OnePlus Nord long-term review

Introduction

The OnePlus Nord launched to extreme fanfare back in August. The company went back to its early days of aggressive, relentless marketing for this phone that exceeded anything it had done in the past few years. One would think OnePlus was about to launch the cure for COVID-19.

The hype deflated almost instantly after launch when people realized that after all that it was indeed just another mid-range phone. Therein was the issue; the OnePlus Nord is an excellent phone. Had the marketing focused on that rather than boring people with the details of what goes on at OnePlus HQ it would have been more successful.

But enough about OnePlus' marketing shenanigans. We are back here again to discuss the phone itself after having used it daily since before it was launched and to convey our real-life impressions and feelings about it. It's a great phone this one. We might even go as far as preferring it over the bigger OnePlus 8 Pro. Now, this is something you wouldn't find in an OnePlus ad.

Design

The OnePlus Nord is undeniably an attractive phone, especially in the Marble Blue color. The design has a baby OnePlus vibe to it, where it looks like a shrunken-down version of the bigger OnePlus phones. The company made sure the design influence carried over in the form of things like the pill-shaped elongated camera array on the back, distinctive curves along the side, and the knurled alert slider.

The Nord doesn't quite have the premium materials of its flagship siblings, foregoing the metal frame for a polycarbonate one with a polished chrome finish. We have to be honest, it did fool us when we first saw it in hand and thought it was metal. The frame feels incredibly sturdy and it's only the lack of antenna lines and the slight warp to the chrome finish that give up the jig.

The back, however, is made out of Corning Gorilla Glass 5, the same as the one covering the display. In our opinion, OnePlus made the right decision of choosing the premium material for the back instead of the frame. It's possible to mistake the plastic frame for metal but there's no way to mistake plastic back for glass. The glass back on the Nord feels leagues better than the plastic backs that adorn most of the other phones in this price range (and one very expensive Samsung Galaxy Note20). We honestly couldn't care less about the frame being plastic.

The front of the Nord is ever so slightly controversial. OnePlus chose to introduce its first dual front camera setup on this phone with a neat-little pill-shaped cutout on the display. It's a bit of an eye-sore and we are also not fond of how far it intrudes into the status bar. We keep thinking back to the pop-up cameras of 2019 and can't wrap our heads around why it was abandoned in favor of these cutouts.

The highlight of the Nord's design for us is how much more compact it feels in a sea of ever-expanding smartphones. The Nord isn't a small phone by any means; it is fairly tall due to the elongated 20:9 display. It is, however, crucially narrower than a lot of big phones, which makes it a lot easier to operate. It's also a fair bit lighter, about 20g or so than most of the larger flagship devices including the OnePlus 8 Pro.

This makes the Nord feel much more user-friendly, especially to those who don't have large hands. You can operate this phone with one hand much more easily and it doesn't feel like a burden after holding it for a few minutes. The only issue is the layout of the buttons; the power and volume buttons are placed exactly opposite to each other and it's very difficult to press one without exerting pressure on the other and accidentally taking screenshots.

Display

The OnePlus Nord has a 6.44-inch, 2400x1080 resolution AMOLED display. The display is capable of refreshing at 90Hz but not all the time.

The image quality of the display is impressive for a phone in this price range. The display isn't as well calibrated as the ones on the more expensive OnePlus 8 devices (our unit had a slight green cast) but it's something you'd only notice in side by side comparisons. Otherwise, the display looks pretty well-calibrated in the most accurate Natural setting.

The best thing about the display is perhaps that it isn't curved. Yes, non-curved displays have become something to celebrate now just as the presence of headphone jacks. The flat-screen on the Nord makes it more usable than the curved screen on the OnePlus 8 Pro, as it results in fewer, almost zero accidental touches. This is helped by the phone also being physically smaller, which just makes it all that much nicer to use than the 8 Pro. Of course, the curved display criticisms can be leveled against other flagships as well but it's quite telling how it makes a more expensive phone feel worse than another, cheaper phone in the same company's lineup.

OnePlus doesn't claim HDR support for this display but the phone does support HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG content. What this means is that apps that do offer HDR content, such as YouTube and Netflix, will play content in HDR when available. Amazon Prime Video, however, ignored the HDR tag in the software and only played the SDR version.

The display, however, has a handful of issues when playing HDR content. First, it cannot reproduce the wide color gamut of HDR correctly, leading to pale colors whenever they exceed the Rec. 709 standard. Second, the calibration is even worse in HDR, with exaggerated warmth that makes whites appear yellow. Third, the part of the display outside of the video frame is dark gray and not pitch black as would be the case on an OLED. For some reason, the pixels outside the video frame stay illuminated, which only happens with HDR content and not SDR. The video itself, however, can achieve true black. This means in case you are viewing content that has a pitch-black screen, the video frame would be perfectly black surrounded by a dark gray border.

Going back to our comment on the refresh rate, the OnePlus Nord does indeed have a 90Hz refresh rate. However, it is variable, as is often the case with phones. The phone generally keeps it at 90Hz, however, some apps like YouTube, WhatsApp, Skype, Google Maps, and Camera operate at a fixed 60Hz. Some of these apps like Camera or even Google Maps are understandable. YouTube is debatable; we don't think it's necessary to have 90Hz during video playback as YouTube doesn't support videos over 60Hz but there's no reason to disable 90Hz while just scrolling through the app. Apps like WhatsApp and Skype are a complete mystery, however.

By far the worst thing regarding the refresh rate is the complete absence of support for 90Hz in games. This is not just a case with the Nord but across all OnePlus phones with high refresh rate displays. The OnePlus 8 phones support 90Hz in select titles like Fortnite and PUBG Mobile but outside of those the refresh rate is locked at 60Hz across all games. For the Nord, even Fortnite and PUBG Mobile aren't available in 90Hz. This just feels like a criminal waste of hardware capability, as gaming is one area where a high refresh rate is not just easily perceived but also is the most beneficial. By locking the display to 60Hz in games, the Nord is no better than any other phone with a 60Hz display.

Like our OnePlus 8 unit, the OnePlus Nord display has an issue where the 90Hz mode looks a bit different than the 60Hz mode. The 60Hz mode is noticeably darker due to a higher gamma and it is mostly only noticeable when using the dark mode. In the early versions of the OS, the phone would dynamically switch from 90Hz to 60Hz when you stopped interacting with the display. This would cause a very obvious shift in the display's color tone as it became noticeably darker. In later software updates, OnePlus disabled the dynamic switching in dark mode, limiting it only to the aforementioned apps. It's much harder to notice the screen color changing when it happens during the transition animation of opening the app, so OnePlus mostly gets away with it. The dynamic switching still happens in light mode but as said before, it's much harder to notice it here.

OnePlus also likes to mess around with the screen gamma in the Phone and Messages app when using dark mode. If you drop your display brightness below 33% in either of these apps when using dark mode, the gamma curve of the display suddenly shifts up, causing the entire screen to appear darker. It's not clear if OnePlus is using this to conserve power or to make the screen appear easier on the eyes in the dark. Shifting the gamma does affect all colors on the screen but since it's the Messages and Phone app we are talking about here, it's not much of a concern. Of course, since this happens on a hardware level and not in software, you can't exactly show it through screenshots.

The early version of the Nord software also caused the display to decrease its brightness level inside certain apps to save power. However, OnePlus dropped that in later updates or at least reduced its intensity to the point where it's not noticeable.

Overall, the display on the Nord is still quite good. At least the panel itself seems to be good for the price. However, the software department at OnePlus has been making an absolute dog's breakfast out of it, with arbitrary refresh rate limitations, improperly calibrated HDR mode, color shifts between refresh rates and within the Phone and Messages apps, and all sorts of other shenanigans. If they could just calibrate it correctly, let the display stick to 90Hz across all apps and games, and not mess around with the colors and brightness, that would be great.

Battery Life

The OnePlus Nord performed very well in our battery life test. At 4115mAh, the Nord doesn't have the largest battery in its price category but thanks to the low power Snapdragon 765G chipset, the phone achieves a satisfactory run time.

Of course, when it comes to charging, the OnePlus Warp 30T is one of the best out there, even if it's not the outright fastest. You can charge the phone completely from flat within an hour, which is still pretty impressive even if there are faster charging solutions out there.

Software and Performance

The OnePlus Nord runs on OxygenOS 10 on top of Android 10. At the time of publishing this, the phone had just received the OxygenOS 10.5.8 update with September 1 security patch.

While super-quick updates may not be OnePlus' forte, the company has made a name for itself when it comes to fast and clean UI design. Over the years, OnePlus has made many changes to OxygenOS but the focus has always been on keeping it clean and keeping it working smoothly, so you never get the feeling of wading through years of accumulated cruft that you get when using some of the other custom implementations of Android.

A big part of this is the UI. While not "stock" by any stretch of the imagination, OnePlus has carefully chosen a design language that closely mimics Google's design. This gives the user the impression of using a near-stock UI but at the same time one that is much more customizable. This customizability works across all levels, from the launcher to the default OnePlus apps, to the OS itself.

Aside from cleanliness, OnePlus has also prioritized speed. This involves having quicker animations and transitions and identifying stress points to get rid of any stutters or frame drops. This has resulted in a largely consistent and smooth user interface that feels a joy to use, especially on these high refresh rate displays.

There are some annoyances, however, especially on the Nord and the India specific unit that we are testing here. As we have mentioned in our OnePlus 8 Pro long term review, OnePlus Red Cable Club on Indian units, which is a program where users can get some free cloud storage and discounts on some services, repairs, and OnePlus products. All this app needs is for you to sign in using an OnePlus account. However, should you choose to ignore it, it gets a bit annoying.

Red Cable Club (India exclusive)

A small part of this annoyance is notification alerts to get you to sign up. A major part, however, is the persistent item at the top of the Settings that constantly reminds you that you haven't yet signed up for this service. Periodically, OnePlus will throw in a needless 'New' badge on it, just to tempt you to click on it even if nothing has changed.

The Gallery app will also occasionally join in on the annoyance and nag you to use the free cloud storage that you get as part of this program.

To be clear, these things aren't as cheap and annoying as actual ads like some other OEMs bundle in their phones. However, one of the reasons users preferred OxygenOS was that it was free of annoyances like these and it seems OnePlus is slowly forgetting that. It's also frustrating that these things are only limited to the Indian units; OnePlus knows damn well that it would never get away with this in the western market while southeast Asian markets generally have a higher tolerance for such shenanigans, especially when

packaged as a value add.

The Nord also ships with Google's version of the Phone and Messages app instead of the OxygenOS versions. Both these apps are inferior to what OnePlus makes, so naturally, users were upset when they first discovered them on their new phones. The Google Phone app, for instance, did not have a voice-recording feature that the OnePlus app did. Google Messages also doesn't have any way to sort incoming messages into notifications and chats the way the OnePlus app does. Eventually, Google did roll out the voice recording feature for the Phone app but the Messages app continues to be embarrassingly limited.

Coming back to the performance, as mentioned before, the Nord performs exceptionally well. This was especially a surprise to us because the phone does not ship with the latest and greatest flagship chipset. Instead, it has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G, which isn't bad on paper but also one of Qualcomm's faster chips.

However, OnePlus has strung every ounce of power out of this chip because, in practice, the OnePlus Nord feels about as fast and responsive as any 2020 flagship. We often have to move back and forth between devices as we are testing them and often find ourselves moving between the Nord and the much more expensive OnePlus 8 Pro. To say that we always noticed the difference in performance between them would be a lie. The OnePlus 8 Pro does feel smoother and more responsive, but it also has a 120Hz display. When it comes to devices in its price range, the OnePlus Nord puts the competition to shame with the combination of a 90Hz display and excellent software optimization.

Gaming performance is acceptable. While admittedly the GPU in the Snapdragon 765G would not have been able to run every game at 90Hz, it would have still been nice to have the option to run games at an unlocked frame rate, so they could go as high as they can. Simpler 2D games, in particular, would have had no issue running at top speed. It's not clear what OnePlus is more afraid of, the increased power consumption, or the increased heat from the CPU. Either way, it's a shame they decided to leave it locked to 60Hz because now we will never know what the hardware is truly capable of.

Camera

The OnePlus Nord has the most cameras for any OnePlus phone; four on the back and two on the front. For now, we will mostly just focus on the cameras on the back.

The Nord has the same 48MP Sony IMX586 camera sensor as the OnePlus 8 and also all of last year's OnePlus phones. This sensor has been in use for a couple of years now and it is starting to show its age.

The image quality of the main camera on the Nord is perfectly adequate for a phone in its price range. In good lighting, the details, dynamic range, and color accuracy can be quite decent. There's even a fake 2x digital zoom mode, which also produces respectable results as it just crops from the middle of the sensor for lossless quality.

Unfortunately, the Nord does not have an objectively good camera, and there are several issues to contend with here. Despite the massive 48MP advertised resolution, the final images are 12MP. This in itself isn't a major issue but those 12MP images can often be a bit soft and lacking in detail compared to some of the native 12MP sensors on more expensive phones.

Main camera samples

Then there is the common OnePlus bugbear of color reproduction. Colors from OnePlus cameras are neither particularly accurate nor exactly pleasant. There will always be some strange color caste that neither matches nor enhances the original scene. Primary colors like red and green are rarely accurately represented. It's like the camera is drawing from memory rather than capturing what's in front of it.

The Nord also has an issue with dynamic range in some scenes. OnePlus has used a very aggressive contrast curve on this phone for some reason, which often results in the phone crushing shadow detail and bumping up highlights, especially when it detects high-frequency detail in the scene. This also tends to happen more often in less than perfect lighting, which further makes the image look dark and super contrasty.

Moving on, the Nord also packs a new 8MP ultra-wide camera. This particular camera is disappointing even for a mid-range phone. Images are extremely soft and are only usable if you don't expect anyone to zoom in. If you just want a wider perspective, this camera will do just fine, especially if you are shooting in good lighting. But otherwise, this sensor is a serious downgrade from what even OnePlus normally has on its phones.

Ultra-wide samples

Continuing this downward trajectory of quality is the macro camera, easily the worst of the three usable cameras on the back. The paltry 2MP resolution means you aren't getting any additional detail than if you had just shot from a distance with the main camera and cropped in. And the image quality degrades rapidly with light, with even the highest quality images still looking noisy with poor colors.

Macro samples

On the OnePlus 8 and 7T series, OnePlus achieved macro photography using the ultra-wide lens. Since the camera behind this lens was reasonably good quality, the macro images were also quite good and usable. The switch to a dedicated, low-quality macro camera on the Nord only serves to increase the camera count while seriously reducing the image quality. The company could have had the same, higher quality ultra-wide camera from the OnePlus 8 on the Nord and in one fell swoop had a better ultra-wide and macro performance. Instead, they decided to cut corners and increase the camera count for marketing reasons.

Overall, the Nord has a mediocre camera system. The main 48MP camera can produce usable images most of the time but the other cameras are a serious let down in terms of quality and it feels like there was more emphasis on having more cameras than having good ones.

Conclusion

The OnePlus Nord is an excellent mid-range smartphone. For the price, you are getting a very well built and well-designed smartphone with a great display, excellent performance, and largely clean software. The battery life is also pretty good and OnePlus' DASH charging continues to be ridiculously quick.

The combination of all of these things in a relatively compact body with a flat display makes the Nord more attractive than OnePlus' own flagship phones. The Nord especially makes the standard OnePlus 8 feel irrelevant; the 8 Pro still has a lot going for it but the 8 doesn't feel dramatically better than the Nord despite the considerable price difference.

The primary complaint against the phone would be the cameras, which are underwhelming across the board. It doesn't matter if there's six of them when all of them are varying levels of mediocrity. The main camera can produce some decent images but it's still not as good as the one on the Pixel 4a. The focus here clearly was on including as many as possible rather than making them good and it shows in the image quality.

The phone also has some issues with the software, with the Indian units having minor annoyances. And while most people wouldn't notice them, the display also has several minor issues that need fixing.

There's also the issue of availability. OnePlus chose to launch this phone only in India and Europe, with many regions including the Americas getting left out. OnePlus has plans to launch a separate device in these regions but we are not yet sure when it will be released and what the differences would be with the version tested here.

Overall, though, if you are in one of the lucky regions where this phone is available, the OnePlus Nord should still be your top pick in this price range.

Pros

• Good design and build quality
• Good overall display performance
• Fast and responsive user interface
• Good battery life with fast charging

Cons

• Disappointing ultra-wide and macro cameras
• Several minor display issues
• Games limited to 60Hz
• Minor software annoyances on Indian units
• Limited global availability

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