OnePlus has officially announced the Nord, its first serious attempt at a midrange handset since 2015’s ill-fated OnePlus X. Yet, despite the fact that it starts at just £379 (around $480), the phone shares a lot of the DNA of the $699 OnePlus 8 released just a few short months ago, which, along with the OnePlus 8 Pro, was the company’s flagship handset for this year.
For that price, you get a 90Hz display that measures 6.44 inches with a resolution of 2400×1080. The display is also flat, a big upgrade over the pointlessly curved, distorted screens you see on most flagships. There’s a Snapdragon 765G, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage, and a 4100mAh battery. There’s also a more expensive SKU that upgrades you to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
For rear cameras you get the same main 48MP sensor as the OnePlus 8, plus an 8MP wide-angle lens, 2MP macro lens, and 5MP depth sensor. The front looks like a Samsung Galaxy S10+ with dual front cameras in an oval-shaped cutout. Besides the main 32MB selfie cam, you get a second 8MP wide-angle camera. That’s six cameras on what is supposed to be a budget phone.
When it comes to the front-facing camera, however, OnePlus is actually breaking new ground with the Nord. Here you’ll find two front-facing cameras, including an 8-megapixel sensor ultrawide camera with a 105-degree field of view, as well as a more traditional 32-megapixel selfie camera. It means the screen’s hole-punch cutout is twice as big, but it’s a useful feature if you’re trying to take a selfie with a group of friends or just want to include more of your environment.
There’s no water resistance, or at least no official IP rating. OnePlus says there are still some rubber seals around the phone that provide some water protection, but it’s hard to know how much without proper testing. The phone has a USB-C port, NFC, an in-screen optical fingerprint reader, a single speaker on the bottom, and OnePlus’ 30W Warp Charging, which the company says will take the phone from “empty to 70% in just half an hour.” The phone runs Android 10 and comes with two years of major OS updates and three years of security updates; although, like other OnePlus phones, they won’t be monthly.
The result is a really interesting device that, on paper at least, ticks a lot of the boxes for what you’d like to see in a modern smartphone, regardless of whether it’s technically a midrange or a flagship. That’s especially interesting in the context of the recently released OnePlus 8, of which the Nord is definitely nipping at the heels.
The Nord ships via oneplus.com on August 4.
