Ameya DalviMar 20, 2023 18:47:58 IST

Execs:
– Sturdy construct, feels nice in hand
– Sure options are even higher than OnePlus 10 Professional
– Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC – as quick as they arrive
– Glorious QHD+ LTPO3 AMOLED show
– Good primary digital camera efficiency even in low mild
– Succesful assist forged in images division
– Good battery backup, costs absolutely in lower than half hour

Cons:
– RIP OxygenOS
– No ingress safety
– Cumbersome charger, no wi-fi charging

Ranking: 4/5
Worth: Rs 56,999 to Rs 61,999

At first of 2022, plenty of techies and OnePlus followers had been enthusiastic about what the corporate would carry to the desk within the supposed OnePlus 10; a quantity that fascinates many. By the top of 12 months, the joy changed into disappointment because the telephone was a no-show. To make issues worse, the OnePlus 10T that the corporate launched in direction of the top of the 12 months appeared extra like a R sequence telephone, thus fueling rumours that the long-lasting sequence was on its deathbed.

Come 2023, OnePlus put to mattress all these rumours with the launch of the OnePlus 11 5G, a becoming consultant of the sequence (non-R/non-Professional). In actual fact, the brand new telephone is full of sure options that one would typically affiliate with the Professional sequence. A lot in order that it creates an existential disaster for the OnePlus 10 Professional. After having used the OnePlus 11 5G for over a month, it’s time to see whether it is certainly value its not-so-modest asking value and likewise a greater different to the ten Professional.

OnePlus 11 5G Design: Premium construct; good design makes the telephone really feel compact
The OnePlus 11 5G appears loads like the ten Professional with a curved show, slim bezels and a punch-hole on the prime left of the display for the selfie digital camera. The identical applies to the again of the Titan Black variant that we bought for evaluation, with a matte glass that may be a neat little throwback to the sandstone end of the primary OnePlus telephone, and it additionally stays smudge-free. For the primary time because the OnePlus 8T/9R, you get an Aluminium body on a non-Professional OnePlus machine. The body is a contact shiny right here as in comparison with the matte end on the ten Professional. 

The alert slider is again, which inexplicably went lacking on the 10T. Whereas the place of the rear cameras stays much like the ten sequence telephones, the squarish digital camera island now makes approach for a round one on the 11. It’s arduous to say which one appears higher, however neither look unhealthy, so no complaints. It does mix properly into the body similar to the show. The show is protected by a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, whereas the again has Corning Gorilla Glass 5 safety in opposition to scratches.

The OnePlus 11 5G is 0.3 mm slimmer than the 10T, however the weight is sort of related, and tilts the size at 205 grams. I wouldn’t time period this telephone compact or mild, however courtesy of its good design and even weight distribution, the telephone neither feels too large nor too heavy in hand. The amount rockers are positioned alongside the left edge whereas the facility button and alert slider are on the precise. A SIM tray, speaker and a USB-C port will be discovered alongside the underside edge. The in-display fingerprint scanner is positioned a superb inch and a half above the underside edge, which makes it ergonomic. 

OnePlus 11 5G Show: Non-Professional goes QHD with a LTPO3 AMOLED show
One of many large adjustments right here is the show, and it’s not simply the curved edges I communicate of. For the primary time ever on a non-Professional OnePlus telephone, we now have a QHD+ show with a decision of 3216 x 1440 pixels, versus a Full HD+ display. That’s much like what you get on the ten Professional. The show on each telephones has an adaptive refresh price of 120 Hz, however whereas the Professional makes use of a LTPO2 AMOLED show, the OnePlus 11 5G flaunts the brand new LTPO3 commonplace with a variable refresh price starting from 1 Hz all the way in which to 120 Hz for higher energy effectivity. 

Each telephones have 6.7-inch HDR10+ compliant shows, however the one right here affords Dolby Imaginative and prescient compliance too; a welcome addition. The ten-bit show on the OnePlus 11 can rise up to 1300 nits vivid, and is vivid sufficient even underneath direct daylight. You get 4 display color modes – Vivid, Pure, Cinematic and Good, together with a slider for color temperature adjustment. Pure mode lives as much as its title, however in the event you discover the output a tad boring, you possibly can at all times attempt Vivid or Good and transfer the color temperature slider a bit to the hotter facet for good outcomes.

OnePlus 11 5G Efficiency: As quick because it will get in the mean time
OnePlus has opted for the newest and probably the most highly effective Qualcomm SoC round, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2; the primary telephone in India with that SoC. You get two variants of the telephone right here, one with 8 GB LPDDR5 RAM and 128 GB UFS 3.1 storage and the opposite with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB UFS 4.0 storage. For sure, it’s blazing quick, and the scores are persistently larger than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip discovered within the OnePlus 10T and 10 Professional.

We ran a couple of artificial benchmarks to gauge the distinction in efficiency between the OnePlus 11 5G and OnePlus 10 Professional. In Geekbench 5, the 11 5G scored 1079 and 4077 within the single-core and multi-core checks respectively, whereas the ten Professional managed to attain 968 and 3377 within the respective checks. Thus the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip delivers a 11.5% and 20.7% soar in single-core and multi-core efficiency respectively, which is spectacular. The PCMark Work 3.0 benchmark rating was neck and neck with the 2 telephones scoring 10355 and 10374 respectively. 

To check the gaming capabilities, we ran the Wild Life and Wild Life Excessive checks from the 3DMark suite, and each telephones had been too highly effective for the Wild Life benchmark and maxed it out. Within the Wild Life Excessive benchmark, the OnePlus 11 5G managed to attain 3623 with 21.7 common FPS, whereas the ten Professional scored 2581 with 15.5 common FPS. That may be a huge 40% soar in efficiency for the Adreno 740 GPU over the Adreno 730, which is mighty spectacular. For sure, the OnePlus 11 5G managed to run each recreation we tried on it easily and not using a stutter on the highest setting.

This telephone has two audio system, one behind the earpiece and the opposite on the base of the telephone. Collectively they produce a reasonably loud sound output with good stereo separation. The telephone is Bluetooth 5.3 compliant and has dual-band WiFi with assist for a/b/g/n/ac/6/7 requirements. We had no purpose to complain in regards to the name high quality or reception in the course of the course of our testing. 

OnePlus 11 5G Battery efficiency: Good battery life, brisk 100W charging
The battery capability has seen a slight increment from 4800 mAh on the 10T to 5000 mAh right here. It lasts for nearly a day and a half of reasonable use because of the highly effective but energy environment friendly Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. After all, lengthy hours of gaming will drain the battery quicker. However fear not, the bundled 100W charger takes the battery from 1% to 100% within the promised 25 minutes. Charging velocity is the one space the place its predecessor, the OnePlus 10T has the higher hand, because of its 150W SuperVOOC charger. 

The bundled charger right here is comparatively slower as compared and takes 5 further minutes to cost the OnePlus 11 5G as in comparison with the 10T, which is completely acceptable. Since I had an older 65W OnePlus charger at hand, I attempted utilizing that with the 11 too. Apparently, it takes simply half-hour to cost this machine absolutely. Now, the bundled 100W charger is sort of cumbersome and heavy, so if in case you have an older 65W charger mendacity round, it wouldn’t be a foul concept to make use of that in journey, leaving the massive man at dwelling.

OnePlus 11 5G Digicam efficiency: Good selection of rear cameras, superb picture high quality
You get three cameras behind the OnePlus 11 5G, and no, it isn’t that usually boring 50MP+8MP+2MP mixture that the corporate slapped on most of their telephones over the previous 12 months or two proper from the Nord sequence to the 10R to even the 10T. The selection of cameras right here is way extra smart and versatile; no pointless items to replenish advertising and marketing sheets. The star of the present is a 50MP major digital camera with a Sony IMX890 sensor and optical picture stabilisation (OIS). 

The second digital camera is a 48MP ultra-wide shooter primarily based on aSony IMX581 sensor with 115-degrees FOV and auto-focus. That is most likely the primary time because the OnePlus 7T that auto-focus returns to the ultra-wide digital camera on a non-Professional OnePlus telephone. That lets this digital camera double up as a macro digital camera too. And lastly, there’s a 32MP telephoto digital camera with Sony’s IMX709 sensor and 2X optical zoom that can be used for clicking prime quality portrait pictures.

The OnePlus 11 5G advantages from Hasselblad’s color tuning in addition to their experience in portrait images. Shifting on to picture high quality, the first digital camera clicks some glorious pictures with superb element and spectacular dynamic vary. Colors are certainly near pure most often, although not as pure because the Google Pixel 7 Professional’s pictures. The trace of additional saturation is one thing a number of customers may very well want for social media posts. 

The low mild images right here sees an enormous enchancment over its predecessors, particularly on the primary digital camera. It preserves a large amount of element in low-light captures with minimal noise. Even the colors look pure. When the sunshine drops additional, the Evening mode kicks in routinely. I fairly favored the Evening mode right here because it makes issues only a tad brighter with out making the picture overly vivid, which is the case with a number of different telephones.

The ultra-wide digital camera is equally spectacular in nicely lit situations. The color replica and dynamic vary are comparable, and the pictures have a superb quantity of element. However as the sunshine drops, the pictures are likely to get softer, and I might counsel switching to the primary digital camera in low mild. As I discussed earlier, the ultra-wide digital camera has auto-focus, and allows you to seize macro pictures too. If you get nearer to a topic, the telephone routinely switches to macro mode. 

The macro pictures is usually a hit or a miss because it tends to wrestle with the main target at instances. So finest to click on a few further pictures on this mode with regular palms. When it focuses proper, the captured pictures are fairly good and approach higher than most ‘devoted’ 2MP and 5MP macro cameras that you just get on a number of telephones. The telephoto digital camera does a superb job, and 2X zoomed pictures look sharp sufficient. Something past 2X is digital zoom and as much as 5X zoomed pictures are usable. Past that they give the impression of being washed out.

The actual objective of the telephoto digital camera right here is to seize ‘skilled grade’ portrait pictures, considerably on the traces of Hasselblad cameras with XCD 30 mm and 65 mm lenses.  Sure, the 2X optical zoom is sort of helpful when capturing portrait pictures. Since I haven’t used the above lenses, I can not examine the outcomes right here with what they’re able to, however the portrait pictures listed here are fairly spectacular, particularly with human topics. It really works nicely with animals too in the event that they keep nonetheless lengthy sufficient, however the edge detection isn’t as good with different topics.

The 16MP fastened focus entrance digital camera stays unchanged for some time now. It does an honest job with selfies with pure pores and skin tones when the face is nicely lit. Whereas the entrance digital camera is restricted to 1080p video recording, the primary digital camera can now document 8K movies at 24 fps. You even have an choice for recording 4K movies at 30 and 60 fps, and might go as excessive as 240 fps for 1080p movies. You get OIS and EIS assist to compensate for shaky palms. Greatest outcomes are obtained with 4K movies and the footage is sharp and stabilised. You get fairly a couple of modes to play with.

Click on right here for unedited digital camera samples.

OS and consumer interface: OxygenOS 13, who?
Don’t get me began! I’ll try to preserve it quick. The OnePlus 11 5G runs Android 13 with ColorOS… OK superb, OxygenOS 13, in the event you say so. When OxygenOS 12 was criticised for having fairly a couple of parts of Oppo’s ColorOS, OnePlus had promised that the subsequent iteration would restore the favored UI’s previous glory, however they’ve clearly gone within the different course. If OxygenOS 12 had shades of ColorOS, model 13 has sucked the Oxygen out of it utterly and could be very a lot ColorOS itself. 

When you have by no means used an older OnePlus telephone with OxygenOS 11 or prior, or are keen to let go of the previous, OxygenOS 13 is completely usable. It stays freed from advertisements and extra bloatware. The UI is easy, lag-free and pretty simple to understand even for a novice. For the followers of the older interface, you possibly can both reside with that or reside in hope for the approaching of ‘the UI that was promised’. The great half being, OnePlus has promised three main Android updates on this telephone together with common safety updates over the subsequent few years. That’s greater than helpful.

Closing phrases: Oh so professional… virtually!
The OnePlus 11 5G will be bought for Rs 56,999 for the 8 GB RAM and 128 GB storage variant and Rs 61,999 for the one with double the RAM and storage, with a one 12 months guarantee. That will make it most likely the costliest non-Professional OnePlus telephone so far. However then, it is usually their most loaded, and does supply sure options which might be comparable and a few even higher than the OnePlus 10 Professional. It does miss out on a few options like IP68 rated ingress safety and wi-fi charging that’s out there on the Professional, however what you get right here far outweighs what you don’t.

You get a telephone with probably the most highly effective SoC round, ample RAM and storage with a quicker interface, a wonderful LTPO3 QHD+ show, good battery backup with quick charging and final however not the least, versatile and competent rear cameras. Consumer interface apart, one can anticipate OS and safety updates for one more three years maintaining the telephone related for lots longer. All issues thought-about, the OnePlus 11 5G is an effective all-round telephone and simply the perfect from the corporate up to now two years. As for alternate options, examine this out.