleand the pill shaped cutout for the selfie cameras on some of the other Realme and OPPOsmartphones. Now there is nothing in this phone that jumpsout and screams unique, But the OnePlus Nord still managed to findan audience for itself. OnePlus launched this phone in 2 colours BlueMarble and Grey Onyx, and 3 RAM and Storage variants, 6+64, 8+128 and 12+256. This is the Gray Onyx colour with 8GB RAMand 128GB Storage, and I got it for Rs.27,999. The 6GB RAM and 64GB storage variant whichis supposed to retail at Rs.25,000 is not yet available for sale. I think that variant was just announced tocreate a hype, and OnePlus will be delaying that one for as long as they can. And even then, they might launch it in 1 or2 flash sales, and we might never see it again. Anyways, what do we get at this price. A 6.44 inch AMOLED display with a resolutionof 2400x1080 pixels, 90 Hz refresh rate, HDR 10+ support, peak brightness of 1000nits undercertain conditions and Gorilla Glass 5 protection. There is a pill shaped cutout for 2 frontfacing camera on the top left, and an in display fingerprint sensor towards the bottom. I am sure, by now, you might have heard aboutthe black line and the green tint issue on the display panel of this phone. Yes, it is there on some of the devices, butit is not as big of an issue because it shows up at a very particular low brightness settingin very dark environment. Even if your device has this issue, it ispossible that you might never encounter it, because it is easier for the cameras to catchthis, than our naked eyes. And you should also know, this is not theonly phone which shows this. Most other high refresh rate AMOLED displaysshow this, so it is not as big of a problem as some people want you to believe. 90Hz refresh rate combined with Oxygen OSgives us a super smooth experience while using this phone. This display is great for consuming contentand playing games. Colours are accurate and viewing angels arealso very wide with amazing contrast levels. It is a flat display and not a curved onelike on the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro, so you don’t have worry about any accidental touches orweird refractions while watching videos. Some people consider it as a downgrade, butI prefer flat displays, so I like this panel. It gets very bright for outdoor lighting conditions,and the notch doesn’t get in the way as much as you would think. Sure some of the notifications are hiddenuntil you pull down the notifications shade, but you get used to this in a few days. All in all, I am happy with the display. The in display fingerprint sensor is alsopretty fast and accurate. I just feel it is placed a bit too low onthe phone. You can get used to it, but I was using thisphone with the OnePlus 8, and its fingerprint sensor is more conveniently placed, so I hadto constantly adjust my grip to unlock this phone. OnePlus didn’t go with the side mountedfingerprint sensor that we have seen on so many budget smartphones this year. Speaking of the sides, while they look andshine like stainless steel, the frame is actually made of plastic. While looking good, doesn’t feel very premiumto the touch. There is gorilla glass protection to the frontand back, but I still prefer using it with the case on, as it adds a lot of grip to it,and also protects the back from all the fingerprints and smudges. As I said before the design of this phoneis not exactly new, or something that we have not seen before, but holding it in you hands,the OnePlus Nord feels more refined and premium than any other similar looking phone, primarilybecause of the glass back. I also like the size, as it fits comfortablyin my hands. It doesn’t get any official IP or waterproofrating, but it has rubber seals all around, including in the SIM Tray, to keep water fromentering inside, so it can definitely withstand a few light splashes of water. Since the frame is build of plastic and notmetal, I really can’t say how it will fair in long run, say after 2-3 years, that wewill just have to wait and see. Now on the inside, we see that OnePlus hasmade the biggest tradeoffs. OnePlus is known for packing in the latestand greatest specs in their smartphones. But the Nord comes with a midrange Snapdragon765G processor, which is 5G capable. Adreno 620 GPU, 6/8/12GB of RAM. 64/128/256GBof Storage and a 4115 mAh non removable battery. The RAM and Storage sound plenty, but theyare using the LPDDR4X RAM and UFS 2.1 storage instead of the latest ones. Even the USB c port at the bottom of thisphone is just usb 2.0. While this doesn’t really make a differenceto everyday average user, but performance of the heavy and demanding games suffer dueto this. I think using latest parts would make thephone more future proof. But then again its a sub 30K Rs. smartphone,so I am not going to bash them too much about it. Even with these internals, the overall performanceof the OnePlus Nord is pretty good. I mean the internals are not really bad, butthey are not fastest and latest that we are use to seeing in OnePlus smartphones. Other than a few stutters in the 90Hz mode,I don’t find anything that is too wrong with it. I actually noticed these frame drops everynow and then because I know what to look for, but I am very sure most people using thisphone on a daily basis wont. So that is not a big issue. Even in my speed test with the OnePlus 8,the Nord was not too far behind, so that’s a very good thing. I just hope, the smooth performance is carriedforward for years to come. I feel the RAM management could have beena bit better, because if you saw my speed test videos, Nord even with 8GB of RAM couldnot keep as many apps in the memory as I would have liked. I mean its not bad, but it could be better. But that can easily be fixed with a softwareupdate. Gaming is a breeze on this phone. It might not run every game on the highestpossible settings, but the gameplay is fairly smooth or most games. If you are a hardcore gamer, you might wantto look at some other phones with better flagship processors, but for most other non heavy gamesNord will be fine. The notch doesn’t get in the way while playinggames or watching videos. Now the speaker is pretty loud, but we justget a mono speaker on this phone, and its is not the clearest mono speaker, so the contentconsumption experience might not be as good as some of the other phones in the market. Thankfully the speaker is placed on the topright when you hold the phone in landscape mode. So it is not blocked when you are playinggames or watching videos. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack, which peoplestill love, and expect to get on the phones, specially in this price segment. OnePlus could have at least bundled the USBC to 3.5mm adaptor in the box but they didn’t, what was bit of a surprise. Maybe they want people to spend more moneyand get their new wireless buds or earphones. The 765G processor on the Nord has 5G support. While the 5G network is non existent in Indiaright now, this phone will be ready for faster speeds, for when the 5G networks are actuallyavailable. Now I used this phone with Airtel and JIOSIM cards, and for the most part I did not face any major issues with the cellular reception. People on the other end of the calls wereable to hear me and I had no issues listening to them. Now I did face the wifi disconnection issue3 times when I restarted the device. Before turning it off, it was connected toa Wi-Fi network, and when starting back up, it did not automatically connect to the samewifi network. This happened 3 times in total, but hasn’thappened again since the last week, so maybe the latest software update fixed that bugfor me. Now what ties all the internals together onany phone is the software that it is running on, which in OnePlus Nord’s case is theOxygen OS. Honestly these internals and this design ata near 30K Rs. price point, from any other manufacturer would have been a very hard sell. What gives people an extra bit of confidenceto go with the Nord is the smooth, minimalistic yet very functional UI in the form of OxygenOS. And OnePlus has a proven record of keepingtheir phones running smooth and making the necessary tweaks in the software, to elevatethe end users experience for years to come. I like to leave the system haptics on, onall my phones, and I was very happy with the haptic feedback from the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro,but the the Nord is a big disappointment for me in that department. The vibration motor inside just doesn’tseem as good or as powerful as its bigger brothers. I don’t know if anyone else is going tonotice it or even be bothered by this, but small things like this, build up the overalluser experience. While we are on the topic of small things,I am so glad that this alert slider is still present on this phone. And while the frame of the phone is made ofplastic, all the buttons are made of metal, and they are held together very well, so theydon’t rattle at all. The 4115 mAh battery lasts for well over aday even if you are a heavy user and have the 90Hz mode turned on. I don’t play games on my phone, but otherthan that I use the phone very extensively. With an hour or so of making and receiving calls, half an hour of watching YouTube videos, checking twitter, Instagram and emails onand off through the day, taking few image and videos, sending and receiving Whatsapp messages, opening some chrome tabs, and so on I normally end my day with about 23-28%of the battery still remaining. For hardcore gamers, this might vary dependingon the games that you play and for how long you play them. But for most other users, you won’t haveto worry about the battery life on this phone. So OnePlus has done a great job with the battery optimisation. Actually if I am being honest, I think they took the optimisation part a step too further. Sometimes in the effort to not wake the device from sleep, the phone just won’t show me the notifications for emails and messages. I get all notifications at once, when I pickup the phone. As a workaround for this, I had to disablethe battery optimisation feature for some of these apps, and then I get all my important notifications as they arrive. I find this issue on most OnePlus phones. I just wish they fix this. When you do manage to drain the battery, youget the 30T warp charger included in the box, which can fully juice the Nord up in littleover an hour. And thankfully it supports 18 Watt fast chargingas well, so if you have any other 3rd party power delivery fast charger, it can chargerthe Nord at a faster rate as well. Despite of having a glass back, it doesn’tsupport wireless charging. To be fair, OnePlus 8 also doesn’t supportwireless charging, that feature is reserved only for the OnePlus 8 Pro, so I wasn’teven hoping to get that feature on this phone. Coming to the cameras. The primary camera gets a 48 megapixel SonyIMX 586 sensor with F/1.75 aperture, same as the OnePlus 8. Then there is an 8 megapixel ultra wide camera,5 megapixel depth sensor and a 2 megapixel macro camera. I have actually made a lot of videos showinghow good the cameras on this phone actually are, considering the price of the phone. I will leave all of them linked in the descriptionsection. While it might not be as good as the oneson its bigger brothers, The main camera on the Nord can take some really good imagesand videos in almost all lighting conditions. I don’t know why some people are sayingthat the cameras are not adequate, It is a Rs.28K smartphone, and the cameras performas such. I have shared 75+ image and video samplesin all my cameras reviews of this phone. I suggest you guys check them out and decidefor yourself. If anything, I just feel the cameras shouldbe more consistent with the colour temperature and white balance. You might know this already, but the performancegets even better with Gcam installed, and I have made separate video bout that as well. It is true what others said, the Macro camerais really bad and the depth sensor doesn’t really make any difference. You can take just as good portrait shots evenby covering this depth sensor. Leaving these things, I really like the imagescoming out the OnePlus Nord. If you know how to use a camera and what youare doing, it is difficult to take a bad picture with the main camera on this phone. The dual front facing cameras are also doinga nice enough job. While the selfies don’t look as impressiveas they should from a 32 megapixel camera, they are still a step up from the other OnePlus phones. And the secondary wide camera, while not beingas sharp, lets you get a lot more of the scene in a single shot. For a much deeper insight into the camerason the Nord, make sure to check out my dedicated camera review of it. I just feel that the overall camera performanceor the image processing is a bit slower on the Nord. It might be because of the processor. Everything from opening the camera app, shutterspeed and the time it takes to detect the edges for portrait shots, and deliver theimage, is a bit slower on this phone. I don’t really know if it can be done, butif OnePlus could make it a bit faster via software updates, the overall experience ofusing the cameras will improve a lot. So looking at each individual things likethe design, internals, cameras or the price, OnePlus Nord doesn’t really stand out ofthe competition. But when software ties all these things together,you get an overall better phone. There are a few other phones in the similarprice point, which are better in the performance department, like last years Redmi K20 Proor the newer Realme X3, both of which comes with an older but flagship Snapdragon 855processor. But then you don’t get 5G capabilities andthe smoother Oxygen OS and the assurity of 2 major software updates on them. So you will have to decide what is more importantto you. Overall I feel the OnePlus Nord is a solidmidrange option, if you are in the market for a sub Rs.30,000 smartphone. People are not ready to spend a lot of moneyon flagship smartphones, and in this condition OnePlus brought this lower priced option,which is making many people turn towards it. I feel the overall performance including thecameras is more than adequate for most average users. You should also check out me speed test andcamera comparison videos of the Nord with the OnePlus 8. Those videos will definitely make you askthe question, that given the difference in the price, wether people should even considergoing for the flagships. So those were my thoughts about the OnePlusNord. Do let me know in the comments, your thoughtsabout it. If you are looking to buy this phone. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Alright, peace. 

Oneplus Nord Price -

12GB+256GB = 29,000.00  https://amzn.to/30Eb38r

8GB+128Gb   = 27,000.00 https://amzn.to/34g2kdk

6GB+64Gb = 24,999.00    https://amzn.to/3jkyfQ2