Best Features Of The OnePlus 12
Performance
Let’s take a look at some of the best and some of the worst things about the new OnePlus 12. Starting off with the good stuff, let’s talk about performance. There’s a lot to like here; the phone comes packed with Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor. It offers notable performance and efficiency gains over the H Gen 2, which was already a really great chip itself. On top of that, the OnePlus 12 comes in RAM configurations of either 12, 16, or a whopping 24 GB, with tons of fast UFS 4.0 storage and improved heat dissipation. The phone is an absolute speed demon, and to add that cherry on top, it has 100 W wired charging (80 W here in the US), which can charge the phone from 0 to 100% in around half an hour, 50 W wireless charging as well, and 10 W reverse wireless charging.
Display
The next best thing about this phone is the display. It’s pretty phenomenal. We’re looking at a 6.82-inch Quad HD Plus LTPO AMOLED panel with a 120 Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision, and HDR 10 Plus. It’s pixel-dense, super crisp and colorful, and it’s the brightest OnePlus that you can get at 4500 nits. Aside from the Find X7 Pro, which also has the same peak brightness, it’s got a 90.8% screen-to-body ratio. This is one of the best displays on a smartphone right now, from fluidity, quality, aesthetics, and brightness—it’s just pure eye candy.
Design
The design this year is a more mature take on what we got with the OnePlus 11. I think it looks good, and for a phone with this large of a screen, it’s actually quite comfortable to hold and use, with nice curvature and solid quality materials. While the look of the camera housing is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, it does look a lot better than what we got with last year’s model, and I think it’s as good as it gets as far as this particular design language is concerned. I also enjoy the marble design of this Flowy Emerald color. It’s incredibly unique and one of the more striking designs on your phone.
Battery Life
Solid battery performance is observed here. The phone supports a beefy 5400 mAh battery, and paired with optimization and efficiency improvements from the 8 Gen 3 processor, you’ll be good to go whether it be light casual usage or heavy power usage type. Whether you’re putting the phone through a lot or not, the battery will last you for 3 days of usage without a problem, and you should be seeing some very impressive screen on times.
Cameras
OnePlus has also continued to step up their camera game, and you can argue that the 12’s cameras punch above their weight class in many cases. They can easily compete with and even surpass results from other phones at the top of the food chain. They’re not perfect, of course, but you can definitely expect to get great high-quality photos all around, especially with the upgraded telephoto lens which got bumped up to a periscope setup. Big thumbs up for that. The 11’s cameras were a big step up from the 10 Pros, and the 12’s array moves that needle in the right direction. At this point, I think it’s safe to say that the cameras are no longer a crutch for this line of phones and are now more comfortably one of its strengths.
Areas for Improvement in the OnePlus 12
OS Updates
As for the not-so-great stuff, OnePlus’s current promise of four years of OS updates and 5 years of security patches now puts them far behind the competition. Google set the new standard at 7 years of OS updates last fall, and Samsung recently met them there at 7 years as well. Unfortunately, for now, anyway, the OnePlus 12 is stuck at 4 years. This 7-year OS update commitment is definitely a trend we like to see more Android OEMs follow along with.
Lack of AI Features
AI features have also quickly become a major selling point for heavy hitters like the Pixel 8 Pro and Galaxy S24 Ultra, and that’s not going to slow down anytime soon. And the thing is, a number of these AI features have proven to be genuinely useful rather than marketing gimmicks. So it’s odd seeing that OnePlus hasn’t followed in those footsteps quite yet. It’ll be interesting to see if they do at all, especially with all the quality of life potential that could be added to the user experience of Oxygen OS.
Optical Fingerprint Scanner
This one’s pretty minor, but I think it’s time for OnePlus to swap the optical fingerprint scanner with something else. In fact, it’s been time. Moving on from this scanner, which requires bright lights in order to be able to read fingerprints, in favor of something like an ultrasonic scanner, is long overdue. The bright light can be obnoxious when you’re trying to unlock the phone in dark environments, and ultrasonic tech has been around for a while at this point. It’s both faster and more reliable. They can even opt for a side-mounting capacitive sensor like the one on the OnePlus Open. Either way, it’s time, OnePlus. It’s time.
Wireless Charging
Another little annoyance is that as great as 50 W wireless charging is, in order to utilize that speed, you need to buy OnePlus’s $50 proprietary charging stand. If you skip out on that, you can still use any regular wireless charger, which is cool, but charging will then be capped at 15 W.
Better Alternatives
Now, the OnePlus 12 starts at $800, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. But what I want to point out here is that OnePlus is also releasing the 12R. This is a variation of the 12 that’s been stripped of a few things like the telephoto lens, wireless charging. It’s got the 8 Gen 2 processor instead of the 8 Gen 3 and a lower resolution display, among a few other things. But its screen is still high quality, the H Gen 2 is still a great processor, and it’s got a slightly larger battery capacity at 5,500 milliamp. So while you may miss out on a few things, the 12R is still nothing to sneeze at.
Anyways, those are the five best and five worst things about the OnePlus 12. Let me know what you think about this flagship.
