OnePlus Nord: Everything you need to know

The OnePlus Nord has just been announced via a unique, AR-based virtual launch event. According to OnePlus, this was the world’s first AR smartphone launch, and viewers had choices of downloading the OnePlus Nord AR app on iOS or Android to experience the launch in AR, or simply watching a conventional stream here.

Putting that ingenuity aside, the highly-anticipated OnePlus Nord is here! We’ve got everything you need to know here—specs, pricing, availability, and so on. Ready? Let’s go.

Price and availability

The OnePlus Nord is available in two colours: Gray Onyx and Blue Marble. For memory configurations, you’ll have options of either 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, or 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage. Meanwhile, customers in India have an exclusive version with just 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

The OnePlus Nord has a starting price of:

OnePlus Nord – India – INR24999 (~RM1,428)
OnePlus Nord – Europe – EUR399 (~RM1,951)
OnePlus Nord – UK – GBP379 (~RM2,055)

If you’re keen to customise the look of the Nord, OnePlus has also created three “lightweight” cases which have some pretty distinctive looks. Head over to nord.oneplus.com for more information on the cases.

Specs

Some of the specs have already been expected, and OnePlus doesn’t disappoint with the internals of their latest mid-range device—and at a price point that is very familiar to OnePlus from their early days. These include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G which is mated with up to 12GB of RAM, along with support for 5G connectivity. As discussed earlier, storage configurations go up to 256GB for storage.

Part of allure of (recent) OnePlus phones has been the high refresh rate displays. This continues with the OnePlus Nord, which features a 6.44″ Fluid AMOLED FHD+ display with a refresh rate of 90Hz—the same refresh rate as the previous generation, flagship OnePlus 7T Pro.

You’re also looking at a quad camera rear setup, which is made up of a 48MP main shooter with Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS), an 8MP ultra-wide angle camera a 5MP depth sensor, and a 2MP macro lens. Up front, OnePlus has also ditched the pop-up selfie camera for now, with a hole-punch cutout housing twin selfie cameras: a 32MP Sony IMX616 main shooter and an 8MP ultra-wide angle camera with a 105 degree field of view.

The battery is just about average for a 2020 smartphone at 4,100mAh. Still, Warp Charge 30T support means that you’ll be able to charge the 4,100mAh battery from 0–70 percent in just half an hour, according to OnePlus. Unfortunately, there is no wireless charging support—not a surprise, given the price point, as well as the same missing feature on the regular OnePlus 8.

Of course, the OnePlus Nord will ship with Android 10 out of the box, which will be layered over with OxygenOS 10.5. The UI has been one of the strengths of OnePlus’ phones over the years—and you should theoretically get a similarly “clean” experience with the company’s new mid-range smartphone. In this same line of thought, OnePlus is also going with a stock Google Messages app for text messages.

So, what do you think? Is the OnePlus Nord a new “flagship killer”? Let us know in the comments section below.

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