- The OnePlus 12 is a great flagship phone that feels familiar.
- The technology is impressive, but it just fades into the background.
- Wireless charging is back, and it's fast.
The OnePlus 12 is the company's latest flagship Android phone, and it's a solid piece of engineering that, much like Apple's iPhone range, packs a lot of tech under the hood to ensure you have a smooth, effortless experience when using the device .
This new phone won't wow your friends with its looks, but that might not be as important as some people think.
The OnePlus 12 is a fantastic iteration of a tried-and-true formula. It sports a similar design to the previous model, with a larger 6.82-inch display, a bright 4,500-nit display, and a more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. The 5,400 mAh battery is also 10% more energy efficient. 12 supports 80W fast charging (one of the coolest features ever), and finally, OnePlus is bringing wireless charging back to its flagship device, with 50W fast charging available via a special OnePlus Wireless Charger.
Holding the OnePlus 12 is fun. To be honest, it's almost too light and thin. I've always wanted a pop socket or some other type of retention system because I'm always worried that my slim, attractive phone could slip out of my fingers at any moment. The black model I played with had a pebbled back panel, which probably should have helped that, but it still felt a bit short. Looks pretty, but maybe I need a box to put this thing in.
The display is gorgeous - the colors are deep and the backlit display is bright and easy to see and use. The touch screen and scrolling animations are very stable thanks to a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. There's even technology that adjusts the refresh rate based on your activity, such as 10Hz when reading an e-book or 60Hz when making video calls.
Even in crowded areas, demanding games like Genshin Impact and Diablo Immortal run well on the device without any stuttering. Oxygen OS offers some gaming coverage - when I set it to gaming mode (a higher performance rate than balanced mode), the device got very hot. OnePlus knows that gamers like to play while plugged in, so they've given it a sizable cooling update, which the company calls a Dual Freeze Speed VC cooling system.
OnePlus says the cooling system is larger than any other company's and offers a better way for heat to escape to the interior so your gaming sessions don't overheat the phone. In practical terms, this means that while the OnePlus 12 will still get warm while gaming, even when plugged in to preserve battery power, it won't freeze mid-game.
I installed Genshin Impact on a OnePlus 12 and iPhone 15, and they both got hot, especially when connected to power. The OnePlus 12 always ran smoothly, games looked great, and it never got so hot that I had to shut it down.
The camera of the OnePlus 12 is very good. Takes great photos in both bright and low light. I'm not a professional photographer, but from what I've used, this camera is great. It boots up quickly and lets me quickly select Pro, Video, Photo, and Portrait modes.
Portrait mode is neat, as each zoom level (1x, 2x, and 3x) mimics a specific Hasselblad lens, resulting in a variety of bokeh effects that can help you take more artistic photos. The "More" button hides even more photo content, such as night mode, high-resolution photos, panoramas, movies, slow motion, time-lapse, long exposure, dual-view video, text scanning, tilt-shift, and Xpan. call.
Pro Mode (now, unfortunately, called Master Mode) lets you tweak all the little settings to your liking, including hue, sharpness, contrast, vignetting, saturation, and more.
The company says it equipped the OnePlus 12 with a 50MP wide-angle camera using Sony's LYT-808 sensor, which is a "first" in the industry. It also promises a 1/1.4 sensor, 1.12-micron pixel size, f/1.6 aperture, 85-degree field of view, and a 23mm equivalent focal length lens. 4MP 3x optical periscope telephoto camera with 6x in-sensor digital zoom and 70mm equivalent focal length lens. The 114-degree ultra-wide-angle camera has a 48MP and 16mm equivalent focal length lens.
Well, that means you can take a variety of photos (up close, zoomed in, wide angle, etc.) in a variety of settings and get really good results. I'll compare OnePlus 12 photos to iPhone 15 photos any day.
The OnePlus 12 is priced at $799.99 for 12GB RAM and 256GB storage, and $899.99 for the 16GB/512GB model. Both come in black or a flowing emerald green, which looks nothing like the patterns you'd see on countertops.
You can trade in any phone in any condition and get a minimum of $100 USD ($150 CAD) off a new phone, up to $700 off on a trade-in.
You can also buy the OnePlus 12 at Best Buy and Amazon for the same price, but without the same perks (though you can upgrade to 512GB of RAM for free).
Will this phone wow your friends like the OnePlus Open and others? Probably not. But does that make using your phone to take photos, watch media or play games a pleasure? That's pretty much it.
If you want a solid, reliable, and useful device that will make your smartphone life better (and it's affordable), then you should check out the OnePlus 12.
Update 1/23/24: Updated third paragraph to clarify wireless and wired charging power.
