I have been a follower and user of OnePlus devices for quite some time now and have had a variety of their devices over the years. I have witnessed the changes that have been made within the company from the early days up current day. There have been a lot of things that have happened inOnePlus’s short history as a phone maker, some have been negative e and some have been brilliant. I have always tried to stay pragmatic when it comes to the brand and its position in the market, however, It cannot be argued its positioning in the UK in particular has been under some very heavy scrutiny from the mobile phone buying public and there has been a lot of bad vibes being directed at OnePlus lately.
It is not the time or the place to go into these issues today however as OnePlus unveiled their new Flagship yesterday in the form of the Oneplus 11 5G and I have been lucky enough to be one of the first people to be able to use one and put it through its paces. Not to be a spoiler but I am impressed with what I have seen so far, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves as there is a review to be done!!
Design
I like the overall design of the Onplus 11 5G it is not too far stretch from what they have done before and you can see the evolution of the design when it is held in comparison with its predecessors the OnePlus 10 Pro 5G and the OnePlus 10T 5G. In general, the phone feels great in the hand and has a reassuring solidity to it. I don’t feel that the phone is fragile when I use it which is very comforting to know that if I am a bit rough with it then it should come off unharmed.
I have already done a full unboxing of the phone if you have not had a chance to view that it can be found below
If however, you prefer your device tours in text form then here we go.
Starting from the top edge of the phone we have got a microphone whole and what I can only presume is a port for air circulation for the top speaker which is a forward-facing affair and doubles the earpiece. It is pretty loud and works well when used for calls resulting in a clear sound profile allowing you to hear your calls clearly.
Moving down the right-hand side I am very pleased to say that we have got a return of the much-vaunted “Alert Slider” that was noticeably absent from the OnePlus 10T 5G. it is just satisfying to use as it has always been and I am so glad that it has been added back into the phone. Below this is where you will find the sleep wake button that will also double up as a Google Assistant button if you wish it to via quick in the software settings. Apart from that and a few antenna lines there is nothing else to see here so around we go.
On the bottom of the phone, we have got the other stereo speaker which is bottom-firing but is again like its bedfellows at the top of the phone plenty loud enough for you to know the difference. next to this is the USB Type C port which is sadly only USB 2 in terms of support but it does support SUPERVOOC fast charging of up to 100w when used with the correct charger (handily included in the box).
Onto the left-hand side and this is where we will find a few more antenna lines (they are everywhere on this phone) and also the volume rocker. This is a typical OnePlus design trait and it has been common practice for a few years now. I have to say though it can be a bit annoying as I have accidentally ended up taking a screenshot when picking out the phone as this is where my fingers will naturally end up. I suppose it would stop happening once you become more familiar with it or change the screenshot function within the setting of the phone.
Around the back is where one of the main features of this phone is to be found. I am of course meaning the camera module. The entire module itself is encased in a stainless steel camera decor (bump) which stretches to the edge of the frame. The back panel itself consists of Corning Gorilla Glass 5 to protect from being scratched and gives some impact protection. However, in the colour, I have (Eternal Green) the phone is a slippy customer so some sort of case would be a wise investment.
Here are a few shots of the official Oneplus 11 5g Aramid Fibre Bumper Case that i have been testing on the phone to stop it from slipping out of my hands and off flat surfaces!
The camera module itself consists of four three different cameras:
Main Camera:-
Sensor: Sony IMX890
Sensor Size: 1/1.56″
Megapixels: 50
Pixel Size: 1.0 μm
Lens Quantity: 6P
Optical Image Stabilization: OIS
Electronic Image Stabilization: Yes
Focal Length: 24mm equivalent
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Ultra-Wide Camera:-
Sensor: Sony IMX581
Sensor Size: 1/2″
Megapixels: 48
Lens Quantity: 6P
Aperture: ƒ/2.2
Field of View: 115°
Portrait Tele Camera:
Sensor: Sony IMX709
Sensor Size: 1/2.74″
Megapixels: 32
Lens Quantity: 6P
Aperture: ƒ/2.0
Here is a close-up of the camera module
The last thing in this module is the Duel LED flash which is very bright!
Around the front is a glorious 6.7″ Super Fuid AMOLED LPTO 3 display, that has a PPI of 525 and a resolution of 3216 by 1440 to make it QHD+. The screen has a refresh rate of between 1Hz and 120Hz depending on the content being viewed and this is something I will cover later on in my review. The aspect ratio is a very reasonable 20.1:9 which feels about right for a panel of this size. The other features of the display are that it has a response rate of up to 1000 Hz, Supports sRGB, Display P3 and has a 10-bit colour depth. as if this wasn’t enough the display supports Dolby Vision and is covered by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus. I am sure that you will agree that on paper this looks pretty impressive and i can assure you that in person none of that impressiveness is lost!
Quite a nice tidy package I am sure you will agree. Now on with the specs sheet.
Specifications
So this is a pretty banging phone on the Specs sheet alone but how is it in real-life usage and what does that hardware feel like to use? Onto the hardware section of the review and we will throw in some performance just for good measure as well!
Hardware and Performance
A pretty face does not always mean a powerful core, however, I am very pleased to advise that this could not be further from the truth with the OnePlus 11 5G. The phone as we can see from the above specs sheet is packing a very powerful heart in the form of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor and this n turn is ably assisted by 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM on my phone with the added assistance of the RAM-Vita which will allow for the allocation of extra Virtual RAm if the OS find that the phone needs that extra boost in computational power. Not only is the RAM massive and fast but the storage on offer is, in my case 256GB of UFS.40. The combination of these elements allow for very fast read and write speeds and allows up to 44 simultaneous apps to be active in the background. Now I can not imagine a scenario where I will ever need that amount of apps to be open as I tend to break out into a cold sweat when I have more than 10 apps running at the same time. It is good to know however that I had the desire to run this amount I could do so without any significant problem
Along with the massive and quick storage, we have an equally large and fast charging battery in the form of a 5000mAh two-cell battery which charges at up to 100w via the SUPERVOOC fast charging technology that has now become synonymous with devices from the Oneplus, OPPO and Realme families. If you are reading this in America please be warned however due to the difference in power standards you will only get 80w of fast charging and your charging time will be a tad slower than the advertised time of 25 minutes from 1% to 100%. The fact that this battery can charge so quickly does lessen the sting a bit of the removal of Wireless charging from the device.
This is a strange decision as it was present on both of the last two OnePlus devices in the form of the OnePlus 9 family and the OnePlus 10 family (the OnePlus 10T notwithstanding). What makes it even stranger still is that OnePlus have included wireless charging into the Oneplus Buds Pro 2 which are being sold alongside the new phone and it would have been great to have been able to utilize the reverse wireless charging feature of the phone to allow you to quickly easily top up the earbuds when on the go.
The battery and its rapid charging could be seen as a point of concern to some as this has long been the weakest link for a lot of phones in the past. So in order to counter this Oneplus has developed its Battery Health Engine. Now coming into these phone reviews as someone who deals with the concerns of battery health daily due to owning an Electric vehicle, this sounds and indeed functions in a very similar manner to what is being done on the massive multi-cell battery backs that power the EVs of today.
In essence, the BHS will allow you to continue to use the total battery capacity and obtain faster speeds for longer by the use of the Smart Battery Health Algorithm and Battery Healing Technology. The former will allow the phone to self-regulate charging speeds automatically only doing the fastest charging when the phone needs it or you demand it by overriding a setting. it can also implement an 80% limit on the battery for normal daily charging if you are not regularly using the total capacity in one session. The latter is actually down to the electrolyte formula that has been used in the battery and this will help to protect the anode and cathode in that battery for longer meaning that the cells will last longer. Now all of this is great to see on paper but the sceptic in me has been burned before with EVs and their promised performance so the fact that the BHS system and the batteries have been independently tested by TÜV Rheinland gives me some peace of mind for the long term. How long i hear you ask well over 1600 charger cycles or 4 years (based on a daily charge session) whichever comes first.
So there is a side effect that we know about when it comes to faster charging and high performance and this is our old friend heat. Now don’t get me wrong, with the current temperatures as they are in the UK I am all for my phone doubling as a hand warmer! However, this is yet another thing that will hamper the longevity of a phone so therefore it is bad joo joo. So under that smooth glossy exterior of the OnePlus 11 5G, we find it has been optimised to try and reduce that thermal afterthought as much as possible to again ensure that you are getting the maximum performance for your movie binging, gaming, video recording, editing sessions when you are on the go. I would like to introduce the Cryo-velocity VC Cooling system, which claims to be the largest ever on the OnePlus 11 Series device’s (ED note could there be others in the series coming later on….) at a 3685 mm². if you were to lay that flat then you are looking at a piece of paper in between the sizes of A4 and A3 which is pretty awesome to think is inside the phone in the form of a Vapour chamber! If all that wasn’t enough then we also have a 5673 mm² graphene mid-frame layer to add to the mix. That is a huge amount for such a small device and it is hard to imagine how they managed to get all this inside the phone so here is a visual to show it off for you.
So what does all of this mean for performance well OnePlus has always had a mantra when it comes to performance and it is Never Settle and one of the key components of that is Smooth and Fast. The Oneplus 11 ticks the boxes when it comes down to this. I loaded up a few games to try and see how they would perform in testing conditions. I am pleased to advise that during some short but intense gaming sessions, the phone stayed cool and comfortable to hold and allowed me to play with everything on maximum settings with ease. I used F1 Mobile Racing and Republique as my test games. Both of these games ran smoothly with a consistent 29-30FPS on the screen even at their highest settings.
F1 Mobile
Obviously, these are not the most demanding games that could be run on the phone but they are what i am currently playing and I found them to work absolutely perfectly. I also took the time to run a few benchmarks on the phone and the result are shown in the screenshots below.
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- OnePlus 11
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- Galaxy Z Fold 4
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- OnePlus 11
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- OnePlus 11 Geekbench ^
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- Galaxy Z Fold 4 Geekbench 6
As you can see from the benchmarks that I have completed the OnePlus 11 is getting a faster FPS consistently over the Galaxy Z Fold 4 it also seems to handle the thermals a bit better as well as this was found in the sustained load test in Wildlife Extreme Stress test on 3D Mark. In the Geekbaench test the galaxy ZFold 4 does have a slightly high single-core score but when it comes to the multicore processing the OnePlus 11 comes out on top again.
Both of these devices are extremely powerful devices and will both be more than adequate for mobile gaming and I have not seen any sluggishness when using either of them in my daily use.
So now that we have established how powerful the phone is what can it do in terms of photography? This is a key area where this phone needs to perform well and i am not going to take it easy on the phone as I am going to be pitching it up against the Pixel 7 Pro which is one of the better phones for camera performance.
Camera
So let’s look at some macro Shots first
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- OnePlus 11 5G
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- Pixel 7 Pro
To my eyes, the pictures are both good but there seems to be a tad more detail on the face from the shot taken on Pixel 7 Pro. Also getting the OnePlus 11 5G to go into macro mode is a bit more of a faff as it wants to jump between macro and normal modes too easily.
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- OnePlus 11 5G
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- Pixel 7 Pro
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- OnePlus 11 5G
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- Pixel 7 Pro
Some more generic shots here one of my back garden where you can’t really see a massive difference I would say that things are about equal in these two images. The second set or some inside shots of my watch and OnePlus 11 5G edges it out for me in this one as it is a more pleasing image.
The next set is of a tricky lighting condition and in this group, you can see more from the OnePlus 11 5G shot than you can in the Pixel 7 Pro.
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- OnePlus 11
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- Pixe 7 Pro
It is very close though but in the bottom right-hand corner, you can see a bit more colour detail of the frame on the picture from the OnePlus 11 5G.
Next up is a comparison of Zoom levels taken at the standard levels of 0.6 x zoom(o.5 x zoom for the Pixel 7 Pro) 1x ,2x and 5,
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- OnePlus 11 5G 0.6x zoom
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- OnePlus 11 5G 1x zoom
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- OnePlus 11 5G 2 x zoom
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- OnePlus 11 5G 5 x zoom
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- Pixel 7 Pro 0.5x zoom
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- Pixel 7 Pro 1x zoom
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- Pixel 7 Pro 2x zoom
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- Pixel 7 Pro 5x zoom
Some interesting things are going on here which i am a bit surprised by Overall at the different zoom levels the OnePlus 11 5G shots are better and truer to life than that of the Pixel 7 Pro shots. if you look in particular at the colours of the window sills on the OnePlus 11 5g they remain white through all the zoom levels. When you look closer at the Pixel 7 Pro shots you can see that the window sills adopt the blueish tint from the wall colour. Overall the Oneplus 11 5G images are truer to life. However, in the Ultawide images for each phone, the Pixel 7 Pro shows the colour of the wall much better than the OnePlus 11 5G which indicates that when the Ultrawide lens is being used the OnePlus 11 5G is lacking colour reproduction.
Time for a selfie shootout
I am expecting this too again by similar in terms of the results but I will say that the process of turning all the enhancements off on the OnePlus 11 5G is a bit more involved than that of the Pixel so if you are just looking for the unenhanced image then bear this in mind.
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- OnePlus 11 5G
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- Pixel 7 Pro
You will see that the OnePlus 11 has got a slightly wider angle than the Pixel 7 Pro but that being said you do have the wide angle available as an option on the Pixel 7 Pro which is not a feature found on the OnePlus 11. In terms of colour, I would say that they are even, with the Oneplus 11 5G being a tad brighter when you look at the wall in the background. However, once it comes down to sharpness this is where the Pixel take a lead. When I look at a zoomed-in version of the images focusing on my beard I can see more defined hairs on the Pixel 7 Pro than on the OnePlus 11 5G.
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- OnePlus 11 5G
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- Pixel 7 Pro
This could be a by-product of the fact that to get a real-world image of what you actually look like you need to turn off a load of the extra AI stuff on the OnePlus 11 5G. In isolation the OnePlus 11 5Gis a perfectly adequate selfie shooter. It also does a very good job of getting portraits when you actually select that mode. There is a noticeable difference and you can adjust the depth of field focus on the portrait mode with the OnePlus 11 5Gwhich you cannot do on the Pixel 7 Pro until you have taken the image it can be edited afterwards.
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- OnePlus 11 5G portrait mode
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- Pixel 7 Pro portrait mode
So that is the end of the comparison of the images and I think it is fair to say that in most areas the OnePlus 11 5G is a good camera and it stacks up very nicely against the Pixel 7 Pro. There is however one area where the Pixel 7 Pro stands out above the OnePlus 11 5G and indeed in this reviewer’s opinion. This area i simplicity in the camera UI. As i mentioned briefly above there are a lot of different things that you can tweak and fiddle with on the OnePlus 11 5G and for me, this is actually a turn-off. I like my camera interface to be simple and I don’t want to have to faff with setting to get the image I want. If you do like using filters and tweaking settings even in the normal modes then the OnePlus is probably for you but for me i want simple and this is where the Pixel 7 Pro wins out for me and even with the choice of phones that I have is always my go-to when I need a camera I can rely on 100%.
Below i just want to share some more images of what can be achieved by the OnePlus 11 5G when you are willing to play with some of the other settings including the option for using XPAN mode which i never really fully figured out if I am honest!
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- 0.6x zoom
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- 1 x zoom
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- 2 x zoom
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- 5 x zoom
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- 10x zoom
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- 20x zoom
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- Portrait Mode
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- Macro
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- XPAN Black and White
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- XPAN Colour
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- TiltShift
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- Night mode
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- Night mode Light-trails
So With the stills camera covered pretty extensively, I also wanted to include a little bit of Video for you just to show what the phone is capable of. This sample has been recorded at 1080p using a 30 FPS second framerate but the video will allow up to 8K and up to 24fps when in that mode. Due to the constraints of WordPress I have not been able to upload that sample and i don’t really ever see myself using it, however, it is there if you want it!
I am happy now to move on to another area where OnePlus has been scrutinised a lot recently and this is the question of Software.
Software
OnePlus phones used to be nearly unique in the relative sparseness of things that they added to the UI on their phones. But as with the inevitable march of time they have also had to change things up as time has moved forward. So over the past few years, we have seen what was once a user favourite in the form of Oxygen UI become Oxygen OS 13 in its current form. I have found that this new OS bears a remarkable similarity to an OS i have also seen on another brand of Phone in the form of a Realme device. (see Realme GT 2 5G review).
This is not surprising given that Realme and Oppo devices run Colour OS and OnePlus devices run Oxygen OS but hold on a minute those OS’s are different are they? Well dear reader this is where eth problem lies the lines between these OS’s have now blurred significantly so much so that in the far east the OnePlus 11 5G was launched with colour OS 13 instead of Oxygen OS 13 and if you were to place phones from each region next to each other you would struggle to identify the difference between them.
But what does this all mean for the user? Well in short it is actually not that bad when compared to something like One UI from Samsung or Magic UI from Honor but if you compare it to what Oxygen UI used to be then it is also not that great. I loved Oxygen UI back in the day because it was as close as you could get to having a Nexus/Pixel phone without having one of them, it was also normally significantly cheaper than the aforementioned devices as well! However, now the Oneplus Phones are no longer clean in terms of software and they have added extra features and started to duplicate apps which is not a good place to be in my book.
Dont get me wrong there are new features to Oxygen OS 13 that I like the cute Always on Display that shows either Polar bears or Coral and the effect that temperature has on them is a nice touch, I also like the gaming app that collates your game into one place and has the ability to get pop pout tools when playing a game and also block notifications. However, there is a lot of other largely useless stuff on there that just gets in the way. I dislike that I am limited to only having an app drawer that will not show more than 4 icons across.
I don’t need the duplicate apps that are present and I shouldn’t be seeing what is essentially a storefront for OnePlus every time I go into the settings screen.
Now i know that OnePlus is not alone in the above implementations of strange add-ons to UI’s but that is what used to distinguish OnePlus from the rest of the industry they were not just putting extra bloat in for the sake of it and they kept the UI clean and streamlined. A lot of this may just be me being a bit grumpy and old-fashioned but I liked that I didn’t use to have to spend an hour removing unnecessary apps from my phone to get it to work the way I want it to. I am sure that there will be users who are new to OnePlus who have been pulled in by the Specs and the camera who will not even notice these changes from the old to the new but for me it is annoying. Dont get me wrong once i had spent some time cleaning up duplicate apps (there are not that many to be fair) and turned off the extra features that I did not want or need then I enjoyed using the phone a lot and the software is not bad at all. I just prefer things to be a bit cleaner like that what is to be found on Pixels and dare I say iPhones!
Moving on from that rant let’s get int the conclusions about this phone.
Conclusion
As i inclined at the top of this review i am impressed with what I have seen about the OnePlus 11 5G and i am happy to have had the chance to use it for the time i have been able to do so. I suppose though the real test of it is whether I would buy one with my own hard-earned cash. Well for me it is a no but where does that leave you the normal consumer? I would defiantly give this phone a look it is a great-looking and very powerful phone that comes in at an awesome price point.
Yes, there are a few things that are missing such as Wireless Charging and a full IP 68 rating but the lack of wireless charging was really a non-issue for me as the battery life is really good and the IP rating doesn’t bother me at all.
I was also very impressed by the camera as this is a massive step in the right direction from what I had seen during my last time using a Co-developed camera (OnePlus 9 series). it seems that OnePlus and Hassleblad have actually figured out what is important to people and made sure that this works for them. In all honesty, If you were to give me a batch of photos from either the Pixel 7 Pro or the OnePlus 11 5G and ask me which was which I would struggle to tell you either way.
So if you fancy a phone that is one of the most powerful currently in the market with a respectable camera and a sensible price point, then you could do a lot worse than getting a OnePlus 11 5G, and the good news is that if you do want one you can order it now from OnePlus or from Amazon right now. Prices start at £729.00, when you are there then be sure to also pick up one of their cases, as well as this, is a slippy customer, particularly in the Eternal Green colour like the one I have been testing!