Creations of Ashish

Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 5 Review: A gaming centric offering from Xiaomi that proves to be a perfect all-rounder!!

2026-10-31T21:20:27.477+05:30

An all-rounder from Xiaomi that can raise standards out there!!

Xiaomi has been a major player in the mid-range and premium mid-range with its Note lineup, offering well-balanced specs for each price segment, with an emphasis on optics. Xiaomi's popular Turbo series has been a hit in China and is now heading global, with India already having one. Performance-centric smartphones have always been part of POCO, which was earlier a sub-brand of Xiaomi and is now a separate brand out there.

So with the Redmi Turbo 5, Xiaomi is eyeing the premium mid-range segment, which has a lot of smartphones from different brands, so competing with them would not be easy. The Redmi Turbo 5 brings strong specs to the table, including a 120Hz AMOLED display, a powerful MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Ultra chipset, a 7540mAh battery, and more. It is also Redmi's performance-centric smartphone aimed at gamers for daily use.

So, with the right specifications out there can the Redmi Turbo 5 hold a position for itself in this highly competitive segment? Is it worth considering?

Let's find out in the full review.

Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 5 Design:

The Redmi Turbo 5 is one of those rare smartphones that comes with a premium design, with a glass build at the back and a metallic frame around the sides, which is better than the polycarbonate build on other smartphones in this price segment. The back of the smartphone resembles the POCO X8 Pro, where you get a new design with rounded corners, and the sides are flatter with no curves. It has two cameras on the back and an LED flashlight on the side.

There is no dedicated camera module as such. The inner side of the camera rings has a red accent, and the power button does as well. The same red accent is seen on the red "Redmi" logo on the rear panel, which has a soft matte finish which provides great grip while holding in the hands. With the Turbo White variant, you even get fine silver patterned stripes running on the right side, which Xiaomi claims is a gaming-centric design.

Since Xiaomi is using a metal and glass design, there is an IP66+IP68+IP69+IP69K rating, which means you can submerge it under fresh water up to 1.5 meters for 30 minutes and, on top of that, it also has dust resistance. There is a new "Redmi Pixel Matrix" lighting system inside the two camera rings on the back that you can turn on by heading to Settings > Additional Settings > Backlight effects. You get a bunch of colours to choose from, but you cannot set a colour for a specific application.

The lighting effects come into play when any notification comes up and for other functionalities like call reminders, during gaming (only supported while playing COD Mobile), while using the camera for taking timed or burst shots, etc. This lighting system also came in handy for alerts and notifications when the smartphone was placed down and set to silent mode. Around the sides, there is an aluminium frame that houses the power button, along with volume buttons on the right side.

The left side remains empty with no controls. On the top, there is a secondary speaker output and a microphone. In terms of weight distribution, the smartphone weighs around 204 grams, making it lighter and easy to hold. Other than the Turbo White colour, there are two other colour variants, namely Nitro Blue and Asphalt Black. On the front, there is a single punch-hole camera located at the top in the centre of the display. The bezels are minimal on the sides, which makes it look premium.

Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 5 Display:

The Redmi Turbo 5 sports a larger 6.59-inch 1.5K(1268x2756 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. It is a 12-bit display, and since it is AMOLED, the colours look punchier with deeper blues and blacks; you get good viewing angles. Combined with this display, you get a 120Hz refresh rate, and since it is an LTPS panel, there is no variable refresh rate. There are two options to choose from: Default and Custom. You can also select app-specific refresh rates.

When switching to Default Mode, the display switches dynamically between 60Hz and 120Hz depending on the application running to save battery. The Custom mode, on the other hand, lets you choose an application-specific refresh rate for almost all applications, where you can choose between 60Hz and 120Hz for any application, but most applications strictly adhere to a 120Hz refresh rate only. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, there is a 480Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses.

In terms of display brightness, the display of the Redmi Turbo 5 can reach a peak brightness of 3500 nits, which is good and under High Brightness Mode, the display can reach a brightness of around 2850 nits, and similar results were achieved while viewing the display under direct sunlight. The display of the smartphone has three different modes to choose from: Vivid, Saturated, and Standard. When you choose Vivid or Saturated mode, the colours look punchier, and it covers the DCI-P3 gamut.

Setting the display to Standard mode provides natural-looking colours, maintaining a colour-accurate profile without any boosting in colours, thus covering the sRGB colour space. There is a dedicated temperature slider where you can set the display to a warmer or a cooler tone. The display has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works accurately and is faster in daily usage. However, its positioning is slightly awkward as it is placed at the very bottom so it may be difficult for few hands.

There is support for HDR on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 ensures streaming of HDR content on OTT platforms. Dolby Vision is present, and it is supported on Netflix, so the content-watching experience will be seamless. In terms of display protection, there is Corning Gorilla Glass 7i on the front. Overall, the display of the Redmi Turbo 5 is great for multimedia consumption.

Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 5 Performance:

The Redmi Turbo 5 is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Ultra chipset, which is based on an octa-core setup that includes 1x3.4 GHz Cortex-A725 core and 3x3.2 GHz Cortex-A725 cores with another 4x2.2 GHz Cortex-A725 cores coupled with a powerful Mali-G720 MC8 GPU. Since this chipset is based on an efficient 4nm process, we do expect better power efficiency. In terms of daily usage, which includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, etc., it feels smoother.

For gaming, the smartphone handles heavy hitters like Call of Duty Mobile vzf TJWL without breaking a sweat. Other games like Genshin Impact, which is a graphics-intensive game, run smoothly at the highest graphics settings at 60fps with very few frame drops noticed. Genshin Impact runs on Default/Medium up to High graphics settings with some frame drops, which are negligible. In BGMI, the gameplay was smoother with the graphics set to Smooth and frame rates set to Extreme.

During the gameplay for around 3-4 hours, we noticed around 90fps-118fps with no frame drops as such. After longer gaming sessions (3-4 hours), the back of the smartphone became slightly warmer. Still, Xiaomi has equipped it with a larger 5300mm2 Redmi 3D Ice Loop cooling system, which helps dissipate heat faster and prevents thermal throttling during heavy gaming. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone sustained around 75-80 per cent performance with almost no throttling.

The benchmark scores came out very good considering the chipset underneath. In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation and support for almost all bands of 5G. The Redmi Turbo 5 is available in two different variants - 8/12GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256GB storage, which have UFS 4.1 speeds.

Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 5 Software:

The Redmi Turbo 5 runs on the latest HyperOS 3, which is based on Android 16 out of the box. HyperOS 3's design has been inspired by iOS, with an almost similar layout, enhanced lock screen personalisation, granular customisation options, and various depth effects throughout the user interface. It offers many customisations, including icon shape and size, colour, fonts, and different effects for the lock screen and Always-On display.

There is the Hyper Island which functions similar to Apple's Dynamic Island which is an interactive, pill-shaped notification interface built around the front camera cutout. It displays live updates for ongoing tasks such as music playback, timers, charging status, and scheduled alerts. It also lets you switch, expand, and manage multiple live notifications directly from the status bar without leaving the current application. There is also support for third-party food delivery applications that show live status.

HyperOS 3's cross-system ecosystem works seamlessly with different devices like Windows PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones and other Xiaomi-specific devices via the Xiaomi Interconnectivity and Link to Windows feature, and users can now run Xiaomi phone applications directly on these devices seamlessly. Like all other user interfaces, here also there are a plethora of AI features that are built in, which come in handy in daily usage.

Some of them include AI Speech Recognition and Summarization which automatically transcribes audio to text, separates notes, automatically separates notes by identifying individual speakers, and provides concise summary with proper bullet points and to-do items, AI Translate Conversation helps with bilingual face-to-face conversations, translate voice calls, and interpret online meetings in real time. AI Interpreter is designed for real-time or live voice and speech translation support.

AI Creativity Assistant lets you enhance your images with smart tools like AI Eraser Pro for removing unwanted objects or people using generative AI, and AI Reflection Removal lets you remove glare and reflections in images. AI Dynamic Wallpaper lets you turn static images into short-motion video wallpapers using built-in AI models. AI Writing helps you draft emails, messages, notes, and documents and automatically corrects spelling and grammar by changing the tone of writing.

Google Gemini is a personal chat assistant and is well integrated with almost all the applications. In terms of bloatware, this is where HyperOS feels like a letdown, as there are a bunch of pre-installed applications and games that can be uninstalled. There is the Indus App Store sends a lot of notifications for app updates which is cumbersome and cannot be uninstalled. In terms of software support, the smartphone will get another four years of Android OS updates and six years of security updates, which is very good.

Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 5 Cameras:

The Redmi Turbo 5 sports a dual camera setup which includes a 50MP f/1.5 Sony IMX882 sensor for the primary camera and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. On the front, there is a 20MP f/2.2 camera for selfies. In terms of video, both the primary and the ultrawide cameras can record 4K video, but the front camera is limited to 1080p video recording only, which is a slight disappointment.

In terms of images taken during the day, the primary camera captures sharper details with a wider dynamic range and has less noise in the background. The colours look slightly oversaturated, with warmer tones in the background. There is some oversharpening present, but the white balance is handled very well. Using the dedicated 50MP mode, the images come out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range, with less noise in the background.

During night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with almost less noise in the background. The colours look slightly washed out, with some oversharpening present in the background. Without the dedicated Night Mode, the details look good with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range, but the noise is on the higher side. At 2x zoom levels, the images come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range.

The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening as such. During the night, the 2x zoomed images come out with softer details and have a decent dynamic range, but the colours look accurate with very little oversharpening in the background. In terms of portraits, the primary camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with almost less noise in the background.

The edge detection is proper, and background blur is well implemented. The human skin tones look natural with no oversharpening as such. The images taken from the ultrawide camera during the day come out with softer details, and the dynamic range is decent, with a considerable amount of noise in the background. The colours look saturated but have warmer tones, with some oversharpening in the background. At night, the images come out with softer details and average dynamic range.

There is a considerable amount of noise in the background, with the white balance taking a hit. On the front, the selfies come out with sharper details, a wider dynamic range and have less noise in the background. The human skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. At night, the selfies come out with a decent level of detail, but they look softer and have limited dynamic range with higher noise in the background.

In terms of videos, the primary camera takes videos with sharper details and a wider dynamic range, with saturated colours in the background. There is very little noise present in the videos due to the presence of OIS, and you do get good contrast and white balance out there. Similarly, at night, the videos come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with softer details and limited dynamic range.

The noise in the background is on the higher side, and there is a lot of distortion around the edges. At night, the ultrawide camera struggles in terms of capturing light in videos, thus resulting in softer details and washed-out colours in the background. The 1080p videos from the front camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range, but there is noise clearly present in the background.

Overall, in terms of cameras, the Redmi Turbo 5 does the job well, but is not a camera-centric option.

Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 5 Battery Life:

The Redmi Turbo 5 sports a larger 7540mAh battery, which is considered a good capacity for a smartphone user. With the efficient MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Ultra chipset being built on a 4nm process, we do expect better power efficiency and battery life. With normal usage, which includes streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, and playing games casually for 1-2 hours, the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some battery left.

With heavy usage that includes taking videos and images using the cameras, playing games like Genshin Impact and BGMI for 3-4 hours continuously, rendering videos, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days with some charge left. The standard screen-on time with heavy usage came around 5.5-6 hours, and with normal usage, the standard screen-on time came around 8-9 hours, which is very good.

In terms of charging, the Redmi Turbo 5 supports 100W fast charging with the dedicated charger included in the box. With the 100W fast charger, the smartphone charges from 0 to 100 per cent in around 55-60 minutes, which is quite good considering the size of the battery. There is also support for 27W reverse wired charging, which means that using this smartphone, you can charge other smartphones easily.

Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 5 Audio Quality:

The Redmi Turbo 5 sports a dual stereo speaker setup which includes the loudspeaker grille at the bottom along with a single speaker outlet on the top. The audio output is louder and clearer with no distortion as such. However, the loudness levels are not so good, as it does sound feeble in very crowded places. There is support for Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound output while listening to music, watching movies, etc. Other than that, there is also support for LDAC and LHDC.

Verdict:

The Redmi Turbo 5 is an overall solid package in the premium mid-range segment for those who value performance and battery life in a smartphone. First of all, the design is where the brand has not cut corners, as it is one of the very few smartphones that comes with a glass build and an aluminium frame, with strong durability that includes a proper IP rating. In terms of display, you get an immersive experience with the AMOLED display and combined with stereo speakers, it's a seamless experience.

When it comes to performance and gaming, the chipset is a good powerhouse and handles everything with ease. The battery life is excellent with good screen-on time figures and there is also fast charging present, which is an added advantage with the charger present inside the box. HyperOS 3 provides a smooth and feature-rich software experience with a plethora of AI features on board and an assurity of long-term software support. However, there are some areas where the smartphone does fall short.

When it comes to cameras, whether it is videos or photos, the performance is decent when compared to the camera setup on other smartphones, which perform much better. The ultrawide camera output comes out to be average. Though HyperOS 3 is good and feature-rich, there is a considerable amount of bloatware, which makes the user experience cumbersome and clumsy to use. There are some instances when the back of the smartphone does feel warmer after prolonged hours of gaming, which needs to be improved.

Overall, as a package, the Redmi Turbo 5 is a solid heaturner in the premium mid-range segment, which comes with a solid and premium build and design, flagship-level performance and gaming capabilities and great battery life with decent camera performance and good software experience. When compared to other smartphones in this price segment, the Redmi Turbo 5 is worth buying and holds a strong position for itself in this highly competitive segment in terms of performance and battery life primarily.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro Review: A well rounded premium mid-range smartphone with necessary misses!!

2026-10-10T18:40:53.670+05:30

A slim form factor from Motorola with a healthier battery life!!

Motorola Edge smartphones are the most popular segment in the mid-range and premium mid-range segments. This year, we have the Edge 70 series, where there are three offerings in the form of the Edge 70, Edge 70 Fusion, and the Edge 70 Pro, with the Edge 70 Pro being the premium offering of the three. With the Motorola Edge 70 Pro, there is a steep increase in price due to the rising prices of components like RAM and storage.

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro packs a handful of specifications, including a 144Hz AMOLED display, a powerful MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Extreme chipset, and a 50MP camera setup. And much more. However, the most striking aspect of the smartphone has to be its slimmer profile, where the brand has packed a lot without sacrificing the design. With many competitors in the premium mid-range segment, can the Motorola Edge 70 Pro take the top spot?

Let's find out in the full review.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro Design:

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro sports a similar look to all Motorola smartphones, with the square-shaped camera module at the back that houses the triple cameras along with an LED flashlight. The back of the smartphone has a silicon polymer textured back, which provides solid grip when held in the hands. Even the back colour matches that of the camera module. The camera module is slightly raised and is not so protruding, which means it would not wobble when kept on a flat surface.

The smartphone is available in five different colours which are Pantone calibrated - Tea, Titan, Lily White, Zinfandel, and Chicory Coffee. The Zinfandel is just like Burgundy colour and looks attractive and has a satin luxe finish on the back. The rest of the colours also look attractive, with the Lily White getting a smooth marble-like finish, Tea colour getting a satin-luxe finish, and the Titan colour variant getting a fabric finish on the back, all of which look premium.

Irrespective of whichever colour you choose, the back of the smartphone colour matches the frame running all around. As usual, just like Motorola smartphones, there is an M logo embossed in the middle of the back panel with a slight recess in the texture where you can place your thumb while taking images from the camera. Coming to the sides, Motorola has struck the slim factor here with a 7.2mm profile thickness, but it is made of polycarbonate, which is a slight letdown when compared to an aluminium finish.

In terms of ingress protection, the smartphone is protected by MIL-STD-810H, which means it can handle transport and temperature shocks. There is also an IP68/IP69 rating, which makes it dust and water resistant, so it can survive under fresh water upto 1.5meters for 30 minutes and can also handle high-pressure water jets. In terms of weight distribution, the smartphone weighs around 190 grams, making it very light and easier to hold in the hands.

Coming to the sides, there is a power button along with volume buttons on the right side, whereas the left side gets a dedicated AI Key, which comes in handy in daily usage and will be discussed in the software section later. The bottom of the smartphone houses a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot, and a primary microphone. On the top, there is a tiny hole for the speaker, which, along with the bottom loudspeaker grille, doubles up as a stereo speaker.

There is no earpiece grille on the top as such. On the front, there is a quad curved display which is curved on all four sides, but the curvature has been reduced compared to previous Motorola Edge smartphones in the past, making it easy to handle. Around the sides, the bezels are slimmer, and there is a single punch-hole located at the top at the middle, which houses the selfie camera. Overall, the build and design look and feel premium, along with a good level of safety standards.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro Display:

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro houses a larger 6.78-inches 1.5K (1272x2772 pixels) Extreme AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. The display is a 10-bit panel, and since it is an AMOLED panel, you get deeper blues and blacks along with great viewing angles. The display is an LTPS panel and has a 144Hz refresh rate, so the refresh rate will vary based on the content on the display. In terms of display protection, there is Corning Gorilla Glass 7i on the front.

Talking about the refresh rate, the display usually refreshes at 120Hz for almost all scenarios. There are three different settings to choose from: Smart and Balanced, Hyper Smooth and Efficiency First. Both Smart and Balanced and Hyper Smooth work similarly, except that Hyper Smooth continues to maintain a 120Hz refresh rate for almost all applications, thus prioritising fluidity and responsiveness, whereas the Hyper Smooth maintains a 90Hz refresh rate frequently, thus striking a balance of battery life and fluidity.

Efficiency First, as the name suggests, maintains a constant refresh rate of 60Hz, thus maximising battery life. For example, while you are watching a movie, the display refreshes at 90Hz, and it drops down to 60Hz while you are viewing any static content or the display is idle, i.e. not in use. Only when it comes to playing heavy games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., does the display achieve a refresh rate of 144Hz, and that too works in selected games only.

Combined with the 144Hz refresh rate, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses. In terms of display brightness, the display of the Motorola Edge 70 Pro can reach around 5200 nits, which is a very good figure, and under High Brightness Mode, the display brightness hovers around 1800- 2000 nits, which is good, and you get good visibility under direct sunlight also. In terms of display colour settings, there are three different modes to choose from: Natural, Radiant, and Vivid.

If you choose the Natural mode, the colours have a natural look with accurate and realistic colours, which covers the sRGB colour space, whereas if you choose Radiant or Vivid mode, the colours look punchier and saturated with deeper blues and blacks, thus covering the DCI-P3 gamut. There is a dedicated temperature slider where you can set the display to a warmer or a cooler tone. The display of the smartphone has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner, which works accurately and is faster.

The display of the smartphone has support for HDR on YouTube, which means you can stream HDR content on YouTube, and there is support for Widevine L1, so you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. But there is no support for Dolby Vision as of now, which could be fixed with a future software update.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro Performance:

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro sports a powerful MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Extreme chipset, which is a powerful chipset and is made to power some of the premium mid-range smartphones. The MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Extreme chipset is a good upgrade over last year's MediaTek Dimensity 8350 chipset present on last year's Motorola Edge 60 Pro, as you almost 60 per cent better CPU performance and 40 per cent better GPU performance.

The MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Extreme chipset is based on an octa-core setup which includes 1x3.4GHz Cortex-A725 core with 3x3.2GHz Cortex-A725 cores and another set of 4x2.2GHz Cortex-A725 cores, all of which have been coupled with a powerful Mali-G720 MC8 GPU. This chipset is based on an efficient 4nm process. In terms of daily tasks like scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, and other multitasking tasks, the smartphone handles everything without breaking a sweat.

In games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc. the smartphone handled the gameplay easily at the highest graphics settings without much of frame drops or stutters as such during a longer time of gameplay. In BGMI, the smartphone easily ran at Smooth graphics along with Extreme/Ultra Extreme frame rates, with very minor frame drops, and the gameplay was almost consistent at 100-110fps for most of the time.

On very rare occasions, we touched 120fps completely. In Genshin Impact, the smartphone easily ran at Highest/Ultra settings with an average frame rate of 58.8 to 59.1fps during gameplay. During prolonged gameplay, there were a few frame drops noticed, along with the back of the smartphone getting warmer. In terms of thermals, after longer hours of gameplay, i.e. 3-4 hours, the back becomes warmer, especially around the camera module.

Motorola claims that they have equipped a 4600mm2 vapour cooling chamber which helps in dissipating heat faster. In CPU throttling tests, the smartphone could easily achieve a sustained performance of around 85-90 per cent with almost no throttling noticed. In terms of benchmarks, the scores came out really good in both AnTuTu v6 and Geekbench 6.0.

In terms of network connectivity, you get support for good carrier aggregation, and there are almost all bands of 5G present, ensuring smooth connectivity. The Motorola Edge 70 Pro is available in three different variants: 8GB RAM with 256GB storage, 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, and 12GB RAM with 512GB storage, with RAM speeds of LPDDR5X and storage speeds of UFS 4.1.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro Software:

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro runs on the latest HelloUI, which is based on Android 16 out of the box. HelloUI look almost like Stock Android, which means the look and feel of the user interface is very simple but brings along a handful of features and customisations. There are a host of AI features which come in handy during daily usage. There are a lot of customisations present where you can change icon shape, size, colour and also fonts.

There are in-built themes along with custom accent colours that match the wallpaper. The Always-On display gets different styles to choose from and is well integrated with the lock screen. The lock screen can now accommodate more widgets, making it handy during the usage. The Moto app houses a handful of gestures, and Moto Secure, which is a built-in security feature, has Secure Folder, using which you can hide and lock sensitive applications, photos, and files through different ways of authentication.

You can perform a three-finger selection on the display to take a screenshot, and it lets you select a piece of text or image and drag in a different application. Personalise lets you customise the icon's shape, size, colour and choose fonts for it. To ensure cross-device connectivity, there is Smart Connect, which lets you link the smartphone to a PC, laptop, or any external display through a wired or wireless approach. It brings features like phone-to-PC integration, wireless display casting, and clipboard syncing.

Motorola has also added AI-powered voice commands to Smart Connect, making the experience much easier. When it comes to AI features, you can invoke them once you press the AI Key, which is present on the left side of the smartphone or by doing a double-tap gesture on the back. Moto AI supports a wide range of features, which include "Remember This", which lets you take a screenshot, add a voice memo for context and have it indexed for easy searching.

"Pay Attention" lets you record and transcribe conversations or meetings with summaries. Image Studio provides multiple functionalities like text-to-image generation, which transforms written prompts and ideas into artwork; you can sketch rough drawings into polished and detailed graphics, create custom digital stickers from text prompts for messaging and social sharing and also you can generate personalised digital avatars using on-device processing.

Playlist Studio lets you generate a custom music playlist using text or voice prompts based on different moods, vibe and current screen content. The Moto AI is well implemented with Copilot Vision, which uses the smartphone's camera to analyse the physical surroundings, objects, texts in real time and answers questions accordingly. HelloUI also lets you choose between multiple AI assistants like Google Gemini and Explore with Perplexity.

There are a bunch of Motorola-specific gestures like a karate chop to turn on/off flashlight on/off, twist the wrist to turn on the camera, and back tap lets you switch between applications and control music in the playlist. Flipping the smartphone for Do Not Disturb lets you automatically mute incoming calls, messages and alarms. You can enable Sidebar, where you can store your favourite applications and use them. Double-pressing the power key lets you open Google Gemini or the camera application.

In terms of bloatware, there are a few third-party applications present in the user interface, like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. You can uninstall them easily, but there is a third-party application named Indus App Store, which does throw in a lot of notifications and recommendations which cannot be uninstalled but can be disabled. In terms of software updates, the Motorola Edge 70 Pro will receive another three years of Android OS updates and five years of security patches, which is good but still not the best.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro Cameras:

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro houses a triple camera setup which includes a 50MP f/1.7 Sony LYTIA-700 sensor for the primary camera, a 50MP f/2.0Samsung ISOCELL JN5 for the ultrawide camera and a 3-in-1 light sensor which helps the primary camera to achieve low-light images and videos. On the front, there is a 50MP f/1.9 Samsung ISOCELL JN5 sensor for the selfie camera. There is no more the telephoto camera, which was present on last year's Motorola Edge 60 Pro seems to be slightly disappointing.

The images from the primary camera during the day come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range, with almost less noise in the background. The colours look punchier, with deeper blues and blacks, with no oversharpening as such in the background. The white balance is handled well, but the contrast is on the higher side. The human skin tones come out a bit warmer, though. Using the 50MP dedicated mode, the images come out with sharper details, but the noise is slightly on the higher side.

During the night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range. The exposure is well balanced, and the darker areas. The details in shadows come out sharper, with a slight tendency to oversharpen the background. The colours look natural, though a bit washed out at times, but still it is very hard to find the flaws. That said, with the dedicated Night Mode, the images come out with much sharper details with almost no noise in the background.

The 2x zoomed images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look natural, and almost similar results are achieved at night, but the details look a tad softer, with some oversharpening in the background. The 50MP ultrawide camera does a great job in terms of details that look sharper, with a wider dynamic range and have less noise in the background.

The ultrawide images taken during the night come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range, but the noise is slightly on the higher side. The colours look natural, but there is a lot of oversharpening present in the background. The details in shadows look decent, and white balance is maintained well. There is no dedicated telephoto camera, which is a miss here, as it was present with last year's Motorola Edge 60 Pro.

For portraits, the primary camera does a good job, with sharper details, wider dynamic range, and less background noise. Skin tones come out accurate, with no oversharpening in the background. The edge detection is good, along with proper background blur. You can achieve 2x-level portraits at 35mm, resulting in sharper details and wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background.

In terms of selfies, the front camera of the smartphone does a great job in terms of detail, which looks sharper with a wider dynamic range, and noise is also less in the background. The skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The portrait selfies come out with proper edge detection and good background blur, with no such oversharpening in the background. The skin tones look natural in the portrait selfies.

When it comes to videos, all three cameras, which include the primary, ultrawide and the front, can record 4K videos at 60fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with almost less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. At night, the results are almost similar, but there is oversharpening in the background with slightly higher noise.

The 1080p videos at 60fps from the primary camera come out with wider dynamic range, and the details look much sharper with natural colours in the background. The 4K videos from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range, with some amount of noise in the background. The videos from the front camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro Battery Life:

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro packs a larger 6500mAh battery, which is quite large in capacity, and it uses silicon-carbon technology, which offers higher energy density than traditional lithium-ion cells. The battery capacity is not the largest, as other smartphones like the OnePlus Nord 6 (Review) come with a larger 9000mAh battery. With the MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Extreme chipset underneath, we do expect good battery life.

With normal usage that includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days with some charge left. The standard screen-on time with normal usage came around 8-8.5 hours, which are very good figures. With heavy usage that includes playing heavy games like Call of Duty Mobile for 3-4 hours continuously, rendering videos, taking images and videos from the cameras, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one day with charge left.

The standard screen-on time with heavy usage came around 4-5 hours, which is quite good considering the size of the battery. The smartphone is equipped with a 90W fast charger, which uses Motorola's TurboCharge technology, which means the smartphone easily achieves 0 to 100 per cent within 1 hour, making it quite fast. There is no support for wireless charging, which is a big disappointment since the Motorola Edge 60 Pro had it.

Motorola Edge 70 Pro Audio Quality:

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro sports a dual stereo speaker setup, with the top speaker and the bottom loudspeaker grille together providing stereo output with a good level of bass and treble. The sound does not feel muffled or distorted even at the highest volume settings, but the level of loudness is not the best. Dolby Atmos is available for enhanced sound output while watching movies, listening to songs, etc. There is also support for LHDC and LDAC, so you get a good experience while using earphones.

Verdict:

The Motorola Edge 70 Pro is a solid contender in the premium mid-range smartphone segment, offering a well-rounded package with most of the essential features users would expect in this category. It boasts a premium, sleek, and eye-catching design, complemented by a 144Hz AMOLED display and stereo speakers that make multimedia consumption an enjoyable experience.

The powerful chipset delivers capable day-to-day performance and a satisfying gaming experience, while the feature-rich software, with its handy gestures and useful AI-powered features, further enhances everyday usability. The camera system performs well in both photography and videography, while the battery life is dependable enough for daily use. The addition of fast charging is another welcome advantage.

However, Motorola has made a few compromises to keep the pricing competitive, and some of these decisions leave the Edge 70 Pro trailing behind its rivals. The removal of the dedicated telephoto camera and wireless charging support is particularly disappointing, especially considering that its predecessor, the Motorola Edge 60 Pro, offered both features. In terms of performance and gaming, the chipset is capable of handling demanding workloads, but thermal efficiency remains a concern.

The rear panel can become noticeably warm during extended gaming sessions. The ultrawide camera is another area that needs improvement, particularly when it comes to low-light photography and video recording. Furthermore, Motorola's software update policy falls short of what some competing smartphone brands offer, which could be a concern for users who prioritise long-term software support.

Overall, if you can live with these compromises, the Motorola Edge 70 Pro is an excellent option in the premium mid-range segment, particularly for users who prioritise design, display quality, battery life, and a smooth, feature-rich software experience. However, if gaming performance and camera versatility, there are better alternatives available in the market.

Motorola Signature Review: A flagship comeback from Motorola which is all set to raise newer standards!!

2026-10-02T19:43:10.313+05:30

A sleek design with all flagship feel set to impress the audience!!

The premium flagship segment has been competitive since brands have been launching their respective smartphones in this segment with all the flagship specifications out there. Over the past few months, there has been an increase in the prices of a few smartphone components like RAM and storage ever since AI entered the market. The premium flagship space is being ruled by many popular smartphone brands like OnePlus, Samsung, Apple, etc.

This time around, Motorola is aiming to take the top spot in this highly competitive segment as it has introduced its new Signature series with the Motorola Signature. Motorola has long been one of the best brands for mid-range and premium mid-range smartphones, offering the right specifications at a cracking price; with the Motorola Signature, the brand is aiming for a value-for-money offering in the premium flagship segment.

The Motorola Signature packs a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset, a 165Hz AMOLED display, a 5200mAh battery, a 50MP triple-camera setup, and much more, with the base price starting at Rs.59999, making it a sweet deal to consider. Can Motorola make a statement for itself in this premium flagship segment with its Signature, and should you ditch other flagships and go for this? Is it worth buying?

Let's find out in the full review.

Motorola Signature Design:

The Motorola Signature carries forward a similar design strategy as we have seen on the Moto Edge smartphone series, which includes a square-shaped camera module which houses the triple cameras with an LED flashlight. The camera module is a slightly darker colour when compared to the rest of the colour on the back. The camera rings are accented, making it look premium. With the slightly raised camera module, the back of the smartphone does wobble slightly when kept on a flat surface.

The back of the smartphone does not have a flat panel; instead, it is slightly curved on both sides. The smartphone is available in two Pantone-curated colours: Martini Olive and Carbon. The Martini Olive colour variant has a softer, woven-textured material on the back, which provides a solid grip when held in the hands. It does not catch any kind of fingerprint smudges as such.

The Carbon variant has a linen-inspired textured finish, which also provides great grip when held in the hands. In terms of ingress protection, the smartphone is protected by an IP68/69 rating, so it can survive in fresh water up to 1.2 meters for 30 minutes and is also dust-resistant. On top of that, there are MIL-STD-810H military-grade durability standards so that it can handle high humidity and temperature shocks. The smartphone is slightly rounded around the edges, making it easy to hold in the hands.

Around the sides, Motorola has struck perfection, as the thickness is 7.99 mm, which has never been seen before in any premium flagship smartphone to date. The side frame matches the respective colour at the back, and the side frame is made of aluminium, giving it a sturdy and premium feel. The right side of the smartphone houses the volume buttons and a power button, and on the left side, there is an AI Key, which is designed to quickly launch Moto AI when pressed.

The bottom of the smartphone has a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone, and a dual SIM card slot. There is no additional slot for microSD card storage expansion. The top of the smartphone has only a secondary speaker, which, along with the bottom loudspeaker, doubles as a stereo speaker. On the front, the display is slightly curved on all sides and all around the display, the bezels are thinner, making it look premium.

Motorola Signature Display:

The Motorola Signature houses a larger 6.83-inch 1.5K (1264x2780 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. This 10-bit AMOLED display delivers solid colour reproduction with deeper blues and blacks, and the viewing angles are great. The smartphone has an LTPO panel, which means the display can go as low as 1Hz and up to 165Hz during gaming.

For refresh rate, there are three options: Smart and Balanced, HyperSmooth, and Efficiency First. As per the naming convention, the Efficiency First mode is the best for battery life, as the display is capped at 60Hz and drops down to 0Hz when there is no interaction with the display. Smart and Balanced mode ensures a 120Hz refresh rate for almost all applications, and similar results are also achieved with the display set to Hyper Smooth.

The only difference is that Hyper Smooth maintains a continuous 120Hz refresh rate for most of the applications during scrolling and animations, whereas the Smart & Balanced mode scales the display refresh rate to 120Hz but drops it down depending on the content on the display and lowers it to 0Hz when static content is shown, ensuring good battery efficiency. However, the 165Hz refresh rate is capped during gaming only.

Talking about the 165Hz refresh rate, there is a Gametime application which consists of a list of games, and there is an override mode where you can set it to 165Hz for smooth gameplay. You can also select any other fixed refresh rate of your choice. Combined with the 165Hz refresh rate, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses. In terms of display brightness, the Motorola Signature can reach a very good peak brightness of 6200nits.

Under High Brightness Mode, the display brightness can hover around 1520-2400 nits, which is good, and you get good visibility under direct sunlight. The display of the smartphone has three different colour profiles to choose from: Natural, Radiant, and Vivid. Selecting the Natural mode provides realistic colours along with softer colour tones and covers the sRGB gamut, whereas Radiant and Vivid modes provide punchier colours which look saturated, thus covering the DCI-P3 gamut.

There is also a temperature slider, using which you can set the display to a warmer or a cooler tone. The display of the Motorola Signature has an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner, which works fast and is accurate. The display has support for HDR, so you can stream HDR content on YouTube, and there is also Widevine L1, so streaming HDR content on OTT platforms like Prime, Netflix, etc., is a breeze. There is also support for Dolby Vision on Netflix, which is great for multimedia consumption.

Motorola Signature Performance:

The Motorola Signature houses a powerful and an almost flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset under the hood, which is seen on the OnePlus 15R (Review). Since it is a powerful and gaming-centric chipset, the smartphone handles almost all tasks easily without breaking a sweat. Even heavy games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, Genshin Impact, etc. run flawlessly at the highest graphics settings.

In BGMI, the smartphone ran easily at Smooth graphics with Ultra Extreme frame rates without any kind of frame drops or stutters as such. The gameplay was almost consistent at 110-120fps for most of the time, and it is very rare for the display refresh rate to reach around 165Hz. Other games like Genshin Impact also ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings, with slight stutters noticed, but it still would not hamper the gaming experience.

After a longer period of gaming, i.e. 3-4 hours, the back of the smartphone did feel slightly warmer, especially around the camera module, but still Motorola claims that it has a larger 6002mm2 vapour chamber, which helps in dissipating heat faster. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone achieved a sustained performance of around 60-70 per cent, with throttling present on the slightly higher side. The chipset does throttle slightly, which is a slight concern.

In terms of benchmarks, scores came out the best in class. In terms of network connectivity, there is support for carrier aggregation and almost all bands of 5G, ensuring smooth connectivity. The Motorola Signature is available in three variants: 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, 16GB RAM with 512GB storage, and 12GB RAM with 1TB storage, where RAM speeds are of LPDDR5X and storage speeds are of UFS 4.1 storage speeds.

Motorola Signature Software:

The Motorola Signature runs on the latest HelloUI based on Android 16 out of the box. HelloUI has a kind of a Stock Android look with some Motorola-specific features embedded with it. There are a lot of customisation options, including icon shape, size, colour, and fonts. The lock screen supports more widgets, and you get different styles for the Always-On display. There are a plethora of features, including some AI-specific ones that do come in handy in daily usage.

There is a Moto app which consists of a bunch of things we use daily, like it consists of a bunch of gestures that we have seen in many Motorola smartphones in the past; then there is Moto Secure 5.0 with ThinkShield protection, which provides an added layer of security between hardware and software; and Moto Unplugged is a digital wellbeing software which helps reduce screen distractions and take breaks without completely disconnecting.

There is a Smart Connect feature, which is a Motorola-specific feature for extensive connectivity, so you can link the smartphone to a PC, tablet, or any external display, whether through a wired or wireless approach. Screen streaming, desktop-style interface, phone to PC integration, Smart Sharing, Smart Clipboard, and cross-device control come in handy for daily usage. The Smart Connect app also lets you connect Moto Buds, watch, VR and tags.

Other than this, there are a plethora of AI features under MotoAI 2.0, which are activated when you press and hold the dedicated AI key on the left side of the smartphone or even through a double-tap gesture on the back. MotoAI is well integrated with Copilot Vision, which works similarly to Google Gemini and, on top of that, it answers all real-time questions based on your surroundings. Catch Me Up 2.0 is a feature which provides you with a quick, consolidated summary of unread messages and missed calls.

It works with multiple third-party applications like WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook, etc. Image Studio lets you create custom wallpapers, stickers, and avatars; you can type a description to generate a custom background. Sketch-To-Image lets you turn basic drawings into detailed and styled images. Style Sync lets you upload a photo of your surroundings to generate matching wallpapers. Pay Attention lets you record, transcribe, and summarise spoken information, conversations, and meetings in real time.

Playlist Studio lets you instantly generate custom music playlists using text or voice prompts based on mood, vibe or current screen content. Remember This lets you tag screenshots, photos, and notes where one can easily retrieve information with simple queries. Recall lets you save, search, and instantly pull up past notes, screenshots, photos, and conversations without scrolling. There are a few third-party applications present, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Perplexity, etc., which can be uninstalled easily.

As with all Motorola smartphones, there are a bunch of gestures, including Karate Chop to turn on/off the flashlight, Wrist Twist to turn on the camera, take a three-finger screenshot on the display, Back Tap includes double-tapping on the back to open a custom application, jump between recent tasks and also control music. Flip for Do Not Disturb works when you place the phone face down, automatically muting incoming calls, notifications, and active alarms. Double-press the power key to summon Google Gemini or the camera app.

There is one outstanding application called the Motorola Signature Club, which is a 24/7 concierge and lifestyle privilege service that provides travel booking assistance, airport meet-and-greet services, golf course reservations, shopping, fine wine and dine reservations, and access to exclusive events. However, these services do cost some amount, which you need to pay for. In terms of software updates, the Motorola Signature will receive seven more years of Android OS updates and security patches, putting it alongside brands like Google and Samsung and making it a future-proof smartphone.

Motorola Signature Cameras:

The Motorola Signature sports a triple camera setup which includes a 50MP f/1.6 Sony LYT-828 sensor for the primary camera, a 50MP f/2.0 Samsung JN5 sensor for the ultrawide camera with support for autofocus, and a 50MP f/2.4 Sony LYT-600 sensor for the telephoto camera with support for 3x optical zoom. On the front, there is a 50MP f/1.9 Sony LYT-500 sensor for the front camera for selfies.

The images from the primary camera during daylight come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range, with almost no noise in the background. The auto white balance works perfectly well, and there is no oversharpening as such in the background. The colours look punchier with slightly warmer tones. The contrast looks good, and all these images are generated at 12.5MP by default. There is also the 50MP mode, which gives you detailed images with good dynamic range and sharper details.

However, there is a slightly higher amount of noise present, but colours look punchier, with no oversharpening present in the background. At 2x zoom, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look punchier with no oversharpening in the background.

During the night, the dedicated auto night mode gets triggered automatically, so you get sharper details and a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look sharper, and there is no oversharpening as such. The contrast is good, and the white balance is handled very well. Without the dedicated night mode, the details look a tad softer, but you still get a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.

The 2x zoom images taken during the night come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look natural but a tad washed out, with some oversharpening present in the background. The images taken during daylight from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look natural, with a lot of oversharpening present in the background.

The images from the ultrawide camera at night come out with a decent level of detail, a wider dynamic range, accurate white balance, and slightly washed-out colours in the background. The details in the shadows look softer, with a lot of oversharpening in the background. The 3x telephoto camera does a great job in terms of details that look sharper and has a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background.

The contrast is slightly on the higher side, and the white balance is handled very well. If you go beyond 3x, i.e. 6x, 10x, 20x, the details look almost good, with sharper textures and a wider dynamic range, but going beyond 20x zoom does result in softer details, and a huge amount of noise is present in the background. The dynamic range is decent, but the images at this zoom level are not of the best quality. There is also a 100x zoom level present, and at this resolution, there is a considerable drop in quality.

Similarly, during the night, the images from the telephoto camera come out with sharper details, a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The colours look a tad washed out, with some oversharpening present in the background. Beyond 3x zoom levels, i.e. 6x, 10x, 20x zoom, there is some drop in quality with a weaker dynamic range and noise on the slightly higher side. At the 100x zoom level, the image quality is just average.

The telephoto camera can take close-up or macro images, focusing as close as 14 cm, which gives sharper details, excellent dynamic range, and almost no background noise. The colours look punchier without any kind of oversharpening in the background. In terms of portraits, the primary camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and has a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background.

The edge detection is good with proper background blur, and colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening as such. Similarly, the 85mm focal length on the telephoto camera lets it capture very good portraits with proper edge detection and background blur. The details look sharper with a wider dynamic range. In terms of selfies, the 50MP camera does a good job in terms of detail, which looks sharper and has a wider dynamic range, with a larger field of view.

The human skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. Even at night, the selfies come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range, with some noise in the background. The portrait selfies come out with proper edge detection, and the background blur is well implemented without any kind of oversharpening. In terms of videos, all four cameras can record 4K videos at 60fps and on top of that, the primary and the telephoto camera can record 8K videos at 30fps.

The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. Even in low light, the videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details, have a good level of contrast, and a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details and have a good dynamic range.

The videos do have slightly higher noise in the background. At night, the videos from the ultrawide camera come out with softer details, and the noise is on the higher side. The videos from the telephoto camera come out with sharper details and excellent dynamic range, with almost no noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening as such in the background. At different zoom levels, the videos also provide much better detail, and the contrast looks good.

But once you go beyond 20x zoom for videos, there is a considerable amount of noise present, and the details look softer, with a loss in quality. The same results are also achieved when taking videos at night. The 4K videos from the front camera come out with sharper details, and the dynamic range is wider, with very little noise in the background. The skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening as such.

Motorola Signature Battery Life:

The Motorola Signature sports a sizeable 5200mAh battery, which is decent in terms of capacity, as most of the premium flagship smartphones come with larger battery capacities. With heavy usage, which includes playing heavy games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., for 3-4 hours continuously, rendering videos, taking images and videos from the cameras, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one day with some battery left.

With normal usage that includes streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, and other lighter multitasking activities, the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came around 5-6 hours with heavy usage, and with normal usage it came around 7.5-8 hours, which is good and decent for its capacity. Combined with HelloUI on board and the efficient Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset, we are getting good battery life.

In terms of charging, the Motorola Signature has support for 90W wired charging and 50W wireless charging. The dedicated 90W Turbocharger takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent within 1 hour 10 minutes, which is quite fast, as it packs a 5200mAh battery. Other than that, there is support for 10W reverse wireless charging and 5W reverse wired charging, thus coming in handy for daily use and is much more convenient for other smartphones to get charged.

Motorola Signature Audio Quality:

The Motorola Signature sports a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately loud and clear, with strong sound output. The bass level is good, and the sound does not feel muffled even at the highest volume settings. Motorola has partnered it with Bose, and on top of that, there is Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound output. There is also support for LHDC and LDAC for earphones.

Verdict:

As an overall package, the Motorola Signature delivers the best of almost everything in almost all aspects, whether it is in terms of build and design, display, performance, cameras, and much more. The biggest highlight of the smartphone has to be its slimmer form factor, making it much lighter with those flagship specifications on board. The build and design speak of premium quality, and it has all the necessary protection, like an IP69 Rating, military standards, etc.

The display of the smartphone is great for multimedia consumption, and added to it the presence of stereo speakers enhances the sound experience further. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset provides a great multitasking experience, and along with that, the gaming experience is also close to other premium flagship smartphones out there. In terms of software experience, Motorola smartphones do not come with bloatware, which has been a strong point, and now there are a plethora of features which come in handy with daily usage.

The presence of AI features is quite interesting, and the Signature Club elevates the software experience further, thus providing additional benefits. Even in terms of software updates, it is on par with Google and Samsung smartphones, which offer the best software updates to date. The cameras are good in terms of both images and videos, but there are a few areas where refinement is still needed. The battery life is good, with support for fast charging.

However, there are a few areas where Motorola could have made improvements to the smartphone. The ultrawide camera is not as good as the primary, telephoto and front cameras, as it struggles with low-light photography and in videos also. The battery life is not the best when compared to other flagships that do come with much larger 6000 or 7000mAh batteries. The HelloUI, though feature rich, there are still few bugs present here and there, which could be refined with a future software update.

So if you are looking for a premium flagship smartphone with a sleek design, a feature-rich software experience, good performance and gaming experience, and cameras, thus sacrificing battery life, then the Motorola Signature is a solid consideration out there in the market when compared to other premium flagships out there, making it worth buying.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro Review: A bold budget flagship that turns heads but isn't without compromises!!

2026-09-13T17:22:30.425+05:30

An eye-catching all-rounder offering with its own caveats!!

Ever since Nothing entered the market, design and a cleaner software experience have been its biggest strengths, thus catching the attention of a lot of buyers out there in the market. We have the flagship number series and then the A series, which targets the mid-range and premium mid-range segment, thus getting all the basic specifications right, but the gap is now much closer between the A and the number series.

Nothing has not moved towards a different direction this year with its latest offering, i.e., the Nothing Phone 4a Pro, as instead of launching its flagship number series like we saw with the Nothing Phone 3 launched last year. This year, they have come up with the Nothing Phone 4a Pro, which provides an almost flagship experience considering its specifications. With the rising prices for smartphone storage and RAM, the Nothing Phone 4a Pro is also on the expensive side.

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro brings a striking design, a good set of cameras, cleaner software performance and much more. So with the premium price tag, can the Nothing Phone 4a Pro stand out in this highly competitive smartphone segment and is it worth buying?

Let's find out in the full review.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro Design:

Nothing has always been experimental in terms of design, and it looks striking with those Glyph LEDs that are placed on the back of each of its smartphones, and this is no different here on the Nothing Phone 4a Pro. The back of the Nothing Phone 4a Pro has a larger rectangular, circle-shaped camera module which houses the three cameras, along with a larger circular module that houses the Glyph LEDs.

The Glyph Matrix display is larger compared to the one on the Nothing Phone 3, and along with that, there is a red LED recording indicator, an LED flashlight and a microphone. There are around 137 pixel LED lights that are much brighter and bigger, with a peak brightness of 3000nits. The LED lights are white in colour, and there are four different brightness levels that you can adjust the brightness of the LEDs to. The Glyph LED lights provide a lot of functionalities like Glyph Mirror, Flip to Glyph, etc.

The camera module is slightly raised, but the smartphone does not wobble when kept on a flat surface. The Nothing Phone 4a Pro is available in three different colours - Black, Silver, and Pink. At the bottom left corner, there is a circular indent which one may mistake for a button; it looks like a cool addition. Apart from the camera module, the rest is an aluminium unibody, which is very rare to see on today's smartphones. Even the side frame matches the back colour, making it feel premium.

The bottom edges of the back panel feature an antenna line that complements the back design and has a contrasting finish for each colour variant. Around the edges, the smartphone has flatter edges and rounded corners, making it easy to hold in the hands. The Nothing Phone 4a Pro comes with an IP65 rating, making it dust- and water-resistant; i.e. it can only survive splashes of water, which is slightly disappointing considering other smartphones in its price segment do come with a proper IP69 rating.

Around the sides, the frame is aluminium and has a thickness of 7.95mm, making it one of the thinnest unibody aluminum smartphone in the market. There are a couple of antenna lines around the sides, which look good. The smartphone weighs around 210 grams, making it lighter to hold in the hands. On the right side, there are the volume buttons and a power button, and the left side houses Nothing's signature Essential key, which offers a different set of functionalities.

The Essential Key enables quick screenshot capture and further use it for intelligent content analysis through intuitive press gestures, which is integrated with the Essential Space application, which acts like an assistant to organise tasks and appointments easily. You can also long-press the Essential Key for voice memo recording while taking a screenshot. The bottom of the smartphone houses the USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a loudspeaker grille, and a dual SIM card slot.

There is no additional slot for a microSD card for storage expansion. The top of the smartphone has only a secondary speaker. On the front, there is a single punch-hole in the display that houses the selfie camera and around the sides of the display, there are minimal bezels to the sides. The display on the front is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i. Overall, the build and design are great and exude a premium feel when held in hand.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro Display:

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro sports a larger 6.83-inches 1.5K(1280x2800 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. Since it is an OLED panel, you get great viewing angles, and colours look punchier, with deeper blues and blacks on this OLED display; on top of it, it is a 10-bit panel, so colours look saturated. The display has support for a 144Hz refresh rate, and this is an LTPS panel, not the LTPO one.

As for the refresh rate, the smartphone offers three settings: Dynamic, High, and Standard. If you choose Dynamic or High modes, the display refreshes at 120Hz for most apps, and you can reach 144Hz only in a few graphically intensive games (e.g., Call of Duty Mobile, Genshin Impact, etc.). For example, when you are watching any 30fps video on YouTube, the display refreshes at 60Hz, while playing a game like Call of Duty Mobile, the display refreshes at 144Hz, etc.

You can set application-specific refresh rates also for most of the applications, which can be capped at 120Hz only. When the display is idle or when the always-on display is turned on, the display refreshes at 30Hz only. So the display refresh rate scales between 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz only. When you choose the Standard mode, the display refreshes at 60Hz. This is the best mode to achieve a healthy battery life. Combined with the 144Hz refresh rate, you get a 480Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses.

In terms of display brightness, the Nothing Phone 4a Pro can reach a peak brightness of around 5000 nits, which is really good, but it is not all pixels exhibit this level of brightness, as only individual pixels do show this number. With the display set to the High Brightness Mode, the display reaches a peak brightness of around 1600 nits, which is good for content consumption. The display has good visibility under direct sunlight also.

The display of the Nothing Phone 4a Pro has two different modes to choose from: Alive and Standard. If you set the display to Alive mode, colours look vivid and punchier, with deeper blues and blacks, thus covering the DCI-P3 gamut, whereas if you switch to Standard mode, you get more of a natural colour tone, which covers the sRGB colour space. There is also a temperature slider where you can set the display to a warmer or a cooler tone.

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro has support for HDR, so you can easily stream HDR content on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 ensures that you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. There is no support for Dolby Vision, which is slightly disappointing. The display has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that is accurate and fast at all times. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro Performance:

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro is powered by the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset, which is a mid-range chipset based on an efficient 4nm process and is an octa-core chipset which has: 1x2.8 GHz Cortex-A720 core with 4x2.4 GHz Cortex-A720 cores and another 3x1.8 GHz Cortex-A520 cores. The chipset is coupled with an Adreno 722 GPU. This chipset is not a flagship chipset like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 or MediaTek Dimensity 9500s chipset found in this price segment.

In terms of daily tasks, the smartphone handles all of them easily without breaking a sweat, whether it's heavier tasks like rendering videos, playing games, etc., or lighter tasks like scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, etc. In terms of gaming, the smartphone handled most of the heavy games with ease, with some frame drops noticed after a longer duration of gameplay. In BGMI, the graphics can be set to Super Smooth graphics with Extreme frame rates.

The gameplay is smooth, with some minor frame drops noticed, and the gameplay was consistent at 90fps most of the time. After a longer period, i.e. 3-4 hours, there were significant frame drops and stutters noticed, since this is not a dedicated gaming smartphone. Other games like Genshin Impact and Call of Duty Mobile ran smoothly, with some frame drops at the highest graphics settings. After a longer period of gaming, the back does not feel warmer, which is good.

The smartphone is equipped with a larger 5300mm2 vapour cooling chamber, which dissipates heat faster; still, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset runs cooler at all times, and similar results are reflected in the CPU throttling test, where the smartphone achieved a sustained performance of around 90-95 per cent, which is one of the best figures since it is a mid-range chipset. In benchmark tests, the smartphone performed well.

For network connectivity, it supports good carrier aggregation and all 5G bands. The Nothing Phone 4a Pro is available in three different variants: 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, 8GB RAM with 256GB storage, and 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, where RAM speeds are LPDDR5X and storage speeds are UFS 3.1, which is a slight letdown since other smartphones in this price segment come with faster UFS 4.0 speeds.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro Software:

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro runs on NothingOS 4.1 based on Android 16 out of the box. As seen in the past, NothingOS provides a feature-rich experience, and it is no different here either. With the newer NothingOS 4.1, there are a few new additions, like enhanced animations throughout the user interface, flexible sizing for homescreen applications, password recovery for Private Space, redesigned lock-screen effects with widget support and a depth effect for wallpapers.

There are a total of 19 widgets which can be customised, and it covers the essentials like the clock, calendars, contacts, and weather with different styles. The newer addition has to be the Relaxation Hub, which includes three widgets focused on breathing exercises with different modes - Focus, Calm, and Relax- each with a different pattern altogether. The notification shade area and the quick settings remain similar to before, except that the two main quick toggles have switched from a circular design to a rounded square design.

There is a custom icon pack with a monochrome look, and similarly, it applies to the Always-On display, which has very basic functionality where you get a clock and notification icons only. The lock-screen clocks have different styles to choose from and include a Depth Effect. The Nothing X application provides seamless integration with various Nothing products like Ear, Ear(a), CMF Buds, etc.

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro's graphical display-style Glyph Matrix has 489 LEDs, compared to 137 on the Nothing Phone 3. You can set the brightness of the LED lights across four levels, and it provides additional functionalities for various events, incoming calls and notifications. The Glyph interface doubles up with different activities like a volume indicator and Glyph Timer, which uses LED lights at the back as a physical progress bar for the timer.

Flip to Glyph works well to mute calls when the smartphone is flipped. Nothing has also added third-party integrations that make use of the Glyph light for progress. Just like all other user interfaces, there are also a host of AI features, which include the Essential Space and Essential Voice, which is an AI-powered hub that analyses screen contents, captures screenshots, and lets you record voice memos. AI automatically transcribes or summarises audio output, organises dates and times to sync with Google Calendar.

Using the Essential Key, you can send photos or screenshots to the Essential Space by adding text annotations. A long press of the Essential Key lets you record audio along with the captured image. The Essential Recorder is present, which lets you record, transcribe and automatically analyse conversations further. ChatGPT is well integrated within the ecosystem, where there is a dedicated widget that lets you send text, an image, or a voice note to the assistant.

Essential News picks up news from different sources, summarises the news, and also reads it out for better clarity. The gallery app has an AI Eraser feature that automatically detects and removes unwanted objects from images, and you can also select them manually for more control. There is Wallpaper Studio, which you can use to create a wallpaper using custom text as well as images.

Google Gemini is well integrated, and AI tools like Circle to Search work flawlessly in daily usage. In terms of bloatware, there are two or three applications present in the user interface, which means you are getting a clean Stock Android experience. In terms of software lifecycle support, the smartphone will get another three years of Android OS updates and six years of security patches, which is good, but still other brands like Samsung and OnePlus provide better software updates.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro Cameras:

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro sports a triple-camera setup that includes a 50MP f/1.9 Sony IMX896 sensor for the primary camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 50MP f/2.9 Samsung JN5 sensor for the periscope telephoto camera, with support for 3.5x optical zoom. On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.2 camera for selfies. This camera setup seems to be identical to most smartphones in this price segment that miss out on a telephoto camera.

The images from the primary camera come out with details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range, with less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. All these images come out at 12MP by default. With the dedicated 50MP mode, the details look sharper, but they do introduce some noise in the background, with the dynamic range remaining wider. The colours look natural, though.

The 2x zoomed images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. At night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The details in shadows look good with no oversharpening in the background. Even the 2x zoomed images taken during the night come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range, with some noise in the background.

The images from the 8MP ultrawide camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with good contrast. The colours look punchier, and there is some oversharpening present in the background. The noise is on the higher side, though. At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details, good dynamic range and good contrast. The noise is on the higher side, with oversharpening present in the background.

The 50MP telephoto camera looks to be a great addition here, as the images from this camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The contrast looks good, and the white balance is handled well. These images are taken in 3.5x optical zoom mode. Once you go beyond 3.5x zoom, the details look sharper and have a wider dynamic range and at 7x zoom, the details look good with slightly more noise in the background.

The contrast is good, and colours look saturated at 7x zoom levels. The white balance could have been better. At night, the images taken with the telephoto camera at 3.5x zoom come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range, with almost no noise in the background. The colours look saturated, with no oversharpening in the background. At 7x zoom levels, the details look sharper with punchier colours, and there is no drop in sharpness or contrast either. However, noise is clearly present.

In terms of portraits, the primary camera does a good job in terms of edge detection, and the background blur is well implemented, with natural-looking human skin tones. The dynamic range is good, and noise is very low in the background. You can also use the telephoto camera for portraits also resulting in sharper details and good dynamic range with almost no noise in the background at 3.5x zoom. Also, the edge detection and level of background blur are perfectly implemented.

In terms of selfies, the front camera takes images with sharper details and has good dynamic range with less noise in the background. The skin tones in the selfies look natural, with no such oversharpening in the background. Even portrait selfies come out with proper edge detection and have a good amount of background blur. In terms of video recording, the primary and the telephoto cameras can record 4K videos at 30fps, whereas the ultrawide camera can only record 1080p videos at 30fps.

The front camera can record 1080p videos at 60fps, as there is no support for 4K video recording, which is a huge disappointment considering the price of this smartphone. The 4K videos at 30fps from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range, with almost no noise in the background. The colours look saturated in the videos without any kind of oversharpening as such. The 1080p videos from the ultrawide camera come out well, with sharper details and good dynamic range.

However, noise remains on the higher side and in low light, the videos struggle in terms of sharpness, and exposure takes a hit. The 4K videos from the telephoto camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. At night, both the front and the telephoto camera do struggle a bit in terms of noise. The front camera records 1080p videos, which come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range, with less noise in the background.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro Battery Life:

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro sports a 5400mAh battery in India, whereas the rest of the world has a 5080mAh battery. Considering the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset along with NothingOS 4.1, we do expect a healthy battery life. With normal usage that includes streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some charge left, and the standard screen-on time came around 8-8.5 hours, which is very good.

With heavy usage that includes playing heavy games like BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile, etc. for 3-4 hours, rendering videos, taking images and videos using the cameras, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for a single day with some charge left. Just like Samsung, Nothing also provides a dedicated charger inside the box along with its smartphones. The Nothing Phone 4a Pro supports 50W fast charging, so if you use any dedicated 65W fast charger, the smartphone charges at 42W only.

So with either a 65W fast charger or anything higher than that, the smartphone takes around 1 hour 15 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent. There is no support for wireless charging or reverse wired charging as such.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro Audio Quality:

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro houses a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately loud and clear with no distortion as such. The audio quality does not feel muffled as such, even at the highest volume settings. There is support for LHDC and LDAC, so you get a great audio experience while using earphones.

Verdict:

The Nothing Phone 4a Pro plays a safe role in the budget flagship segment, which is catered to the audience in a different manner as compared to other budget flagships out there. The build and design are solid, with a unique design at the back, just like other Nothing smartphones and one that will catch attention thanks to the presence of Glyph LEDs at the back. The OLED display, along with a set of stereo speakers, is great for multimedia consumption.

In terms of performance, the smartphone handles almost all the tasks thrown at it, but when it comes to gaming, the experience is good but not like other budget flagships that come with more powerful chipsets and offer a much better gaming experience. The software is one area where Nothing smartphones have excelled in the past, and the same is true here also. You get a feature-rich Stock Android experience with no bloatware, and the dot matrix look gives it a good appeal.

The cameras are one area where the Nothing Phone 4a Pro excels, as it gets a proper triple camera setup with the inclusion of a telephoto camera, which most of the budget flagships miss out on. The images from all the cameras come out with good quality, and even the video quality is good. The battery life is good, as the smartphone easily lasts from one to two days depending on usage, and to top that, there is faster charging also. But there are many areas where the smartphone lacks that feel-good factor.

The Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 is a powerful chipset, but the gaming experience is still not as smooth or on par with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset found on other budget flagships out there. The software experience, though clean and good, is still far behind the competition in terms of software updates, where other brands like OnePlus, Samsung, Google, etc. offer a better software update lifecycle.

The ultrawide camera is the only one that struggles in terms of low-light capability, and the absence of 4K video recording at the front is a letdown. The lack of a charger inside the box is a big concern, as you have to rely on third-party chargers which do not charge at 50W, which the smartphone supports, and the battery life is decent but not as good as some other budget flagships that come with a larger-capacity battery.

So, as an overall package, if you are someone whose main concern has to be the look and the clean software experience, with good battery life and cameras being the highest priority, with decent performance and are not concerned about gaming, then the Nothing Phone 4a Pro is a solid buy out there. But with the rise in prices, the Nothing Phone 4a Pro will be slightly hard to digest, but you are getting a unique smartphone experience in the budget flagship segment.

POCO X8 Pro Max Review: A perfect performance focused premium mid-range smartphone that can set newer standards!!

2026-08-24T19:20:10.158+05:30

The POCO X8 Pro Max brings the best power and battery life!!

The POCO X series is one of the best picks in the mid-range and premium mid-range smartphone segments, bridging the gap between the affordable POCO M series and the flagship F series, which primarily focuses on performance. But this time around, POCO has changed a few things with its new X-series, introducing two offerings in its eighth generation: the POCO X8 Pro and the POCO X8 Pro Max.

Until now, the POCO X series smartphones were the ones that were priced on par with the mid-range and premium mid-range segments, and now the prices of both the POCO X8 Pro and the POCO X8 Pro Max are on the higher side, with the POCO X8 Pro Max being their flagship offering in the X-series. The POCO X8 Pro Max comes with a great set of specifications, but it comes with a hefty price tag, which is close to budget flagships out there.

Last year's POCO X7 Pro was a solid offering with a good set of specifications where performance was the top priority, and here it is no different. However, with the POCO X8 series, there are a lot of expectations, and right here with the POCO X8 Pro Max, it is difficult for it to sustain them, since the budget flagship segment has a lot of offerings from different brands out there. So, is the POCO X8 Pro Max worth considering, and how does it fare against the competition?

Let's find out in the full review.

POCO X8 Pro Max Design:

In terms of build and design, the POCO X8 Pro Max has a simple and subtle look that can be clearly seen on the back, with no flashy design as such. The back has a smooth matte finish, and the build is of fibreglass instead of proper glass, which would have been more premium. The POCO X8 Pro is available in three different colours - Black, White, and Blue. The White colour option is not purely white; instead, it looks like a satin silver finish on the back with a few stripes running from top to bottom.

The other two colours are solid colours with no stripes running through them or any kind of flashy stuff out there. The smartphone is flat on both the front and the back, and the edges are rounded, making it easy to hold in the hands. The back of all three colour variants does not carry many fingerprints or smudges as such. The POCO X8 Pro Max gets an IP66+IP68+IP69+IP69K rating, which makes it dust- and water-resistant, thus providing strong durability.

The camera module is pill-shaped, like we saw on the POCO F7 (Review), and this camera module houses the dual cameras, with the two LED flashlights placed outside the camera module beside it. The camera module has an interesting addition of LED rings around both cameras. They are two RGB LED rings that have four segments, and you can tweak them with different colours for lighting, but do note that the two LED rings light up with the same colour, and you cannot customise a different colour for each LED ring.

The LED rings provide multiple functionalities, like lighting up when any messages, calls or notifications come up and acting as a colour-coded charging indicator while charging. For example, when the battery is charging from 0 to 20 per cent, the LED ring lights up in red colour; orangish-yellow when charging is between 20 per cent and 50 per cent, then turns white above 50 per cent and green when fully charged at 100 per cent.

Even while playing music from any third-party application like Spotify or YouTube Music, both LED rings light up, and while playing games like Call of Duty Mobile or BGMI, the colours light up simultaneously. In terms of weight distribution, the POCO X8 Pro Max weighs around 218 grams, which is slightly on the heavier side, but due to the fibreglass construction at the back, it does not feel that heavy, despite having a massive 9000mAh battery.

Around the sides, the thickness is around 8.2mm, and there is a premium aluminium frame that houses the power button along with volume buttons, whereas the left side remains completely clean. At the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone along with a speaker grille for stereo output. At the bottom, there is a primary microphone, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot and a USB Type-C port. There is neither support for a microSD card slot for storage expansion nor a 3.5mm headphone jack.

On the front, the display of the smartphone has a single punch-hole in the display located on the top centre, which houses the selfie camera. The bezels are not the slimmest around the sides, but they still look good. Overall, the design looks good, and so is the build, but a proper glass back would have made it slightly more premium. However, the durability is good with a proper IP rating.

POCO X8 Pro Max Display:

The POCO X8 Pro Max sports a larger 6.83-inch 1.5K (1280x2772 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. This is a 12-bit display, which means colours look saturated with deeper blues and blacks, with excellent viewing angles. The display has support for a 120Hz refresh rate, and this is an LTPS panel and not an LTPO panel, which is slightly disappointing as it's priced closer to budget flagships out there.

Talking about the refresh rate, under settings there are two options to choose from: Default and Custom. If you set the display to Default mode, the refresh rate switches automatically depending on the content on the display. For example, while watching a 60fps video, the display refreshes at 60Hz and then switches to 30Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz, with 120Hz only while playing heavy games. While the display is idle, the refresh rate is set to 60Hz.

If you set the display to Custom mode, you can set your application-specific refresh rates, and most of them can easily achieve a 120Hz refresh rate; otherwise, the standard 60Hz is a better option for extended battery life. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a 480Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses, and there is 3180Hz PWM dimming, thus preventing strain on the eyes while viewing the display in the dark.

The display also provides an instantaneous touch sampling rate of 2560Hz while playing games. In terms of display brightness, the POCO X8 Pro Max reached a peak of 3500 nits and around 2000 nits in High Brightness Mode, which are good figures. Under direct sunlight, the brightness reached around 800-900 nits, and in very low light or darkness, the display could drop to as low as 2 nits, thus not straining the eyes.

In terms of colour profiles, there are three different profiles to choose from: Original Colour Pro, Vivid, and Custom. Choosing the Original Colour Pro mode provides more natural, well-balanced, and calibrated tones, whereas Vivid mode provides punchier and saturated colours. Custom mode lets you customise the colour temperature to a warmer or a cooler tone accordingly. The display of the POCO X8 Pro Max has support for HDR, so you can watch HDR content on YouTube.

There is also support for Widevine L1, so you can easily stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Hotstar, etc. and on top of that, there is support for Dolby Vision, so you can easily watch any of your favourite content, thus providing an immersive experience. In terms of display protection, there is Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, which is decent enough for a display. The display gets an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, which is reliable and quite fast in daily use.

POCO X8 Pro Max Performance:

The POCO X8 Pro Max is powered by the flagship MediaTek Dimensity 9500s chipset, which provides almost flagship-level performance and is very close when compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 on the OnePlus 15R (Review). The MediaTek Dimensity 9500s has an octa-core configuration which consists of 1x3.73 GHz Cortex-X925 core, 3x3.3 GHz Cortex-X4 cores and another 4x2.4 GHz Cortex-A720 cores based on an efficient 3nm process. Coupled with the chipset is the powerful Immortalis -G925 MC12 GPU.

In terms of daily tasks, whether it is scrolling through webpages, playing games, taking photos and videos using the camera, etc., the smartphone handles all these tasks with ease without breaking a sweat. When it comes to gaming, all heavy games like Genshin Impact, Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc. can be played easily at the highest graphics settings. The 120Hz refresh rate also makes the gaming experience better.

In BGMI, the smartphone easily achieved Smooth graphics with Ultra Extreme frame rates, with very minor frame drops noticed. Gameplay ran smoothly, and 120fps was maintained most of the time consistently since POCO has focused on gaming here. With Genshin Impact, the gameplay was smooth at the highest graphics, but at times there were minor frame drops noticed, and the smartphone easily achieved around 90-100fps during gameplay.

POCO's Wildboost is an intelligent software optimisation tool built into Game Turbo, which is an advanced software -hardware gaming enhancement tool which predicts per-frame computing loads to proactively prevent frame drops and optimise power efficiency during heavy gaming sessions. It also maintains the frame rate. In terms of network connectivity, you get good carrier aggregation and support for almost all bands of 5G.

After longer hours of gaming, i.e., 3-4 hours continuously, the back of the smartphone did feel slightly warmer, but the fibreglass build and the larger 3D IceLoop Cooling system, with a larger 5800 mm2 liquid cooling area, do help dissipate heat faster. In a CPU throttling test, the smartphone could achieve a sustained performance of around 70-75 per cent with very minimal throttling present. The benchmark scores were good and closer to those of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset.

The POCO X8 Pro Max is available in two variants: 12GB LPDDR5X Ultra RAM with 256/512GB storage having UFS 4.1 speeds.

POCO X8 Pro Max Software:

The POCO X8 Pro Max runs on the latest Xiaomi's latest HyperOS 3 platform, built on top of Android 16 out of the box. Compared to previous iterations of HyperOS on Xiaomi or POCO smartphones, the user interface remains identical, with some new changes and the addition of AI features. There is a newer set of animations and transitions in the user interface. You get a lot of customisations where you can change icon shape, size, colour and also fonts.

Just like Apple's Dynamic Island, Xiaomi's Super Island is present, which provides multiple functionalities like showing the timer, incoming calls, and any music playing on Spotify, and quick shortcuts to running applications in the background, all of which are in a compact form factor around the front camera. All system-wide icons have a newer look with a slight redesign. The notification panel is seen when swiping from the top right, whereas swiping from the top left shows the quick settings.

Other than this, with HyperOS 3, there is a lot of focus towards AI-drien features, which has been one of the biggest trends for every smartphone user interface. AI Dynamic Wallpapers and Cinematic Lock Screens convert any still photo into an animated and motion-rich wallpaper using cloud-based AI processing. AI Speech Recognition helps to reduce background noise and hear voices clearly during playback. It provides real-time transcription while watching videos and creates summaries from meetings.

AI Search scans local files, app data settings, audio recordings and PDFs, thus providing smart summaries. It has an enhanced Gallery Search where it utilises natural language prompts and visual tags to locate specific images across various categories. AI Interpreter and AI Subtitles provide bilingual translation and simultaneous interpretation for phone calls, and live on-screen subtitles in up to 25 languages while watching videos.

You can also tap the smartphone to another Android or iOS device to easily share photos, videos, and files. You can also pair with a Windows PC or laptop, where you can seamlessly use the smartphone content on the laptop or PC. However, with HyperOS 3, there is a huge number of pre-installed applications, which make the experience slightly cumbersome, and Xiaomi's own set of applications can only be disabled and not uninstalled, which lets it down slightly.

In terms of software updates, the smartphone will receive another four years of Android OS updates and six years of security updates, which is very good, as both brands are also offering this software update policy.

POCO X8 Pro Max Cameras:

The POCO X8 Pro Max sports a triple-camera setup that includes a 50MP f/1.5 Light Fusion 600 sensor for the primary camera and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. On the front, there is a 20MP f/2.2 OmniVision OV20B sensor for selfies.

In terms of images taken from the primary camera during the day, the details look sharper, with a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The colours look natural without much oversharpening in the background. The contrast is good, and the white balance is handled well. These images are captured by default at 12MP. Using the dedicated 50MP mode results in sharper details with good dynamic range and less noise in the background. However, there is some oversharpening present.

At night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The details in shadows are well balanced, and there is no such scene of overexposure in the background. The colours look natural but tend to be oversharpened a bit. The contrast looks good, and the white balance is handled well. When it comes to 2x zoomed images taken during the day, the details look sharper with good dynamic range, but with some noise around.

Similarly, at night, the 2x zoomed images come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range, with some noise around the corners. There is some oversharpening in the background. The images taken during the daylight come out with sharper details, good dynamic range, and less noise in the background. There is some distortion around the edges, with some oversharpening present. The colours look natural and do have a warmer tone.

At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with softer details and have a decent dynamic range, with more noise in the background. The colours look natural, with some oversharpening in the background. The ultrawide camera also doubles as a macro camera, producing images with slightly softer details and washed-out colours, with noise in the background. The primary camera provides some very good portraits with proper edge detection and background blur.

The human skin tones look natural without any kind of over-sharpening in the background. The dynamic range is wider, and white balance is handled very well in portraits. In terms of selfies, the 20MP front camera does a good job in terms of details, which look sharper and have a good dynamic range. Skin tones look natural, though the background shows some oversharpening. The noise is on the lower side, though.

However, in low-light scenarios, the front camera does struggle in terms of light, as there is higher noise in the background and oversharpening is present. In terms of videos, the primary camera can record 4K videos at 60fps, whereas the ultrawide camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps. The front camera can record 1080p videos at 60fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range, with less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening.

For a noise-free experience, you can switch to 1080p video recording at 30fps, where the ShootSteady mode kicks in, thus reducing noise to a greater extent. The presence of OIS works well at night in reducing the noise to a greater extent, thus providing sharper details and a wider dynamic range in the videos. The 2x zoomed videos come out with sharper details and good dynamic range, with some oversharpening in the background.

The noise is less, though. The videos from the ultrawide camera during the day come out with sharper details and decent dynamic range. However, the noise is slightly on the higher side. At night, the details in videos have softer details, with heavy oversharpening in the background. On the front, the 1080p videos come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The skin tones look natural with some sharpening present.

POCO X8 Pro Max Battery Life:

The POCO X8 Pro Max sports a massive 9000mAh battery, which is the highest-capacity battery for any POCO smartphone to date. With the efficient MediaTek Dimensity 9500s chipset built on a 3nm process and HyperOS 3 on board, we do expect a healthier battery life, and the smartphone does not disappoint in this area.

With normal usage that includes streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, and other lighter tasks, the smartphone easily lasted for two to close to three days on most occasions, thus providing a solid battery life. The standard screen-on time came around 10-11 hours, which is excellent. With heavy usage, which includes playing heavy games continuously for 4-5 hours, rendering videos, clicking images and taking videos, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days with some charge left.

The standard screen-on time came around 6.5-7 hours with heavy usage, considering the larger battery underneath. In terms of charging, the smartphone has support for a 100W fast charger, which comes inside the box, and it takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent in around 1 hour 10 minutes, which is quite fast considering the larger 9000mAh battery.

There is no support for wireless charging, which may not be a concern for most in this price segment, but you do get 27W reverse wired charging, using which you can use the POCO X8 Pro Max as a power bank to charge other smartphones using the charging cable.

POCO X8 Pro Max Audio Quality:

The POCO X8 Pro Max sports a dual stereo speaker which has an enriching sound experience, and the sound does not feel muffled or distorted even at the highest volume settings. There is also support for Dolby Atmos, which provides a great experience while watching videos, listening to music, etc. For a lossless audio experience through earphones, there is support for LHDC and LDAC support.

Verdict:

The POCO X8 Pro Max provides a solid, flagship-level experience when it comes to its specifications for the price segment. The build and design are good, with the fibreglass back and durability; the AMOLED display is great for multimedia consumption, and to enhance it further, the stereo speakers are present. In terms of gaming and performance, the chipset provides an almost flagship-grade experience; the larger 9000mAh battery with faster charging aids it further.

The software experience is good, with HyperOS providing a host of AI features that come in handy for daily usage. Even the software update lifecycle has been improved on POCO smartphones, which is reflected here also. However, there are some compromises clearly seen on the smartphone. Though you get a good build and design, the presence of a proper glass build is missing, and the display protection is not the best.

The MediaTek chipset provides a flagship gaming experience, but the back of the smartphone does feel slightly warmer. In terms of cameras, POCO has clearly cut corners, as the primary camera performance is decent but not the best when you compare it with other smartphones in the budget flagship segment that have better cameras. The ultrawide camera struggles in terms of low-light in terms of images and videos. There is also no telephoto camera present, considering the price segment.

HyperOS 3 provides a good, feature-rich software experience but still lacks finesse and is not as smooth as other user interfaces like OxygenOS or OneUI due to the huge bloatware that comes pre-installed on the smartphone, which is not expected from a smartphone in the budget flagship segment. When compared to the competition out there, you do get a solid smartphone with the right specifications, except for the cameras; other smartphones do offer better cameras.

When you compare the MediaTek chipset with a Qualcomm chipset found on most budget flagships from iQOO, OnePlus, etc, the performance and gaming experience are almost on par, so there would not be much of a difference. With time, MediaTek chipsets have seen a drastic improvement from quite a longer time also. So if you are someone who wants a performance-centric smartphone with the best battery life and future-proof specifications, thus sacrificing the optics, then the POCO X8 Pro Max is a solid buy out there, making it worth considering.

OnePlus Nord 6 Review: Can this almost flagship killer from OnePlus with minor trade-offs make a solid option?

2026-08-15T08:58:25.640+05:30

An almost flagship-grade experience with a long-lasting battery!!

The OnePlus Nord series has been very popular ever since it came to market, as it bridges the gap between the budget Nord CE series and the popular R series, both of which are performing well in the market. The Nord series strikes the perfect blend of experience along with an almost flagship performance, thus undercutting the competition and has been a huge success when compared to other smartphone brands out there.

The OnePlus Nord 5 (Review) was a successful product, as it offered strong specifications, including the powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, a 144Hz AMOLED display, a larger 7000mAh battery and all specifications were good. So, considering the success of the OnePlus Nord 5, there are a lot of expectations from its successor, i.e. OnePlus Nord 6. With the OnePlus Nord 6, the company has made quite a bunch of handful upgrades which make it a strong contender.

With the rising price of components like semiconductor chips and DRAM for smartphones, OnePlus has jacked up the prices of the OnePlus Nord 6, which now falls under the value flagship territory. However, with upgrades like a 165Hz display, a powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, a massive 9000mAh battery and much more, does it feel like a good upgrade over the OnePlus Nord 5? Is it worth buying?

Let's find out in the full review.

OnePlus Nord 6 Design:

The OnePlus Nord 6 sports a slightly different design this time around, as the company has now gone with a squarish-shaped camera module instead of the vertically pill-shaped camera module on its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus Nord 5. The squarish camera module houses dual cameras, an LED flashlight, and an IR Blaster. The camera module is slightly protruded from the back, which will make the smartphone wobble when kept on a flat surface.

Around the edges, the smartphone is rounded, and both the front and back have flat panels with no curves. Though the design looks refreshing with the pill-shaped camera module design, the build quality remains unchanged, as you get a polycarbonate build across all colour variants, which is a kind of a letdown when you compare it with the OnePlus Nord 4 (Review), which came with a premium unibody metal design.

The OnePlus Nord 6 is available in three different colours - Holographic Quick Silver, Pitch Black and Fresh Mint. The Quick Silver colour variant has an interesting addition of a holographic double-lining pattern that wraps right around the camera module, which gives a shimmering effect when the smartphone is tilted at different angles. It gives a cyberpunk-like vibe, which may appeal to the younger generation out there.

If you want a simpler look, then the other two colour variants, i.e. Pitch Black and Fresh Mint, will look good. All three colour variants have a smooth matte finish, which would not carry many fingerprints as such. Around the sides, the OnePlus Nord 6 is thicker at 8.5mm and has a polycarbonate frame which houses the power button along with volume buttons on the right side, whereas the left side houses the signature Plus Key that provides multiple functionalities on a daily basis.

The top only houses a secondary noise-cancelling microphone along with a speaker output. The bottom of the smartphone houses a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot, and a primary microphone. The OnePlus Nord 6 weighs around 217 grams, making it quite heavy as it packs a massive 9000mAh battery, so you can definitely feel the weight while holding it in your hands.

The OnePlus Nord 6 has upgraded the durability as it now comes with an IP66+IP68+IP69+IP69K rating, making it completely dust- and water-resistant. On the front, there are slimmer bezels on the sides, which are uniform, and the display houses a single punch-hole located at the top centre that houses the selfie camera. In terms of display protection, OnePlus Nord 6 comes with Crystal Guard protection, which is almost equivalent to Corning Gorilla Glass Victus +.

OnePlus Nord 6 Display:

The OnePlus Nord 6 has a slightly smaller display at 6.78 inches when compared to the 6.83-inch display of the OnePlus Nord 5. The OnePlus Nord 6 sports a 6.78-inches 1.5K(1272x2772 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. As this is a 10-bit display, the colours look punchier with deeper blues and blacks, and the viewing angles are good. Just like the flagship OnePlus 15, here you also get a 165Hz refresh rate on the display.

The 165Hz refresh rate only works in gaming applications, for example, games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, Genshin Impact, etc. There are three different settings to choose from: Auto-select, Standard, and High. Choosing Auto-select or High mode lets the display refresh at 120Hz for most of the applications, except that in Auto-select mode, the display refreshes at different refresh rates, i.e. 30Hz, 60Hz, 120Hz, etc.

In High mode, the display maintains an almost 120Hz refresh rate for almost all applications, and you can also set application-specific refresh rates. The Standard mode ensures that the display refreshes at 60Hz only, thus providing better battery life. The display is an LTPS panel and not an LTPO panel, though. Combined with the 165Hz refresh rate, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate for faster responses and in gaming, you get an instantaneous touch sampling rate of 3200Hz.

In terms of display brightness, the OnePlus Nord 6 achieves a peak brightness of 3600 nits, which remains unchanged from the predecessor, i.e. OnePlus Nord 5. Under High Brightness Mode, the display brightness comes to around 1800 nits, which is good. Under normal conditions, the brightness hovers at 700-800 nits and also has good visibility under direct sunlight. There is also 3160Hz PWM dimming, which helps prevent eye strain when viewing content in the dark.

In terms of colour temperature, there are three colour settings to choose from: Vivid, Natural, and Pro, which include Brilliant and Cinematic modes. If you choose the Natural mode, the colours look natural and close to real-life tones, which covers the sRGB colour space, whereas if you switch to Vivid and Pro modes, the colours look punchier, and both of them cover the DCI-P3 gamut. You can set the colour temperature to a warmer or a cooler tone using the temperature slider.

The display has support for HDR, so you can stream HDR on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 ensures that you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. easily. However, there is no Dolby Vision support, which is slightly disappointing. The display supports an optical in-display fingerprint scanner, which works accurately and is faster in daily usage. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption.

OnePlus Nord 6 Performance:

The OnePlus Nord 6 is powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, which is slightly more powerful when compared to the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset on the OnePlus Nord 5. The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset is an octa-core chipset which has 1x3.21GHz Cortex-X4 core, 3x3.0 GHz Cortex-A720 cores and another 2x2.8 GHz Cortex-A720 cores, with 2x2.0 GHz Cortex-A720 cores and is based on an efficient 4nm process and coupled with an Adreno 825 GPU.

In terms of daily usage, which includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, taking images and videos from the cameras, gaming, etc., the smartphone felt smoother to use without breaking a sweat. The 165Hz display works really well with smoother transitions and animations. In terms of gaming, all heavy games like BGMI, Genshin Impact, and Call of Duty Mobile ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings.

In BGMI, the smartphone ran smoothly with the graphics set to Smooth and frame rates set to Ultra Extreme graphics with no stutters or lags as such. During gameplay of BGMI, the smartphone maintained 140-150fps most of the time with very minimal frame drops. The dedicated Game Boost includes HyperBoost technology, which provides an instantaneous touch sampling rate of 3200Hz and also allows for optimising frame rates and network data.

The presence of a WiFi G2 chip ensures seamless network connectivity during gaming, thus preventing latency and stutters in challenging network conditions. In graphics-intensive games like Genshin Impact, the smartphone could achieve somewhere around 110-120fps throughout the gameplay and on very rare occasions, it is seen gaming at 165fps. There were a few frame drops noticed when played continuously for 3-4 hours.

The back of the smartphone does not feel warmer because of the massive 33147 mm2 graphene cooling chamber beneath it. The polycarbonate build also dissipates heat faster than a glass build. The area around the camera module does feel warmer at times when you are pushing the frame rates during gaming to their limits. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone easily maintained a sustained performance of around 70-75 per cent with very minimal throttling present.

These results were obtained without Performance Mode being turned on, whereas with Performance Mode turned on, the sustained performance came to around 65 per cent, which is still good and not an issue. The benchmark scores came out good but slightly lower compared to the ones with Performance Mode turned on. In terms of network connectivity, you get support for all bands of 5G and good carrier aggregation.

The OnePlus Nord 6 is available in two variants: 8GB/12GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256GB storage, having UFS 4.0 speeds. It is good to see that OnePlus is providing 256GB storage from the base variant itself, and storage speeds are now UFS 4.0 compared to UFS 3.1 speeds on the OnePlus Nord 5.

OnePlus Nord 6 Software:

Like the OnePlus 15 series, the OnePlus Nord 6 also runs on the latest OxygenOS 16 based on Android 16 out of the box. OxygenOS 16 brings newer animations and transitions throughout the interface, and you get a host of customisations where you can change icon shape, size, colour and fonts. The newer redesigned lock screen has a lot of customisations, and Always-On display works flawlessly along with it. The Flux Theme 2.0 lets you add different texts, widgets and much more to the lock screen.

Even on the home screen, you can reshape application folders with dynamic layout adjustments, as you can create larger folders and accommodate different applications, where you can increase the font, icon shape, size and also match icon colours with the home screen wallpaper accordingly. There are a lot of AI features that are built in and come in handy in everyday usage, some of which include MindSpace, which lets you save on-screen information and documents and take screenshots.

It is also integrated with Google Gemini, which checks the content in MindSpace and creates an itinerary of it. You can get MindSpace if you press the Plus Key placed on the left side of the frame. The Plus Key provides a lot of functionalities, like you can set different sound profiles, which include Vibrate, Ring, and Silent. Long-press the button to record audio and save it in the OneNote application. The Live Alerts feature works well, providing information, and now it supports more applications than before.

Some of the AI features include AI Writer, which helps to rewrite, summarise, generate text and social media tones with adjustable captions in videos; AI Document Scanner lets you scan documents and removes any unwanted noise in the document or fingerprints, AI Scan inteligently scans the images present in the gallery application and removes unwanted noise and shadows in images, AI Portrait Glow adjusts the background lighting in portraits and removes noise in background.

AI Unblur and AI Enhance also work well for portraits. AI Perfect Shot works well at removing blinking and also changes facial expressions in photos. The sound recorder gets live transcription, which means whatever sound is recorded has live captions, and AI Summary summarises all of the content in a proper manner. OnePlus Connect is present, which lets you pair the smartphone with a desktop or PC and use the content of the smartphone on it.

Open Canvas is present, which ensures seamless multitasking as you can use two applications simultaneously in split-screen. In terms of software updates, OnePlus has kept the same policy as its flagship series, i.e. four years of Android OS and six years of security patches for the OnePlus Nord 6, which is a good improvement over the OnePlus Nord 5.

OnePlus Nord 6 Cameras:

The OnePlus Nord 6 sports a dual camera setup which includes a 50MP f/1.8 Sony LYT-600 sensor for the primary camera with OIS and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.0 selfie camera, similar to the one on the OnePlus 15R. The primary camera sensor seems to be a downgrade when compared to the OnePlus Nord 5's Sony LYT-700 sensor on paper, but with the newer chipset onboard, there is not much of a difference.

The images from the primary camera have sharper detail, a wider dynamic range, and less background noise. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening. The contrast is slightly on the higher side, and white balance is handled very well. The colours are slightly punchier when compared to the ones on the OnePlus Nord 5, which provides more natural-looking colours.

In terms of HDR images, the OnePlus Nord 6 tries to oversaturate colours to a greater extent, but the noise remains under control, and the dynamic range is wider. The human skin tones look good but have a warmer tone. There is oversharpening at times in the background, though. The 50MP images come out with sharper details and a good dynamic range with less noise in the background, but compared to 12MP images, the details look a tad softer.

The 2x zoomed images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. At night, the Auto Night Mode gets triggered automatically, which means the details look sharper with a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The colours look natural, but at times there is oversharpening present in the background. The white balance is good, and contrast is on the higher side.

The details in shadows look good, and in very low-light areas the camera struggles at times to capture light and provide details. Without Auto Night Mode, things are not up to par, as there is a consistent drop in image quality since noise is on the higher side and details look softer, with a slightly weaker dynamic range when compared to the ones taken on the OnePlus Nord 5. The 2x zoomed images at night come out with sharper details, but the noise is on the higher side.

The images from the 8MP ultrawide camera come out with sharper details, with wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. There is distortion around the edges, with some oversharpening in the background. The details look slightly better than those of the OnePlus Nord 5 thanks to the better image processing of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset on the smartphone. The contrast is good, and white balance is handled very well.

At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with good details, but they tend to look softer, with oversharpening present in the background. The colours look saturated, though, but the dynamic range comes out as average, and OnePlus still needs to fix the issues through a future software update. The noise is well under control, but it is still on the higher side. The distortion around the edges is clearly visible when you zoom in on the images.

In terms of portraits, the primary camera can take some very good portraits, which come out with natural-looking colours in the background, and the edge detection is also good. The background blur is well implemented, with less noise in the background. In terms of selfies, the 32MP camera on the front takes some very good selfies that have sharper details and a wider dynamic range, with less noise in the background.

The skin tones look natural but do look overprocessed at times. The selfie portraits come out with sharper details and proper edge detection, with some noise around the corners. However, when you compare the selfies of the OnePlus Nord 5, there is a slight improvement in terms of colours, which do not oversaturate, but the field of view is still larger on the OnePlus Nord 5 due to the 50MP front camera.

In terms of video, the primary camera can record 4K videos at 60fps, and the front camera can record 4K videos at 30fps, whereas the ultrawide camera is restricted to 1080p videos at 60fps. There is even slow-motion video recording at 1080p at 240fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range, and since OIS is present, it helps to mask noise to a greater extent. The 4K videos have slightly higher noise in the background.

When switching to 1080p videos at 60fps, the Ultra Steady Mode kicks in, resulting in videos with sharper details, saturated colours and almost no noise in the background. The dynamic range is wider, and contrast is good with proper white balance. The videos from the ultrawide camera have decent detail, but they look softer, and the noise is on the higher side. The colours look saturated, but videos taken at night suffer from oversharpening and look washed out.

The videos from the front camera have sharper detail, a wider dynamic range, and less background noise. The skin tones look natural, and there is no drop in quality either. The white balance is handled well. The same goes for the selfie portrait videos, where you get good edge detection and proper background blur, but it does suffer from focus issues at times and slight inconsistency in colours.

OnePlus Nord 6 Battery Life:

The biggest highlight of the OnePlus Nord 6 is the gigantic 9000mAh battery, which is much larger than that of its predecessor, the OnePlus Nord 5, which came with a 6800mAh battery. With OxygenOS 16 and a slightly more powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset underneath, we do expect an improvement in battery life, and the smartphone clearly delivers it when you see the daily usage.

With normal usage that includes streaming social media, browsing through webpages, or other lighter multitasking, the smartphone easily lasted for two and a half days with charge left. The standard screen-on time came around 10.5-11 hours, which is by far one of the best figures on any OnePlus smartphone to date and the best in the premium mid-range segment. Even the ideal battery drain remains normal, with no significant drop in battery percentage.

With heavy usage that includes rendering videos, taking images and videos using the camera, and playing heavy games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc. for a longer duration, the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came to around 7-8 hours, which is good considering the efficient chipset and the larger battery.

In terms of charging, OnePlus has bundled the smartphone with an 80W SuperVOOC fast charger inside the box. With the 80W fast charger, the OnePlus Nord 6 easily clocks from 0 to 100 per cent within 1 hour 10 minutes, which is quite fast considering the larger battery underneath. The first 30 minutes charge it from 0 to 55 per cent. There is also support for 27W reverse wired charging, which means you can use the OnePlus Nord 6 as a power bank to charge other smartphones.

OnePlus Nord 6 Audio Quality:

The OnePlus Nord 6 has dual stereo speakers where the top earpiece and the bottom firing loudspeakers together produce a stereo sound experience. Even at the highest volume settings, the sound does not feel distorted or muffled. There is also support for LHDC and LDAC support so you do get an immersive audio experience when using any TWS or wireless earphones.

Verdict:

As an overall package, the OnePlus Nord 6 delivers an almost flagship experience in almost all aspects while playing it safe. The smartphone brings a sturdy and durable build and design with a great display paired with stereo speakers for multimedia consumption. The performance and gaming are something which the smartphone has nailed perfectly, as the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset handles everything thrown at it. The software experience is unmatched with OxygenOS running underneath.

There are a host of AI features which come in handy in daily usage, and the presence of Plus Key to the side aids it further. Even the software update policy is very good when compared to other smartphone brands. It may not be the best, but still OnePlus is punctual in terms of software updates. In terms of cameras, you do get a downgraded primary camera when compared to the OnePlus Nord 5, but it feels improved in terms of image processing and video.

The massive 9000mAh battery provides solid battery life and provides the best figures till now in the premium mid-range segment. The 80W fast charger inside the box charges the smartphone quickly, and the reverse wired charging capability comes in handy as always. However, there are certain trade-offs seen on the smartphone. Firstly, the build is still polycarbonate instead of glass, which is slightly disappointing considering its price.

The gaming experience is flagship-level, but at times the back does feel warmer, and the 165fps gameplay is somewhat inconsistent, with slight frame drops noticed. The cameras are not the best in class, which clearly shows the compromise made by OnePlus, as it suffers in low-light scenarios, and the ultrawide camera provides average output. Even the 80W fast charger provided inside the box is USB Type-A to Type-C instead of Type-C to Type-C.

So when you compare it to last year's OnePlus Nord 5, you are getting better performance, an improved battery life, a higher refresh rate display and better durability with a proper IP rating. However, the OnePlus Nord 5 slightly edges it out in terms of primary camera performance, but the OnePlus Nord 6 provides better colour accuracy and contrast. So as an overall package, the OnePlus Nord 6 is a solid premium mid-range smartphone for people who want the best performance and battery life over optics.

However, the higher asking price of the OnePlus Nord 6 is hard to justify given its position in the market, but you are still getting a lot for the money.

POCO F7 Review: A true flagship killer in the premium mid-range segment that will keep the pulse raising!!

2026-08-11T08:29:15.778+05:30

An unbeatable flagship performance at a great price is a sweet deal!!

The POCO F series has always been the performance-centric choice for gamers, ever since the POCO F1 launched in 2018 with the 2018 flagship chipset. It became a huge success, so the brand followed the same philosophy, and like each year, this year we have the POCO F7, which seems to be the flagship killer in the premium mid-range segment.

The POCO F6 (Review) was a solid offering as it provided flagship-grade performance along with great gaming capabilities. Now, this year with the POCO F7, the brand is aiming for the same level of success, offering a few upgrades over the POCO F6: the newer Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, a larger 7550mAh battery, and much more, all at the same price.

So can the POCO F7 continue the journey as the flagship killer just like its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6? Is it worth buying? Let's find out in the full review.

POCO F7 Design:

The POCO F7 comes with a slightly different design when compared to its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6. There are three different colour options present - Black, White, and Cyber Silver. The Cyber Silver variant comes with a dual-tone finish, with the first half in black and the second half in silver. The camera module is vertically oval shaped that houses two cameras with accent rings around the cameras.

Both of them are separated by a diagonal piece with two green LED lines running on either side of it look eye-catching and unique. This camera module is similar for all colour variants. With the Cyber Silver variant, just beside the camera module, there are different geometric shapes which include triangles and rhomboids with different textures, colours and finishes. There is also the Snapdragon branding, which looks interesting.

Just outside the camera module, there is a dual LED flashlight. The other two colours - Black and White look plainer with no gaming aesthetic. However, the back of all colour variants does catch quite a bit of fingerprints and smudges, so it is better to use the smartphone with a case on the back. The POCO F7 has all the required IP ratings, which include IP66, IP68, and IP69 ratings, which include both dust and water resistance.

Around the sides, there is an aluminium frame that houses the power button along with volume buttons on the right side, whereas the left side remains completely cleaner. On top, there is only a secondary noise-cancelling microphone with no secondary speaker, which means the earpiece acts as the secondary speaker, which is located on top of the camera.

At the bottom, there is a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone, a USB Type-C slot and a dual SIM card slot. There is no additional slot for microSD card storage expansion. The POCO F7 weighs around 215 grams, which makes it slightly heavier than its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6, which is due to the premium glass build of the POCO F7 over the polycarbonate back of the POCO F6.

Around the edges, the smartphone is more rounded, which makes it easier to hold in the hands. The front glass is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, which is a slight downgrade over the Corning Gorilla Glass Victus built on its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6. Overall, the build and design feel premium and are a good upgrade over the POCO F6.

POCO F7 Display:

The POCO F7 sports a larger 6.83-inch 1.5K (1280x2772 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9, and this time the display size is also slightly larger when compared to its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6. This is a 12-bit display with good colour reproduction, with deeper blues and blacks, along with great viewing angles.

There is support for a 120Hz refresh rate, which is similar to all typical POCO devices, i.e. it is an adaptive one, not an LTPO panel. There are two different settings to choose from - Default and Custom. The Default Mode lets you choose between 60Hz and 120Hz refresh rate, depending on the content in the display, and this mode works for applications to run at 120Hz and even force to 60Hz for better battery life.

The Custom mode, on the other hand, lets the display scale between different refresh rates - 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz, depending on the content in the display. Combined with the 120Hz display, you get a 480Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses, and this touch sampling rate increases to an instantaneous 2560Hz during gaming while using the Game Turbo mode.

In terms of display brightness, the POCO F7 reaches a peak brightness of 3200 nits, a slight improvement over its predecessor, the POCO F6 (2400 nits), as measured in an HDR video playback test. The typical brightness hovers around 800 nits, which is good, and under direct sunlight or with the High Brightness Mode turned on, the display easily reaches around 1200nits of brightness.

There are three different colour modes to choose from - Original Colour Pro, Vivid, and Custom. If you set the Original Colour Pro mode, the colours look natural and cover the sRGB colour space, whereas if you choose Vivid and Custom modes, the colours look punchier with deeper blues and blacks, thus covering the DCI-P3 gamut. You can set the colour temperature to a warmer or a cooler tone accordingly.

The POCO F7 has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner, which works fast and is very accurate. The display has support for HDR10, so you can easily stream HDR content on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 lets you stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Hotstar, etc. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption.

POCO F7 Performance:

The POCO F7 sports a flagship-grade Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, which is a minor upgrade over the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset on its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6. The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset has an octa-core setup, which includes 1x3.21 GHz Cortex-X4 with 3x3.0 GHz Cortex-A720 cores and 2x2.8 GHz Cortex-A720 cores with 2x2.0 GHz Cortex-A720 cores, which is based on a 4nm process.

Coupled with this chipset, there is an Adreno 825 GPU, which does the duty and is clocked at 1150MHz. In terms of day-to-day activities like scrolling through webpages, playing games, and taking photos and videos with the camera, everything feels smooth in use. All heavy games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings without breaking a sweat.

With BGMI, we could easily achieve Super Smooth graphics and Extreme frame rates, and after 3-4 hours of gameplay, there were no stutters, and the gameplay remained consistent at 120 fps. Even in other games like Call of Duty Mobile or Genshin Impact, the gameplay was stable at 90fps with very minor frame drops noticed. However, the back of the smartphone did feel slightly warmer, which remains a slight concern.

POCO has equipped the smartphone with a 6000mm2 larger vapour cooling system, which dissipates heat faster. There is the Game Turbo mode, which provides consistent frame rates during gaming and shows the CPU and GPU usage during gaming. It does miss out on bypass charging, which may not be a problem for many out there. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could easily achieve a sustained performance of around 80-85 per cent, which is very good.

There is some minor throttling noticed, but it is negligible. The benchmark scores came out the best in class. In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation, and almost all bands of 5G are supported. The POCO F7 is available in two different variants: 12GB RAM with 256 GB storage and another one with 512GB storage, where RAM speeds are of LPDDR5X and storage speeds are of UFS 4.1 speeds.

POCO F7 Software:

The POCO F7 runs on HyperOS v2 based on Android 15 out of the box. The user interface is almost similar to HyperOS, which was initially present on its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6, but this time around, there are a few changes and newer AI features. The user interface comes with two separate panels, which show the quick settings and another one is the notification panel, both of which cannot be merged.

The homescreen supports a huge list of applications, widgets and larger folders which can accommodate different applications. You can either use the app drawer or place all applications on the homescreen. The animations are now smoother and work extremely well on the display. There are a whole lot of customisations where you can change icon shape, size, and colour and also tweak the lockscreen with different wallpapers and effects.

There are a lot of themes for the Always-On Display, which can be set on the lock screen. Talking about the AI features, there are a host of them. In the gallery, under AI Photos, there are a host of AI features which include AI Enhance, AI Beautify, AI Expand, AI Sky, AI Erase, and AI Remove Reflection, all of which come in handy as you can remove objects and people from photos, reflections and also change the appearance of the sky in images.

Google Gemini is present at the heart, which lets you do multiple things and also creates images depending on the content you have asked for. Along with that, there is the AI Speech Recognition, which lets you transcribe speech into text, summarise the contents and translate them. This works well on the Notes app. AI Writing, AI Dynamic Wallpaper, AI Smart Cutout, etc., are some of the handy features.

There is the Circle To Search, which works extremely well throughout the user interface. However, the biggest disappointment has to be the presence of a lot of third-party applications in the user interface, which feels slightly cumbersome to use. However, these can be uninstalled easily. In terms of software updates, the POCO F7 will receive another four years of Android OS updates and six years of security patches, which is a good improvement in terms of software longevity over the POCO F6.

POCO F7 Cameras:

The POCO F7 sports a dual camera setup, which includes a primary 50MP f/1.5 Sony IMX822 sensor for the primary camera and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. There is no macro camera here, which is good, as most manufacturers add it as an extra, which does not make much of a difference since the primary camera itself is capable of taking macro shots. On the front, there is a 20MP f/2.2 camera for selfies.

In terms of daylight images, the details look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The colours look punchier with no oversharpening present. The contrast is slightly on the higher side, and the white balance is handled quite well. All these results are captured in 12MP by default. With the dedicated 50MP mode, you get slightly softer details, decent dynamic range and slightly more noise.

At night, the images come out with a decent level of detail, which looks a tad softer, and the dynamic range comes out to be average. The noise is present clearly in the background, and there is some amount of oversharpening also. With the dedicated Night Mode turned on, the details look a bit sharper, but still the camera suffers from some oversharpening. However, the colours look punchier as it oversaturates a lot in the background.

The primary camera is also capable of taking 2x zoomed images, which come out with sharper details and good dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening. At night, the 2x zoomed images come out with slightly softer details, and the dynamic range is not as wide. The noise is also on the higher side with oversharpening in the background.

The ultrawide camera clicks images with sharper details and has decent dynamic range, but the noise is on the higher side. There is a lot of distortion around the edges, and similarly, at night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with a decent level of detail, and the dynamic range is not so wide, with more noise in the background. The details in the shadows look crushed, with a lot of improvement to be desired.

The selfies come out with sharper details, with good dynamic range, and noise is also well controlled in the background. There is slight oversharpening present in the selfies, which could have been improved. At night, the selfies come out with decent dynamic range with softer details. The human skin tones look artificial at times. In terms of portraits, the primary camera does a good job in terms of edge detection and has a wider dynamic range.

The level of background blur is well maintained, along with almost no noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The primary camera can record 4K videos at 60 fps, whereas the ultrawide and the selfie camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps only. The 4K videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range.

The colours look slightly oversaturated in the background, with less noise. When you switch to 1080p video mode, you get better stabilisation with sharper details and almost no noise in the background. The videos from the ultrawide camera have decent detail that looks a tad softer, and the background noise is considerably higher.

The colours look saturated in the videos taken using the ultrawide camera, though. At night, the ultrawide camera struggles in terms of details, with average dynamic range and more noise in the background. The videos from the selfie camera come out with slightly softer details, with a lot of oversharpening in the background. The dynamic range is average, and the contrast could have been better.

POCO F7 Battery Life:

The POCO F7 sports a larger 7550mAh battery, which is massive in size when compared to the 5000mAh battery on its predecessor, i.e. POCO F6. With the newer Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset built on an efficient 4nm process, we do expect better battery life. With normal usage that includes playing games for 1-2 hours, scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for two and a half days with some charge left.

With heavy usage that includes playing games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., for 4-5 hours or more, continuously using the camera for videos or images, editing videos, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days. The standard screen-on time with normal usage came around 8-8.5 hours, which is just outstanding, and with heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came around 4-5 hours, which is also very good.

In terms of charging, the POCO F7 is bundled with a 90W fast charger, which is bundled inside the box. This is a slight step down from the 120W fast charger that was provided with the POCO F6. The 90W fast charger takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent in around 1hour 30minutes, which is quite time-consuming considering the massive battery that the smartphone has. There is also support for 22.5W reverse charging, which means the POCO F7 acts like a power bank, also.

POCO F7 Audio Quality:

The POCO F7 sports a single speaker at the bottom, but the earpiece on top of the selfie camera acts as a stereo speaker and provides good audio quality. The sound does not feel distorted or muffled in the background, and the loudness is also very good. There is Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound output.

Verdict:

Overall, the POCO F7 is a solid contender in the premium mid-range segment as it brings a premium build and design, a larger display along with a set of stereo speakers, which is great for multi-media consumption, a flagship-grade chipset for performance and gaming, solid battery life, a good software experience and a decent set of cameras.

When it comes to gaming, the POCO F7 fits here perfectly well as it provides consistent frame rates during gameplay and adding to it the gamer-centric design makes it look stunning. However, there are a few areas where this smartphone could have been better. HyperOS 2 in itself provides a feature-rich experience with all the AI features, but the amount of bloatware just makes the experience slightly cumbersome.

On top of that, POCO is not so fast in terms of delivering timely software updates, but still, the brand has improved quite a bit in this area. The cameras are just average when you compare them with today's competition, where many manufacturers are providing newer camera sensors in the premium mid-range smartphones. The primary camera performance is good, but the ultrawide camera struggles in terms of low-light photography and videos.

When compared to the POCO F6, the POCO F7 does bring in necessary upgrades, which include the design, display, battery life and performance, but adding to that, the price has also been increased. So, as an overall package, if you are not concerned about the camera experience and software, with focus only being towards gaming and solid battery life, then the POCO F7 is the true one to be considered above others.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Review: A compact flagship from Samsung with a substantial upgrade could have been better!!

2026-07-20T08:07:56.764+05:30

A compact flagship that does everything in a calm and sedate manner!!

Compact flagship smartphones are one of the main points of attraction for consumers in the market who want flagship-level specifications in a compact form factor, making them easy to carry around. Many brands like Apple and Samsung have nailed it with compact flagships that have been going strong and account for a huge chunk of sales. This year, the Samsung S26 series has its most compact offering in the form of the Galaxy S26.

The Galaxy S26 series also brings three models to the table, which include the most compact Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26 Plus, and the massive Galaxy S26 Ultra (Review). The Galaxy S26 Ultra is the biggest model of the three, which brings flagship specifications, along with the Privacy Display feature, and has set the momentum out there. The Galaxy S26 and the Galaxy S26 Plus are no different, as both carry almost similar characteristics but target different audiences.

The Galaxy S26 brings flagship-level specifications like a 120Hz AMOLED display, a solid triple camera setup, Samsung's own Exynos 2600 chipset, and a 4300mAh battery and much more. When compared to its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy S25, there are some very minor upgrades. So can this compact flagship deliver the same as its elder sibling, the Galaxy S26 Ultra, did? Would you consider one of them?

Let's find out in the full review.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Design:

In terms of build and design, there are no significant changes noticed on the Galaxy S26 when compared to its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy S25, except that the triple cameras on the back are placed on a cylindrical module and beside it lies the LED flashlight. All three cameras are surrounded by metallic rings, which look premium. The back has a frosted matte finish that provides solid grip while holding in hands and does not catch many fingerprints and smudges.

On the front as well as on the back, the panels are flatter. The camera module does protrude slightly, so the smartphone does wobble when kept on a flat surface. The smartphone is rounded around the edges, which fits in the hands comfortably. Just like the Galaxy S25, the side frame is made of Armour Aluminium 2, which feels solid and looks premium.

Around the sides, the smartphone is thinner at 7.2mm, which is one of the slimmest compact flagships in its segment and houses the power button along with the volume buttons on the right side, whereas the left side remains completely cleaner. On top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone with a secondary speaker. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot that houses two physical SIM cards, and a primary microphone.

There is neither a 3.5mm headphone jack nor an microSD card slot for storage expansion, which would not matter much since the base variant of the Galaxy S26 now ships with 256GB storage out of the box. In terms of weight distribution, the Galaxy S26 weighs around 167 grams, making it 5grams heavier than the weight of the Galaxy S25, as the former now packs a slightly larger battery.

The Galaxy S26 is available in four different colours: Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, Black, White, Silver Shadow, and Pink. In terms of ingress protection, the Galaxy S26 has an IP68 rating, which makes it dust- and water-resistant, but it is still not the best protection when you compare it with smartphones that come with an IP69 rating and are priced much lower than the Galaxy S26.

On the front, the display size has been increased from 6.2 inches on the Galaxy S25 to 6.3 inches on the Galaxy S26. The display has a flat panel with minimal bezels around, making it look premium. The punch-hole camera is in the middle at the top, which houses the front selfie camera.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Display:

The Galaxy S26 sports a 6.3-inches Full HD+(1080x2340 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. Since it is an AMOLED display from Samsung, the colours look punchier with deeper blues and blacks and have great viewing angles. However, this display is an 8-bit panel which produces 16.7 million colours, which is disappointing considering smartphones priced lower than this have a 10-bit panel.

Unlike the Galaxy S26 Ultra, here there is no Privacy Display feature, which clearly separates this smartphone from the more premium Galaxy S26 Ultra, which may not be a concern to many people out there. Just like the Galaxy S25, the display has support for 120Hz refresh rate. Talking about the refresh rate, there are two different options to choose from: Standard and Adaptive.

Since this is an LTPO panel, the refresh rate ranges from 1Hz to 120Hz depending on the content, with the display set to Adaptive. For example, while watching a 60fps video on YouTube, the display refreshes at 60Hz; while playing games like BGMI, it switches to 120Hz; and when idle, it switches to 1Hz. With the display set to Standard, the display refreshes at 60Hz only, and this provides solid battery life.

Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, there is a 240Hz touch sampling rate also. In terms of display brightness, the panel of the Galaxy S26 can reach a peak brightness of 2600nits which is identical to the figures on the Galaxy S25, but with the High Brightness Mode turned on, the display reaches a brightness of 1600nits which is good and under direct sunlight, the brightness hovers around 1800 nits, thus ensuring good visibility under direct sunlight.

However, there is no anti-reflective coating and PwM dimming, both of which are present on the more expensive Galaxy S26 Ultra. In terms of display colour options, there are two different settings to choose from - Natural and Vivid. Setting the display to Natural mode provides colours which look close to natural without much boost in colours, thus covering the sRGB colour space, whereas switching the display to Vivid provides punchier colours, thus covering the DCI-P3 gamut scale.

You can set the display to a warmer or a cooler tone using the temperature slider. In terms of multimedia experience, the display of the Galaxy S26 has support for HDR so you can stream HDR content on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 ensures HDR streaming on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc., but there is no support for Dolby Vision, which maybe Samsung fixes with a future software update.

In terms of display protection, the front display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which is a slight downgrade compared to Gorilla Glass Armour protection on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. The display of the Galaxy S26 houses an in-display ultrasonic fingerprint scanner that works accurately and is very fast. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption except for the lack of Dolby Vision and a 10-bit panel.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Performance:

Unlike the Galaxy S25 launched last year, which was powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, with the Galaxy S26, Samsung has made a comeback with its in-house chipset, i.e. Exynos. So as a result, the Galaxy S26 is powered by the latest and greatest Exynos 2600 chipset, which is based on an efficient 2nm process, which seems much more power efficient. This same chipset does duty on the Galaxy S26 Plus also.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset is reserved for the Galaxy S26 Ultra only, which is built on a 3nm process. The Exynos 2600 chipset is based on a deca-core configuration that has 1x3.80 GHz C1-Ultra core, which is the primary one, and along with that, there are 3x3.25GHz C1-Pro cores and another 6x2.75GHz C1-Pro efficient cores for power efficiency. This chipset is coupled with a powerful Xclipse 960 GPU under the hood.

So when you compare the performance of the Exynos 2600 chipset with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, in terms of daily tasks like switching between applications, scrolling through webpages, playing games, etc. there is not much of a difference, but still, when it comes to raw gaming for longer hours, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset with its Adreno GPU does outperform the Exynos 2600 chipset and laos has better thermals.

Compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset present on the Galaxy S25, the Exynos 2600 provides 10% more in terms of power efficiency and performance. In terms of benchmarks, the Exynos 2600 chipset on the Galaxy S26 scored well, but the figures are still lower than those of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset present on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. Still, there is not much of a difference between the two chipsets in terms of daily usage.

In terms of daily usage, which includes tasks like scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, playing games, etc., all feel smooth without breaking a sweat thanks to the smoother transitions and animations with One UI 8.5. In terms of gaming, all heavy games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, Genshin Impact, etc., ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings with very few frame drops noticed.

In BGMI, with the frame rates set to Smooth and graphics set to Ultra, we noticed 100-110fps most of the time during gameplay, except for a few occasions where 120fps was noticed. In Genshin Impact, there were frame drops noticed consistently at the highest graphics, but when the graphics were set to Medium, the gameplay was smoother. There is no dedicated frame interpolation as such, which clearly shows that it is not for hardcore gaming.

After longer hours of gaming, i.e., 3-4 hours continuously, the back of the smartphone feels warmer, and the heat is noticeable around the camera module. There is a dedicated vapour-cooling chamber that dissipates heat, but the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 still has better thermal performance. In terms of the CPU throttling test, the smartphone provides a sustained performance of around 65-70 percent with thermal throttling noticed.

The Galaxy S26 is available in two storage variants - 12GB RAM with 256/512GB storage, where storage speeds are UFS 4.0, and RAM is LPDDR5X. Samsung has ditched the 128GB storage variant this time, and the base model starts with 256GB storage.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Software:

The Galaxy S26 series runs on the latest One UI 8.5 based on Android 16 out of the box, and here it is no different with the Galaxy S26. Just like the Galaxy S26 Ultra, you get all the full-fledged features of Galaxy AI and a lot of customisations. The only thing you miss here is the S-Pen-related features since there is no S-Pen support on the Galaxy S26. The quick settings panel looks newer and can accommodate more icons, which are inspired by iOS 26-like design.

OneUI 8.5 brings a lot to the table, where you can do a lot of customisations to icons' shape, size, colour and change different fonts also. The lockscreen and Always-On display are well integrated together, with the Always-On display providing different themes. Some of the useful AI features include the Now Nudge, Call Assist, Note Assist, Interpreter, an improved version of Bixby, Creative Studio, Audio Eraser, etc., which come in handy daily.

The Now Nudge feature is an interesting feature which is an AI feature that analyses the screen context in real time to suggest different shortcuts and suggestions on a proactive basis. For example, if a friend asks for some photos after a certain trip over WhatsApp, the AI automatically retrieves those photos from the gallery application and shares them instantly with friends, which feels much handier. Call Assist helps screen calls, translate the conversations in real time and transcribe voice notes.

While taking notes, the Note Assist summarises the notes and provides everything in a cleaner format. It generates text transcripts from different recordings and then summarises them and adds them to the notes. Interpreter lets you translate the spoken words in the language of your choice and displays them on a split-screen so that both users can read the translation in their own language. Bixby is now well integrated with Galaxy AI, thus performing real-time actions in the user interface.

Creative Studio helps you generate brand new images from different sketches, create custom stickers, and design personalised wallpapers through texts, sketches or existing images. Photo Assist lets you edit photos in the gallery application, where features like AI Eraser let you remove unwanted objects in the images, you can move or resize objects in the image, and Portrait Studio turns an image into a sketch, watercolour, cartoon, or 3D art.

Now Bar and Now Brief are also part of the user interface, as always. Circle To Search is present, which lets you circle a particular object in the gallery, and it retrieves information regarding it from the web in terms of images or details, and now it works for multiple objects. Audio Eraser works flawlessly in video-based applications, such as while watching Instagram Reels, YouTube videos, etc., where you can reduce background noise in videos for a richer experience.

Other features include the Samsung DeX, which works well where you can pair a Samsung smartphone with a tablet or PC and use the smartphone content on those easily. Knox Security is present for an added layer of safety. Secure Folder provides enhanced security where you can use your fingerprint for accessing photos, videos, etc. There is very little bloatware present and a lot of Samsung-based third-party applications, some of which can be uninstalled.

In terms of software updates, the Samsung S series has an excellent track record of software updates and just like the Galaxy S26 Ultra, the Galaxy S26 will also receive another seven major Android OS updates and security patches, making it the best in terms of software support in the smartphone industry alongside the Pixel devices.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Cameras:

The Galaxy S26 sports the identical camera setup as that of its predecessor, i.e., the Galaxy S25. The Galaxy S26 has a 50MP f/1.8 ISOCELL GN3 sensor for the primary camera with support for OIS, a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera and a 10MP f/2.4 telephoto camera with support for 3x optical zoom and OIS. On the front, there is a 12MP f/2.2 camera for selfies. This is very disappointing for Samsung users as this camera setup remains the same from the last 3-4 generations of the S-lineup.

During the day, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details, a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening as such. The white balance is handled very well, and contrast is on the higher side. When using the Photo Mode, the images are generated at 12MP by default, and there is a 50MP dedicated one for images.

The images shot using the dedicated 50MP mode result in sharper details with good dynamic range and have less noise in the background. It is just that details do look softer than the regular 12MP images, and colours look too much saturated at times. The 2x zoomed images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.

The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening, as such, in the background. Similarly, during the night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look natural, and the details in shadows come out really well. The exposure is well handled in very low-light areas and offers good contrast.

All these results are captured with the Auto Night Mode, which gets triggered automatically if you take the camera in the dark. So all these results were captured with the Auto Night Mode. If you turn off the Night Mode manually, the results are not much different, as you still get excellent details that look sharper but not as sharp as with the Auto Night Mode turned on, but you get a wider dynamic range with natural colours in the background.

However, the noise is on the slightly higher side. The 2x zoomed images taken from the primary camera during the night come out with sharper details, a wider dynamic range, and less noise in the background. The colour tones look warmer, though, but there is some oversharpening that does take place in the background. The 12MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of images taken during the daylight, which come out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range.

The colours look saturated with no oversharpening in the background. The noise is slightly on the higher side, though. This ultrawide camera lacks autofocus, so you cannot use it for macro shots. At night, the ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of images, which come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with saturated colours. There is some amount of oversharpening taking place in the background, and noise is also on the higher side.

The 3x telephoto camera captures some very good images, which come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look oversaturated at times, but still you get natural-looking colours which match the primary camera output. Around 5x zoom, the details look sharper with saturated colours and less noise in the background. Beyond 5x zoom, i.e. 10x or 20x zoom, the results are not so good.

At night, the images from the 3x telephoto camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening in the background. All these results are captured with the Auto Night Mode turned on. Without the Auto Night Mode, the details look sharper, but there is some oversharpening in the background and noise is noticed slightly on the higher side.

In terms of portraits, the primary camera can take 1x and 2x level portraits, which come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range. The human skin tones look natural with slightly warmer tones at times. The edge detection is good, and the level of background blur is well implemented. The 3x telephoto camera also captures sharper portrait images with proper edge detection and a good level of background blur with a wider dynamic range.

On the front, the 12MP camera does a good job in terms of selfies, which come out with sharper details, a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The selfies do have a wider field of view, though. The human skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The contrast is on the higher side, but the white balance is handled very well. Even portrait selfies come out with good edge detection and background blur.

In terms of videos, all three cameras at the back as well as the front can record 4K videos at 60fps. The primary camera can record 8K videos at 30fps also. Unlike the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which has support for 4K video recording at 120fps, this one does not get that. The 4K videos at 60fps from the primary camera provide sharper details with a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background.

The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening in the background. At 4K resolution, the EIS kicks in, thus reducing some noise to an extent. Switching the camera to 1080p video recording at 60fps, the videos come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background, as the Ultra Steady Mode, along with OIS, works the best in masking out noise. Even the colours look saturated with no oversharpening as such.

In low light or at night, the videos come out with sharper details, with good dynamic range and less noise in the background. The colours look saturated with no oversharpening as such. In 8K or 4K videos, there is some noise clearly present, whereas 1080p videos shot at night have excellent results. The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background during the day.

In low light, the videos from the ultrawide camera do result in softer details with decent dynamic range, and noise is on the higher side also. The telephoto camera does an excellent job in terms of videos where details look sharper with a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The colours look saturated with no oversharpening in the background as such. During the night, the videos come out with sharper details and have saturated colours in the background.

Though there is some noise present on the higher side, you would not notice much as the OIS work well. The videos from the front camera come out with sharper details, with decent dynamic range, and skin tones also look natural without any kind of oversharpening. There is some amount of noise present in the background, but still EIS works at its best in removing the noise in the background.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Battery Life:

In terms of battery capacity, the Galaxy S26 gets an upgrade here as it sports a 4300mAh battery, which is 300mAh more in capacity compared to the Galaxy S25, which comes with a 4000mAh battery. Still, this battery capacity is very low when compared to other flagship smartphones out there. Since the Exynos 2600 is based on an efficient 2nm process and with the OneUI 8.5 on board, we do expect some better improvements in battery life.

In terms of normal usage, which includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, and other lighter tasks, the Galaxy S26 easily lasted for one and a half days to two days with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came around 7.5-8 hours, which is good and slightly better than the figures obtained on the Galaxy S25. With heavy usage, which includes playing games like BGMI for 3-4 hours, rendering videos, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days.

The standard screen-on time came around 5-5.5 hours with heavy usage, which is quite good considering the Exynos 2600 chipset, which does throttle at times. In terms of charging speeds, there are no changes as the Galaxy S26 still relies on 25W fast charging speeds and 15W wireless charging speeds, along with 4.5W reverse wireless charging speeds. Just like each year, this time, the charger is also not bundled inside the box.

Using any third-party charger of 60W and higher still results in slow charging of the device, whereas if you use a Samsung proprietary charger of 25W, it takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent in around 1 hour and 20 minutes, which is very time-consuming according to today's standards as flagships priced less than the Galaxy S26 have higher speeds of charging i.e. 65W/100W/125W. Even the Galaxy S26+ supports 45W fast charging, with the Galaxy S26 Ultra supporting 60W charging speeds.

The wireless charging speeds are not the best either, as with any third-party 15W wireless charger, the smartphone takes around close to two hours for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent. The reverse wireless charging does work well if you put any device supporting wireless charging on the back of the Galaxy S26; it will charge automatically at 4.5W. You do not have any magnetic support like MagSafe charging support for iPhones.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Audio Quality:

The Galaxy S26 has a dual stereo speaker setup, which provides good audio output combined with the loudspeaker at the bottom, along with the secondary speaker outlet on the top. The sound output is richer and provides better levels of bass and is slightly better than the outputs from the Galaxy S25. The presence of Dolby Atmos provides a richer sound experience while watching videos, listening to music, etc.

Verdict:

Overall, the Galaxy S26 feels like a perfect compact flagship that delivers all the necessities required in a smartphone while not creating much of a hype and rather plays it safe in the market out there. It boasts of a premium build and design, a great compact display with support for stereo speakers, flagship-level performance in all day-to-day activities, a reliable camera experience, good battery life with support for fast charging and an excellent software experience.

There are some areas where the Galaxy S26 could have been better. For instance, the design is nothing short of new as it brings a similar design except for the newer camera module, the display is an 8-bit panel instead of a 10-bit panel and does not have support for Dolby Vision also. The Exynos 2600, though efficient, struggles in terms of gaming when compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset found on the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

Even in terms of thermals, the Exynos 2600 does become slightly warmer and throttle more when compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset. The cameras still have not received an upgrade from the last three to four years, with the ultrawide camera performance coming to be average. Even the telephoto camera struggles quite a bit in terms of videos taken in low light. So clearly, with the newer chipset, Samsung has improved the image processing quite a bit, but still no significant changes.

The charging speeds are also the slowest when compared to other flagships from OnePlus, iQOO, etc., in this price segment and are way behind them in both wired and wireless standards. When you compare the Galaxy S26 with its predecessor or even the Galaxy S24 (Review), what you are getting extra is slightly better performance, battery life and more years of software support. Other than these, there are no such changes noticed, so if you consider these three factors, then you can upgrade to the Galaxy S26.

In my personal opinion, if you are someone who owns a Galaxy S25 or Galaxy S24, there is no scope for upgrading, as there are no such differences, as both are now selling at lower prices, making a value-for-money option there in the market. If you are using an older Samsung A series smartphone or an older S-lineup smartphone like the S21 or S22 series, then you can consider upgrading to the Galaxy S26. But as an overall package, this compact flagship brings the peace of the brand, while it may not be exciting.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Review: A flagship that continues the legacy of the Samsung family with an added layer of privacy!!

2026-07-18T13:22:58.136+05:30

Enhanced privacy protection comes with a healthy package!!

Samsung's S lineup of smartphones brings new innovation and technology with each of its generations, and here it is no different with the Galaxy S26 series. The Galaxy S series has been at the forefront in delivering the perfect flagship smartphone, as we saw with the Galaxy S25 Ultra (Review), which was launched last year with flagship-level specifications and was a solid product which was unbeatable out there.

With the smartphone advancing in the field of AI, Samsung has taken another leap in incorporating AI features with each of its S-lineup, and now, with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, things have improved further. The Galaxy S26 Ultra brings the newer Privacy Display feature, a few upgrades in terms of cameras and faster charging support over the Galaxy S25 Ultra. On top of that, there is a newer Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset under the hood.

These may not be major improvements, but it does lift the experience further. Do these upgrades over the Galaxy S25 Ultra make the Galaxy S26 Ultra worth considering? Can the Galaxy S26 Ultra set the momentum for itself in this highly competitive market?

Let's find out in the full review.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Design:

Like all Samsung S series smartphones, the Galaxy S26 Ultra gets a premium build and design with a glass sandwich design both at the front and on the back. When compared to its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy S25 Ultra, the back look has been slightly tweaked. The Galaxy S26 Ultra has a cylindrical camera island which houses the three cameras, and alongside them, there is an LED flashlight along with two other cameras.

So as a result, the cameras protrude out quite a bit, which does make the smartphone wobble when kept on a flat surface. The back has that premium frosted finish, which remains unchanged from its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy S25 Ultra, which means you get a solid grip while holding it in your hands, and it does not catch many fingerprints or smudges. Both the front and the back are flatter which no curves around.

Around the edges, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is more rounded, making it easy to hold in the hands. Around the sides, there is the newer Armour Aluminium frame, which is a sort of a downgrade when compared to the more sturdy titanium frame of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but this would not make much of a difference. Around the sides, to the right side are the volume buttons along with a power button, whereas the left side remains completely cleaner.

At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot, a primary microphone and an S-Pen holster that houses the S-Pen. This time, the S-Pen has become even lighter and thinner with the same controls as on its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy S25 Ultra, with the lack of Bluetooth connectivity. On top, there is a secondary speaker only, which doubles up as a stereo speaker for audio output.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra now weighs 214 grams, which is a tad lighter than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which weighs around 218grams. In terms of thickness, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is the slimmest S-series smartphone at 7.9mm till date as opposed to the 8.2mm thickness on the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

In terms of ingress protection, the Galaxy S26 Ultra boasts an IP68 rating, which means it can survive splashes of water and is dust-resistant up to some extent, which is a slight disappointment when compared to other smartphones that are priced lower and provide an IP69 rating, which is much better than the IP68 rating. However, the Galaxy S26 Ultra can survive 1.5 metres underwater for around 30 minutes.

On the front, there is Corning Gorilla Glass Armour 2 for protection, whereas the back glass is protected by Corning Glass Victus 2. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is available in four different colours - Black, Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, and White. On the front, there is a flat display with the camera punch hole located at the top centre. The bezels are very slim, giving it a premium look as always.

Overall, the build and design exudes premiumness except for the side frame dropping from titanium to aluminium.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Display:

Just like its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy S25 Ultra, the Galaxy S26 Ultra sports a larger 6.9-inch Quad HD+(1440x3120 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. As this is a Samsung display, you get deeper blacks and blues with great viewing angles. However, this is an 8-bit panel and not a 10-bit panel, but nonetheless, the display is great for multimedia consumption.

It also has an anti-reflective coating, which means there will be less glare on the display when viewed outdoors or under direct sunlight. Just like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, there is support for a 120Hz refresh rate on the display and since it is an LTPO panel, the refresh rate scales between 1Hz and 120Hz depending on the content on the display. Talking about the refresh rate, there are two different options to choose from: Adaptive and Standard.

Switching to Adaptive mode, the display switches between different refresh rates. For example, while you are watching a 24fps or a 48fps video, the display switches to standard 60Hz; when playing games like Genshin Impact, the display switches to 120Hz, and when the display is idle with no activity, the refresh rate scales down to 1Hz. With the display set to Standard mode, the display refreshes at standard 60Hz throughout.

Combined with the 120Hz display, there is a 240Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses. The biggest talking point has to be the newer Privacy Display feature on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. It is present under Settings with three options: Turn on Privacy Display, Conditions for turning on, and Maximum privacy protection. So when you turn on the first option, it turns the display darker by reducing the pixels, ensuring that the person sitting beside you cannot view the display.

So this comes in handy as it completely blacks out the screen, making it useful when you are using the smartphone in a crowded space. When you turn on the Conditions for turning on mode, it provides additional security in terms of PIN, password, patterns, etc. and also hides sensitive content in notifications, thus preventing other people from looking at your smartphone except you, which is a great move.

However, currently, this feature is limited to system applications and the lock screen only. Maybe a future update is required to enable this feature for third-party applications. As mentioned above, the second option is the basic Privacy Display feature, and the third one is called the Maximum Privacy Protection, which, when turned on, completely turns the blacks to grey and the contrast gets reduced to a larger extent.

This mode provides the highest level of privacy, ensuring nothing is visible to the person sitting next to you. However, this one is not always recommended, as the display completely gets washed out and is used when required. This is a hardware-based feature which Samsung likes to call the Flex Magic Panel that switches off or lowers the brightness for certain pixels on the display, only letting the user who is holding the smartphone view the display and not others.

There are two types of pixels, which include wider and narrower ones. So when the Privacy Display feature is turned on, the wider pixels' brightness is reduced, and the narrower pixels emit more light, making them very hard to see. In terms of display brightness, the Galaxy S26 Ultra achieves similar brightness levels to its predecessor, which is around 2600nits while viewing content in HDR mode.

Under normal mode, the display brightness hovers around 1200-1500nits which is good. In terms of display colour calibration, there are two different options to choose from: Natural and Vivid. Going for the Natural mode provides realistic colours with a slightly washed-out effect in some scenarios, thus covering the sRGB colour space, whereas Vivid provides punchier colours which cover the DCI-P3 gamut scale.

You can also set the temperature of the display to a warmer or a cooler tone. The display has support for HDR, so you can stream HDR content on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 ensures that streaming HDR content on OTT platforms is a breeze. However, there is no Dolby Vision present, which is slightly disappointing considering smartphones priced less than this have that. The display houses an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner that works faster and is as accurate as ever.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Performance:

The Galaxy S26 Ultra is powered by this year's latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, which is seen on many flagships launched this year. As in previous years, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset for Galaxy is present in the Galaxy S26 Ultra. This means the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset is slightly clocked higher than the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset found on other flagships.

The two primary Oryon V3 Phoenix L cores are now clocked at 4.74GHz as opposed to the 4.6GHz clock speed on the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset. The remaining six Oryon V3 Phoenix M cores are clocked at 3.62GHz as usual. Coupled with this, there is the powerful Adreno 840 GPU, which is also clocked higher at 1300MHz when compared to 1200MHz on the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset.

In terms of daily performance, whether lighter or heavier tasks, the smartphone handles all of them easily without breaking a sweat. Even all games like BGMI Mobile, Genshin Impact, etc., ran easily at the highest graphics settings, but there were a few frame drops noticed during an extended session of gameplay, i.e. 3-4 hours. In BGMI, the gameplay remained smooth with the graphics set to Smooth and frame rates set to Extreme.

However, the frame rates were not as consistent when compared to other Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5-powered smartphones that do offer a slightly better gaming experience. There is a Game Booster mode which does increase the frame rates during gaming and allows you to set the game performance level. While playing games, the display usually tries to maintain around 90-110fps in most of the scenarios, with very few cases of achieving 120fps.

This time, Samsung has also increased the surface area of the vapour cooling chamber, which helps in dissipating heat faster. The Galaxy S26 Ultra scores very well in terms of benchmarks, but still, the scores are not the best when compared to other smartphones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset. However, the scores are a good improvement over last year's Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset on the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

In terms of the CPU throttling test, the Galaxy S26 Ultra achieved a sustained performance of around 70-75 per cent, which is decent, but there is some thermal throttling present. With the Performance Mode turned on, the throttling is noticed more, which needs some room for improvement. But the benchmark scores come out better. In terms of network connectivity, you get support for carrier aggregation and almost all bands of 5G.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra is available in four different variants - 128GB/256GB/512GB, and 1TB storage variants paired with 12GB/16GB RAM, respectively, where the RAM speeds are UFS 4.1, and the RAM is of LPDDR5X configuration. Overall, the performance and gaming capabilities have been improved over the last year's Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Software:

The Galaxy S26 Ultra runs on the latest OneUI 8.5 based on Android 16 out of the box. OneUI 8.5 is a slightly tweaked version of OneUI 8.0, which came on last year's Galaxy Z Fold 7 (Review). There are a couple of newer additions in terms of AI features on top of the existing AI features which are already present. OneUI 8.5 provides a lot of customisations where you can change the icon, shape, size and colour on the homescreen as well as on the lockscreen.

For instance, with the OneUI 8.5, you get a much improved version of Bixby, which is Samsung's own chat assistant, now provides more functionalities which can understand context and natural language much better, like for instance it can access the live location and provide up-to-date information to the user. It also points out to the relevant settings or system apps when asked for help while giving instructions.

For example, instead of going to settings and performing any activity, with Bixby now you can just simply write "the screen is idle for a long time, so I need to adjust the screen-on time", where automatically it goes to settings under Screen Timeout, where you can set the screen timeout to 15 seconds, 30 seconds, etc. Other than this, all other functionalities like getting weather information or any activities come in handy with Bixby.

Samsung has integrated with Perplexity AI, where saying "Hey Plex" initiates a quick search where you can write queries like scheduling a meeting on Google Meet, which works extremely well. The Now Brief remains unchanged from the OneUI 8.0, which provides personalised summaries of schedule, weather, news and health stats. Now it provides more information, which is useful.

Now Bar is also present, which is Samsung's own Dynamic Island, which lets you control music playback, different directions in Google Maps, and provides on-time information, which comes in handy as always. There is now the Now Nudge, which is a newer addition and tracks the conversations on a real-time basis. For example, when you are planning to go somewhere with friends, it shows suggestions and also books the place, which is quite handy.

The Now Nudge is supported in a few applications like Google Chat, the default Samsung Messages application, Google Messages, etc. The Circle To Search feature also gets an upgrade where it can recognise and search for multiple objects on screen at once. Suppose you have clicked a photo of a pair of shoes with a dress; it will search and provide information for both of these simultaneously.

The Photo Assist tool in the gallery application works flawlessly, where you can search for an image and edit it by writing different suggestions, like if there is a black coloured shirt in the photo, you can change it to blue by writing the same, which is quite an interesting feature. It lets you remove, resize, and transform doodles into realistic additions to sketch images and convert portraits to artistic styles.

There is a newer, smarter Screenshot feature in the Gallery application where AI analyses the content in the screenshot, and you can search for it. The search bar provides quick search tags for a particular screenshot. There is the Audio Eraser tool, which works well in removing noise in the background in videos, enabling a richer sound experience. You can adjust the "Strength" slider to fine-tune noise reduction and enable "Voice Focus" to hear sound clearly.

It provides real-time audio control in applications like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. The Document Scanner works well where, if the camera detects a document by analysing edge detection, auto captures pages, removes unwanted elements like finger marks, folded corners and patterns from scans. It also allows you to export it to a PDF file. There is the newer Creative Studio feature, which lets you generate brand new images, turn S-Pen sketches to realistic look with colours, etc.

Some other customisations include the slightly tweaked notification panel with more rounded icons, which is close to the iOS 26-designed theme called the floating theme. Other features like Secure Folder work as expected, and then there is the Samsung DeX, using which you can connect to various wired devices such as laptops, PCs, and Galaxy devices. There is Knox Security present, where you can keep all your personal data for use.

With OneUI 8.5, there are newer themes and wallpapers also. There are newer animations which feel silky smooth throughout the usage. The presence of the S-Pen makes multitasking much easier as it is well integrated with the Samsung Notes application, where you get functionalities like Create Note, Screen Write, Smart Select, etc. Just like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, this one also lacks Bluetooth support, so you cannot click images or take videos using the S-Pen.

There is a new feature, partial screen recording, where OneUI 8.5 adds a magnifying glass and a cropping tool so that you can record only a specific part of the screen. There are very few pre-installed applications present in the user interface which can be uninstalled easily. Samsung Browser does throw in quite some notifications. In terms of software updates, just like all S-series flagships, this one will also receive another seven years of Android OS updates and security patches.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Cameras:

In terms of cameras, the Galaxy S26 Ultra brings the same identical setup as that of its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy S25 Ultra, except for a few tweaks in aperture for the cameras. The primary camera is a 200MP Samsung ISOCELL HP2 sensor with a larger f/1.4 aperture (f/1.7 on Galaxy S25 Ultra), and a 50MP f/2.4 Samsung ISOCELL JN3 sensor for the ultrawide camera, 10MP f/2.4 telephoto camera, and a 50MP f/2.9 telephoto camera, both of which have support for 3x and 5x optical zoom, respectively.

On the front, there is a 12MP f/2.2 camera for selfies. The small changes come with the primary camera, which has a larger f/1.4 aperture; the 50MP telephoto camera now has an f/2.9 aperture as compared to f/3.4 on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. One downgrade has to be the 10MP telephoto camera (3x optical zoom) compared to the 12MP telephoto camera on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but the aperture remains similar.

With the wider aperture and the newer image processing with the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, we do expect better results. In terms of images taken during the day, the details look sharper with a wider dynamic range. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The contrast and white balance are handled well. The HDR images provide slightly better results compared to the ones taken from the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

All these results are captured at 50MP resolution, but with the 200MP resolution, the images come out with punchier colours and a wider dynamic range with almost no oversharpening in the background. Though the details look a tad softer when compared to the 50MP ones, the noise is well under control in the background. The 2x zoomed images captured have sharper details with a wider dynamic range, with almost no noise in the background.

When compared to the 2x zoomed images taken from the primary camera of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the highlights are well controlled, and the contrast has been improved slightly. At night, the primary camera clearly shows an improvement over the one present in the Galaxy S25 Ultra, thus providing excellent details in shadows and controlling highlights well. The details captured are much sharper than before, with a slight improvement in dynamic range.

In very low-lighting scenarios, the exposure is well handled with almost no noise in the background. The colours look saturated with no oversharpening present in the background. Similarly, the 2x zoomed images provide sharper details with a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The colours have a warmer tone compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra night shots. The 200MP images taken during the night perform well with sharper details and less noise in the background.

The 50MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper with almost no noise in the background. The dynamic range is wider with saturated colours in the background, with no oversharpening present. The contrast is good, and the white balance is handled very well. Similarly, during the night, the images have sharper details with very little noise in the background.

The dynamic range is wider with saturated colours in the background. The colours do have a warmer tone as opposed to the cooler tone in the Galaxy S25 Ultra ultrawide images. The exposure is also well under control and slightly improved over the Galaxy S25 Ultra. In terms of the 3x telephoto camera performance, the slightly lower resolution (10MP vs 12MP) does not make much of a difference.

Still, the details look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look saturated with no oversharpening present. Going beyond 3x zoom, the details look a tad softer with slightly higher noise, and colours look saturated as expected. During the night, the 3x zoomed images come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.

Using the dedicated Night Mode, the noise is reduced to quite a large extent, though. The 50MP telephoto camera takes some excellent images, which come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. At 10x zoom levels, the details look sharper with very little noise in the background. Beyond 10x zoom, let's say 30x, 50x or 100x zoom levels, there is a slight drop in details, and colours look a tad washed out.

But still up to 50x zoom, this telephoto camera maintains a good balance in terms of details, which look sharper with decent dynamic range. At 100x zoom levels, the details look softer with a lot of noise in the background and colours look washed out. At night, the 5x telephoto camera does a great job in terms of details that look sharper with a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. At 10x zoom levels, the details look sharper with slightly washed-out colours.

Beyond 30x zoom levels, the details look softer with much higher noise in the background. The dynamic range remains average. With the dedicated Night Mode, things do improve quite a margin. In terms of portraits, both the 3x and 5x telephoto cameras do an excellent job in terms of edge detection, and the level of background blur is well implemented. The dynamic range is wider with saturated colours in the background.

The human subjects have natural-looking skin tones with finer grain in textures. The portraits captured using the primary camera come out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The skin tones look natural, with some oversharpening present in the background. The edge detection is good, and the level of background blur is well implemented, but still, the depth in portraits is better captured on the 5x telephoto camera out of the three cameras.

In terms of selfies, the 12MP camera does a great job in terms of details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening, and the contrast is well handled. Even portrait selfies come out with proper edge detection, and background blur is well implemented. The skin tones look natural with a wider dynamic range and less noise.

At night, the selfies come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range, but there is a slight light flare noticed at times, which may be a software bug and can be fixed with a future software update. In terms of videos, all three cameras can record 8K videos at 30fps, whereas the front camera can record 4K videos at 60fps only. There is an option for recording 8K videos at 24fps, also, which is part of Pro Mode. It also includes 4K video recording at 120fps for both main and ultrawide cameras.

The 8K videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The 4K videos from the primary camera come out with excellent details that look sharper, have a wider dynamic range and offer good contrast with proper white balance. The noise is almost non-existent since EIS works extremely well, but there are areas of oversharpening at times.

When you switch to 1080p videos at 60fps on the primary camera, OIS works extremely well in masking noise to a huge margin. Compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the colours look a tad saturated, but there is not much of a difference. The 4K as well as 1080p videos on the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. There is a slight distortion present in the videos, though.

The videos from both the telephoto cameras come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with saturated colours in the background. With OIS on board for both telephoto cameras, the noise is very low, with the 5x telephoto camera yielding better output of the two. During the night, the ultrawide camera does struggle quite a bit by introducing light flare and noise in the background, whereas the primary and the 5x telephoto camera output excellent videos.

The videos from the front camera come out with sharper details, a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The 1080p videos at 60fps provide better stabilisation with no noise in the background. The human skin tones look natural, but there is a slight boost in colours. Overall, there are some improvements over the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but the low-light photography and video output from the ultrawide camera need some improvement.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Battery Life:

Just like its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy S25 Ultra, the Galaxy S26 Ultra houses a similar-sized battery, i.e. 5000mAh, which is kind of disappointing as other smartphone brands are going with silicon carbide solution, thus carving out much larger 7000 or 8000mAh batteries out there. But still, Samsung claims that paired with the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset and OneUI 8.5, the battery life seems to be improved.

With normal usage that includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, and other lighter multitasking activities, the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came around 8-8.5 hours, which is good but not the best. When it comes to heavy usage that includes playing heavy games, rendering videos, taking images and videos using the camera, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for a single day and a half with some charge left.

The standard screen-on time came around 5.5-6 hours, which is good and a slight improvement over last year's Galaxy S25 Ultra. In terms of charging, Samsung has made a few improvements this time with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, as charging speeds now support up to 60W compared to the standard 45W charging speed on the previous S-lineup of smartphones. However, there is no Samsung-branded charger in the box, which is disappointing.

By using another third-party 65W fast charger, the smartphone easily charges from 0 to 100 per cent within 45-50 minutes, which is good and almost similar results were obtained using Samsung's own 60W fast charger also. These charging speeds are still not the best in class, as other brands like Xiaomi, OnePlus, and iQOO are going with faster 100W and 120W fast charging speeds and come with a charger inside the box.

Still, the gap is much closer when compared to charging time on other smartphones, with the bump in charging speeds to 60W. The wireless charging speeds have been increased to 25W, which is an improvement over the 15W wireless charging speeds in earlier models. Using the Qi 2.1 standards wireless charger, the smartphone takes around 1hour 10 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent, which is good. Other than that, there is 4.5W reverse wireless charging, which is unchanged.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Audio Quality:

The Galaxy S26 Ultra has a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately loud and clear. The sound does not feel muffled or distorted even at the highest volume settings. There is no support for Dolby Atmos, though.

Verdict:

The Galaxy S26 Ultra is a great flagship that builds on itself, with improvements we see in each generation. It has a premium build and design, an excellent display along with stereo speakers for multimedia consumption, provides flagship-grade performance in daily activities, has a great set of cameras for taking both images and videos, and good battery life with faster charging. The software experience is by far one of the most refined, with OneUI improving in terms of AI-related features.

With AI being the buzzword in the technology world nowadays, the Galaxy S26 Ultra brings newer additions to the existing AI features already present as part of the software. The Privacy Display is the main point of attraction, which is a very useful feature when you are viewing the smartphone in a crowd, ensuring security and preventing prying eyes. The slightly faster charging speeds over the previous S-lineup are a good improvement.

However, though the Galaxy S26 Ultra is a great all-rounder, there are a few areas where it could have been better. In terms of haptic feedback, Samsung could have been slightly better in terms of the vibration motor. Though the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset is a flagship-grade chipset that provides solid performance is not so well optimised on the Galaxy S26 Ultra, as it does show signs of thermal throttling, and the gaming experience pales in competition to other flagships.

The images and videos from all the cameras come out the best in class, but still, the ultrawide camera needs improvement in terms of videography and low-light photography. The 3x telephoto camera also needs some room for improvement in terms of video. The charging speeds have been upgraded, but the speeds are still slower when compared to other competitors out there. There is no charger even bundled inside the box.

When you compare the Galaxy S26 Ultra with its predecessor, i.e., the Galaxy S25 Ultra, or even the Galaxy S24 Ultra (Review), you are getting better performance and slightly better camera output; the charging speeds have been increased, and the design is more rounded, making it easier to hold in the hands. The addition of Privacy Display will not matter to most, as it is just a small addition. The S-Pen functionality remains unchanged, which is handy in all aspects.

So if you are someone who is looking to buy the Galaxy S26 Ultra, you can definitely buy one and feel the experience of this Samsung flagship, but if you are someone who already has the Galaxy S25 Ultra and wants to upgrade, then consider factors like daily performance, slightly better output from cameras, faster charging speeds, and the Privacy Display are worth, you can upgrade easily. But if these do not matter, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is still a good option to consider, as it is now priced lower and makes a value-for-money option out there.

But as an overall package, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is a no-brainer flagship smartphone out there in the market.

OnePlus 15R Review: A well put together flagship killer with some compromises!!

2026-07-04T18:00:56.644+05:30

A flagship killer that provides a great experience with corners cut!!

OnePlus smartphones have been synonymous with delivering a flagship experience ever since the launch of its first product, i.e. OnePlus One. Over the years, the brand established a strong reputation with its flagship Number series before introducing the R series, which provides an almost flagship experience at an affordable price.

Last year's OnePlus 13R (Review) was a very solid offering out there in the market as it was a no-compromise OnePlus flagship killer out there which had the powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, a 50MP triple camera setup, a larger 6000mAh battery and much more at a solid price. With the OnePlus 13R being a successful product, there are a lot of expectations for its successor, i.e., the OnePlus 15R.

Building on the success of its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus 13, there have been a lot of expectations for the OnePlus 15R. The OnePlus 15R brings a lot of flagship-level specifications, which include a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset, a larger 7400mAh battery, and much more, but OnePlus seems to cut a few corners that could have made the device a compelling package.

This time, the OnePlus 15R comes with a higher price tag, largely due to the ongoing chip shortage, which has affected the global smartphone industry. So is the OnePlus 15R worth buying?

Let's find out in the full review.

OnePlus 15R Design:

At the back, the OnePlus 15R boasts a similar design to that of the OnePlus 13s (Review), which is the most compact flagship from OnePlus launched last year, where both share almost a similar camera module, except that the OnePlus 15R camera module is slightly narrower, and it houses the dual cameras, and alongside it, there is an LED flashlight in the module.

The frame and camera housing are made of aluminium with a matte finish. This is a big departure from the circular camera module present on the OnePlus 13R, which makes it more versatile like other OnePlus and Oppo smartphones out there. The back has flat edges and rounded corners, which makes it easy to hold in the hands. The OnePlus 15R is available in three different colours - Charcoal Black, Mint Green, and Electric Violet.

The Electric Violet variant has a fibreglass-reinforced plastic back, whereas the Mint Green and Charcoal Black variants have a glass build. All these colour variants have a smooth matte finish at the back, which does not catch fingerprints or smudges easily. Around the sides, the smartphone is slimmer at 8.1mm, thus housing an aluminium frame which looks premium.

It houses the volume buttons along with a power button, whereas the left side houses the Plus Key, which provides a lot of functionalities. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a speaker grille which provides stereo output, and a dual SIM card tray that houses two nano SIM cards. On top, there are two microphones with a secondary speaker outlet.

The OnePlus 15R weighs around 213 grams, which is slightly heavier than its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus 13, but now there is also a larger-capacity battery. In terms of ingress protection, there is now an IP66+IP68+IP69+IP69K rating, which is the highest level of dust and water resistance on a OnePlus R series. On the front, the display has slimmer bezels with a single punch-hole that houses the selfie camera.

OnePlus 15R Display:

The OnePlus 15R sports a slightly larger 6.83-inches 1.5K AMOLED (1272x2800 pixels) display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9 compared to the 6.78-inches display on the OnePlus 13R. Since it has a 10-bit display, the colours look punchier with deep blacks and blues, with great viewing angles. The display here is an LTPS panel, which is a slight downgrade over the LTPO panel on the OnePlus 13R.

As we know, the LTPS panel provides fixed refresh rates instead of variable refresh rates on the LTPO panel, but OnePlus has made an upgrade by providing a 165Hz refresh rate on the OnePlus 15R. Talking about the refresh rate, there are three different options to choose from: Automatic, Standard, and High. If you set the display to Automatic or High, the display usually refreshes at 120Hz.

Choosing the High Mode forces certain applications to refresh at 120Hz, and here you can set application-specific refresh rates. In Auto mode, the refresh rate scales to different refresh rates like 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz depending on the content on the display. For example, while watching a 60fps video on YouTube, the display refreshes at 90Hz, whereas if the display is idle, the refresh rate scales down to 60Hz.

The same is true when the refresh rate is set to High. In Standard mode, the refresh rate remains constant at 60Hz. So, as we know, the display supports 165Hz, but this only works in a few games like Genshin Impact and Call of Duty: Mobile. However, the display does not maintain continuous 165Hz, but you still get the benefit of this higher refresh rate in certain games.

Combined with the 165Hz refresh rate, you get a 240Hz touch sampling rate, which increases to 3200Hz instantaneously during gaming. In terms of brightness, the display can reach a peak brightness of 3600 nits, which is good and under High Brightness Mode, the display could achieve a peak brightness of 1800nits. Under direct sunlight, the brightness hovered somewhere between 1000 and 1200 nits and provided good visibility.

The OnePlus 15R display offers three colour settings to choose from: Standard (default), Natural, and Vivid. If you set the display to Standard or Natural mode, the colours look close to natural and cover the DCI-P3 gamut, whereas if you set the display to Vivid mode, the colours look punchier with deeper blues and blacks, which also cover the DCI-P3 gamut. You can also set the display to a warmer or a cooler tone.

In terms of multimedia consumption, the display of the OnePlus 15R has support for HDR on YouTube and Widevine L1 ensures that streaming HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. is a breeze. A small upgrade has to be the new ultrasonic fingerprint scanner on the OnePlus 15R over the in-display fingerprint scanner of the OnePlus 13R. The fingerprint scanner is very fast and accurate.

The OnePlus 15R display has Corning Gorilla Glass 7i for protection, which is slightly disappointing considering other smartphones have Corning Gorilla Glass Victus for protection on their displays. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption, but the lack of an LTPO panel is a slight concern since the OnePlus 13R had it.

OnePlus 15R Performance:

The OnePlus 15R is powered by the newly launched Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset, which is based on an octa-core configuration that includes: 2x3.8 GHz Oryon V3 Phoenix L cores along with 6x3.32 GHz Oryon V3 Phoenix M cores, which is coupled with an Adreno 829 GPU and is based on an efficient 3nm process. This chipset sits somewhere between the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset and the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset.

In terms of raw performance, the smartphone handles all the tasks easily without breaking a sweat, whether it is scrolling through webpages, playing games, video editing, etc. Paired with the 165Hz display and the smooth animations and transitions with OxygenOS 16, all things are smooth to use. All heavy games like BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile, Genshin Impact, etc. ran smoothly without breaking a sweat.

The presence of a new Touch Response Chip aids in smooth gaming where the display switches to a 3200Hz instantaneous touch sampling rate. In BGMI, the smartphone could easily run at Smooth graphics along with HDR+Extreme frame rates without any lags or stutters. Usually, BGMI runs at 120fps by default, but using frame interpolation, the gameplay runs at 165fps, which feels very smooth.

In other games like Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact, which are highly graphics-intensive games, the gameplay was smoother with almost zero stutter lag. Usually, the frame rates hover around 145-155fps for most of the games when played for 30 minutes to 1 hour, and after longer hours of gaming, i.e. 3-4 hours, the back of the smartphone did feel slightly warmer.

The OnePlus 15R features a larger 5704 sq mm Cryo Velocity 3D Vapour Cooling system, which keeps the smartphone cooler even during extreme gaming sessions. In terms of the CPU throttling test, the OnePlus 15R could maintain a sustained performance of around 75-80 per cent with almost minimal throttling, which is very good with the Performance Mode turned on.

In terms of benchmarks, the scores came out really well, as the scores are on par with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and slightly lower than the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset on the OnePlus 15. The OnePlus 15R is available in three variants: 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, 12GB RAM with 512GB storage, and 16GB RAM with 512GB storage, with LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage.

OnePlus 15R Software:

The OnePlus 15R runs on the latest OxygenOS 16 based on Android 16 out of the box. As seen on the OnePlus 15, here you also get almost all the features of OxygenOS 16, which include newer transitions and animations throughout the user interface. You can customise icon shape, size, colour and fonts. There are different styles for the Always-On display, which also works well with the lock screen.

The presence of Flux Theme 2.0 lets you add texts, motion picture widgets, and much more in the lockscreen, which looks quite interesting. There are scalable icons present in the homescreen that let you customise icons and add other shortcuts for convenience. As usual, the Live Alerts feature is present, which provides real-time updates along with ongoing activities in a small capsule around the front-facing camera.

There are a host of AI features which are part of OxygenOS 16, of which MindSpace is quite interesting as it lets you save on-screen information, documents, take screenshots and is now well integrated with Google Gemini, which checks the content in the MindSpace app and creates an itinerary of it. The Plus Key present on the left side of the smartphone triggers the MindSpace.

Other than that, the Plus Key provides other functionalities where you can set the different sound profiles - Ring, Vibrate, and Silent, long-press the button to record audio and save it in OnePlus Notes. Some of the AI features include AI Unblur, AI Enhance, AI Writer, and DocScanner, which work in the gallery application. AI Portrait Glow, AI Perfect Shot, and Circle To Search are other interesting ones that come in handy.

There is the Device Connect using which you can share content with any OnePlus smartphone and even iPhones by bringing both closer. It also allows you to sync information with your laptop or PC. All of these AI features have been discussed in the OnePlus 15 review. The software experience remains cleaner with almost no bloatware except for five to six applications, which can be uninstalled easily.

In terms of software updates, OnePlus has a good track record, and just like the flagship OnePlus 15, here you will also be getting four major Android OS updates and six years of security patches.

OnePlus 15R Cameras:

The OnePlus 15R sports a dual camera setup, which includes a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX906 sensor for the primary camera and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. There is no dedicated telephoto camera, which is slightly disappointing since its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus 13R, had one. On the front, there is a new 32MP f/2.0 selfie camera compared to the 16MP selfie camera of the OnePlus 13R.

The images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and excellent dynamic range, and by default, these images are captured in 26MP resolution compared to 12MP on the OnePlus 13R. There is the new DetailMax Engine as seen on the OnePlus 15, which improves the colour temperature, reduces noise to a larger extent in the background and also the dynamic range is wider.

In terms of HDR images, colours look punchier and have a great dynamic range. The human skin tones look natural and have good contrast, but in sunlight, there is some oversharpening present at times. The images shot at 12MP by default come out with sharper details and have a good dynamic range with less noise in the background. Similarly, during the night, the images taken in 26MP resolution look great.

The Auto Night Mode turns on automatically whenever the camera captures images at night. The images come out with sharper details, with excellent dynamic range and have less noise in the background. The details in the shadows look good with almost no oversharpening in the background. Since there is no dedicated telephoto camera, the main camera provides 2x digital zoom capabilities.

The 2x zoomed images taken during the day come out with sharper details, with decent dynamic range and less noise in the background. During the night, the 2x zoomed images have sharper details with a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The primary camera performance is almost on par with the flagship OnePlus 15, but nonetheless, the latter is better.

The 8MP ultrawide camera does a decent job in terms of details, which have softer details with decent dynamic range, with noise present on the higher side. There is a lot of distortion around the edges, but still, with the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processing, the results are better than those of the OnePlus 13R. The images from the ultrawide camera taken during the night come out with a decent level of detail, with higher noise in the background.

The colours look dull, and contrast is not so good. In terms of portraits, the primary camera takes some very good portraits with excellent dynamic range and proper edge detection. The human skin tones look natural with no oversharpening in the background. The background blur is well implemented with almost no noise in the background. You can take portraits at both 1x and 2x zoom levels.

There is no dedicated macro camera, but the ultrawide camera also doubles up as a macro camera, where details look good with decent dynamic range and slightly higher noise in the background. The colours look muted, though. In terms of selfies, the front camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.

The primary camera can record 4K videos at 120fps, whereas the ultrawide camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps. On the front, the 32MP camera does a great job in terms of videos, which can record 4K videos at 30fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The contrast is on the higher side with proper white balance.

The 2x zoomed videos have sharper details with good dynamic range, and colours look saturated but with slightly higher noise. The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with softer details, limited dynamic range and more noise in the background. The videos from the front camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.

OnePlus 15R Battery Life:

The OnePlus 15R sports a larger 7400mAh battery, which is massive in size and almost 1400mAh more in capacity when compared to the OnePlus 13R and 100mAh more in capacity than the OnePlus 15. With the effcient Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset being built on a 3nm process on board along with OxygenOS 16, we do expect healthy battery life.

In terms of heavy usage, which includes playing games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., rendering videos, taking photos and videos using the camera, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one to two days with the display set to High or Auto refresh rate. With heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came around 5-6 hours which is very good considering the huge battery underneath.

In terms of normal usage which includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, and other lighter multi-tasking activities, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for two and half days with some charge left. With normal usage, the standard screen-on time came around 9-10 hours of screen-on time, which is excellent by today's standards. In terms of charging, OnePlus eqipped the smartphone with a 80W SuperVOOC fast charger inside the box.

In terms of charging speeds, the smartphones reaches a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent within an hour which is quite fast considering the huge size of the battery. There is no support for wireless charging which may not be a concern considering none of the OnePlus R series do not have support for wireless charging. Other features include reverse wired charging and bypass charging capabilities.

OnePlus 15R Audio Quality:

The OnePlus 15R has a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds louder and the sound clarity is very good. It is a slight improvement over the sound quality of the OnePlus 13R. There is support for LHDC and LDAC support for earphones. There is no Dolby Atmos present here also.

Verdict:

The OnePlus 15R is a solid flagship smartphone from OnePlus as of now in the market. It brings a great build and design, an excellent 165Hz AMOLED display along with stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, flagship grade performance with great gaming capabilities, good camera exeprience and excllent battery life. OxygenOS 16 provides a cleaner and richer experience with a good track record of software updates.

Though the OnePlus 15R proves to be a solid smartphone, OnePlus has made a few compromises which seems awkward when comapred to its predecessor i.e. OnePlus 13R. The latter had a telephoto camera and an LTPO display both of which are missing on the OnePlus 15R. Even the ultrawide camera performance is not so good as it struggles in low-light scenarios. The primary camera performance could have also been better.

So to sum it up, the OnePlus 15R is a great smartphone to be considered as ticks almost all the boxes whether it is build and design, display, performance, battery life, etc. except for the cameras which could have been better. With the sudden increase in prices, the OnePlus 15R could have been a good value for money option but still it is worth the upgrade over the OnePlus 13R and a sensible offering amongst other flagships at this price point.

iQOO 15 Review: A no-compromise flagship that continues to set newer benchmarks in the flagship space!!

2026-05-24T10:56:35.433+05:30

A more mature flagship, which makes it next-level out there!!

iQOO smartphones have been at the forefront in performance and gaming capabilities, giving tough competition to other brands, and the price at which they are offered makes them a value-for-money option. The premium flagship space has always been competitive, and this time around, with significant upgrades over last year's iQOO 13 (Review), the iQOO 15 aims to taste success in this segment.

Last year's iQOO 13 was a well put-together flagship from iQOO, which was itself a very powerful smartphone with all the flagship specifications, including the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, a 144Hz LTPO display, a 50MP triple camera setup, a 6000mAh battery and much more. The iQOO 15 is also aiming to continue the similar successful journey, just like its predecessor, i.e. iQOO 13 did.

The iQOO 15 brings a lot to the table, which includes the flagship-grade Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a newer 144Hz LTPO display, a larger 7000mAh battery, and much more. There are some good upgrades which definitely push the prices of the smartphone. So, with the slightly higher asking price and the flagship features, is the iQOO 15 worth considering, and how good of an upgrade is it over the iQOO 13?

Let's find out in the full review.

iQOO 15 Design:

The iQOO 15 continues the similar design pattern just like its predecessor, i.e. iQOO 13, but the back is now flat instead of the micro-curved back on the iQOO 13. There is a similarly sized square camera module that houses the triple cameras, an ambient light sensor, and an LED flashlight. The camera module does not protrude, as the smartphone would not wobble when kept on a flat surface.

Around the edges, the smartphone is slightly rounded, which makes it easy to hold in the hands. The camera module features a very thin lighting strip that surrounds it, which iQOO calls the Energy Halo. It is an RGB sensor that activates when music is playing, a new notification pops up, and while playing games. This RGB colour can be customised with different colour options under the settings menu.

The iQOO 15 is available in two different colour variants - Legend and Alpha Black. The Legend variant is instantly recognisable in white, and this time around, there is a smaller "Monster Inside" logo instead of the BMW M Motorsport logo on the iQOO 13. There is some design near this logo which is very minimalistic and looks good.

The Alpha Black variant, on the other hand, has a fibreglass back with a smooth matte finish that feels premium and provides good grip while holding in the hands. Neither colour variants do not catch fingerprints, which is good. In terms of button placements, the right side houses the volume buttons along with a power button, whereas the left side remains completely cleaner.

The top of the smartphone houses an IR Blaster and an additional chamber for the secondary speaker, whereas the bottom houses the USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot, and a primary microphone. There is also support for eSIM. In terms of thickness, the iQOO 15 is thicker at 8.1mm around the sides and weighs around 220 grams, which makes it slightly heavier considering the larger size of the battery.

The iQOO 15 also brings an IP68/69 rating, which makes it dust and water-resistant. Overall, the build and design feel premium without much flashy design, thus providing the flagship feel out there.

iQOO 15 Display:

The iQOO 15 sports a larger 6.85-inches 2K (1440x3168 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. This display uses Samsung's new M14 AMOLED panel, which is a good upgrade over the iQOO 13's display. Just like its predecessor, i.e. iQOO 13, this one also has support for a 144Hz refresh rate and is a 10-bit display, which means you get saturated colours along with great viewing angles.

Talking about the refresh rate, there are three different options to choose from - Smart Adaptation, Standard, and High. The Smart Adaptation mode lets the display switch between different refresh rates depending on the content being played, which means it dials down to 30Hz while scrolling through webpages, switches to 120Hz for most applications, and 60Hz while watching a YouTube video.

Switching to the High mode, the display constantly maintains a 120Hz refresh rate for almost all the applications which support but 144Hz is not always constant while playing games. On the other hand, the Standard mode restricts the display to 60Hz only, which is the best option for better battery life. Regardless of the refresh rate on the display, it drops to 1Hz when there is no activity.

Combined with the 144Hz refresh rate, there is a 360Hz touch sampling rate that instantly switches to 3200Hz while gaming. In terms of display brightness, the iQOO 15 reaches a peak of 6000 nits, a slight improvement over the iQOO 13. The iQOO 15 reaches 2600nits of brightness under High Brightness Mode, whereas in typical scenarios, the display hovers around 1000nits.

The display of the iQOO 15 has good visibility under direct sunlight. In terms of colour reproduction, there are three different modes to choose from - Bright, Standard, and Professional. Choosing the Bright mode provides saturated colours which look punchier, whereas the Professional mode provides proper colour accuracy, and both these modes cover the DCI-P3 gamut space. The Standard mode provides natural colours that are true to nature, and this covers the sRGB colour space.

The display of the iQOO 15 is protected by Schott Xensation Alpha. The iQOO 15 display supports HDR on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 ensures that streaming HDR content on OTT platforms is a breeze. There is also support for Dolby Vision on Netflix. Just like the iQOO 13, here also, there is support for an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, which works accurately and is faster.

iQOO 15 Performance:

The iQOO 15 sports the latest flagship chipset of 2026, i.e., the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, which is seen on all flagships like the OnePlus 15 (Review), Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, etc. In terms of daily performance, the iQOO 15 handles all the tasks easily without breaking a sweat. With the powerful Adreno 840 GPU on board, it handles all light to heavy games easily.

Compared to the iQOO 13, there is a newer Supercomputing Q3 chip, which works well when it comes to gaming. In terms of gaming, the BGMI easily ran at Smooth graphics along with Ultra Extreme frame rates without any frame drops noticed. All other games, like Genshin Impact, Call of Duty Mobile, etc., ran easily at the highest graphics settings without any stutters or frame drops.

The SuperComputing Q3 chip aids in a smooth gaming experience as it inherits game frame interpolation that analyses the gameplay and increases the frame rates during gaming. For example, BGMI easily runs at 144Hz constantly without any latency or compromise in battery health. The same goes for all other high-end games like Call of Duty Mobile, Genshin Impact, etc., thus maintaining consistent FPS during gameplay.

Along with the SuperComputing Q3 chip, iQOO has provided a larger 8000mm2 vapour chamber, which dissipates heat faster. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could easily achieve a sustained performance of around 80-85 per cent, which is great as there is very minimal throttling present. The benchmark scores also came out the best in class and far better than smartphones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset.

In terms of network connectivity, you get support for good carrier aggregation, and there is support for almost all bands of 5G. The iQOO 15 is available in two different variants - 12GB RAM with 256GB storage and another 16GB RAM with 512GB storage, where RAM speeds are of LPDDR5X and storage speeds are of UFS 4.1. Overall, the performance remains flagship level without any flaws.

iQOO 15 Software:

The iQOO 15 is the first smartphone that runs on OriginOS out of the box, as compared to other iQOO smartphones that run on FunTouchOS. So the iQOO 15 runs on OriginOS 6 based on Android 16. When compared to FunTouchOS, there are a lot of changes within the user interface. There are newer animations throughout the interface, which feel smoother along with the 144Hz display.

The notification panel and the quick settings can both operate in two split parts or a single window. Notifications use a stacked card layout, and there are newer animations for charging, fingerprint scanner, newly designed power menus and a new iQOO Sans font. The control centre brings some substantial changes in terms of animations and blur effects, which iQOO likes to call the Gradient Blur.

Now, bigger folders that hold different applications can be placed in the homescreen, which can be resized horizontally or vertically, along with customizable colour options. There are a few new looks to different widgets, also. OriginOS 6 comes with a feature called Flip Cards, which is a lockscreen feature where you can select 4 images from the gallery application, which changes wallpapers when you tilt the smartphone sideways.

You can also place a few widgets on the lockscreen, which comes in handy. Similar to Apple's Dynamic Island, there is Origin Island, which shows all the information regarding what music is played, any notifications, and other functionalities. It also provides the convenience of dragging an image or text near the front camera area, where the Origin Island comes out with different applications, where you want to share and save the content, like in social media platforms or note-taking applications.

For example, while dragging an image brings up New Note and Save To Albums, dragging a text brings up Uber, Snapchat, and WhatsApp. There are a lot of AI features present, which include the AI writing tool, which can summarise the text, draft reports, and write paragraphs. AI Captions works well for speech-to-text conversion and provides real-time translation and transcription during meetings and video calls.

AI Magic Move lets you drag, resize and move objects within an image, thus ensuring that the background is perfect. AI Image Extender extends the image borders and reframes the shots that have been captured. AI Erase lets you remove any unwanted subject from an image, and AI Colour Adjustment sometimes adjusts the colour science in most images. AI UHD works well in removing blur from images.

There are others like AI Creation, AI Search, DocMaster, AI Photo Enhance, etc. There is the Circle To Search, which comes in handy as always. Google's Gemini integration is present throughout the user interface, also. There is also the convenience of linking the smartphone with a personal computer or laptop, which provides different functionalities like transferring files, screen mirroring, and controling of phone from the PC. The Private Space feature lets you store your private data without exposing it to others.

There is also OneTouch Share, where tapping both smartphones' tops together shares content easily, similar to AirDrop on iPhones. With OriginOS, there is very little bloatware now in the form of a few third-party applications, which can be uninstalled easily. In terms of software updates, OriginOS has gone one step ahead by providing another five years of AndroidOS updates and seven years of security patches, which is a considerable improvement over FunTouchOS.

iQOO 15 Cameras:

The iQOO 15 sports a triple camera setup, which remains unchanged from the iQOO 13 except that the telephoto camera now comes with 3x optical zoom instead of the 2x optical zoom on the iQOO 13. So the primary camera is a 50MP f/1.9 Sony IMX921 sensor, and with that, there is a 50MP f/2.0 ISOCELL JN1 sensor for the ultrawide camera and a 50MP f/2.5 Sony IMX882 sensor for the telephoto camera, which supports 3x optical zoom.

On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.2 camera for selfies. The primary camera does a great job in terms of details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with natural colours in the background without any kind of oversharpening. The noise is less in the background, also. The contrast is slightly on the higher side, and the white balance is handled very well.

The 50MP images come out with sharper details, but they tend to be slightly softer when compared to the default 12.5MP images. The images taken during the night come out with sharper details and have excellent dynamic range with punchier colours in the background. The details in the shadows look good, and there is no oversharpening in the background as such. All these results are captured using the dedicated Night Mode.

Without the Night Mode, the details look good but a tad softer and slightly higher noise in the background, but the difference is very minimal. The 50MP ultrawide camera does a great job in terms of details, which look sharper with good dynamic range. The colours look natural, but there is a lot of oversharpening in the background. The contrast comes out well, and the white balance is handled well.

Around the edges, there is some distortion present, but still, it is slightly improved when compared to the iQOO 13's ultrawide camera images. At night, the ultrawide camera does suffer from oversharpening, and the details look softer with higher noise in the background. The colours look slightly washed out, and the contrast is not so good.

With the dedicated Night Mode, the details look slightly sharper, but still, the dynamic range comes out to be average with slightly reduced noise in the background. The images from the telephoto camera come out with sharper details and have excellent dynamic range with almost no noise in the background when taken at 3x zoom. The colours look punchier with good contrast and white balance. There is no oversharpening in the background as such.

If you take images at 6x zoom, the details look adequately sharper with less noise in the background, with punchier colours. Beyond 6x zoom, if you go for 10x and 20x zoom levels, the details do look softer with limited dynamic range, and noise is on the higher side also. The details look softer with washed-out colours.

The telephoto camera is not capable of taking macro shots, which is a slight disappointment, but it is really capable of taking some very good portrait shots with proper edge detection and nice background blur. At night, the telephoto camera does a great job in terms of details that look sharper and have excellent dynamic range with less noise in the background.

With the dedicated Night Mode turned on, the results came out even better with almost no noise in the background. The colours look punchier with no oversharpening in the background, and the contrast was also on the higher side with proper white balance. At 6x zoom levels, the images came out with pretty sharp details with some noise in the background.

The colours do look slightly washed out, but if you go beyond 10x or more, then definitely there is a considerable amount of noise in the background, the details look softer, and colours get faded out. In terms of macro photography, you can take 3x or 6x shots using the primary camera, which results in sharper details and a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.

In terms of portraits, both the primary and the telephoto cameras are capable of capturing portraits with proper edge detection and a good level of background blur. The human skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening, and the portraits from both cameras come out with a wider dynamic range. The telephoto camera takes the slight edge in terms of wider dynamic range and better background blur.

When it comes to selfies, the front camera does a good job in terms of resulting in sharper details along with a wider dynamic range. The skin tones look slightly weird with some skin smoothening in the background. The contrast is good, and the white balance is handled well. Even portrait selfies come out with good dynamic range and have proper edge detection. The background blur is also well implemented.

In terms of video recording, the primary camera can record 8K videos at 30 fps, while the rest of the cameras are capable of taking 4K videos at 60fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The colours look punchier with good contrast. Still with 8K videos, there is some room for improvement in terms of stabilisation.

The 4K videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and excellent dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The colours look punchier with no oversharpening in the background. The 4K videos from the ultrawide camera come out with decent dynamic range, and details look sharper with a considerable amount of noise in the background. However, colours look saturated though. All these results are captured during the day as well as at night.

The 4K videos from the telephoto camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range, with almost no noise in the background. The colours look punchier, but at night, the details look softer with limited dynamic range, and noise is also on the higher side. The front camera is capable of taking videos which come out with sharper details and wider dynamic range, but noise is on the higher side.

iQOO 15 Battery Life:

The iQOO 15 sports a larger 7000mAh battery, which is about 1000mAh more in capacity compared to its predecessor, i.e. iQOO 13. With normal usage that includes casual gaming, streaming social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for a single day and a half with some battery left. The standard screen-on time came around 7.5-8 hours, which is good.

With heavy usage that includes playing heavy games like BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile, etc, rendering videos, taking images and videos using the camera, etc., the iQOO 15 easily lasted for a single day and a half with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came around 5-6 hours, which is good. So clearly, we can see that with the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, the battery life has been improved.

In terms of charging, the iQOO 15 supports 100W fast charging and the dedicated 100W fast charger is present inside the box. This is a slight downgrade when compared to the 120W fast charging support on its predecessor, i.e. iQOO 13. The 100W fast charger takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent in around 55-60 minutes, which is fast but slightly time-consuming considering that we now have a larger capacity battery.

Along with this, iQOO has finally bought the 40W wireless charging support on the iQOO 15, which is a good upgrade over the iQOO 13, which lacked the support for wireless charging. There is also support for reverse wireless charging and reverse wired charging, which can be useful for charging other smartphones.

iQOO 15 Audio Quality:

The iQOO 15 sports a dual stereo speaker setup, which includes a speaker on the top along with the loudspeaker grille at the bottom. The audio quality is loud and clearer with no distortion, even at the highest volume settings. There is support for LDAC for HiRes audio, and the haptics are just spot on, where you can even change the intensity of the haptics for a better experience.

Verdict:

Overall, as a package, the iQOO 15 is a solid flagship out there, which will make many flagship smartphones go in admiration. This year, the prices have been increased slightly, but the noticeable features, which include a powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a capable camera setup, a 144Hz AMOLED display, and a larger battery with faster charging and a new feature-rich software experience, make up for it.

If you consider the iQOO 15, what you are getting is a solid build and design, a great eye-catching display for content consumption, along with support for stereo speakers, and then there is the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, which provides solid performance and great gaming capabilities, the cameras are good for images and videos, and you get solid battery life with support for faster charging.

The software experience, which was not so refined with FunTouchOS on iQOO smartphones in the past, has been improved with OriginOS on the iQOO 15, which includes a feature-rich software experience along with a better software upgrade lifecycle over other brands in this segment. However, there are a few areas where the iQOO 15 falls short. The ultrawide camera performance is not so good, which makes it average.

The OriginOS, though feature-rich, is not as polished as OneUI in Samsung smartphones or OxygenOS in OnePlus smartphones, and there is bloatware present. The charging speed has been slightly downgraded compared to last year's iQOO 13. So in a nutshell, except for the charging speeds, the iQOO 15 is a good upgrade over the iQOO 13 and makes a sensible buy in the market with the slightly higher asking price.

OnePlus Nord 5 Review: A well established mid-range offering which can be a great consideration in the market!!

2026-04-19T00:11:00.001+05:30

A true flagship performing mid-ranger which makes a good option!!

The OnePlus Nord series has been popular in the mid-range and premium mid-range segments, borrowing features from the flagship OnePlus number series, along with clean software, good hardware, and aggressive pricing. The Nord CE series has been the people's choice in the budget and mid-range segment, whereas the OnePlus Nord series is a mix of both the Nord CE series and the flagship number series.

With the soaring competition in the premium mid-range segment from various manufacturers, the OnePlus Nord 5 faces some serious competition. Last year's OnePlus Nord 4 (Review) brought in some very good specifications, of which a striking part was the design with the unibody metal finish that feels premium. With the OnePlus Nord 5, OnePlus has brought in a few upgrades in terms of the newer Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, a larger battery and slightly upgraded cameras.

With each Nord lineup, the prices have been increased, and this time, it is no different. So, how good of an upgrade is the OnePlus Nord 5 over its predecessor, and is it worth the asking price?

Let's find out in the full review.

OnePlus Nord 5 Design:

The OnePlus Nord 5 has a different design approach when compared to last year's OnePlus Nord 4, which had a premium unibody metal design. The back of the OnePlus Nord 5 has a glass panel with a matte finish, which does not catch many fingerprints, which is good since the back of the OnePlus Nord 4 did catch smudges and fingerprints. The rear cameras are placed in a vertical order along with an LED flashlight in a capsule-like module.

The camera module does not protrude much, which means the smartphone will not wobble when kept on a flat surface. The OnePlus Nord 5 is available in three different colours - Marble Sands (white), Dry Ice (Blue), and Phantom Grey. The back of the smartphone is flat and is curved around the edges, which makes it easy to hold in the hands. The smartphone has an IP65 rating, which makes it dust and water-resistant.

The OnePlus Nord 5 weighs around 211 grams, which is slightly heavier than the OnePlus Nord 4, which weighs around 199 grams, since the former houses a larger 6800mAh battery, which does add to the weight. Around the sides, the smartphone is thicker at 8.1mm, but this time, instead of the aluminium frame, there is now a polycarbonate frame, which is a slight downgrade.

The polycarbonate frame houses the OnePlus Plus Key on the left, which provides multiple functionalities, whereas the right side has the volume buttons along with the power key. The top of the smartphone houses the IR Blaster along with a secondary noise-cancelling microphone and secondary speaker output, whereas the bottom houses the dual SIM card tray, a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone and a USB Type-C port.

There is no additional slot for microSD card expansion, and as usual, no presence of a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the front, there is a single punch-hole display with minimal bezels on the sides, making it look premium. The front display is a flatter one and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, which is good. However, the display is now a larger 6.83-inch one. Overall, the build and design are good but not so impressive as its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus Nord 4.

OnePlus Nord 5 Display:

The OnePlus Nord 5 sports a larger 6.83-inches display compared to the 6.74-inches display of the OnePlus Nord 4, and even in terms of screen resolution, the display of the OnePlus Nord 5 has a 1.5K (1272x2800 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. This display is a 10-bit one so you get excellent colour reproduction along with great viewing angles.

Another small display upgrade is the 144Hz refresh rate, but it is a small gimmick. The 144Hz refresh rate works for certain games only, like Call of Duty Mobile, Genshin Impact, BGMI, etc., as OnePlus has whitelisted these games only. Other than that, the display usually refreshes at 120Hz, which is the highest refresh rate on the OnePlus Nord 5 for most applications.

Talking about refresh rates, there are three different settings to choose from - Auto Select, Standard, and High. The display usually refreshes at 120Hz when you choose either High or Auto Select, except that when the display is set to High, it drops to 60Hz when idle or not in use, but maintains a 120Hz refresh rate in most applications.

Auto-Select, on the other hand, ensures the display switches between different refresh rates depending on the content on the display. The Standard mode provides a 60Hz refresh rate, which ensures solid battery life. Combined with this, you get a 300Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses on the display, and while playing games, there is an instantaneous 3000Hz touch sampling rate ensuring smooth gameplay.

In terms of display brightness, the display can reach a peak of 1800 nits, which is slightly lower than its predecessor, i.e., OnePlus Nord 4, but it is still bright enough when watching content or viewing it under direct sunlight. The display can reach 1400nits of brightness in High Brightness Mode. Under normal conditions, the display brightness hovers around 600-700 nits.

The display has great visibility under direct sunlight, and like all OnePlus smartphones, there is an Extra Brightness Mode for enhanced brightness. The colour reproduction on the display can be calibrated, as there are three different settings to choose from - Vivid, Natural, and Pro, where if you choose Vivid and Pro modes, the colours look punchier and cover the DCI-P3 colour gamut.

If you choose Natural mode, the colours look slightly muted when compared to the other two modes, which cover the sRGB colour space. The display has support for HDR, ensuring that streaming HDR content over YouTube or any other application is a breeze. There is support for Widevine L1, so you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms. The display has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner, which works fast and is accurate.

OnePlus Nord 5 Performance:

The OnePlus Nord 5 houses a flagship-grade Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, which is an underclocked version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and has an octa-core setup, which includes 1x3.0 GHz Cortex-X4 core with 4x2.8 GHz Cortex-A720 cores and another 3x2.0 GHz Cortex-A520 cores, which is based on a 4nm process and is coupled with a powerful Adreno 735 GPU.

When compared to the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset is a slight upgrade. In terms of all activities like scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, playing games, etc., the smartphone handled all these without breaking a sweat. All heavy games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings without any stutters or frame drops.

In BGMI, the smartphone could easily run at Smooth graphics with Extreme+ frame rates. Genshin Impact could easily run at 120fps without any frame drops, also. After longer gaming sessions, i.e., 3-4 hours, the back of the smartphone felt slightly warmer, but the dedicated vapour cooling system, called "Cryo Velocity VC," dissipates heat faster since it has a larger surface area of 7300 mm2.

In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone achieved sustained performance of around 70-80 per cent, which is good, with minimal throttling. The scores came out really well in benchmarks, also. In terms of network connectivity, you get support for good carrier aggregation, and almost all bands of 5G are supported.

The OnePlus Nord 5 is available in three different storage variants - 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, and another 12GB RAM with 512GB storage, all of which have RAM configuration of LPDDR5X, and the storage speeds are of UFS 3.1.

OnePlus Nord 5 Software:

The OnePlus Nord 5 came with OxygenOS 15, based on Android 15 out of the box, but now it has been updated to Android 16 and is running the latest OxygenOS 16. OxygenOS 16 brings a few new additions to the list with enhanced animations throughout the user interface, newer AI features, etc. The Plus Key makes daily usage much easier as it comes in handy.

Some of the newer AI features include the AI Portrait Glow, which adjusts the background lighting in most scenarios and also removes shadows, and then there is the AI Perfect Shot, which is great for selfies as it also changes the facial expressions to match the background. AI Summary works well in summarising the contents while using the Notes application, and there is live transcription, which works well for audio recordings.

The MindSpace works extremely well, as when you take a particular screenshot, it analyses the screenshot and provides a small summary if there is some written text in the screenshot. However, the interesting part is that now there is the Google Gemini integration with MindSpace, which allows you to create any content easily. The Circle To Search is available, which provides a good amount of information easily.

As always, OxygenOS provides a bloatware-free experience except for a few applications, which can be uninstalled easily. In terms of software updates, the OnePlus Nord 5 will receive four years of Android updates and six years of security patches, which is good, so it will support till Android 19, as currently it has received one major update to Android 16.

OnePlus Nord 5 Cameras:

The OnePlus Nord 5 has a triple camera setup, which includes a 50MP f/1.8 Sony LYT-700 sensor for the primary camera and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. On the front, there is a 50MP f/2.0 Samsung JN5 sensor for selfies. This is almost the same camera setup as seen on the OnePlus Nord 4, except the newer chipset does provide different image processing results.

During daylight, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The contrast and white balance are handled very well. The 50MP images have slightly softer details and decent dynamic range when compared to the regular 12MP images.

The 2x zoomed images from the primary camera come out with sharper details, have good dynamic range, and less noise in the background. At night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range. The noise is very low in the background with no oversharpening present. The details in shadows look good, and the white balance is handled very well.

All these results were captured with the Auto Night Mode turned on. Without the dedicated Night Mode, the images had slightly softer details with some noise present in the background. The 2x zoomed images taken at night do have softer details with more noise around the corners. The dynamic range is wider and colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening.

The images from the ultrawide camera came out with softer details and have limited dynamic range. There is a lot of distortion around the edges with some oversharpening in the background. The colours do look punchier when compared to the results on the OnePlus Nord 4. At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with softer details, limited dynamic range and more noise in the background.

There is no dedicated macro camera, so you have to rely on 2x digital zoom from the primary camera for detailed macro images. In terms of portraits, the primary camera does a good job in terms of edge detection, and there is proper separation of the subject from the background. Even the human skin tones look natural, and the noise is also very low in the background in portraits. The dynamic range is wider also.

On the front, the 50MP selfie camera does a great job, producing sharper selfies with a wider dynamic range and almost no background noise. The human skin tones look natural with no oversharpening. You also get a wider field of view, and now this selfie camera has autofocus, which means selfies at night come out with sharper details and have almost less noise in the background.

In terms of video recording, both the primary and selfie cameras can record 4K videos at 60 fps, whereas the ultrawide camera can record 1080p videos at 30 fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. At 1080p videos at 60fps, the videos came out with excellent dynamic range and sharper details with no noise in the background.

There is an Ultra Steady Mode, which works really well for 1080p videos. The videos taken at night come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with some noise in the background. The colours look natural in videos shot both during the night and during the day. The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with softer details, have a limited dynamic range and a lot of noise in the background.

The 4K videos from the selfie camera came out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. There is the Ultra Steady Mode, which works well at 1080p at 30fps, resulting in excellent dynamic range and sharper details with no noise in the background.

OnePlus Nord 5 Battery Life:

The OnePlus Nord 5 sports a larger 6800mAh battery, which is more in capacity when compared to its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus Nord 4, which had a 5500mAh battery. With the powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset built on a 3nm process and the larger battery size, we do expect better battery life, and it clearly reflects on the daily usage of the smartphone.

In terms of normal usage, which includes streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, or any random multi-tasking between applications, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for two and a half days with some charge left, which is really good. The standard screen-on time came around 8.5-9 hours, which is excellent and by far the best numbers in the premium mid-range segment.

With heavy usage that includes playing heavy games, taking images and videos using the camera, rendering videos, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came around 4-4.5 hours, which is good. In terms of charging, the OnePlus Nord 5 is bundled with an 80W SuperVOOC charger inside the box.

This is a slight downgrade compared to the OnePlus Nord 4, which came with a 100W fast charger. However, the 80W fast charger takes the OnePlus Nord 5 from 0 to 100 per cent for a full charge in around 45-50 minutes, which is good considering the huge battery capacity.

OnePlus Nord 5 Audio Quality:

The OnePlus Nord 5 sports a dual stereo speaker that sounds equally good from both the earpiece at the top and the bottom loudspeaker grille. The audio quality is not so deep, but the vocals, along with bass levels, are good. There is the OHaptics, which provides solid haptic feedback while using any application. For enhanced sound output, Dolby Atmos is present.

Verdict:

As an overall packages, the OnePlus Nord 5 continues to impress just like its predecessor i.e. OnePlus Nord 4. You get a good build and design except that you miss out on the metallic build of the OnePlus Nord 4, then there is the 144Hz AMOLED display along with stereo speakers which is great for content consumption, the powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset provides excellent gaming capabilities and daily performance.

The larger battery present under the hood is a great companion along with the powerful chipset as it provides solid battery life and to top that up the 80W fast charger charges the smartphone quite fast. The cameras remains unchanged from the OnePlus Nord 4, but still both the primary and the front camera do a good job in terms of videos and images. The ultrawide camera is the one which is an average performer.

OxygenOS has been one of the best user interface in the Android side of things and this is no different here also as you get a cleaner software experience with almost no bloatware and a strong software update cycle is an added advantage considering the good track record of software updates provided by OnePlus in the past. There are few areas where OnePlus Nord 5 holds back and could have been better.

In terms of design, there is a slight let down with the glass back instead of the premium metallic finish of the OnePlus Nord 4 which may not be a concern to much out there, then the ultrawide camera is not so good when compared to other two cameras as it struggles a lot. Even the primary camera is not a newer sensor when compared to the OnePlus Nord 4, so there is not much of an improvement in terms of images and videos.

The OnePlus Nord 5 feels heavier for some considering the huge battery underneath. So as an overall package if you want the best performance along with good gaming capbilities, a strong battery life along with a great display for multimedia consumption, then the OnePlus Nord 5 is a great buy but you do have to sacrifice on the camera performance out there. With all the smaller upgrades except the design, the OnePlus Nord 5 is a good upgrade over the OnePlus Nord 4 thus making it worth buying.

OnePlus 15 Review: A perfect flagship that strives higher for perfection amongst the flagships!!

2026-04-05T11:43:00.003+05:30

An all-rounder flagship from OnePlus, which is a good deal out there!!

OnePlus has been a strong contender in the smartphone space ever since it came on the market in 2011. The flagship series has had a huge success in the market, and this year, we have the OnePlus 15 series, which aims to hold the same value in this highly competitive space. Last year, we had the OnePlus 13 (Review) series, which was successful, and this time, OnePlus has not left anything behind with the OnePlus 15, which brings flagship specifications to the table.

With the OnePlus 15, there are a lot of changes, especially the design philosophy, which has seen a drastic change from the OnePlus 13s (Review). The OnePlus 15 brings flagship specifications, including the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a 165Hz AMOLED display, a 50MP triple-camera setup, and more. So, does it have enough grunt to continue the premium flagship's journey out there?

Let's find out in the full review.

OnePlus 15 Design:

The OnePlus 15 brings a newer design philosophy, which is similar to the OnePlus 13s, which was indeed a very successful product from OnePlus, with its compact form factor. Unlike the OnePlus 13, which had curves all along, i.e. both at the front as well as on the back, the OnePlus 15 has a flat panel all around. This clearly indicates that getting tempered glass for a flat display is much easier.

The edges are curved around, which makes it easier to hold in the hands. At the back, there is a square-shaped camera module which houses the triple cameras along with an LED flashlight. The camera module is slightly protruding, which may not be a major concern. The OnePlus 15 is available in three different colour variants - Infinite Black, Sand Storm, and Ultra Violet.

The Infinite Black, as the name suggests, has a black coloured back with a smooth matte finish that looks premium and provides a solid grip while holding in the hands, whereas if you consider the Sand Storm variant, you will get a premium feel, especially due to the textured material that feels like ceramic and this same finish has been carried forward on the frame as well as the camera module.

The Ultra Violet variant has a lavender colour finish that shows a slight shift in colour while viewed from different angles. Around the sides, for the Infinite Black and Ultra Violet, there is an aluminium frame that houses the Plus key on the left side, whereas the right side houses the power button along with volume keys. There is no longer the signature alert slider, which was the forte of OnePlus smartphones.

With the Plus key, you can assign different actions or shortcuts depending on the usage. On top, there is a speaker along with a secondary noise-cancelling microphone. The IR Blaster control is present on the camera module at the back between the cameras. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone, and a dual-SIM card tray.

There is no support for a 3.5mm headphone jack or a microSD card slot for storage expansion. In terms of weight distribution, the OnePlus 15 weighs around 211 grams, which is almost identical to its predecessor, the OnePlus 13, so it does not feel much heavier in the hand. In terms of thickness, the OnePlus 15 is thinner at 8.1mm, which is quite thinner compared to the 8.9mm thickness on the OnePlus 13.

The OnePlus 15 has an IP69 rating, which makes it dust and water resistant also. OnePlus claims to have put all IP ratings, which include IP66/68/69/69K rating. On the front, there is Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 for protection for all colour variants. The back is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i for the Infinite Black and Ultra Violet, whereas the Sand Storm variant has a fibreglass finish.

On the front, the display is flatter with minimal bezels to the sides, and the single punch-hole camera is located at the top.

Overall, the build and design feel premium.

OnePlus 15 Display:

The OnePlus 15 sports a 6.78-inch display, which is slightly smaller compared to its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus 13, which sports a 6.82-inch display. The display has a 1.5K resolution (1272x2772 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9, which is a slight downgrade compared to the Quad HD+ resolution on its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus 13.

This display is a 10-bit display, which means you get excellent colour reproduction and great viewing angles. The display of the OnePlus 15 supports a 165Hz refresh rate, which OnePlus claims will work very well in almost all graphics-intensive games. This being an LTPO display, the display can go as low as 1Hz and can reach a higher refresh rate of 165Hz (mostly the refresh rate goes up to 120Hz).

There are three different options under the screen refresh rate to choose from - Auto Select, Standard, and High. Choosing Auto-Select lets the display switch between different refresh rates depending on the content on the display, whereas selecting High mode lets the display refresh at 120Hz for most of the applications except for games, where the display easily achieves 165Hz refresh rate.

The Standard mode limits the display to 60Hz only, and this leads to extended battery life. The display of the OnePlus 15 has support for 2160Hz PWM frequency dimming, ensuring that eyes are not affected in the dark while viewing the smartphone display. In terms of display brightness, the OnePlus 15 can reach a peak brightness of 3600 nits, whereas with the High Brightness Mode turned on, the display reaches a brightness of 1800 nits.

In manual mode, the display reached a good brightness of 790nits. The display has good visibility under direct sunlight, too. You can set the colour temperature of the display as you get three options - Vivid, Natural, and Standard. Selecting the Natural or the Standard mode provides softer colours which look close to natural, whereas the Vivid mode provides punchier colours on the display and covers the DCI-P3 gamut.

The display of the OnePlus 15 has support for HDR10+, so you can easily view HDR content on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 ensures that you can view HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Hotstar, etc. There is also support for Dolby Vision. The display of the OnePlus 15 has support for an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner that works fast and is accurate.

OnePlus 15 Performance:

The OnePlus 15 sports this year's flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, which is based on a 3nm process. It is the first smartphone to have this chipset, and this will be the mainline chipset for all 2026 flagships. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset has an octa-core chipset, which includes: 2x4.6 GHz Oryon V3 Phoenix L cores and 6x3.62 GHz Oryon V3 Phoenix M cores, which is based on an Adreno 840 GPU.

When compared to last year's Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, there is a 23% improvement in performance and 30% in power efficiency. In terms of daily tasks, which include scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, playing games, running benchmarks, etc., the smartphone easily handled all of the tasks without breaking a sweat. With OxygenOS 16, multitasking is also a breeze.

This time around, OnePlus has taken the gaming experience seriously as it brings a new OnePlus Performance Tri-chip, which provides an enhanced gaming experience with faster touch response and manages heat during gaming. All heavy games like BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile, Genshin Impact, etc., ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings without any stutters or frame drops.

In BGMI, the smartphone could easily run with Smooth graphics with Ultra Extreme frame rates, and there was a consistent 165Hz refresh rate throughout the gameplay. Similar results were achieved with Genshin Impact, where the smartphone consistently maintained 120fps during gameplay. Even Call of Duty Mobile gameplay was smooth without any frame drops, and 165Hz was maintained consistently.

In terms of heat dissipation, there is a larger vapour chamber cooling system called the 360 Cryo-Velocity Cooling System of size 5731mm2 with graphite coating, which ensures heat is dissipated easily. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone achieved a sustained performance of 80-85 per cent, which is very good, and there is minimal throttling present. The benchmark scores came out best in class.

In terms of network connectivity, you get support for good carrier aggregation and have support for almost all bands of 5G. The OnePlus 15 is available in two different variants - 12/16GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256/512GB storage of UFS 4.0 speeds.

OnePlus 15 Software:

The OnePlus 15 runs on the latest OxygenOS 16, which is based on Android 16 out of the box. With OxygenOS 16, there are very few changes compared to OxygenOS 15 out there. There are some newer animations and customisation options. As usual, you can change icon shape, size, and colour along with different styles for Always-On Display. Speaking of the Always-On Display, it can now go full screen.

The transition from AOD to the lockscreen looks good. There is the Flux Theme 2.0, which lets you add texts, motion pictures, widgets, and a full-screen Always-On Display and much more to the lockscreen. The home screen customisations are now limited to four settings, where OnePlus has consolidated icon, transition, etc., into the consolidated wallpaper and style settings.

There are now scalable icons that let you customise the icons and add other shortcuts for convenience. The quick settings have seen a small change where you can add a few more toggles and now follow the system colour theme. As with Live Alerts, there are no such changes, as you get multiple, like 2-3 of them and now supports other applications like Google Maps, YouTube Play Music, etc.

There is an iOS-like theme in the app drawer, which categorises different applications, and once you hover over the alphabet, it shows the applications starting with the respective alphabet. With the OxygenOS 16, the motion smoothness is even better and faster compared to the OxygenOS 15, which means faster animations while opening and closing applications or switching between different applications.

There are a lot of AI features, of which MindSpace is one interesting one to be considered, where if you take a screenshot, AI will summarise the screenshot, and now it supports multiple languages also. The biggest upgrade to the MindSpace is the Google Gemini integration, where you can ask Gemini to look up the content in MindSpace and create an itinerary regarding the information that is captured.

You can long-press the Plus Key to attach audio notes, and MindSpace creates an AI collection that groups related content. AI Writer is systemwide present now, where it will rewrite, summarise, and analyse the contents. The DocScanner inside the gallery application works well, as there are other features like AI Unblur, AI Enhance, and remove shadows, resulting in the document looking cleaner and clearer.

Inside the gallery, there is an AI Portrait Glow, which adjusts the background lighting and removes shadows for better portraits. There is a live transcription in the sound recorder application, AI Summary, and a clear voice for noise-free recordings. OnePlus Connect works seamlessly with different devices, where you can sync the contents of your OnePlus smartphone over a third-party desktop or laptop.

AI Perfect Shot in the gallery application removes the blinked eyes and alters the undesired facial expression in the photos. Other AI features remain unchanged from the OxygenOS 15. The Circle to Search works well in almost all of the applications. In terms of third-party applications, there are very few that can be uninstalled easily, considering the cleaner software experience of OxygenOS.

In terms of software updates, the OnePlus 15 will receive another four years of Android OS updates and six years of security patches, which is good.

OnePlus 15 Cameras:

The OnePlus 15 sports a triple-camera setup that includes a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX906 sensor for the primary camera with OIS, a 50MP f/2.0 OmniVision OV50D sensor for the ultrawide camera, and a 50MP f/2.8 ISOCELL JN5 sensor for the telephoto camera, which supports 3.5x optical zoom. On the front, there is a 32MP Sony IMX709 sensor for selfies.

This time around, there is no longer a Hasselblad partnership; instead, OnePlus has gone with the DetailMax Engine computational algorithm, which works mainly for the primary and the telephoto cameras. The camera sensors are a slight downgrade compared to its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus 13.

During daylight, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The contrast and white balance come out well. There is some overprocessing in the images. All these results are captured in the 26MP mode.

Using the 12MP mode, the images come out with sharper details, with wider dynamic range and almost minimal noise in the background. These images look much sharper compared to the images taken using the 26MP mode. The contrast is slightly on the higher side. At night, the Night Mode gets triggered automatically, which results in images having sharper details and a wider dynamic range.

The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. There is a good amount of detail in the shadows, which do not look overprocessed. Without the Night Mode, the details look a tad softer, and noise is slightly on the higher side, also. The images captured at night lack some contrast, and there is a slight shift in colour temperature when using them without the Night Mode.

The 50MP ultrawide camera seems to be a downgrade in terms of sensor size when compared to that of its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus 13. The images from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range. The noise is also less in the background, but when you compare the ultrawide images shot with the OnePlus 13, there are a few shortcomings.

The images from the OnePlus 15's ultrawide have slightly softer details, and they do look overprocessed. The field of view is quite wide, but there is some distortion present around the edges. At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details, but the dynamic range comes out to be average as it is not so wide, and even the noise is slightly higher.

However, the colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening, but still, when compared to both the primary and the telephoto cameras, they look muted. The telephoto camera takes images in 26MP by default, and these images have sharper details with wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening, and the contrast is well handled.

There is a 7x toggle viewfinder, which results in great zoomed images, resulting in sharper details, but still the details look softer when compared to the 3.5x zoom ones, and noise is on the higher side. During the night, the dedicated Night Mode gets triggered automatically, so the telephoto camera does a good job in terms of images which have sharper details and good dynamic range with almost no noise in the background.

The details in shadows look good, but there is some overprocessing in the images which needs some improvement. At 7x zoom, the images have softer details with average dynamic range and more noise in the background. The macro mode works well on the telephoto camera, resulting in sharper details, wider dynamic range, and almost no noise in the background. The close-up images come out really well.

In terms of portraits, with the telephoto camera, you get good edge detection, and there is proper separation of the subject from the background. The background blur is well maintained, and the dynamic range is wider in portraits. The human skin tones look natural with no oversharpening and have good contrast. The main camera also takes some very good portraits, but the telephoto camera is still better in terms of portraits.

The selfie camera does a great job in terms of selfies, which come out with sharper details and good dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The skin tones look natural, but sometimes they do look overprocessed. The selfie camera now has support for autofocus, which means the selfies come out with sharper details, wider dynamic range, and less noise in the background, even during the night.

In terms of videos, the primary camera can record 8K videos at 30fps as well as 4K videos at 120fps, whereas the remaining three cameras have support for 4K video recording at 60fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details, with a wider dynamic range, and almost no noise in the background as EIS works really well. Even the colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening.

The 1080p videos at 60fps come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise, as when you switch to 1080p resolution, the OIS works here. The colours look natural, and contrast is on the higher side. Similarly, during the night, the videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.

The 4K videos from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range, but there is a slight distortion around the edges. The colours were slightly muted. At night, the ultrawide camera does an average job in terms of videos, as the output has higher noise in the background, and the dynamic range is not so good. Even the details look softer.

The 4K videos from the telephoto camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background when taken at 3.5x zoom. Once you switch to the 7x zoom, the videos do have more noise, and the details look softer. At night, the videos came out with sharper details with less noise in the background. The videos from the selfie camera come out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range, with almost no noise present.

OnePlus 15 Battery Life:

The OnePlus 15 sports a 7300mAh battery, which is by far the largest battery capacity on any OnePlus smartphone to date, which looks to be a good upgrade over the 6000mAh battery on its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus 13. Since the chipset is a newer one, with a larger battery, and based on a 3nm process, we do expect better battery life.

With heavy usage that includes playing games like BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile, etc., for 3-4 hours continuously, rendering videos, running benchmarks, taking images and videos using the cameras, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came around 5-6 hours, which is really good.

With normal usage that includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, and other casual activities, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for two and a half days with some charge left, which is excellent in this flagship segment. The standard screen-on time came around 10-11 hours, which is a good improvement over the OnePlus 13 and even compared to other flagships out there.

The OnePlus 15 is bundled with a 120W fast charger inside the box, which is a good upgrade over the 100W fast charger bundled with earlier OnePlus smartphones. The dedicated 120W fast charger takes the OnePlus 15 from 0 to 100 per cent within 40-45 minutes, which is very fast considering the huge battery capacity. Other than that, there is support for 50W wireless charging, which can be achieved with OnePlus's AirVOOC charger.

The OnePlus AirVOOC charger takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent under 90 minutes, which is quite fast according to wireless charging standards. There is support for 5W reverse wired charging and 10W reverse wireless charging, which means any wireless charging device can be charged at 10W when it is placed on the back of the OnePlus 15. There is the bypass charging, which ensures good battery health during gaming.

OnePlus 15 Audio Quality:

The OnePlus 15 features a dual stereo speaker setup that delivers sound equally from both the earpiece and the bottom-firing speakers. The audio quality does not feel muffled, even at the highest volume settings, and, compared to the OnePlus 13, it has been slightly improved. There is no Dolby Atmos present, but still, the content consumption experience remains top-notch.

Verdict:

Overall, the OnePlus 15 is a solid flagship out there in the market, which brings one of the best hardware and software experiences, which has been true in many OnePlus smartphones in the past. The build and design remain top-notch with the new look inspired by the popular OnePlus 13s. Other than that, the display, along with stereo speakers, is great for multi-media consumption and that 165Hz refresh rate is a great addition to it.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset is a true beast on the OnePlus 15, which provides flagship-level performance as the smartphone handles all day-to-day tasks easily, and the gaming experience is also flagship-level when compared to other OnePlus flagships in the past. The cameras are not the best, but still, the camera performance is good for a smartphone out there.

In terms of software experience, the OxygenOS 15 on the OnePlus 15 provides a smooth and cleaner software experience with no bloatware, and the additional AI features make the experience wholesome. The main attractive point is the solid battery life, which we are seeing for the first time in a flagship, and this is where OnePlus have nailed it. Along with the solid battery, there are fast charging options, which are an added boon.

However, though being a premium flagship, the one area where OnePlus have cut corners is in the camera experience, as there is no Hasselblad collaboration, the camera performance is not so good considering that this is a premium flagship. The ultrawide camera and the telephoto cameras need attention in terms of videography, and the rest of both the front and primary cameras do a good job, but could have been improved.

The 165Hz refresh rate does seem to be good on paper, but you sacrifice on the screen resolution, which may not be a concern to many out there, but still, a higher resolution means a better content-watching experience. When you compare it with the OnePlus 13, the OnePlus 15 definitely feels like a good upgrade except for the cameras.

So if you are a performance enthusiast and want an overall flagship experience, thus sacrificing on the cameras, then the OnePlus 15 is a solid buy out there in the market.

iQOO 13 Review: A value flagship that continues to set newer benchmarks out there amongst the flagships!!

2026-03-22T22:31:15.709+05:30

A true value flagship that keeps the momentum going!

Vivo's sub-brand iQOO is known for its performance-centric smartphones that have shaken up the competition in each segment. The iQOO smartphones also come at a cracking price, making them valuable assets in each price segment where they are launched. Last year, the iQOO 12 (Review) had a strong foothold in the premium flagship segment, and this year, we expect the same from the iQOO 13.

The iQOO 12 was a well put-together product, featuring top-of-the-line specifications such as a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, a 50MP triple camera setup, a 5500mAh battery, and more. The same expectations are there for the iQOO 13. The iQOO 13 brings a lot to the table, including the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, a 144Hz LTPO display, a 6000mAh battery, and more.

Will the iQOO 13 make a strong statement just like its predecessor, i.e. iQOO 12, and is it worth the upgrade? Let's find out in the full review.

iQOO 13 Design:

The iQOO 13 sports a similar design to that of its predecessor, i.e. iQOO 12, which means you get a similarly sized circular, squarish-shaped camera module, which is surrounded by RGB LED lighting called Monster Halo. These LED lights come on whenever there is a notification for calls and messages. This time around, the IR Blaster is present in the camera module alongside the three cameras.

The iQOO 13 is available in three colour variants: Alpha (Black), Nardo Grey (Silver), and White (BMW M branding). The White colour variant features a small design element with three thin blue, red, and black stripes, and the word "Fascination Meets Innovation" above the iQOO logo. The back has a satin finish that provides a solid grip and feels good in the hands.

Around the sides, there is an aluminium frame which holds the power button along with volume buttons on the right side, whereas the left side frame remains empty. At the top, there is a secondary speaker and a microphone, whereas the bottom houses the USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker, a primary microphone and a dual SIM card tray. The iQOO 13 weighs around 207 grams, which is slightly heavier compared to the iQOO 12, since now you get a larger battery.

The iQOO 13 has a flat back and is slightly curved around the edges. The iQOO 13 now has an IP68 rating, which makes it fully water and dust-resistant, which is a good upgrade over the IP64 rating on the iQOO 12. On the front, there is a single punch hole located on the top of the display at the centre. The display is surrounded by bezels which are slimmer and look premium.

Overall, the build and design remain premium.

iQOO 13 Display:

The iQOO 13 features a 6.82-inch display, slightly larger than the 6.78-inch display of the iQOO 12. The iQOO 13 has a slightly higher resolution of 1440x3168 pixels compared to 1260x2800 pixels on the iQOO 12. Just like the display of the iQOO 12, this one also has support for a 144Hz refresh rate and is a 10-bit panel, which means you get great colour reproduction and good viewing angles.

Talking about the refresh rate, there are three different modes to choose from - Smart Switch(Auto), High, and Standard. Switching the display to Smart Switch or High usually results in a display showing 120Hz, and in High Mode, you can force certain applications to 144Hz. With both these modes, the display switches between 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, etc., depending on the applications.

If there is no activity being performed, the display trickles to as low as 1Hz, thus ensuring good battery life also. With the Standard mode, the display refreshes at 60Hz only. Combined with this, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses, also. In terms of display brightness, the display of the iQOO 13 can reach a peak brightness of 4500nits which is slightly improved over the display of the iQOO 12.

In High Brightness Mode, the display of the iQOO 13 can reach around 1800 nits, and the display has good visibility under direct sunlight. The manual brightness can reach around 515nits, which is good but could have been better. In terms of display colour settings, there are four different modes to choose from - Standard, Professional, Bright and Adaptive.

Switching to Standard and Professional mode results in natural colours on the display that covers the sRGB colour space, whereas with Bright and Adaptive mode, you get punchier colours that cover the DCI-P3 colour gamut. You can set the colour temperature to a warmer or cooler tone. The display of the iQOO 13 is protected by Schott Xensation Alpha.

The iQOO 13 sports an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner, which is a good upgrade over the optical one on the iQOO 12. The fingerprint scanner works well and is accurate. The display of the iQOO 13 supports HDR streaming on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 makes it a breeze while watching content on OTT platforms like Netflix and Hotstar. etc.

iQOO 13 Performance:

The iQOO 13 sports the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which is based on a 3nm process and this chipset is found in many flagships like the OnePlus 13, Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, etc. When compared to the iQOO 12, which was powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, the performance has been improved slightly and there is a new Supercomputing Q2 chip over the Supercomputing Q1 chip over the iQOO 12.

In terms of daily activities like gaming, scrolling through webpages, rendering videos, streaming social media, etc., the smartphone handles all the activities easily without breaking a sweat. In games like BGMI, Genshin Impact, etc., the smartphone ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings. iQOO smartphones are the forte when it comes to gaming, and the experience is no different here.

All games are locked at 60fps, but with the new Supercomputing Q2 chip, you can upscale the games to run at 90fps and also increase the frame rates, which is called game frame interpolation. Even if it can boost the frame rates to the display refresh rate, ensuring smooth gaming without any stutters. After longer hours of gaming, the back of the smartphone did not feel warmer since there is a larger 7000m2 vapour chamber, which dissipates heat faster.

In terms of benchmarks, the scores came out really good, which were higher than those of other smartphones which run this chipset. In terms of thermal throttling, there is little throttling present, and the smartphone maintains a sustained performance of around 80-85 percent which is very good considering other smartphones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset do throttle a lot.

In terms of network connectivity, you get good carrier aggregation, and there is support for almost all bands of 5G. The iQOO 13 is available in two storage variants - 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, and another 16GB RAM with 512GB storage, where RAM is of LPDDR5 and storage is of UFS 4.0 speeds. Overall, the performance and gaming experience remain the segment's best.

iQOO 13 Software:

Just like all iQOO smartphones, the iQOO 13 ships with FunTouchOS 15 based on Android 15. The FunTouchOS 15 is not much different when compared to the FunTouchOS 14, but now there is a host of AI features present and will slowly trickle down to other iQOO smartphones. In terms of customisations, you can change icon shape and size, colour, fonts, lockscreen and Always-On display profiles.

There are a few pre-installed applications which can be uninstalled easily. There are a couple of AI features, which include AI Erase, AI Enhancement, Circle to Search, Live Transcribe, etc. In the gallery, the AI Erase lets you remove different objects, people and some distortions in an image, whereas the AI Enhancement lets you remove blur in the image and boosts different properties in image post-processing.

As usual, Google's Circle To Search lets you select any object in an image or while viewing that content on the website and provides the required information regarding it. Live Transcribe lets you translate all the conversations during phone calls, which comes in handy in daily usage. There is a Dynamic Light feature where you can customise colours and effects for the LED strip that surrounds the camera module.

In terms of software updates, iQOO 13 will receive another four years of Android OS updates and another five years of security patches, which seems to be a good upgrade over the iQOO 12.

iQOO 13 Cameras:

The iQOO 13 sports a triple camera setup that includes a 50MP f/1.9 Sony IMX921 sensor for the primary camera with support for OIS, a 50MP f/2.0 Samsung ISOCELL JN1 sensor for the ultrawide camera, and a 50MP f/1.9 Sony IMX816 sensor for the telephoto camera. On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.2 camera for selfies.

The images from the primary camera come out with sharper details, and the dynamic range is wider. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening. There is very little noise in the background. The 50MP images come out with slightly softer details, with wider dynamic range, and there is also less noise in the background. The 2x zoomed images come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range.

The colour looks saturated without any kind of oversharpening, and there is less noise in the background also. During the night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range. The noise is also on the lesser side with no oversharpening in the background. All these results have been captured with the Photo mode turned on.

With the dedicated Night Mode turned on, you get sharper details and good dynamic range. There is some oversharpening in the background, but other than that, noise is barely present, and contrast looks good. There is some overexposure in the shadows, and details in shadows look slightly softer. Still, the images shot using the Night Mode have slightly better results than those compared without the Night Mode.

The 50MP ultrawide camera captures sharper details with good dynamic range and has very little noise in the background. The colours look sharper without any kind of oversharpening. The field of view is larger, and the contrast also looks good. At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with good details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.

The images from the 2x telephoto camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colour reproduction is perfect, and colours look natural like those of the main camera. Beyond 4x zoom, the images look good, but details look softer, and the dynamic range is not so wide. The contrast and white balance are handled very well.

During the night, the 2x zoomed images come out with sharper details and have decent dynamic range. The noise is slightly on the higher side, whereas the colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening as such. Beyond 4x zoom, there is a considerable amount of noise present, and the details also look softer. In terms of portraits, the telephoto camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and have proper edge detection.

The background blur is well maintained in portraits, and even the colour reproduction looks natural without any kind of oversharpening. The portraits have less noise in the background, which is very good. In terms of selfies, the images have sharper details with good dynamic range, and noise is also on the lower side. However, colours could have been saturated, and some is oversharpening on the background.

In terms of videos, both the primary and the telephoto cameras can record 8K videos at 30 fps, whereas the rest (front and ultrawide cameras) can record 4K videos at 60fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details, with wider dynamic range and have very little noise in the background, especially due to the presence of EIS, which works perfectly well.

The OIS works perfectly at 1080p videos at 60fps, which results in a wider dynamic range and colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening. The 4K videos from the telephoto camera come out with sharper details, with good dynamic range and less noise in the background. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening.

The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with slightly softer details, and there is a considerable amount of noise present in the background. The colours look natural, but there is a huge amount of oversharpening in the background. Similarly, in terms of selfies, the front camera does an average job in terms of details that look softer, colours look dull, and noise is on the higher side.

iQOO 13 Battery Life:

The iQOO 13 sports a larger 6000mAh battery, which is 1000mAh capacity more than its predecessor, i.e. iQOO 12. With the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset built on a 3nm process and the larger battery size, we do expect better battery life. With normal usage, which includes streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some charge left.

With heavy usage that includes playing games for 4-5 hours, running benchmarks, taking videos and clicking images using the camera frequently, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days. The standard screen-on time with heavy usage came around 4-5 hours, which is very good, and with normal usage, the standard screen-on time came around 7-7.5 hours, which is very good.

In terms of charging, the iQOO 13 comes with a 120W fast charger, which remains unchanged from the iQOO 12. The 120W fast charger takes around 45-50 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent, which is slightly longer than its predecessor, i.e. iQOO 12, but now you get a more capacity battery. However, there is no support for wireless charging, which is a slight disappointment.

iQOO 13 Audio Quality:

The iQOO 13 sports a dual stereo speaker setup, which includes a loudspeaker grille at the bottom and the earpiece on the top. The sound output is loud and clear without any distortion in the background. There is support for LDAC for HiRes audio, and along with that, there is Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound effects.

Verdict:

The iQOO 13 is a solid all-rounder smartphone which brings the best of everything, including a premium design, an excellent display with support for stereo speakers, flagship-level performance and gaming capabilities, a good software experience, faster charging with great battery life, and a good camera experience. When compared to the iQOO 12, there are fewer upgrades which are worth it.

However, there are only two drawbacks, which include the weak low-light performance from the ultrawide and the telephoto cameras and the lack of wireless charging support, which other flagships do have. Other than the slightly weaker camera experience, the iQOO 13 is a solid flagship all-rounder to be considered and can de-throne many other flagships out there in the market.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Review: The foldable that sets the bar with its newer profile and much more!!

2026-02-11T10:11:00.001+05:30

Galaxy Z Fold 7 feels like a perfect foldable with a striking look!!

The Galaxy Z Fold series has been the pinnacle of foldables in the smartphone industry, thereby demonstrating Samsung's brand recognition. Last year, we had the Galaxy Z Fold 6 (Review), which was a solid product in its own right, and now with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, the brand is aiming to continue its top spot, as Samsung has nailed the design.

With AI being the biggest talking point for the Galaxy Z Fold 6, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 brings a solid experience in terms of newer AI features in the software, an upgraded primary camera, but the main talking point has to be the new slim form factor and the newer design, which feels like a huge upgrade. There are a few other areas where the Galaxy Z Fold 7 brings fewer upgrades, which will be discussed in the further review.

So, how good of an upgrade is the newer Galaxy Z Fold 7 over its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6, and is it worth considering with that premium price tag out there?

Let's find out in the full review.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Design:

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sports a design similar to that of its predecessor, the Galaxy Z Fold 6, but it is now much slimmer and lighter as well. When you open the foldable, there is the presence of a newer hinge, which Samsung likes to call the Armour FlexHinge, which is more durable when compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The newer hinge hides the crease, thus making it look premium.

The edges are slightly sharper than before, but you would not feel the sharp edges around. In terms of thickness, the Galaxy Z Fold 7, when unfolded, is slimmer at 4.2mm compared to the 5.6mm thickness on the Galaxy Z Fold 6. When folded, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is slimmer at 8.4mm, which is way thinner compared to the 12.1mm thickness of the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

In terms of weight distribution, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 weighs around 215grams which is 24grams lighter than the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The display present inside now has 50% thicker Ultra-thin glass, which is more durable. On the outside, the cover display is slightly larger now when compared to its predecessor, thus giving you the feel of using a proper smartphone.

When folded, at the back, there is a similar pill-shaped camera module which houses the triple cameras and just outside the module, alongside lies an LED flashlight. The camera module is now more protruding when compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 6, so it may wobble when kept on a flat surface. There is the IP48 rating, which makes it water-resistant, but this time it misses out on dust resistance.

The Armour Aluminium frame houses the power button and the volume buttons on the side. The top houses the microphone, speaker grille, and a dual SIM card slot that takes two nano SIM cards. There is no additional slot for a microSD card for storage expansion. The bottom has the USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 1 port, two microphones and a loudspeaker grille.

Coming to the outer display, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has a slightly larger 6.5-inch display compared to the 6.3-inch display on the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The inner display has been upgraded to an 8-inch display from the 7.6-inch display of its predecessor. There is no more the hidden selfie camera inside the display compared to last year, and the inside selfie camera is now clearly present, which is located at the top of the centre.

In terms of display protection, the Galaxy Z Fold 7's cover display is protected by Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2, while the back panel is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is available in four different colours - Blue Shadow, Silver Shadow, Jet Black, and Mint. Overall, the build and design feel like an upgrade over the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Display:

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sports a larger 8-inch Full HD+ (1968x2184 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display, with slightly higher resolution than the Galaxy Z Fold 6's (1856x2160 pixels) display. Since it is an AMOLED display, you get punchier colours, and viewing angles are great. On top of that, this one is a 10-bit display.

The outer display of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is also larger at 6.5 inches with a Full HD+(1080x2520 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 22.1:9. Both the inner and the outer displays have an LTPO panel, which means the refresh rate can scale between 1Hz to 120Hz depending on the content in the display which means if you are watching a 60fps video, the display refreshes at 90Hz, while playing games like COD Mobile, the display refreshes at 120Hz.

Under Motion Smoothness settings under Display, there are two different options to choose from - Adaptive and Standard, where selecting the Adaptive mode lets the display scale between different refresh rates depending on the tasks running in the display, whereas if you want the best battery life, then the Standard Mode will cater for your needs.

Combined with a 120Hz refresh rate, there is a 240Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses during gaming. In terms of display brightness under high brightness mode, both the outer and the inner display can reach a brightness of 1400nits which is 200nits lower than its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6, under direct sunlight. However, both displays have a peak brightness of 2600nits which remains unchanged from the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

There is an Extra Brightness Mode which, when turned on, results to 707nits of extra brightness. There are two different modes under settings to choose from - Vivid and Natural. Under Vivid mode, you get punchier colours with deep blues and blacks, and this covers the DCI-P3 gamut, whereas choosing the Standard mode results in slightly lower saturated colours with more of a natural tone, and this covers the sRGB colour space.

The outer display has an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, which works perfectly and is accurate. The display of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has support for HDR, and the presence of Widevine L1 lets you stream HDR content on OTT platforms, but this time, there is no support for Dolby Vision, which is slightly disappointing. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Performance:

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sports the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, and just like the Galaxy S25 Ultra (Review), the primary core of this chipset is overclocked at 4.47GHz compared to the 4.32GHz on other Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered smartphones. In terms of daily tasks, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 handles everything smoothly without breaking a sweat.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset is paired with an Adreno 830 GPU, which is clocked at 1200MHz, which is 100MHz clocked higher than the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset-powered smartphones. Compared to last year's Galaxy Z Fold 6, you get slightly better performance, and this is clearly noticed in most of the tasks, whether scrolling through webpages, playing games, rendering videos, etc.

In BGMI, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 easily ran with Smooth graphics and Extreme frame rate without any frame drops, except that you may notice some stutters while setting the frame rates to HDR. In other games like COD Mobile and Genshin Impact, the gameplay was smooth at the highest graphics settings. After longer hours of gaming, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 did feel slightly warmer to the touch.

It was not much warmer since there is a dedicated vapour chamber system, which has a larger area for dissipating heat faster. In terms of the CPU throttling test, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 had a sustained performance of around 65-70 per cent with some throttling present. When it comes to benchmarks, the scores came out the best in class since the primary core of the chipset has been overclocked.

In terms of network connectivity, you get support for good carrier aggregation, and there is support for all bands of 5G. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is available in three different storage variants - 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, 12GB RAM with 512GB storage and another 16GB storage with 1TB storage, where all of the variants have LPDDR5X RAM with UFS 4.0 speeds for faster reads and writes.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Software:

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 runs on the latest OneUI 8.0, which is based on Android 16. If you compare OneUI 8.0 with OneUI 7.0, there are not many differences, as OneUI 7.0 was itself a huge upgrade over OneUI 6.0, but with OneUI 8.0, there are a couple of new additions. When it comes to AI, Samsung has nailed all its smartphones with the latest AI features that always come in handy.

The Galaxy AI features are well optimised for foldables, like Multimodal A, which works well, and you can share the screen on Gemini Live. The Multimodal AI feature understands contexts much better, and you also get a much improved multi-tasking feature, where now you get a 90:10 split, a good improvement over the 70:30 split. Other features include the Now Bar and Now Brief, which were also seen on the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

The Now Bar lets you control most of the things, like which music is playing, shows the different directions while using Maps, shows live tracking of any order from third-party applications like Swiggy or Zomato, and many other tasks. The Now Brief provides personalised briefs based on content that are suggested, like current weather, multiple reminders, and even features like last night's sleep summary early next morning.

The Reminder application comes with additions where it can manage your to-do lists and drop the required reminders on time. There are a host of AI features like Call Assist, Writing Assist, Interpreter, Note Assist, Browsing Assist, Photo Assist, Drawing Assist, Audio Eraser, Health Assist, and Photo Ambient Wallpaper. These features were already a part of last year's OneUI 7.0, and a detailed explanation is written in the Galaxy Z Fold 6 review.

There is also the Circle To Search feature, which now works in many games, where if you circle on any subject in the game, it will provide the details of it. There are a lot of customisations present where you can change icon shape and size, colours, fonts and different AOD styles on the lockscreen. In terms of software updates, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 will receive another seven years of AndroidOS updates and security patches.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Cameras:

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 comes with an upgraded camera setup when compared to its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6, as it sports a 200MP f/1.7 Samsung ISOCELL HP2 sensor for the primary camera, a 12MP Sony IMX564 sensor for the ultrawide camera, and a 10MP ISOCELL 3K1 sensor for the telephoto camera with support for 3x optical zoom. The outer display has a 10MP f/2.2 selfie camera.

The inner display camera also gets an upgraded 10MP f/2.2 unit compared to a 4MP unit on its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6. The primary camera sensor is similar to the one found on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening, and even the noise is not very present in the background.

The contrast is on the higher side, and the white balance is handled perfectly. The regular 200MP mode provides images with good dynamic range and sharper details, but tends to be slightly softer with a bit of noise in the background. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening with the 200MP mode, also. The 50MP mode also yields almost similar results as that of the 200MP camera mode.

The 2x zoom from the primary camera works well for images that come out with sharper details, a wider dynamic range, and almost no background noise. At night, Auto Night Mode is triggered automatically, resulting in sharper details, a good dynamic range, and saturated colours with less background noise. The contrast and white balance are handled very well.

Without the dedicated Night Mode, the results came out good, but still, the details looked softer, and the noise was on the higher side. The colours look punchier without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The 2x zoomed images from this camera shot at night came out with sharper details, with good dynamic range and less noise in the background. Without the Night Mode, the details looked softer, and the noise is on the higher side.

The ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper with almost no noise in the background. The dynamic range is wider, but still not as wide as that of the primary camera. The colours look punchier with some amount of oversharpening, but you would notice much. The contrast and white balance are well maintained at all times.

During the night, the ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper, and has good dynamic range with less noise in the background. Just like the primary camera, here also the Auto Night Mode gets triggered automatically, and all the results came out very good. Without the Night Mode, there is quite an amount of noise in the background, and the details look a tad softer, but still, the dynamic range is quite wider.

However, if you look closely, there is not much difference between images taken with and without Night Mode. This time around, there is autofocus support for the ultrawide camera, which means you can take very good macro images that look sharper and have wider dynamic range. The colours look saturated with no hint of oversharpening, and noise is well under control.

The 3x telephoto camera does an excellent job in terms of details, which look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening as such. Beyond 5x zoom levels, there is a bit of noise noticed, and details also look softer. Similarly, the Auto Night Mode gets triggered automatically at night for the 3x telephoto camera.

At night, the 3x telephoto camera does an excellent job in terms of details, which look sharper and have good dynamic range with less noise in the background. The details in the shadows look good, and contrast is well handled. However, without the Night Mode, the details look softer, and the dynamic range takes a slight hit. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening.

The inner selfie camera is bumped upto 10MP from the 4MP one on its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6. The inner display selfie camera is no longer hidden and is clearly visible. The selfies come out with sharper details, wider dynamic range, and colours (skin tones) look saturated without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The selfies have almost no noise present.

The outer selfie camera does a good job in terms of details, which look sharper, have good dynamic range with natural-looking skin tones and less noise in the background. However, the inner selfie camera captures slightly wider images as it has a slightly wider field of view compared to the outer selfie camera. There is a fair bit of oversharpening noticed in the selfies taken from the outer selfie camera.

In terms of video recording, the primary camera can only record 8K videos at 30fps whereas all other cameras can record 4K videos at 60fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details, wider dynamic range, and less noise in the background due to the presence of OIS. The colours look punchier with good contrast and proper white balance.

At night, the videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details, with a wider dynamic range, and almost no noise in the background with the Auto Night Mode turned on. Without the Auto Night Mode, the colours look saturated, though without any kind of oversharpening. Without the Auto Night Mode, the details look softer, and the noise is on the higher side, too.

The videos from both the ultrawide and the telephoto cameras come out with good details that look sharper, colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening, and noise is also less in the background. However, the videos do suffer in terms of oversharpening in the background, but the videos come out better on the telephoto camera compared to the ultrawide camera, which needs a lot of improvement.

The videos from both selfie cameras come out with good details that look sharper, but there is a huge amount of noise in the background, and skin tones look a bit washed out. The inner selfie camera is the better performer of the two. The outer selfie camera is just average, but still, the video quality from both selfie cameras is an improvement over its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6.

There are a couple of new features, like the Galaxy Log video feature, which allows you to download videos from your smartphone and perform colour grading of the video footage. Then there is the AI Audio Eraser, using which you can control the level of noise in the videos, where you can eliminate the wind, crowd and noise in the videos and also adjust the sound in the videos, which is great.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Battery Life:

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sports an identical 4400mAh battery as that of its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6, but with the presence of a newer Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, we do expect better results since the chipset is based on a 3nm process. With normal usage, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 can easily last two days, and with heavy usage, it can easily last for a single day with some charge left.

With normal usage that includes streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, playing games for 1-2 hours only, etc., the Galaxy Z Fold 7 easily lasted for two days with some charge left, and the standard screen-on time came around 6-6.5 hours, which is good. With heavy usage that includes playing games like COD Mobile for longer hours, taking images and videos using all the cameras, etc., the foldable easily lasted for one day with some charge left.

The standard screen-on time with heavy usage came out around 5-5.5 hours, which is good, but considering the more efficient 3nm process-based chipset, there is no such improvement, as these results remain similar to its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy Z Fold 6. In terms of charging speeds, Samsung is sticking with similar charging speeds, which means the Galaxy Z Fold 7 supports 25W fast charging just like its predecessor.

Just as always, the foldable is not equipped with a charger inside the box, which is a huge disappointment. The 25W fast charger can be purchased separately from the market or online, and using this dedicated charger, you can reach 0 to 50 per cent within 30 minutes, whereas a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent will take around 1 hour and 30 minutes, which is good but still quite time-consuming.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 Audio Quality:

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 sports a dual stereo speaker setup, which sounds adequately loud and clear with no distortion in the sound. The audio output does not feel muffled even at the highest volume settings. There is the presence of Dolby Atmos, which provides excellent sound output while watching videos, listening to songs, etc.

Verdict:

As an overall package, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has a lot going for it, as Samsung always tries to get the best out of each of its foldable devices, and the same here is the story. The standout feature is the design of this foldable, where Samsung has perfectly crafted a slim form factor, and, aside from that, all other aspects have also been taken care of.

Other things that work in favour are the display, along with stereo speakers which is great for multi-media consumption, and the performance is top tier with the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset thus providing great gaming capabilities, the camera performance has been very good with the slight changes in the camera setup, the software experience has to be the most refined one with great features and the software update lifecycle.

The battery life is also very good. However, there are still a few areas where the Galaxy Z Fold 7 feels short. The Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset is great for multitasking daily, but there is a lot of thermal throttling noticed, and the foldable does feel slightly warmer. The primary camera performance is excellent, but still, the camera outputs from other cameras need a huge scope of improvement, especially at night.

Though you get good battery life, the charging speeds are still not the best, as 25W fast charging does feel slower when compared to the competition out there. On top of that, the absence of a charger does feel like a pain. Another drawback has to be the removal of S-Pen support, which could have made the experience much better. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is a worthy upgrade over the Galaxy Z Fold 6, considering all factors except for the S-Pen support.

As an overall package, if you can live with the few shortcomings, then the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is a solid product out there.

OnePlus 13s Review: Sets the standards of the compact flagships out there in the market!!

2026-02-01T19:02:00.003+05:30

A power-packed flagship experience in a compact form factor!!

Ever since OnePlus entered the smartphone market, it has shaken the industry by launching smartphones with flagship-level specifications, and its first product, OnePlus One, had a huge fan following and was a great success. Over the years, the brand has had its ups and downs, but the OnePlus moniker remains close to many hearts in the market.

The OnePlus 13 series has two of its offerings with the flagship OnePlus 13 (Review) and the semi-flagship OnePlus 13R (Review), both of which had a good level of success, so now the company is focusing its attention on the compact flagship in the form of the OnePlus 13R. There are multiple brands which are bringing larger smartphone screen devices, but a few brands like Apple, Google, etc. are getting smaller form factors by packing all the required specifications.

The OnePlus 13s packs all the required flagship specifications for the price, which includes the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, the one which is found even on the flagship OnePlus 13. Other than this, the smartphone packs a larger 5800mAh battery, a 50MP dual camera setup, and much more. So can this compact flagship shake this highly competitive market, and will this bring back the glory of "flagship killer", which OnePlus was known for?

Let's find out in the full review.

OnePlus 13s Design:

This is the first time that OnePlus has brought a slightly tweaked design with a squarish-shaped camera module at the back instead of the circular camera module that was present in both the OnePlus 13 and 13R. The camera module, made of one piece of aluminium, looks premium and houses two dual cameras along with an LED flashlight and an IR transmitter, which are adjacent to the two cameras. The camera module does not protrude much, which is good when kept on flat surfaces.

The OnePlus 13s is available in three different colour variants - Pink Satin, Black Velvet, and Green Silk. The Black Velvet variant has a metallic sand-like finish, whereas the Pink Satin and Green Silk have a Velvet Glass with a smooth matte finish. The back has a flat panel with rounded corners. Even the display on the front is flat without any curves on both sides.

The smartphone does come with an IP65 rating, which makes it splash resistant, which is a slight disappointment considering smartphones priced lower than the OnePlus 13R come with a proper IP67 rating. Around the sides, there is an aluminium frame that houses the power button and volume buttons on the right side, whereas the left side holds the newer Plus Key instead of the signature alert slider that we are used to in OnePlus smartphones.

We will be talking more about the Plus Key in the software section later. Other than that, on the top, there is an IR Blaster along with a secondary noise-cancelling microphone, whereas the bottom houses the USB Type-C port that supports USB 2.0 speeds, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot and a primary microphone. There is neither an additional slot for microSD card storage expansion nor a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Since it is a compact flagship smartphone, it weighs 185grams which makes it lighter while holding in the hands. In terms of thickness, the smartphone is thicker at 8.2mm around the sides, thus providing it a slimmer profile. On the front, there is a single punch hole in the display with slimmer bezels around the display. Overall, the design is eye-catching with a unique look on the back.

OnePlus 13s Display:

The OnePlus 13s sports a compact 6.32-inch 1.5K (1216x2640 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. The display is a 10-bit one, which means colours look punchier and have great viewing angles. Even the bezels around the display look slimmer, which makes it look premium. The display of the OnePlus 13s is an LTPO one, which means the display can refresh between 1Hz and 120Hz.

There are three different settings for choosing the refresh rate: Standard, High, and Auto-Select. Setting the display to either Auto-Select or High results in the display showing a 120Hz refresh rate most of the time, except that if you select the refresh rate to High, the display maintains a 90Hz refresh rate. Still, if you want better battery life, the Standard mode will work better.

The Auto-Select mode ensures that the refresh rate varies between 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz or 120Hz, depending on the content in the display. Just like all OnePlus smartphones, you can also set application-specific refresh rates. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate, which means you get faster touch responses. In terms of display brightness, the OnePlus 13s can reach a peak brightness of 1600nits under High Brightness Mode, which is good.

In normal scenarios, the display provides 800nits of brightness, which is good, and the display covers 100% DCI-P3 gamut. Along with that, you get 2160Hz PWM dimming, which makes it easier to view the display during the night. The display has three different colour modes to choose from - Vivid, Natural, and Pro, where if you switch to Vivid or Pro mode, the colours look vivid, whereas if you consider Natural, the colours have an off-white tone.

The Pro mode further consists of Brilliant and Cinematic. The display of the OnePlus 13s is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, which is the same one as seen on the OnePlus 13R, which is good but not the best. The display houses an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works accurately. The display of the OnePlus 13s has support for Widevine L1, so you can stream HDR content on YouTube, and also, there is support for HDR on OTT platforms.

Overall, the display of the OnePlus 13s is great for multi-media consumption.

OnePlus 13s Performance:

The OnePlus 13s is powered by the 2025 flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which is also seen on the flagship OnePlus 13. In terms of daily activities, which include scrolling through webpages, switching between applications, playing casual games, or any other tasks, etc., the smartphone could handle all of them easily. In terms of gaming, all games like COD Mobile, BGMI, etc., ran smoothly without any lags or stutters as such.

There is an Adaptive Frame Booster, which provides higher frame rates and higher quality graphics for a better gaming experience. In BGMI, the smartphone easily ran at "Smooth" graphics along with Extreme frame rates, and during gaming, there was not much of a drop in frame rates as the smartphone maintained a stable gameplay. After longer hours of gaming continuously, the back of the smartphone did feel slightly warmer, but due to the larger vapour cooling chamber (4400mm2), the heat gets dissipated faster.

In the CPU throttling test, the OnePlus 13s achieved a sustained performance of 70-75 per cent in Balanced Mode, whereas with the High Performance mode, the sustained performance came around 65,% which is not the best considering this is a flagship-grade chipset. Thermal throttling was present, which is a major concern. In terms of benchmarks, the scores were not the best in class, but still good enough for a semi-flagship.

The OnePlus 13s is available in two different variants - 256GB/512GB storage of UFS 4.0 speeds paired with 12GB LPDDR5 RAM.

OnePlus 13s Software:

In terms of software experience, OnePlus smartphones have always stayed at the top in delivering the cleanest software experience with no ads or bloatware, and here it is no different with the OnePlus 13s. The OnePlus 13s runs on the latest OxygenOS 15 with Android 15 out of the box. OxygenOS 15 feels like a proper and refined version of OxygenOS 14 with all the necessary customisations and newer AI features.

There are a lot of customisations present where you can change the icon shape and size, colour, font, Always-On display and the lockscreen effects. You can choose a lot of themes for the Always-On display, and you can customise the lock screen, where you can add a piece of text or an image, change the look, and the transition effect is also present, similar to the Always-On display.

There are a host of new AI features, which include AI VoiceScribe, a built-in translation application, AI Recompose, AI Plus Mind feature, etc. Talking about the AI VoiceScribe feature, this one lets you record, summarise, and translate calls in messages, calls, and online meeting applications. If you use the OnePlus Dillar application, it can do real-time translation and summarise calls on regular calls.

Inside the gallery application, there is the AI Best Face 2.0, which lets you automatically correct facial expressions in photos and videos. The AI Translation works perfectly well on different applications, where it lets you translate the text on the screen or if any audio is playing, which is a good move. There is also Gemini AI, which is well integrated with OnePlus Notes, Clock, etc.

Now the biggest talking feature is the new Plus Key, which is a replacement for the signature alert slider since it is a copy of the Action Key as found on the iPhones. The menu of the Plus Key is found under Settings, and if you press this button, there are a lot of functionalities present like taking a screenshot, Do Not Disturb mode, Camera, Torch, recorder and an interesting one being the Save To Mind Space.

The Save To Mind Space feature is a great addition, where if you take a screenshot, it uses the AI to analyse the contents, which can parse phone numbers, addresses, dates, and take contents from images. You can add the details in calender and contacts, which is a good move. In terms of bloatware, except for Facebook and Netflix, there are no third-party applications pre-installed.

In terms of software updates, the OnePlus 13s will get another four years of AndroidOS updates and six years of security patches, which is similar to that of the Nord lineup, which is a good move from OnePlus.

OnePlus 13s Cameras:

The OnePlus 13s sports a dual camera setup, which includes a 50MP f/1.8 Sony LYT-700 sensor for the primary camera and a 50MP f/2.2 Samsung JN5 sensor for the telephoto camera, which supports 2x optical zoom. However, the smartphone does miss out on an ultrawide camera, which is a slight disappointment. The primary camera does have OIS, whereas the telephoto camera has support for EIS. There is a 32MP f/2.0 camera on the front in terms of selfies.

The images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have great dynamic range. Even the noise is less in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening, and you get good contrast also. During the night, the primary camera does a great job in terms of dynamic range, which is wider and also the colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background.

There are adequate details in the shadows, and the colour contrast is also on the higher side. All these results are with the default Night Mode turned on, whereas without the dedicated Night Mode, the images come out with punchier colours and good dynamic range, with slight oversharpening in the background. The primary camera can also reach 4x zoom levels, and the images come out with sharper details, with good dynamic range, but on the other hand, you do end up with noise in the background.

The 50MP telephoto camera does a solid job in terms of images, where they come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range. However, there is slight oversharpening in the background. Beyond 2x zoom levels, the images come out with sharper details, but there is a good amount of noise in the background, and the dynamic range comes out to be average.

At night, the telephoto camera does a good job in terms of details, which look sharper, and the dynamic range is also wider. There is slight oversharpening in the background, and also noise is on the higher side. Beyond 2x optical zoom, the results came out with average dynamic range, more noise in the background, and details looked softer.

The telephoto camera takes some very good macro images with sharper details, wider dynamic range, and there is less noise in the background. However, the telephoto camera lacks autofocus. The front camera takes some very good selfies that come out with sharper details, have good dynamic range, and the noise is also very low in the background. The skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening, though.

In terms of videos, both the primary and the telephoto cameras are capable of taking 4K videos at 60fps. The videos from both the primary and the telephoto cameras come out with sharper details and wider dynamic range, but the video on the telephoto camera has slightly higher noise. The primary camera video results are slightly better due to the presence of OIS.

Both the telephoto and the primary cameras have an Ultra Steady Mode, which works well for 1080p videos, but with almost no noise present. The videos from the front camera come out at 4K at 30fps, and these videos come out with slightly softer details, decent dynamic range, and there is very little noise in the background. The Ultra Steady Mode also works well for the front camera.

OnePlus 13s Battery Life:

The OnePlus 13s sports a larger 5850mAh battery, which is a good figure considering that this is a compact flagship which houses a flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. In terms of normal usage with activities like scrolling through pages, playing games for 1-2 hours, using social media, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some charge left.

With heavy usage that includes playing games like BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile, etc., for 3-4 hours, running benchmarks, taking videos and images using the camera frequently, the smartphone easily lasted for a day with some charge left. In terms of charging speeds, OnePlus has bundled an 80W SuperVOOC charger, which can easily charge the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent within 1 hour, which is good.

There is support for reverse wired charging, but you do miss out on wireless charging, which is slightly disappointing since it is a semi-flagship smartphone.

OnePlus 13s Audio Quality:

The OnePlus 13s sports a dual stereo speaker setup, which includes the earpiece at the top and loudspeaker grille at the bottom, which together provide a nice stereo sound effect. There is no Dolby Atmos, but you get the OReality feature, which lets you choose different sound effects while watching videos or playing songs.

Verdict:

The OnePlus 13s is a perfect compact flagship smartphone with almost all the flagship specifications, which include an eye-catching premium design, a great display for multi-media consumption, flagship-level performance and gaming capabilities, a good set of cameras, and a solid battery life with support for fast charging. The software experience has been the de facto standard of OnePlus smartphones, and it is no different with the OnePlus 13s.

However, there are fewer areas where OnePlus has made a few compromises, like it has skipped out on an ultrawide camera, which is disappointing considering the price of the smartphone. The telephoto camera performance is not so good, as you get average results in terms of images and videos. There is no dedicated IP68 rating, and the display protection is not so good when compared to the competition out there.

When it comes to handling the smartphone, it may be an issue with larger hands, where it tends to feel compact for some people out there. Though you get a flagship-level performance and gaming experience, there is a considerable amount of thermal throttling present. As an overall package, the OnePlus 13s is a solid compact flagship which you can buy right now, only if you can compromise on the cameras.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Review: The behemoth of flagships is well settled with few newer changes out there!!

2025-06-24T11:30:00.580+05:30

Can the Galaxy S25 Ultra continue its journey as king of flagships?

The Galaxy S25 series was launched in the market in March, and, as always, we expect something revolutionary this year as well. The Galaxy S25 Ultra, the highest offering in the Galaxy S25 series, is compared to its predecessor, the Galaxy S24 Ultra (Review). It introduces some upgrades, although there is a minor downgrade, which we will discuss in the review later.

With AI being the buzzword everywhere in the tech world, many smartphones are incorporating AI features in their software. The Galaxy S24 Ultra introduced numerous AI features in One UI 6, and with the release of One UI 7, Samsung has further enhanced the Galaxy S25 Ultra with a host of AI-based features. So, how significant an upgrade is the Galaxy S25 Ultra over the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and does it have enough to continue the legacy of flagship devices?

Let's find out in the full review.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Design:

The Galaxy S25 Ultra brings a premium build and design just like its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy S24 Ultra, but there have been significant changes in terms of design. Just like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the Galaxy S25 Ultra also gets a flatter display instead of a curved display, which makes it easy to hold in the hands and getting a tempered glass for the display is much easier.

But now the significant changes noticed on the Galaxy S25 Ultra are towards the side where you now get a flat frame instead of the curved side frame on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The edges are now more rounded in all four corners, making it easier to hold in the hands. At the back, there is a similar design for the cameras like the Galaxy S24 Ultra (no camera module), and Samsung has been maintaining the family look past 3 generations of its S series lineup.

However, there is a slight difference compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra as the cameras are surrounded by thick metallic rims, which do shine when light falls on them. The cameras are also slightly more protruding compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, so the smartphone may wobble when kept on a flat surface. You get the glass sandwich design with a premium frosted finish at the back, thus providing a solid grip while holding in your hands.

Just like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, here also there is support for an IP68 rating, which means the smartphone can survive 1.5 metres below water for 30 minutes, but still, an IP69 rating could have been better since it provides protection against high-temperature jet sprays. The Galaxy S25 Ultra weighs around 218 grams, which makes it lighter compared to the 234 grams of weight on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Even when it comes to thickness, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is slimmer at 8.2mm compared to the 8.6mm thickness of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The side frame is made of grade 5 titanium, like last year. Other than that, the right side of the frame houses the power button and volume buttons, whereas the left side remains completely clean. On top, there are two holes which house the secondary speaker only.

At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port that supports USB 3.1 speeds, a slot for inserting the S-Pen, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot, and a primary microphone. There is no additional slot for a microSD card for storage expansion, but the SIM card slot is a hybrid one. As usual, there is no 3.5mm headphone jack. In terms of protection, both the front and back are protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Armour 2, which is an upgrade over the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is available in four different colours - Titanium Whitesilver, Titanium Silverblue, Titanium Grey, and Titanium Black. On the front, there is a flat display with the punch-hole located at the centre at the top. The bezels around the display are slimmer, which makes it look premium. The smaller upgrades in terms of design make the Galaxy S25 Ultra more versatile for daily usage.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Display:

The Galaxy S25 Ultra sports a slightly larger 6.9-inch display compared to the 6.8-inch display on its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy S24 Ultra. The screen resolution remains unchanged, as you are getting a similar Quad HD+(1440x3120 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. There is support for a 120Hz refresh rate, and this one is also an LTPO panel where the refresh rate can scale between 1Hz and 120Hz.

Since this is an AMOLED display from Samsung, the colours look deeper and punchier in the display. Talking about the refresh rate, under Motion Smoothness in settings, there are two different options to choose from - Adaptive and Standard, where if you choose Adaptive, the display automatically scales the refresh rate depending on the content on the display.

For example, while you're scrolling through a webpage, the display is showing a refresh rate of 120Hz, but when you keep it idle, the refresh rate automatically scales down to 1Hz. Similarly, while you are watching any videos on your smartphone, the display is showing a refresh rate of 60Hz or 90Hz constantly. Switching to the Standard mode ensures that the display constantly maintains a 60Hz refresh rate.

In terms of display brightness, nothing has been changed from the Galaxy S24 Ultra, as you get a peak brightness of around 2600 nits and in high brightness mode, the display can reach a brightness of 1500 nits, which is not the brightest display out there, considering the price. Under manual light, the display achieves around 800 nits of brightness, and under direct sunlight, it provides good visibility.

The display of the Galaxy S25 Ultra has two different settings to choose from - Vivid and Natural, where Vivid provides punchier colours that have deeper blues and blacks, which cover the DCI-P3 gamut. It also provides a slider where you can change the colour to a warmer or a cooler tone, respectively. The Natural mode provides a natural look with slightly muted colours compared to the Vivid mode.

It provides colours close to natural, thus covering the sRGB colour space. The display of the Galaxy S25 Ultra has an anti-reflective coating on the display, which ensures good visibility under harsh lighting conditions without creating a reflection on the display. The display has an in-display ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, which works faster and is very accurate. In terms of media experience, there is support for HDR on YouTube, along with support for Widevine L1.

Widevine L1 ensures that all OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc., support HDR. However, you do miss out on the Dolby Vision, which is a slight disappointment considering this is a premium flagship and many smartphones priced less than this do support this feature, as it enhances the multi-media experience.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Performance:

The Galaxy S25 Ultra sports a flagship-level Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which also powers other flagships like the OnePlus 13 (Review), iQOO 13, etc. However, there is a slight difference as the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset on the Galaxy S25 Ultra has been overclocked, just like we saw the overclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset on the Galaxy S24 Ultra last year.

This means that only the two primary Oryon cores are clocked at 4.47GHz instead of the 4.32GHz on the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, so that is why it is called the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy. The rest six Oryon cores are clocked at 3.53GHz. Coupled with the chipset is a powerful Adreno 830 GPU, which has also been clocked slightly higher to provide better performance and gaming capabilities.

Compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, which uses the Cortex architecture, the Oryon cores on the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset provide much better CPU performance, and since it is built on a 3nm process, it is also power efficient. In terms of daily uses, the smartphone feels very smooth to use, whether it is for lighter or heavier tasks.

Even while playing games like BGMI, Genshin Impact, etc., the gameplay feels smooth without any stutters or frame drops, but still, it is not the best in terms of gameplay as the frame rate fluctuates a lot, and the smartphone is not able to maintain a consistent 120fps frame rate. In BGMI, the smartphone ran easily at Smooth graphics with Extreme frame rates. Similarly, the gameplay in Genshin Impact was very smooth.

There is a dedicated game booster mode with the OneUI 7.0, which lets you set the game performance level. After longer hours of gaming, the back of the Galaxy S25 Ultra does heat up slightly, but you will not feel the heat much, as this time Samsung has increased the size of the vapour cooling chamber, which helps in dissipating the heat faster.

In the CPU throttling test, the Galaxy S25 Ultra achieved a sustained performance of around 65-70 per cent, which is good, but there is some thermal throttling present. There is also a Performance Mode, which, when turned on, results in slightly better benchmark scores. In benchmarks, the scores came out the best in class, and since you have slightly overclocked primary cores, the scores came out slightly higher than other smartphones having the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset.

In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation and 17 bands of 5G, so you get good connectivity. With the Galaxy S25 Ultra, there are four variants available - 256GB/512GB/1TB storage with 12GB RAM and another 1TB storage with 16GB RAM variant. All of these variants have RAM speeds of LPDDR5X, and storage speeds are of UFS 4.0, which ensures faster read and write speeds.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Software:

The Galaxy S25 Ultra runs on the latest OneUI 7.0 based on Android 15 out of the box. OneUI 7.0 brings some significant upgrades over last year's OneUI 6.0, but as said earlier, as the AI trend is going on in today's world, here we get additional AI features in the software on top of the existing AI features. You get a lot of customisations where you can change icon shape, size and colour in homescreen as well as in lockscreen.

The first change that is clearly noticed on OneUI 7.0 compared to OneUI 6 is that the icons have a colourful look, and they are also more rounded. You can also turn off the icon labels this time. Unlike the OneUI 6.0, which had quick settings and notifications available from a single swipe from the top, now the quick settings toggle and notification tray have been split.

The quick settings at the top come if you swipe from the top left of the display, whereas the notifications tray comes if you swipe from the top right corner, just like iOS on iPhones. You can even edit the quick settings, which is a good addition. The app drawer now has vertical scrolling, and you can scroll alphabetically to get to each of the applications.

Another change has been that the recent background applications are now placed as stacks instead of the side-by-side implementation. There are some newer additions like Now Brief and Now Bar. Now Brief provides a personalised card-based briefing of any selected content like for example, it will show weather-related details, last night sleep summary on the next day morning, multiple reminders, etc.

The Now Bar is Samsung's own implementation of the Dynamic Island, which is found on Apple iPhones, except that it is found on the lock screen instead of the top of the homescreen. The Now Bar lets you control various things like music, which shows which songs are playing, different directions in Google Maps, communication in different languages, and also many other things, making it easy for daily usage.

Other than this, there are some AI features that are added, which include the AI Agents, AI Select, Cross-App Actions, and Circle to Search get additional functionality. AI Agents come with multi-modal capabilities which enable the smartphone to interpret text, speech, images and videos. AI Select, which can analyse the content and help you to create a GIF from a YouTube or Instagram reel or create a wallpaper from a photo.

As seen last year, Circle to Search comes in handy in all the scenarios, and we had discussed this in our Galaxy S24 Ultra review, but here with the OneUI 7.0, it has added a new functionality as it recognises phone numbers, different emails, URLs and also it listens to an audio playing currently and provides information regarding it. The natural language processing works well in most applications.

For example, in the Gallery application, you can perform a voice search to show the images or videos for a specific event or any place that you have been to, and it also allows you to set different fonts in system menus in Settings. The Cross-App function works really well where you can ask it to search a restaurant nearby and immediately Google Maps takes care of it, and you can do other tasks like sharing the location, making notes and calling people also.

The other AI features include the AI Assistant, which summarises your text, creates bullet points and even checks spelling mistakes and grammar, thus formatting them into a proper manner. In the Gallery application, there is a feature called Generative Edit, which helps remove or add people, as well as objects, and allows you to sketch elements and add them to images.

Google Gemini is well integrated now, which opens up when you press the power button, which will perform multiple tasks, like if you want to create an image of an object, just give the input, ask Gemini to write something based on a topic, etc. Call Transcript, Writing Assist, and Drawing Assist are also some AI features that come in handy daily.

There is support for Samsung DeX, which allows you to connect to various wired devices, such as laptops, PCs, or other Galaxy devices. This feature enables you to use the smartphone as a mouse to control different functions and share content between the smartphone and other devices. In terms of protection, Samsung provides Knox Security and Vault, where all the personal data is kept on the device and encrypted with quantum computing standards.

The S-Pen is one of the most striking things in the Ultra series, but this year Samsung has downgraded its functionality by removing the support for Bluetooth, and it does not have a battery. So you cannot click photos using the S-Pen and Air View, but other than that, it provides the other functionalities like Create Note, Screen Write, and Smart Select.

The animations in the user interface work smoothly throughout the user interface. In terms of bloatware, there are a few third-party applications from Microsoft, as well as Samsung's own applications. Just like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, this one also will get another seven years of Android OS updates and security patches, which is great, and Samsung has a good track record in terms of software updates in the Android world.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Cameras:

The Galaxy S25 Ultra features a similar camera setup to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but this time, the ultrawide camera has been upgraded to a 50MP sensor, replacing the 12MP sensor. The rest of the camera specifications remain similar, where the primary camera consists of a 200MP f/1.7 Samsung ISOCELL HP2 sensor, a 12MP f/2.4 telephoto camera which supports 3x optical zoom, a 50MP f/3.4 telephoto camera that supports 5x optical zoom and on the front, there is a 12MP f/2.2 camera for selfies.

The primary camera, which is the 200MP one, does a solid job in terms of details and has a wider dynamic range. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening in the background. Even the noise is under control, and the white balance is well handled. All these images are shot using the 50MP mode, and compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, there is a slight boost in colours, and haze has been reduced in the images.

In terms of HDR images, the Galaxy S25 Ultra does a good job of processing, as the details look sharper, colours appear punchier, and there is barely any noise present in the background. There is a dedicated 200MP mode, which takes excellent images with punchier colours and has a wider dynamic range. However, the details appear slightly softer when compared to the 50MP images, with some oversharpening in the background.

The 2x zoom works well on the primary camera as the images have sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. Even the colours look saturated. At night, the images come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The details in shadows look better, and compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, there is also an improvement in terms of white balance and contrast.

The exposure is well handled in low-light scenarios, and colours look well saturated in the background, but there is slight oversharpening present. All these results are captured using the Photo mode, whereas if you trigger the dedicated night mode, then details look sharper and there is no noise present. The colours look saturated with no oversharpening. The HDR images with the night mode also look good.

Even 2x zoom images during night come out with sharper details, colours look saturated, but the images have an artificial look with some amount of noise present. The ultrawide camera is a newer 50MP sensor, which does a good job in terms of details and has a wider dynamic range with almost no noise present in the background. When compared to the 12MP ultrawide camera images, there looks to be no difference except that the noise has reduced to some extent.

There is no distortion present around the edges, which is good. At night, the ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details, which look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening in the background. There is some scope for improvement needed when it comes to exposure in low-light, though.

The 10MP telephoto camera does a good job in terms of details, which look sharper and have great dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look natural and also have a good contrast. Beyond 5x zoom, the details look quite softer, and there is some amount of noise present in the background. When it comes to portraits, this camera does a good job in terms of edge detection and background blur.

When compared to the portraits taken on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the Galaxy S25 Ultra reduces some amount of noise in the background and also improves the skin tones. The dynamic range is wider. At night, the 10MP telephoto camera does a good job in terms of details, which look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. Going beyond 3x zoom, does results in slightly softer details.

The dedicated night mode on the telephoto camera does a good job in terms of noise reduction in the background, and colours look saturated, but there is some amount of oversharpening in the background. The 5x telephoto camera does a good job in terms of images, which come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening, and also the noise is almost non-existent in the background.

At night, the 5x telephoto camera does a great job in terms of details, which look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The difference is almost negligible when compared to the images taken using the dedicated night mode. At 10x zoom level, the images have sharper details and saturated colours with very little noise in the background.

But once you go beyond 10x, i.e. 30x, 50x and even 100x, there is a huge amount of noise in the background, but still at 30x and 50x, the images have good details, and noise is under control up to some extent. At 100x zoom, the images have softer details and look slightly blurred out with washed-out colours in the background. But another positive side note is that 100x zoom flexibility is present to zoom in on the background.

In terms of portraits, the 5x telephoto camera does a great job in terms of details, which look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with proper edge detection. The background blur is well implemented, and noise is almost not present. The contrast is on the higher side, though. The portraits from the primary camera come out with proper edge detection and have a good level of background blur.

Compared to the portraits from both the telephoto cameras, the skin tones look warmer, and there is a fair bit of noise in the background. The dynamic range is also wider. The 10x telephoto camera is also capable of taking some very good macro images, and since it has autofocus, it can go closer to an object and all the macro images resulting in sharper details, good dynamic range and saturated colours.

In terms of selfies, the front camera does a good job in terms of details, which look sharper, but at times they do look slightly softer as well. The dynamic range is wider, and the contrast is good. The skin tones look natural with some oversharpening in the background, though. At night, the selfies look good with a wider dynamic range and have sharper details with some amount of noise in the background.

The contrast in selfies looks good, and exposure is also well handled in the dark. With the dedicated night mode for selfies, the results come out good with a slight reduction in noise in the background. On the other hand, the portrait selfies come out with good edge detection and background blur is also well implemented. The dynamic range is spot on with less noise in the background.

In terms of videos, the primary, ultrawide and 5x telephoto cameras are capable of taking 8K videos at 30fps, whereas all five cameras can record 4K videos at 60fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with excellent detail, which looks sharper; noise is almost absent, and the colours appear saturated with no oversharpening in the background.

The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours also look saturated. The videos from both telephoto cameras come out with sharper details, a wider dynamic range, and noise is almost absent in the background. The front camera does a good job in terms of videos, as they come out with sharper details and wider dynamic range.

The noise is well under control, and now you get an AI Audio Eraser mode, using which the background noise in a video is removed, making it clear. There is also a Galaxy Log video mode, using which you can take video and apply colour grading to it.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Battery Life:

The Galaxy S25 Ultra sports a 5000mAh battery, which remains unchanged from the last two generations of the Ultra series, which is slightly disappointing since smartphones are coming with larger battery capacities. With the powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset built on a 3nm process, the battery life is a slight improvement over the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

In terms of normal usage, which includes scrolling webpages, streaming social media, casually playing games for 1-2 hours, etc., the smartphone could easily last for two and a half days with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came around 7.5-8 hours with normal usage, which is a good improvement over last year's figures on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

In terms of heavy usage, which includes playing heavy games like BGMI, Genshin Impact, etc., running benchmarks, taking videos and images from the camera, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for a day with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came around 5-5.5 hours, which is good. Even the OneUI 7.0 battery optimisations help yield better battery life.

In terms of charging, the Galaxy S25 Ultra supports 45W fast charging, but you do not get a dedicated charger inside the box. Using the dedicated Samsung 45W fast charger, the smartphone can reach 0 to 100 per cent in around 1 hour and 5 minutes, which is slightly time-consuming when compared to other flagships like the OnePlus 13, iQOO 13, etc.

Other than this, there is support for 15W wireless charging and 4.5W reverse wireless charging. The 15W wireless charging takes around 1 hour and 40 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent, and now there is also support for Qi 2.1 standard for wireless charging. Still, the wireless charging standards are slower when compared to other competitors out there.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Audio Quality:

The Galaxy S25 Ultra sports dual stereo speakers, which sound adequately loud and clearer. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack present. The sound feels balanced from both the top as well as bottom firing speakers and does not feel muffled at the highest volume settings.

Verdict:

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is a solid premium flagship out there in the smartphone space as it brings one of the best specifications in the market right now. It boasts a premium build and design, an excellent display with support for stereo speakers, a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset for performance and gaming, a feature-rich software experience, and great battery life with faster charging.

The presence of a few new AI features over the existing ones makes it even better, so other than the top-notch hardware, it is these AI features that make it feel like a proper premium flagship out there. However, there are some areas where the Galaxy S25 Ultra could have been better. When it comes to IP rating, you get an IP68 rating, but still IP69 rating could have made it better.

In terms of performance, the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset does a great job in terms of daily activities, but still, it is not the best when it comes to gaming, as some games cannot maintain the higher FPS rate and also on top of it, there is some amount of thermal throttling noticed. When it comes to battery life, the results came out good, but when it comes to charging speeds, it is not the fastest out there and is very slow compared to other competitors.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra does lack the support of Bluetooth on the S-Pen, so a few of the features are missed out there. When it comes to low-light photography, the selfie cameras do not perform so well, and though you get an upgraded 50MP ultrawide camera, there is no major improvement over the 12MP ultrawide camera on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

When compared to its predecessor, i.e. Galaxy S24 Ultra, there are definitely upgrades in terms of build and design, the chipset, which is slightly more powerful, and the newer ultrawide camera. Even images, when compared against the Galaxy S24 Ultra, are better in all aspects, especially due to the ISP present on the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset.

Other than this, when compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the S-Pen lacks Bluetooth support, so you are restricted to other features of the S-Pen, which were a part of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. So if you are someone who has the Galaxy S23 Ultra (Review) or the S24 Ultra, unless the newer design, performance, and camera experience do not matter, then they are still worth it out there in the market now.

Even the prices for the Galaxy S24 Ultra have been reduced, thus making it a valuable pick out there, but still, you cannot go wrong with the Galaxy S25 Ultra as it still continues the journey of one of the best premium flagships out there, despite its shortcomings.

OnePlus 13R Review: The flagship killer from OnePlus which is stepping towards the right direction!!

2025-06-20T11:51:00.001+05:30

The OnePlus 13R is a solid flagship killer designed to attract consumers.

The OnePlus R series strikes the perfect balance of specifications at an impressive price. It inherits most of the characteristics of the flagship number series with very few corners cut. Ever since the brand OnePlus focused on the R series instead of the T series, it has garnered huge attention among the masses who cannot afford the flagship number series, thus making a solid purchase in the market.

Last year, we had the OnePlus 12R (Review), an excellent offering from OnePlus that brought impressive specifications for the price, including a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, a 120Hz AMOLED display, and a 5500mAh battery, among others. Still, there were a few areas where it was falling short. The OnePlus 13R boasts several upgrades in terms of specifications, including enhanced performance, improved cameras, and additional features.

However, there are a few corners also cut, which we will be talking about in the review. Since we have many smartphones in the budget flagship space from brands like Samsung, iQOO, Motorola, etc. so does the OnePlus 13R have enough to take over the budget flagship segment and continue its journey as the flagship killer? Is it worth the upgrade over the OnePlus 12R?

Let's find out in the full review.

OnePlus 13R Design:

The OnePlus 13R sports a similar look to its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus 12, where at the back you get a similar circular design for the camera module, which houses the triple cameras with an LED flashlight, but this time around the camera module is not aligned with the side frame and this just like the OnePlus 13 (Review), this one is also placed to the left side. There is no Hasselblad branding on the camera module.

The back has a smooth matte finish that looks premium and provides a solid grip while holding in the hands. The OnePlus 13R is available in two different colours - Astral Trail and Nebula Noir. The Astral Trail has a silver colour at the back with some patterns which are visible when light falls on it, whereas the Nebula Noir has a black colour at the back.

The back is flat with no curves around the sides, except for the slightly curved edges. Around the sides, there is an aluminium frame that houses the power and volume buttons on the right side, whereas the left side houses the signature alert slider, which has three different modes - Mute, Vibrate, and Sound. The thickness is reduced to 8mm from the 8.8mm thickness on the OnePlus 12R.

So, definitely the OnePlus 13R feels slimmer, and in terms of weight, though having a larger 6000mAh battery, the smartphone feels lighter at 206 grams. On top, there is an IR blaster, a third microphone, and a secondary speaker, which, along with bottom-firing speakers, provide a stereo effect. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a dual SIM card slot, two microphones, and a loudspeaker grille.

In terms of protection, there is an IP65 rating, which means the smartphone can survive splashes of water, which is good, but still, it is not the best, as smartphones priced less than the OnePlus 13R come with a proper IP67 rating. On the front, there is a single punch hole display on the top at the centre. Another big departure from the OnePlus 12R's curved display is that now you get a flat display, which is great and suitable for screen guards.

OnePlus 13R Display:

The OnePlus 13R features a similar-sized 6.78-inch 1.5K AMOLED (1264x2780 pixels) display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9, just like its predecessor, the OnePlus 12R. As it is a 10-bit display, the colours look saturated on the display. The bezels are slimmer, and since you get a flat display, it is easy to hold. Additionally, the display supports a 120Hz refresh rate, and since it is an LTPO panel, the refresh rate scales between 1Hz and 120Hz.

Talking about the refresh rate, there are three different settings to choose from - Auto Select, Standard, and High. Selecting either Auto Select or High ensures the 120Hz refresh rate on the display most of the time. However, the only difference between the Auto Select and High is that when you set the display at High, the display usually refreshes at 90Hz most of the time. Still, for a few applications, it maintains the 120Hz refresh rate.

Setting the display to Auto Select lets the refresh rate vary between 1Hz to 120Hz, and it is capped at 30Hz, 60Hz, and 90Hz for most of the applications. If you want the best battery life, then the Standard mode is perfect as it caps the display at 60Hz only. Combined with this display, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses during gaming. You can also set app-specific refresh rates for different applications.

In terms of display brightness, the display of the OnePlus 13R can reach a peak brightness of 4500 nits as claimed by OnePlus, but in reality, only a few pixels of the display can reach that higher number. But with the high brightness mode turned on, the display reaches around 1600 nits, which is good. Even under direct sunlight, the display of the OnePlus 13R can reach around 1000 nits, which is very good.

The display of the OnePlus 13R has three different modes to choose from - Vivid, Natural, and Pro where if you switch to Vivid or Pro mode, the colours look punchier and it covers the DCI-P3 gamut whereas the Natural mode provides slightly white tones and the colours look less saturated which covers the sRGB colour gamut. The Pro mode further consists of Brilliant and Cinematic modes.

You can also set the colour temperature to a warmer or a cooler tone accordingly. In terms of content consumption, the smartphone has support for HDR on YouTube, and also, there is Widevine L1 present, so streaming HDR content on OTT platforms is a breeze. Just like the OnePlus 12R, there is an in-display fingerprint scanner which works faster and is also accurate.

However, this time, the fingerprint scanner placement is present at the bottom, which may cause some inconvenience to smaller hands. In terms of display protection, the OnePlus 13R comes with Gorilla Glass 7i, which is sort of a downgrade compared to Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection on its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus 12R. Overall, the display of the OnePlus 13R is great for multimedia consumption.

OnePlus 13R Performance:

The OnePlus 13R is powered by last year's flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, which was seen on last year's flagship OnePlus 12. So when it comes to daily performance, the smartphone performs well whether it is heavy multi-tasking like playing highly graphics-intensive games, video editing, etc. and also even in lighter tasks like scrolling through webpages, or other tasks.

When it comes to gaming, the OnePlus 13R handles all the games without any issues. Some high-end games like BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile, Genshin Impact, etc., run at the highest graphics settings without any lag or stutter. In BGMI, the smartphone easily ran at Smooth graphics with Ultra Extreme frame rates, and the gameplay was very smooth.

After longer hours of gaming, the back of the smartphone felt slightly warmer, especially around the camera module, but that is negligible. However, the OnePlus 13R is also equipped with a vapour cooling system, which dissipates heat faster. When it comes to the CPU throttling test, the OnePlus 13R could achieve a sustained performance of around 60-65 per cent, which is not so good as thermal throttling is noticed.

Just like the OnePlus 12, this chipset does throttle at times, but it does not affect the performance or the gaming experience. In benchmarks, the OnePlus 13R had good scores, but still, the numbers were not as high as some other smartphones that have the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. In terms of network connectivity, you get support for good carrier aggregation and have all the bands of 5G.

This year, the base RAM and storage have also been increased, as there are two variants present: 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, and another 16GB RAM with 512GB storage. This time OnePlus 13R comes with UFS 4.0 speeds of storage speeds for both of its variants, which is good and also faster compared to the UFS 3.1 storage speeds of the OnePlus 12R.

OnePlus 13R Software:

The OnePlus 13R is running on the latest OxygenOS 15 based on Android 15 out of the box. The software experience has not changed much from the earlier OxygenOS 14, but there are a whole lot of newer additions, which include many AI-based features like AI Eraser, AI Summary, AI Speak, etc., which come in handy in most scenarios. Other than that, there are a lot of customisations present, as always.

Now talking about the AI features, AI Eraser will remove the object from the image and adjust the image contents automatically, AI Unblur removes the blur in the background, AI Summary summarises the paragraph to key points in the form of a summary, AI Spesk reads a particular loudly, AI Writer lets you write that text, AI Editor works well in gallery application, etc.

The look and feel are slightly different, with slightly different icon packs which look good. There are Live Alerts just like the dynamic island functionality in iPhones. There is a Circle to Search where you can circle an object or a text and get the information regarding it. Google's own Gemini is present, and along with that, you get the usual OnePlus features like Auto Pixelate 2.0, Magic Compose Writing, etc.

The Share with iPhone feature lets you share any files or any other content on your smartphone to iPhones. Just like the OnePlus Open, there is the Canvas feature, which lets you do multitasking. This time around, there are three to four pre-installed applications like LinkedIn, Facebook and Netflix, which can be uninstalled, but there is one OnePlus app store that does throw in a lot of notifications, which is cumbersome.

In terms of software updates, the OnePlus 13R, just like the OnePlus 13, will receive another four years of Android OS updates and six years of security patches, which is a good upgrade over the OnePlus 12R. Rest aside, the OxygenOS still continues to impress when it comes to the software experience on OnePlus smartphones.

OnePlus 13R Cameras:

The OnePlus 13R sports a triple camera setup, which includes a 50MP f/1.8 Sony LYT-700 sensor for the primary camera, which has support for OIS, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera and a 50MP f/2.2 Samsung ISOCELL JN5 sensor for the telephoto camera with support for 2x optical zoom. On the front, there is a 16MP f/2.4 camera for selfies.

Compared to the OnePlus 12R, the primary camera is a newer one, and also, instead of a 2MP macro camera, there is a dedicated 50MP telephoto camera. However, the ultrawide and the front cameras remain unchanged. In terms of images during daylight, the primary camera does a very good job in terms of dynamic range, which is wide, and colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background.

The noise is almost not present, which is great and also, even in terms of contrast, it is good. During the night, the primary camera delivers great images with excellent dynamic range, and details look sharper with slight noise in the background. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening, which is good. The dedicated Night Mode is turned on automatically as soon as the camera is exposed to low-light conditions.

Without the night mode, the images look sharp and the dynamic range is wider, with the shadows becoming darker and the colour temperature is on the slightly warmer side. The 8MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details, which look good but are not the sharpest and have a large amount of noise in the background. Even the distortion is present around the edges.

The colours have a warmer tone with slight oversharpening present in the background. At night, the ultrawide camera does a decent job in terms of images that look good, but there is some kind of softness in the images, and the dynamic range is not so wide. The noise is slightly on the higher side, and the contrast in the background is very low.

The newer addition is the telephoto camera, which OnePlus have finally brought after user feedback, and this camera is an exceptional performer. The 2x zoom camera does an excellent job in terms of images, which look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The colours look saturated with no oversharpening in the background, which is good.

Beyond 2x, if you zoom like 5x and the highest you can go is 10x, at that zoom level, there is some softness in the details, and the dynamic range looks decent but not so wide. Up to 5x, definitely the images are pleasing with wider dynamic range and sharper details with less noise. Similarly, during the night, the telephoto camera does a great job in terms of dynamic range, and even colours look saturated.

At 5x zoom, there is some noise present, but that is negligible, and rest assured, the contrast is good, and even details in shadows are good. The exposure is well handled in very low-light conditions. In terms of portraits, the telephoto camera is capable of taking 1x and 2x portraits, which come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range. The edge detection and background blur are well handled.

The skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening. The primary camera can also take some good portraits with proper edge detection and a good level of background blur. Compared to the telephoto camera portraits, there is some oversharpening present on the portraits taken from the primary camera and some amount of noise in the background.

The front camera does a good job in terms of selfies, as skin tones look natural without any oversharpening in the background, and the dynamic range is wide. However, the selfies have slightly softer details, but the contrast looks good. Even the portrait selfies have slightly softer details, but the edge detection is good, and you get a proper background blur also.

In terms of videos, both the primary and the telephoto camera are capable of recording 4K videos at 60fps, whereas the ultrawide and the front camera are restricted to 1080p video recording at 30fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have excellent dynamic range with less noise in the background since OIS works perfectly.

The colours look saturated in the videos, and similarly, the telephoto camera videos come out with sharper details and have wider dynamic range. There is some amount of noise in the videos, which is negligible. At night, the telephoto camera struggles in terms of details, which look softer, and there is a considerable amount of noise in the background. However, colours look saturated, which is good.

The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with softer details and have a large amount of noise in the background. The colours look muted slightly, and there is a considerable amount of oversharpening in the background. The front camera does a good job in terms of videos in terms of details that look sharper and have good dynamic range, with some amount of noise in the background.

OnePlus 13R Battery Life:

The OnePlus 13R sports a larger 6000mAh battery, which is 500mAh more in capacity compared to its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus 12R and combined with OxygenOS 15, battery life has been slightly better. With normal usage that includes scrolling through webpages, playing games for 1-2 hours, and other multitasking like using Instagram, Facebook, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some charge left.

With heavy usage that includes playing games like Genshin Impact, BGMI Mobile, etc., for longer hours, i.e. 3-4 hours, rendering videos, taking images and videos using the cameras, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days. The standard screen-on time with heavy usage came around 4-5 hours, and with normal usage, the standard screen-on time came around 8.5-9 hours, which is excellent and a good improvement over last year's OnePlus 12R.

In terms of charging, the OnePlus 13R comes with an 80W SuperVOOC charger, which is a slight downgrade from its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus 12R comes with a 100W SuperVOOC charger inside the box. The charging is also slower now, as the OnePlus 13R takes around 1 hour 10 minutes to charge from 0 to 100 per cent completely, compared to 40 minutes of full charge from 0 to 100 per cent on the OnePlus 12R.

OnePlus 13R Audio Quality:

The OnePlus 13R comes with a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds louder and clearer. There is no distortion in sound even at the highest volume settings. This time around, there is no support for Dolby Atmos, but you still get a richer sound experience.

Verdict:

The OnePlus 13R is a well-balanced budget flagship that ticks all the right boxes, as it proves to be an excellent offering which includes a solid build and design, a great display along with stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, solid performance and gaming capabilities, a good set of cameras and excellent battery life. The icing on the cake has to be the clean software experience along with a good cycle of software updates.

However, there are a few areas where downgrades are seen. The charging speeds are slower compared to the OnePlus 12R, the ultrawide and front cameras struggle in terms of videos, especially during low-light, details look softer, and though you are getting a solid performance and gaming experience, there is a considerable amount of thermal throttling present.

The USB port at the bottom has USB Type 2.0 speeds instead of the USB 3.1 speeds. When compared to the OnePlus 12R, there is a good set of upgrades in most aspects like cameras, performance, display and battery life, but there are downgrades like charging speeds and display protection. So, definitely the OnePlus 13R seems to be a solid flagship killer out there and is worth the upgrade over the OnePlus 12R.

OnePlus 13 Review: A great flagship from OnePlus that will set the standards high being almost perfect out there!!

2025-06-06T11:12:00.328+05:30

OnePlus is back with same old glory with small upgrades with 13.

OnePlus has been one of the top brands when it comes to the smartphone market globally ever since they first came out with their first offering in the form of the OnePlus One. From then the company's focus has always been to provide flagship-level specifications on its smartphones, and it continued to do that each and every year with its new offering.

After its success in the flagship killer space, the brand came with the Nord lineup of smartphones, which aimed at the mid-range and the premium mid-range segment and were a huge success in the market. Of late, OnePlus came with the semi-flagship R series of smartphones, which also borrowed a few specifications of the flagship number series and were priced very aggressively out there.

Last year, we had the OnePlus 12 series, which consisted of the OnePlus 12 (Review) and 12R, which had a strong hold in the market with their specifications. However, with the newer OnePlus 13 series, OnePlus has worked on a few things, and there are a couple of newer additions. This time here we will be having a look at the OnePlus 13, which brings in some upgrades over the OnePlus 12.

Let's find out in the full review!!

OnePlus 13 Design:

In terms of design, OnePlus has stuck to its design philosophy past two years, ever since it came with the OnePlus 11 series, where the brand came with a circular camera module on the back, and this is also seen on the OnePlus 13 here. At the back, the OnePlus 13 has a circular camera module that houses the three cameras along with an LED flashlight.

Here, the camera module is placed slightly towards the left instead of the centre. Alongside the camera module, there is a small strip where, on top, there is the Hasselblad logo "H", which is placed right next to the camera module, unlike the OnePlus 12, which has the Hasselblad logo inside the camera module. The OnePlus 13 is available in three different colours - Black Eclipse, Arctic Dawn, and Midnight Ocean.

The Midnight Ocean variant has a slightly dark blue colour and comes with a vegan leather finish, which looks premium and feels gentle to touch. Other than this, there are two other variants - Arctic Dawn and Black Eclipse feature a shimmery glass back, which looks premium and does not catch fingerprints. Around the sides, the smartphone houses an aluminium frame that shines and looks premium.

To the left side, there is the OnePlus's signature alert slider, which has three different modes, and this comes in handy in daily usage. To the right, there is the power button along with volume buttons that feel tactile to use. On top, there is a secondary speaker which doubles up as a stereo speaker, an IR Blaster, and two microphones. At the bottom, there is a SIM card, a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille and a primary microphone.

There is no support for a microSD card slot for further storage expansion. In terms of weight distribution, the smartphone weighs around 212 grams, which makes it 10 grams lighter than its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus 12 especially due to the silicon technology in battery. Also, it is thinner at 8.9mm around the sides compared to 9.2mm thickness on the OnePlus 12.

Another small upgrade that the smartphone gets is the IP69 rating over the IP65 rating on the OnePlus 12, which means the OnePlus 13 can survive underwater 1.5 metres for 30 minutes. Along with this, this time OnePlus 13 comes with the Aqua Touch 2.0, which ensures that you can use the smartphone if there is water present on the display or hands are oily for some reason.

There is also a glove mode, which comes in handy when you are wearing gloves and using the smartphone. On the front, there is a curved display which is protected by Ceramic Guard glass, which is almost as tough as Gorilla Glass Victus+. The bezels around the display are very thin, making it look premium. The single punch hole camera sits at the top of the centre.

Overall, the look and feel are premium on the OnePlus 13.

OnePlus 13 Display:

The OnePlus 13 sports a larger 6.82-inches display, which is similar to that of the OnePlus 12. This display has a Quad HD+(1440x3168 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. Like the OnePlus 12, this one also has an LTPO display, which means the display can refresh between 1Hz and 120Hz depending on the content on the display.

Regarding the refresh rate, there are three options to choose from: Auto Select, Standard, and High. Selecting the Standard refresh rate mode will provide you with the 60Hz refresh rate on the display, which will provide great battery life. You can achieve the 120Hz refresh rate when the display is set to High and Auto-Select, but Auto-Select allows your display to scale between different refresh rates simultaneously to save battery.

For example, when you are playing any game like Genshin Impact, the display refreshes at 120Hz, and similarly, when you are not interacting with the display, the refresh rate drops to 1Hz. Along with this, there is support for 2160Hz PWM frequency dimming, which ensures that the display can be easily viewed under low-light conditions, without affecting the eyes.

In terms of display brightness, the OnePlus 13 can reach a peak brightness of around 4500 nits as advertised by OnePlus, but the reality is that only a few pixels of the display can show these brightness numbers. In the High Brightness Mode, the display of the OnePlus 13 can reach a peak brightness of 1600 nits, which is really good. Under direct sunlight, the display has good visibility.

There are different settings to choose from for colour temperature on display - Vivid, Natural, and Pro. If you go with the Natural mode, which is selected by default, then you would get softer colours which look slightly muted, and if you choose Pro and Vivid mode, it results in saturated and punchier colours on the display, thus covering the DCI-P3 gamut scale.

OnePlus has added a new feature called Radiant View, which analyses the content on the display and increases the nits of brightness for individual pixels, thus also boosting the brightness overall. The display of the OnePlus 13 has support for HDR, so you can stream HDR content on YouTube and also Widevine L1 is present along with Dolby Vision, which enhances media consumption on OTT platforms.

This time, OnePlus has finally brought the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner to the display, which is better than the in-display one found on the OnePlus 12. It is accurate and is slightly faster than the in-display one seen previously. Overall, the display of the OnePlus 13 continues to impress, just like its predecessor and is great for multimedia consumption.

OnePlus 13 Performance:

The OnePlus 13 features the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset of 2025, one of the most powerful chipsets of the year and expected to be found in many flagships launched this year. It features an octa-core setup, comprising 2x 4.32 GHz Oryon V2 Phoenix L cores and 6x 3.53 GHz Oryon V2 Phoenix M cores, along with an Adreno 830 GPU. This chipset is built on a 3nm process, which means you will get greater efficiency and battery life.

In terms of daily tasks, the smartphone pulls everything very smoothly, whether it is heavy or lighter tasks in daily usage. All heavy games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., run smoothly without any lag or frame drops at the highest graphics settings. After longer hours of gaming, i.e. 3-4 hours, the back of the smartphone does not heat up as there is a dedicated vapour chamber for cooling, thus dissipating heat faster.

In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could achieve around 40-45 per cent of sustained performance, which is very bad considering the chipset. There is significant throttling noticed with the High Performance Mode turned on, which is disappointing considering it is a flagship chipset. However, with the performance turned off, the smartphone easily achieves a sustained performance of around 70-75 per cent.

In terms of benchmarks, the OnePlus 13 scored well in both Antutu and Geekbench, but the scores were not as high as other smartphones that have the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. The OnePlus 13 is available in two different variants - 12GB RAM with 256GB storage and 16GB RAM with 512GB storage, where RAM speeds are of LPDDR5 and storage speeds are of UFS 4.0, which is quite fast.

OnePlus 13 Software:

The OnePlus 13 runs on the latest OxygenOS 15 out of the box, which is built on Android 15. There are very minor upgrades in OxygenOS 15 over OxygenOS 14, like you get a lot of AI-related features like AI Eraser, AI Speak, AI Writer, etc. There is also the Circle to Search, which we have seen on OneUI in Samsung smartphones. Other than this, the look and feel do not feel much different compared to OxygenOS 14.

You get a lot of customisations in terms of icon shape and size, colour, and also the Always-On display, where you can use different styles, change the fingerprint scanner animation, and much more. The lockscreen can now be customised with a small piece of text that is present by default or a small photo; clock style can be customised, and you get the transition effect in lockscreen as well as on AOD.

Just like there is also the Live Alerts feature, which shows all the live activities if you click near the front camera, which will show a list of ongoing activities, but it is limited to a few applications as of now. Other than this, there are a lot of smooth animations throughout the user interface. The quick settings menu has changed, so swiping from the right shows the quick settings, whereas swiping from the left shows the notifications tray.

Talking about the AI features, a few of them come in handy in terms of daily usage. AI Summary, when enabled in Notes or any third-party application, lets you summarise the things in key or bullet points. AI Eraser works well in the gallery application if you want to remove any object from the background, AI Reflection Eraser removes the shadow from the images, and AI Unblur removes the blur in most of the images.

There is Intelligent Search, along with Circle to Search, which lets you select a piece of text or an image and then retrieve information regarding it. In addition to this, there is Open Canvas, which enables you to use two applications simultaneously and allows for drag-and-drop functionality between different applications. Other than this, there are many Android 15 features which will come in future software updates.

OxygenOS does not come with bloatware, which has been its core strength, but now there seems to be one or two third-party applications present in the user interface. In terms of software updates, OnePlus is providing four years of Android OS updates and another six years of security updates. Overall, the software experience feels smooth to use.

OnePlus 13 Cameras:

The OnePlus 13 features a triple camera setup, comprising a 50MP f/1.6 Sony LYT-808 sensor for the primary camera, a 50MP f/2.0 ISOCELL GN5 sensor for the ultrawide camera, and a 50MP f/2.6 LYT-600 sensor for the telephoto camera, which supports 3x optical zoom. On the front, a 32MP f/2.4 Sony IMX615 sensor is used for the front camera.

The primary camera remains unchanged from the OnePlus 12, but the other two cameras are slightly different, as the 50MP telephoto camera replaces the 48MP telephoto camera on the OnePlus 12. Just like all OnePlus smartphones, the Hasselblad partnership continues to stay here also. The images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have great dynamic range.

There is very little noise present in the background, and no oversharpening is seen. In terms of human subjects, the skin tones also look natural. The 50MP images come out with sharper details, but there is a small hint of noise present in the background. But rest assured, the dynamic range is good. The contrast is good, and with 2x zoom, the images come out with sharper details and have great dynamic range.

At night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have great dynamic range, with almost less noise present in the background. There is not much oversharpening present in the background, and colours have good contrast. With the dedicated Night Mode turned on, you get a warmer colour tone in the surroundings, and also noise is reduced compared to those shot without using the Night Mode.

Even the 2x zoomed images at night come out with sharper details and have great dynamic range without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The ultrawide camera is a 50MP JN1 sensor this time instead of the IMX581 sensor on the OnePlus 12, so as a result, the details look sharper with good dynamic range. There is a slight oversharpening present in the background, though.

There is some noise present in the background, which is slightly disappointing and also around the edges, there is distortion present. However, the colours look natural and the contrast is good. The ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of images during the night, as you get sharper details with good dynamic range. However, the slight concern remains the noise present in the background.

The telephoto camera does an excellent job in terms of details, which look sharper and have excellent dynamic range with saturated colours in the background. At the 3x zoom level, the images come out with excellent details, but there is some oversharpening present, which is negligible. At 6x zoom, the images come out with sharper details, and almost less noise is present.

At night, the images from the telephoto camera come out with sharper details and have great dynamic range with saturated colours in the background. The noise is almost non-existent in the images, which include at 3x and 6x zoom levels. However, the telephoto camera is not capable in terms of portraits as the camera cannot focus closer to a subject, which is slightly disappointing, but still, you get good macro shots.

When it comes to portraits, the edge detection is good, and you get a good dynamic range with proper background blur. There is almost no noise present, which is good, and even skin tones look accurate. Both the primary as well as the telephoto cameras are capable of taking portraits, but the ones from the telephoto camera come out with slightly better details and edge detection of the two.

In terms of selfies, the front camera of the OnePlus 13 does a good job in terms of details, and the dynamic range is also wide enough. The skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening, which is good. The noise is very little in the background, and similarly, the selfies taken during the night come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range, but there is some amount of noise present.

When it comes to videos, all four cameras, which include the three rear cameras and the selfie camera, can record 4K videos at 60fps. The primary camera goes one step ahead as it can record 8K videos at 30fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with good details that look sharper and have excellent dynamic range. The noise is very low in the videos as the EIS works really well in both 4K and 8K videos.

The colour saturation is good without any oversharpening taking place in the background. Even the 1080p videos at 60fps come out with excellent details and a wider dynamic range. The videos from the ultraiwde camera come out with good details and a wider dynamic range but there is a slight distortion seen around the edges which is negligible.

However, the telephoto camera does an excellent job in terms of videos as you get saturated colours, excellent dynamic range and almost no noise present. But once you switch to 6x zoom, there is a lot of noise present which will be soon fixed with a future software update. The videos from the selfie camera come out with excellent details and have good dynamic range. Even the skin tones look natural with almost no noise present.

OnePlus 13 Battery Life:

The OnePlus 13 sports a larger 6000mAh battery which is 1000mAh more in capacity compared to OnePlus 12. This time OnePlus has gone with the silicon carbon technology which allows more lithium ions to stay within the volume of the battery and are lighter also. With the chipset built on an efficient 3nm process and the larger battery, you can achieve solid battery life.

With normal usage that includes streaming social media, scrolling through web pages, playing games casually, etc. you can easily achieve around 8-9 hours of standard screen-on time whereas with heavy usage which includes playing heavy games like Genshin Impact, BGMI, etc for longer hours, rendering videos, taking videos from the cameras, the smartphone easily lasted one day and a half which is amazing.

With heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came around 4.5-5 hours which is really good. In terms of charging, OnePlus has equipped the smartphone with a 100W SuperVOOC fast charger which takes around 40-45 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent. If you use any separate wireless charging pad, it will take slightly longer hours considering the huge 6000mAh battery which is there.

Other than this, there is also support for There is also support for 50W wireless charging and with the dedicated AirVOOC magnetic charger it took 1 hour 20 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent. There is also support for 10W reverse wireless charging where you can keep a smartphone that supports wireless charging on the back of the OnePlus 13 and get it charged.

Even via cable also there is support for 5W reverse wireless charging. However, there is a slight dissapointment when it comes to the charger as it is a USB Type-A to Type-C which means you cannot charge any other gadgets as the USB Type-C to Type-C is capable of it. Other than thses there are even smart charging options present which helps in providing great battery life.

OnePlus 13 Audio Quality:

The OnePlus 13 sports a dual stereo speaker setup that is adequately loud and clear with almost no distortion even at the highest volume levels. The sound comes out equally good on both the speakers but here now you do miss out the Dolby Atmos support but still the sound quality is good while you are watching videos, listening to songs, etc. As always there is no 3.5mm headphone jack.

Verdict:

The OnePlus 13 seems to a perfect flagship out there as it brings all the right set of specifications which includes a great build and design, an amazing display along with stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, solid performance with gaming capabilities, good set of cameras for both images and videos, exceellent battery life with faster charging capabilities.

However, the biggest strength of OnePlus has been its software experience which is bloatware-free and the newer AI features in the user interface levels up the experience further. There are few areas where there was scope of improvement needed. When it comes to cameras, the ultrawide camera needs some improvement in terms of noise reduction and slightly better videos.

Since there is the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, you get thermal throttling in performance compared to other smartphones that are powered using this chipset. Though OneUI is very polished user interface it is still not up there with the OneUI in Samsung smartphones which provides more features and also has a slightly better track record of software updates over OxygenOS.

When compared to the OnePlus 12, you get better IP rating, slightly better performance and battery life but there is a slight downgrade in terms of ultrawide and telephoto camera. Overall, the OnePlus 13 is a solid buy in the market with the brand recognition of OnePlus but only scope of improvement needs to be in terms of cameras and along with that, the OnePlus 13 will take away the honours out there in this highly competititve market out there.

Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max Review: Now the flagship mammoth gets better with the newer AI-driven features!!

2025-01-30T17:26:00.001+05:30

Apple brings the flagship experience with the inclusion of AI and more!

Apple has been at the forefront of the smartphone experience with its iPhones. This year, we have the newer iPhone 16 series, which Apple has created a buzzword with its AI features. The iPhone 16 series comprises three smartphones: the iPhone 16, the iPhone 16 Pro, and the iPhone 16 Pro Max. The iPhone 16 Pro Max is the one Apple has packed with many flagship specifications.

Last year, the iPhone 15 Pro Max (Review) was a well-rounded flagship smartphone that, with its specifications, generated a huge market sale. Now, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is set to rule the flagship smartphone market. Compared to its predecessor, it offers some noticeable upgrades, like a newer and slightly more powerful chipset, a newer ultrawide camera, a slightly larger battery, and a display. The main talking point is the Camera Control Key.

So is the iPhone 16 Pro Max worth buying? Let's find out in the full review.

iPhone 16 Pro Max Design:

The iPhone 16 Pro Max sports a design similar to its predecessor, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, except that some changes are noticed up front. The back is made of Corning Gorilla Glass, the version of which is unspecified. The design remains similar, with a squarish camera module that has triple cameras, an LED flashlight, a microphone, and a LIDAR system.

The triple cameras are slightly protruded, making the smartphone wobble slightly when kept on a flat surface. The back of the smartphone is flat and has a smooth matte finish thus providing solid grip while holding in hands. Like the iPhone 14 Pro Max, the iPhone 15 Pro Max has a side frame made of titanium but now it is made of grade 5 which is even stronger.

The front of the display is protected by a Ceramic Shield for protection which is now of third generation making it even stronger compared to previous versions of Ceramic Shield protection on the iPhones. The smartphone has an IP68 rating which makes it dust and water-resistant and now it can survive up to 6 metres under fresh water for 30 minutes.

The titanium frame makes it lighter and the smartphone weighs around 227 grams which makes it slightly heavier compared to the 221 grams weight of the iPhone 15 Pro Max but you would not feel much of a difference. Around the sides, the left side houses the volume buttons along with an Action key that provides multiple functionalities like a silencer, magnifier, flashlight, etc.

On the right side, there is a power button and the newer addition is the Camera Control Key which provides some extra functionalities which will be discussed in the software section further. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port which continues here from the iPhone 15 Pro Max and there are two dotted grilles where one of which is the loudspeaker and the other is the primary microphone.

On the front, the display has very thin bezels and this time around they are even thinner compared to its predecessor. The cutout pill which houses the front camera remains unchanged and provides a host of functionalities as seen on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Overall, the build and design remain unchanged except for a few changes but feels sturdy and premium.

iPhone 16 Pro Max Display:

The iPhone 16 Pro Max has a slightly larger display this time which is now 6.9-inches compared to 6.7-inches on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The display has a screen resolution of Full HD+ (2868x1320 pixels) Super Retina XDR display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. The display has a ProMotion feature which ensures the display refreshes at 120Hz and can drop to different refresh rates depending on the content of the display.

The smartphone's display has the ProMotion feature, which ensures that it can refresh as low as 1Hz when viewing static content. The display supports Dolby Vision and HDR10, so HDR is supported on YouTube and even on OTT platforms. In terms of display brightness, the smartphone's display can reach around 2000 nits of peak brightness, which is very good.

In auto brightness mode, the display can reach around 1000nits which is good and the sunlight eligibility of the display is very good. In terms of colour reproduction, there is only one setting present which includes the TueTone adjustments which cover the sRGB colour space and provide punchier colours on the display. Overall with the slightly larger display, the multimedia consumption feels much better on the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

iPhone 16 Pro Max Performance:

The iPhone 16 Pro Max sports the newer and more powerful Apple A18 Bionic Pro chipset, which provides 20 per cent better performance than its predecessor, the iPhone 15 Pro Max. This chipset is based on a hexacore setup, with the first two cores clocking at 4.05 GHz and the other four cores clocking at 2.42 GHz. It is built on an efficient 3nm process.

Coupled with the chipset is also a 6-core Apple GPU which is said to provide 20-30 per cent better performance compared to its predecessor. In terms of daily performance, the smartphone handles all the tasks easily without breaking a sweat. In terms of gaming, all heavy games like BGMI, and Genshin Impact run smoothly at the highest graphics settings.

Just like the last year's Apple 6-core GPU, here also you are getting hardware-based ray tracing in games, and better network connectivity but the main upgrade has to be the heat dissipation capabilities as the newer chipset helps maintain a sustained performance without any kind of overheating and keeping the thermals in check. Other than that there is not much of an upgrade over last year's chipset.

In terms of network connectivity, you get support for all bands of 5G and have good carrier aggregation. The iPhone 16 Pro Max just like its predecessor is available in three different variants - 256GB/512GB/1TB storage where all of them have 8GB LPDDR5X RAM. There is no microSD card slot for storage expansion though.

iPhone 16 Pro Max Software:

The iPhone 16 Pro Max runs out of the box on the latest iOS 18. The user interface has a couple of newer additions, including advanced personalization for the lock screen, home screen, and Control Center. The Notes, Camera, and Photos apps have been redesigned. A few newer applications, such as Journal, Passwords, and a slightly modified Calculator application, have also been added.

The Action Key provides a host of functionalities as it gets triggered when you long press that. There are many predefined actions, including silencer, torch, magnifier, Focus, Voice Memo, Camera Shortcut, accessibility shortcut, etc. that come in handy most of the time. Now another main talking feature this year on the iPhone has to be the Camera Control Key.

The Camera Control Key is a touch capacitive button which gets triggered when you lightly press the key while using the camera application. This button also acts as a touch as well as a slider key for various activities. After unlocking the smartphone, a single click on the Camera Control Key launches the camera with a clean preview.

When you double press the Camera Control Key, it launches the Camera Control menu which consists of different options like Exposure, Depth, Zoom, Cameras, Style, Tone, etc. You can long-press the camera button to record a video. You can also set your own camera settings option when you do a single press on the key and swipe right and left for different options.

The Camera Control Key can also be used for opening third-party camera applications like Magnifier and CodeScanner other than the Camera. In the accessibility menu under settings, you can also set the sensitivity of the Camera Control Key from a lighter to a firmer press which is a good option. You can also disable this Camera Control Key from the settings.

Like before you can customize the lock screen with different widgets and also you get a variety of wallpapers and themes to choose from. The Control Center continues to stay and opens up when swiping from the top right and this time it has been tweaked slightly with more widgets, different toggles, and provides different pages to access.

You can now lock individual applications and different contacts through FaceID which is good for security. As usual, there are different Focus modes which include Work, Personal, Driving, Gaming, Do Not Disturb, etc. iOS 18 supports three different widgets - 2x4, 4x4, and 4x2 and you arrange them in the lock screen and the Today page where they get arranged automatically.

With the iOS 18 now you can customize the icons where you can change the colour of the icon, hide the name of the icon, enlarge the icons, and choose from lighter to darker themes for the icons. The Dynamic Island continues to provide different functionalities just like the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The Photos application has been revamped slightly as it shows all photos in the form of a grid.

You get different collections for different photos and also it recognizes the faces of friends or family photos by providing quick access to a collection. The new Passwords application lets you store passwords, passkeys, and Wi-Fi passwords and also lets you know if any password is weaker or used multiple times which is a good move in terms of security.

The Journal application acts as a personal diary where you can write your own notes for personal usage. The Calculator incorporates the Maths Notes which provides more mathematical functionalities, the Map application gets new topographic maps for hiking-related things, and there is the Game Mode which provides a great game-playing experience by minimizing the background activity and also increases responsiveness if you are using external game controllers.

The TV App also provides a lot of functionalities as it acts as a default player for all videos and moves downloaded from iTunes and provides the Apple TV+ streaming service. Now talking about the AI functionality which Apple calls Apple Intelligence seems to be trickled into the iPhones this year as it brings a host of features like enhanced privacy for all your personal data.

Apple AI will let you create images based on your conversations with friends and family. Using the Apple Image Playground you can create different images using sketch, illusion, and animations which are present in most of the applications. You can create something which Apple likes to call "Genmoji" which means creating an emoji of some person in a picture and AI lets you search the images and videos using natural language.

The Apple AI Eraser is a good addition which lets you remove unwanted objects or subjects from the image. Memories let you create a video using image and language recognition by using the images and videos when you are writing a description. The big update is to come to Siri where can it recognize more languages and also will store a history of different conversations which will be triggered when asked.

In the Phone application, you can record the conversation which gets notified to the other person and it generates a summary of it. Now you can also transcribe notes, record, and summarize the notes in the Notes application which is very good. In terms of software updates, just like all iPhones, this smartphone will receive another five years of software updates which is very good.

iPhone 16 Pro Max Cameras:

The iPhone 16 Pro Max has a triple camera setup which includes a 48MP f/1.8 primary camera with a sensor-shift OIS, a newer 48MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 12MP f/2.8 periscope telephoto camera with support for a 5x optical zoom and comes with OIS. On the front, there is a 12MP f/1.9 selfie camera for selfies.

The images from the primary camera come out with excellent details that look sharper and have a great dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The colour saturation is very good as you get close to natural colours in the background without any kind of oversharpening. There is also a 24MP camera mode using which you can take some very good images with sharper details and good dynamic range.

In HDR shots, the details look great with sharper details and human skin tones look natural without any oversharpening in the background. The 48MP mode also provides sharper details and has a good dynamic range with almost no noise present in the background. The primary camera can also capture 2x images at 12MP which comes out with sharper details and has good dynamic range with saturated colours in the background.

At night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have an excellent dynamic range with almost no noise present in the background. The exposure in low-lighting areas is very well handled and also the details in shadows look very good. Whether you are using the dedicated Night Mode or not, you will get almost similar results as the image processing is spot on.

Even 2x images have sharper details with good dynamic range but there is some noise noticed which will not cause any concern as the white balance is handled very well. In terms of the ultrawide camera, Apple has gone with a newer 48MP sensor compared to the 12MP sensor on its predecessor i.e. iPhone 15 Pro Max. The images during the daylight come out with sharper details and excellent dynamic range from the ultrawide camera.

The colours look close to natural and almost similar to that of the primary camera but now you get a much larger field of view with almost no noise in the background. There is no distortion around the edges which is great. At night, the ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details and has a good dynamic range with less oversharpening in the background.

The noise is well under control and the white balance is handled very well. At times the exposure is not handled properly leading to some darker areas with average details. The Night Mode here gets triggered automatically depending on the scenario but when you compare this with last year's iPhone 15 Pro Max's ultrawide camera, there is not much of an improvement.

The ultrawide camera also doubles up as a macro camera and you get some very good shots with crisp and detailed images which have great dynamic range and colours look saturated with almost no noise left behind. Now talking about the 12MP telephoto camera, which remains unchanged from its predecessor does perform really well.

During daylight, it takes images with excellent levels of detail and dynamic range with almost no noise present in the background. The colours look saturated almost close to natural without any kind of oversharpening. At 10x zoom, the images look great without any loss in detail and the dynamic range remains consistent as on the 5x images which is a great thing.

At 10x zoom, there is some noise in the background and the white balance is not as good as on the 5x zoom but still the difference is negligible. At night, the telephoto camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper, have good dynamic range and exposure is well handled. There is a fair bit of noise present in the background whether you are using it with or without Night Mode.

Even the 10x zoom images during the night look good and the colour retention is well handled as in both the level of zoom, you get saturated colours without any kind of oversharpening in the background. In terms of portraits, the telephoto camera does a good job in terms of details and dynamic range is great. The noise is also very low in the background.

The edge detection is very good and you get proper background blur without any oversharpening in the background. The primary camera also does a good job in terms of portraits at 2x zoom levels which results in sharper details and dynamic range with less noise in the background. The skin tones look natural in human subjects without any kind of oversharpening.

The front camera does a good job in terms of selfies as the selfies come out with good dynamic range and details look sharper with almost less noise in the background. The skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening. The selfie portraits come out with good edge detection and proper background blur without any oversharpening.

In terms of videos, all four cameras of the iPhone 16 Pro Max can record 4K videos at 60fps and now the primary camera can also record 4K videos at 120fps which is a great thing for slow-motion videos. The primary camera takes very good videos with excellent levels of detail and dynamic range with saturated colours and almost no noise in the background.

The ultrawide camera also does a good job in terms of videos but there is slight distortion around the edges which would not be noticed much. The telephoto camera provides excellent videos with sharper details and a wider dynamic range. Since it also has the OIS present, there is no noise present and on top of that, the colour saturation is natural.

The videos from the front camera come out with sharper details and have a good dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The skin tones look accurate with no overshapening in the background.

iPhone 16 Pro Max Battery Life:

Apple does not reveal the battery capacity usually for its iPhones. The iPhone 16 Pro Max houses a larger battery at 4685mAh, which is 240mAh more in capacity than the iPhone 15 Pro Max. In terms of daily normal usage which includes casual gaming, streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, attending calls very often, etc. the smartphone easily lasts for two days with some charge left which is really good.

With heavy usage which includes playing games like BGMI or Genshin Impact for 4-5 hours, rendering videos, running benchmarks, taking videos from the camera, etc. the smartphone easily lasted one and half days which is a good improvement over the iPhone 15 Pro Max. With the newer Apple A18 Pro chipset built on an efficient 3nm process, Apple is delivering one of the best battery life out there for its smartphone.

In terms of normal usage, the smartphone could achieve a standard screen-on time of around 8-9 hours which is far more than many other Android flagships out there. With heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came to around 5.5-6 hours which is very good. In terms of charging, just like the iPhone 15 Pro Max, here there is support for 25W fast wired charging and there is also 25W fast wireless charging when using the new MagSafe charger.

However, here also Apple does not provide a dedicated charger inside the box and you need to separately buy the 20W fast charger using that charger, the smartphone takes around 0-55 per cent within 30 minutes whereas a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent takes around 1 hour 40 minutes which is very much time consuming according to today's standards where we have smartphones that support 100/120W fast charging.

There is also support for 15W wireless charging by using any standard Qi2 wireless charger which takes the smartphone close to 2 hours and slightly more. There is also support for 4.5W reverse wireless charging using which you can charge other smartphones supporting that feature by placing them on the back of the smartphone.

iPhone 16 Pro Max Audio Quality:

The iPhone 16 Pro Max sports a dual stereo speaker setup where the earpiece and the speaker grille besides the USB Type-C port together produce a stereo effect with great bass and treble and add to that the sound is adequately louder and clearer.

Verdict:

The iPhone 16 Pro Max does not seem to be a large upgrade over the iPhone 15 Pro Max but still, it seems to be a good upgrade when it comes to the chipset, battery life, a slightly newer ultrawide camera, and some other features like a Camera Control Key which may or may not suite all people out there. On top of that biggest improvement over the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the overheating issue which is not there.

Other than these, the iPhone 16 Pro Max proves to be a solid flagship smartphone which brings the best industrial design with its titanium frame and Ceramic Shield for protection. The display is larger and along with stereo speakers provides a great experience in terms of multi-media consumption, the chipset is very powerful and great for gaming.

The cameras are very good both in terms of photos and videos and the battery life is impeccable as it provides a solid battery life. However, there are a few areas where the iPhone 16 Pro Max could have been better. The Camera Control Key is a newer addition for camera functionalities but at times it feels gimmicky to use as the finger accidentally gets pressed on the key and it is placed way at the bottom.

The ultrawide camera is an upgrade but still in terms of low-light photography and videos there is a lot of improvement needed. The battery life is excellent but the charging speeds are still slower at 25W which is slightly disappointing as competitors or smartphones priced lower than the iPhone 16 Pro Max provide much faster charging speeds.

The Apple AI features are also right now not present on the smartphone which will trickle later this year to the iPhone 16 Pro Max. So other than these few areas of nitpicking, the iPhone 16 Pro Max still proves to be a solid buy in the global flagship market and since it is an Apple product it definitely makes a statement for itself in the market.

Nothing Phone 2a Review: A practical mid-range smartphone from Nothing with a distinct design!!

2024-12-29T07:04:00.003+05:30

A solid offering in the mid-range segment from Nothing!!

Ever since the brand Nothing was introduced by Carl Pie to the market, it has caught a lot of attention with its unique design and a cleaner software experience. From there, the brand started its journey with the Nothing Phone 1 (Review), which targeted consumers who wanted a well-speced smartphone with some flagship specifications, and the pricing was also right.

Then, the Nothing Phone 2 (Review) entered the market, a successor to the Nothing Phone 1. It brought in some very good upgrades, such as a slightly powerful chipset, more customisations for the Glyph lights at the back, etc., but the smartphone was priced slightly higher. After focusing on the budget flagship segment, Nothing aims to get some attention in the premium mid-range segment with the Nothing Phone 2a.

The Nothing Phone 2a is a slightly toned-down version of the Nothing Phone 2 and offers some very good specifications for the price, which could make it a strong contender in this highly competitive segment. So, can the Nothing Phone 2a make a way in the mid-range segment like its dominance in the budget flagship segment?

Let's find out in the full review.

Nothing Phone 2a Design:

In terms of design, the Nothing Phone 2a, like its elder sibling, follows similar family characteristics with the transparent back and the Glyph LEDs. However, certain changes have been made now, as the number of Glyph LEDs has been reduced to three, and the two cameras are now placed horizontally instead of vertically inside the NFC coil. On top of the two cameras, there is a tiny LED flashlight.

The Glyph LEDs light up whenever a notification is coming up. Nothing calls this a 90-degree infinity back cover, and the smartphone's curved edges make it easier to hold in your hand. The Nothing Phone 2a also misses out on the small blinking red light, which was present on both the Nothing Phone 1 and 2. Also, the back is now made of polycarbonate instead of glass, which has been used to reduce costs.

Like the Nothing Phone 2, the back of the Nothing Phone 2a also has an IP54 rating, making it splash—and dust-resistant. The Nothing Phone 2a weighs around 190 grams, which makes it lighter than the Nothing Phone 2, which weighs around 201 grams. This is primarily due to the use of polycarbonate material at the back and around the side frame.

The frame has a smooth matte finish and houses the power button on the right side, whereas the left side houses the volume buttons, which feel tactile to use. On top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone only, whereas the bottom houses the USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone, and a dual SIM card slot.

The Nothing Phone 2a is available in four different colours - Black, White, Blue, and Milk. Milk is a combination of both white and grey colour, which looks good. On the front, just like the Nothing Phone 2, here also the bezels of the display are symmetrical and are uniform all along the sides. Overall, the design continues to be the main attraction here, but the build is polycarbonate instead of glass, which would make it premium.

Nothing Phone 2a Display:

The Nothing Phone 2a sports a larger 6.7-inch Full HD+ (1080x2412 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9, similar to that of the Nothing Phone 2. The display has support for a 120Hz refresh rate. It is a 10-bit one and since the display is an AMOLED one, you get great viewing angles as well as good colour reproduction with deeper blues and blacks.

Unlike the Nothing Phone 2, the Nothing Phone 2a misses out on an LTPO panel but does provide a variable refresh rate depending on the content in the display. There are three different modes to choose from when talking about the refresh rate: Dynamic, High, and Standard. Setting the refresh rate to High or Dynamic makes the display refresh at 120Hz for a few of the applications except that the Dynamic option provides variable refresh rates - 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz depending on the content in the display.

However, the Dynamic option mostly refreshes the display at 90Hz for maximum applications. Switching the display to Standard mode results in refreshing the display at 60Hz, which is the best option for extended battery life. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a faster 240Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses during gaming.

In terms of brightness, the display of the Nothing Phone 2a can reach a peak brightness of 1300nits, which is not the best in the segment but still good. Under direct sunlight, the display has good visibility, and with the display set to the highest brightness mode, it could reach around 1100nits, which is good. There are two different colour modes to choose from for the display: Alive and Standard.

Setting the display to Alive results in deeper blacks and blues with punchier colours in the display covering the DCI-P3 gamut whereas the Standard mode provides off-white colours with a natural tone and covers the sRGB colour space. There is also a temperature slider where you can set the display to a warmer or cooler tone.

The display of the Nothing Phone 2a has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner which works accurately and is faster. The Nothing Phone 2a is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5. Its display supports Widevine L1, which ensures you can easily stream HDR content on Netflix and YouTube. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption.

Nothing Phone 2a Performance:

The Nothing Phone 2a sports a powerful MediaTek Dimensity 7200 Pro chipset which is based on a 4nm process and is based on an octa-core setup that includes 2x2.8 GHz Cortex-A715 cores and 6x2.0 GHz Cortex-A510 cores. Coupled with the CPU, you get a powerful Mali-G610 MC4 GPU. The smartphone can handle all of them easily, whether light or heavy, in terms of daily tasks.

All heavy tasks, like rendering videos, playing games, etc., felt smoother. However, in heavy games like BGMI and Genshin Impact, the gameplay was good enough, but some frame drops were present when played in the highest graphics settings. After longer gaming, i.e. 3-4 hours, the back of the smartphone felt slightly warmer, especially around the camera module.

Regarding the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could achieve a sustained performance of around 80-90 per cent with almost no throttling present, which is very good. The benchmark scores are good, but they are still not the best in the segment, as other smartphones like the POCO F6 and OnePlus Nord 4 have better benchmark scores.

Regarding network connectivity, there is support for 11 bands of 5G, and you get good carrier aggregation. The Nothing Phone 2a is available in three variants: 8GB RAM with 128/256GB storage and 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, with storage speeds of UFS 2.2 and RAM LPDDR5. This is a huge disappointment since the UFS 2.2 speeds are much slower than those of other competitors, who offer much faster UFS 3.1 or 4.0 speeds.

Nothing Phone 2a Software:

The Nothing Phone 2a runs on the latest NothingOS 2.5.3 with Android 14 out of the box. The user interface is completely feature-rich and lets you customize icon shape, size and colour. Like the previous versions of NothingOS, the user interface has the signature dot matrix pattern everywhere, whether it is the fonts, charging animation, custom home screen, lock screen widgets, etc. There are very few changes in the user interface.

There is the Always-On Display present which dims to provide a monochrome look and there are a host of lock screen widgets present to use. In the notifications panel, the two big quick toggles at the top have been changed from circular to square shape, then there is the newer custom icon pack that has a monochrome look, and very few changes in the UI.

However, the Glyph interface comes in handy as you can turn it on or off when needed. It provides most of the functionalities through the LEDs placed on the back of the smartphone. The Glyph Interface contains a huge list of different options - Brightness, Ringtones, Notifications, Flip To Glyph, Glyph Timer, and Composer that lets you choose custom Glyph ringtones, Visual Feedback for controlling the volume level, Music Visualizer, Charging Meter, and also is integrated well with third-party applications like Spotify, Uber, Zomato, etc.

Unlike the Nothing Phone 2 which had support for a lot of experimental features like Connect with Tesla, Enhanced Touch Response, etc. here the Nothing Phone 2a misses out on those but it does provide Glyph Progress which is well integrated with third-party applications and experimental Airpods Support is present. Just like all Nothing phones, here also there is no such bloatware present.

Nothing specific applications like Camera, Composer, Weather, and Recorder applications are present. In terms of software support, just like the Nothing Phone 2, this smartphone will also receive another three major Android updates and four years of security patches.

Nothing Phone 2a Cameras:

The Nothing Phone 2a sports a dual camera setup which includes a 50MP f/1.9 Samsung ISOCELL GN9 sensor for the primary camera and a 50MP f/2.2 ISOCELL JN1 sensor for the ultrawide camera. The primary camera is slightly different here compared to the Nothing Phone 2 which came with a 50MP Sony IMX890 sensor for the primary camera. On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.2 Sony IMX615 sensor for the front camera.

As usual, the Auto Night Mode gets triggered automatically whenever the camera detects any scene in the dark but you can turn it off. The images from the primary camera came out with sharper details and had a good dynamic range with almost less noise in the background. The colour reproduction is good as it yields natural tones without much saturation in the background.

Even HDR images come with good dynamic range and have less noise in the background. The white balance is handled very well. At night, the primary camera does a solid job in terms of details that look sharper and have a great dynamic range with almost less noise in the background. The exposure is well handled even in very low-lighting areas. All these results were captured without using the dedicated Night Mode.

With the dedicated Night Mode, the images come out with excellent dynamic range and even slightly better colour colour saturation with almost no noise present in the background. The ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and the dynamic range is good. However, the colours look undersaturated and there is some distortion around the edges.

The noise is slightly higher in the background. At night, the ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details which do look a tad softer and the dynamic range comes to be average. The colours look a bit washed out with some overexposure present in the background. There is no dedicated macro camera but here just like the Nothing Phone 2, the ultrawide camera on this smartphone also doubles up as a macro camera due to autofocus.

The macro images come out with sharper details, excellent dynamic range, and saturated colours. Also, there is no dedicated telephoto camera, but the primary camera offers 2x digital zoom capabilities and using the primary camera at 2x zoom provides sharper details and good dynamic range with some amount of noise in the background.

In terms of portraits, the primary camera can take portraits at 1x and 2x zoom levels and you get good edge detection and proper background blur. The dynamic range is good with saturated colours in the background. The selfies from the front camera come out with sharper details and have a good dynamic range with almost less noise in the background.

There is some amount of oversharpening in the background present but still, the skin tones look natural. Even the portrait selfies come out with sharper details and have natural-looking skin tones but the edge detection could have been slightly improved. In terms of videos, both the primary and ultrawide cameras can capture 4K videos at 30fps. The videos from the primary camera come out to be very good.

The videos have sharper details, good dynamic range, and less noise present in the background but the colours do look oversaturated. The noise is well under control since there is OIS but OIS works only with 1080p videos at 30 or 60fps. However, EIS works well on all three cameras. The videos from the ultrawide camera has a lot of noise in the background, colours look saturated but the dynamic range comes out average.

The front camera is restricted to 1080p video recording at 30fps, which produces sharper details, decent dynamic range, and less noise in the background. This is due to the EIS working well. The colours look overprocessed in the background. In low light, the primary camera does a great job, whereas both the ultrawide and the selfie cameras struggle in low-light videos as there is a huge amount of noise in the background.

Nothing Phone 2a Battery Life:

The Nothing Phone 2a sports a slightly larger battery at 5000mAh which is 300mAh more in capacity compared to the Nothing Phone 2. With the Mediatek chipset built on a 4nm process and NothingOS 2.5, you can expect better battery life compared to the Nothing Phone 2 but there is not much of a difference. With normal usage, the smartphone easily lasts for two days with some charge left which is great.

With heavy usage that includes playing games like BGMI for 4-5 hours continuously, rendering videos, running benchmarks, streaming social media, attending calls for longer hours, etc. the smartphone lasts for a day with some charge left. With heavy usage, the standard screen-on time comes around 4.5-5 hours and with heavy usage, the standard screen-on time comes around 7.5-8 hours which is good.

In terms of charging, just like the Nothing Phone 2, this smartphone also supports 45W fast charging. However, Nothing has skipped bundling a fast charger inside the box, which is disappointing. Therefore, you need to rely on third-party chargers only. A dedicated 45W fast charger would take the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent within 1 hour and 40 minutes, which is very time-consuming.

However, there is also no support for wireless and reverse wireless charging on the Nothing Phone 2a, which is present on the Nothing Phone 2. This may not be a problem since the former is cheaper than the latter.

Nothing Phone 2a Audio Quality:

Like the Nothing Phone 2, here the Nothing Phone 2a gets a dual stereo speaker setup where the sound is more from the bottom-firing speaker compared to the earpiece on the top. The sound does not feel distorted and the haptic feedback is also good and feels tactile to use. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack but you do get Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound output.

Verdict:

The Nothing Phone 2a is a well-rounded mid-range smartphone from Nothing that brings an exquisite design with the transparent back having those Glyph LEDs, a 120Hz AMOLED display with a set of stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, a good chipset which handles almost all the tasks easily, cameras are good, and you get solid battery life with support for faster charging.

The software experience is great with no bloatware and you get a lot of features also. The software update policy is very good and Nothing provides timely software and security updates. However, there are a lot of things where Nothing has cut corners and price it right. Unlike the Nothing Phone 1 and 2, there is no glass back and instead you get a polycarbonate back.

The back of the smartphone does catches a lot of smudges and dirt. The cameras are not the best in the segment and definitely there are some other smartphones that provide better results than the Nothing Phone 2a in the mid-range segment, the Mediatek Dimensity 7200 Pro provides good performance but is not so good when it comes to playing games as there is lot of frame drops noticed and minor stutters also.

The exclusion of a dedicated fast charger is also a big disappointment since other smartphones do come with fast charger inside the box. There are two things that Nothing Phone 2a clearly stands from the crowd is the design and the cleaner software experience and if you are someone who prioritizes a clean and feature rich experience, then the Nothing Phone 2a is a perfect consideration.

But considering all other specifications, you will get much better options in this segment when it comes to performance, cameras, and other things but still the Nothing Phone 2a is a good fit for people whoi want an affordable Nothing smartphone with the best software experience and a unique design.

OnePlus Nord 4 Review: Can this metalic masterpiece with its specifications stand out in the huge crowd in the market?

2024-12-11T19:51:00.001+05:30

Will the OnePlus Nord 4 make a status for the brand out there?

The OnePlus Nord series is one of the brand's most popular smartphones because it combines some of the best features from the OnePlus flagship series with the OnePlus Nord CE series. It strikes the right balance between the OnePlus flagship series and the OnePlus Nord CE series. Combined with that, the pricing for the Nord series has always been aggressive.

With each Nord series, we have seen prices soaring, which may or may not appeal to all, but definitely with each generation, there have been some upgrades and downgrades. Last year, the OnePlus Nord 3 (Review) was a well-put-together offering in the Nord series as it brought some excellent specifications for the price, and now the OnePlus Nord 4 brings a few upgrades.

Recently, the premium mid-range segment has gained much momentum, with smartphones from different brands launching each month, so the OnePlus Nord 4 will have to make a statement by settling itself. The biggest highlight of the smartphone is the metal unibody design. So, does the OnePlus Nord 4 provide the right balance of everything, and is it worth buying?

Let's find out in the full review.

OnePlus Nord 4 Design:

The OnePlus Nord 4 is unique and striking in terms of design. Its complete metal body recalls older Pixel smartphones, and it is available in three different colour variants: Obsidian Midnight, Mercurial Silver, and Oasis Green. All three variants have the same metal body build, but the design is slightly different on each.

The back is completely flat, and even around the edges, the sides are slightly less curved than those of the OnePlus Nord 3. All three variants have a dual-tone finish. The top half has a shiny glass finish that is reflective and houses the dual cameras horizontally, along with dual LED flashlights placed horizontally, whereas the lower half has a smooth matte finish that provides a solid grip while holding the phone.

If you consider Mercurial Silver, the lower half has a striped texture on its lower half which is not seen on the other two variants. Both the Obsidian Midnight and the Oasis Green variants have a similar design with no such patterns in the lower half. The OnePlus Nord 4 also brings a slight upgrade with the IP65 rating over the IP54 rating on the OnePlus Nord 3 ,thus making it dust and water-resistant.

The OnePlus Nord 4 is slightly heavier at 199 grams compared to 193 grams of weight on the OnePlus Nord 3 since the former has a slightly larger battery. Around the sides, the smartphone has a thickness of 8mm which houses the aluminium frame that houses the power button with a set of volume buttons on the right side whereas the left side houses the OnePlus signature alert slider with three different modes to switch - Mute, Vibrate, and Ring.

At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone, and a dual SIM card slot that houses two SIM cards. There is no additional slot for microSD card storage expansion and also no 3.5mm headphone jack is present. On the top, there is a secondary speaker output, a secondary noise-cancelling microphone, and an IR Blaster to control various devices like air conditioners, televisions, etc.

On the front, there is a single punch hole in the display located at the top at the centre. The smartphone display has even smaller bezels compared to the OnePlus Nord 4 and in terms of protection, it is protected by Panda glass. Overall, the build and design is a good upgrade over the OnePlus Nord 3 and definitely impresses with its unibody metal design.

OnePlus Nord 4 Display:

The OnePlus Nord 4 has a larger 6.74-inch Full HD+(1240x2772 pixels) Fluid AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. This display size remains unchanged from its predecessor i.e. OnePlus Nord 3. This display is a 10-bit one so you get great colour reproduction and viewing angles. Just like the OnePlus Nord 3, this one also has support for a 120Hz refresh rate.

Talking about the refresh rate, it is an LTPS panel where you have three different settings to choose from - Auto Select, Standard, and High. There is also an additional option for app specific rate which when turned on lets you choose the refresh rate you can set for the application to refresh which is a good move. Turning on the Auto-Select mode usually refreshes the display at 90Hz for most of the applications.

Switching to the High mode does show a 120Hz refresh rate for fewer applications like during gaming, and mostly for all other applications but it does switch between different specific refresh rates depending on the content in the display. Setting the display to Standard mode restricts the display to refresh at 60Hz only which is good for extended battery life.

Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a 240Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses. In terms of display brightness, the display can reach a peak brightness of 2150nits which is a slight improvement over the OnePlus Nord 3 and the normal brightness hovers somewhere around 600-700nits which is good. Under High Brightness Mode, the display can reach a brightness of around 1500nits.

Under direct sunlight, the display has good visibility under sunlight. There is also an Extra Brightness Mode for enhanced brightness. In terms of colour reproduction on the display, there are three different settings to choose from - Vivid, Natural, and Pro which further consists of Cinematic and Brilliant where if you choose Vivid and Pro modes, then the display provides punchier colours and covers the DCI-P3 colour space.

On the other hand, the Natural mode provides close to natural colours with less saturation and covers the sRGB colour space. The display of the OnePlus Nord 4 has support for HDR on YouTube and there is support for Widevine L1 making it easier to stream HDR content on OTT platforms but currently Netflix does not have support for HDR. The display houses an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works faster and is accurate.

OnePlus Nord 4 Performance:

The OnePlus Nord 4 sports a powerful Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset which is also found on the similarly priced Realme GT 6T. Since the chipset is based on a 4nm process and coupled with an Adreno 732 GPU, it handles almost all tasks with ease without breaking a sweat. It is good to see a Qualcomm chipset on the OnePlus Nord series after a longer time as the OnePlus Nord 3 came with a Meditek Dimensity 9000 chipset.

In terms of all the lighter tasks like scrolling between webpages, streaming social media, etc. and all heavy tasks like playing games like COD Mobile, rendering videos, taking photos and videos, etc. everything ran smoothly. In games like BGMI, the OnePlus Nord 4 could easily achieve the combination of HDR graphics and Extreme frame rates thus ensuring smooth gameplay without much frame drops.

With the graphics set to Smooth and frame rates set to 90fps, the gameplay feels smoother as it almost maintains the 90fps mark and drops around 80fps which is very good. Even in games like Genshin Impact and COD Mobile at High graphics, the gameplay was smoother but very few frame drops were noticed as it could almost maintain 90fps gameplay.

In the CPU throttling test, the back of the smartphone could achieve a sustained performance of around 65-70 per cent which is not so good and there is some amount of thermal throttling noticed on the higher side. However, without the dedicated Performance Mode turned off, the sustained performance came around 75-80 per cent which is good with very minimal throttling noticed.

In benchmarks, the scores came out very good. In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation and 13 bands of 5G. The OnePlus Nord 3 is available in three different storage variants - 8GB RAM with 128GB storage which comes with UFS 3.1 storage speeds, 8GB RAM with 256GB storage and another 12GB RAM with 256GB storage both of which come with faster UFS 4.0 speeds. However, the RAM type on all variants is LPDDR5X.

OnePlus Nord 4 Software:

The OnePlus Nord 4 runs on the latest OxygenOS 14.1 based on Android 14 out of the box. The look and feel of the user interface is almost similar to the OxygenOS 13 but now there are a couple of AI-specific features which are newer additions to the software experience. You get a lot of customizations where you can change icon shape, size, and colour, and also you can set different styles for AOD on the lock screen.

Other than that, you get multiple wallpapers to choose from, different animations for fingerprint scanners are present, and also there are a lot of multi-tasking features like Smart Sidebar where you can store some applications and use them by selecting the application in the bar by pulling the bar from the sides, Split View enables you to use two applications simultaneously, and Flexible Windows allows you to open different applications in a small window and use any time.

The Smart Sidebar has the File Dock feature which works like a clipboard manager and lets you crop an image, text, or links and use them in different applications. Other than these, there are some of the AI-specific features and one of them includes the AI Eraser in the gallery application which when used can remove an object in an image and adjust the image automatically.

Then there is the Smart Cutout feature lets you choose an object in an image by long pressing on that object and it makes a small cutout that you can various applications, and there is the AI translator which transcribes the notes and video recordings. There is the Auto Pixelate 2.0 feature which blurs the sensitive information regarding contact details, credit card/debit card details, or payment information in a screenshot while sending to a secondary person.

In terms of network connectivity, AI is leveraged for switching between internet sources depending on signal strength or areas having lower networks. OxygenOS has been known for its bloatware-free software experience but this time around, OnePlus seems to have added a few bloatware in the form of third-party applications which is annoying but it can be uninstalled.

However, the presence of Hot Apps on RealmeUI and ColorOS is a huge disappointment as it throws in a lot of notifications and does unnecessary security scans while downloading an application from the Play Store. However, the biggest improvement is in terms of software updates as the OnePlus Nord 4 will receive another four years of AndroidOS updates and six years of security patches which makes it the best in the segment and next to Samsung.

OnePlus Nord 4 Cameras:

The OnePlus Nord 4 sports a slightly different camera setup which includes a dual camera setup having a 50MP f/1.8 Sony LYT600 sensor for the main camera that has support for OIS and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. There is no more dedicated macro camera now. On the front, there is a 16MP f/2.4 camera for selfies.

The images from the primary camera come out with sharper details that have a wider dynamic range and have saturated colours in the background without any kind of oversharpening, and also the noise is barely present in the background. The white balance is handled very well and contrast works well even in HDR images. There is the 50MP resolution mode which can be used for slightly better details.

However, the 50MP images do save in 12MP by default and the images do have a cropped frame compared to regular images shot using the Photo mode. At night, the Auto Night Mode gets triggered automatically so the primary camera does a great job in terms of details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with saturated colours. Even the noise is very low in the background.

If you compare the images with the ones taken on its predecessor i.e. OnePlus Nord 3, then definitely you can see the image processing is slightly improved due to the Qualcomm chipset on the OnePlus Nord 4. Without the Auto Night Mode, the images came out with sharper details and good dynamic range but there is a slightly larger amount of noise in the background.

However, the exposure is well handled even in the darkest scenarios and even highlights in shadows are well controlled. The ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details and the dynamic range is wide but around the edges, there is some amount of distortion noticed. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening but clearly, the noise is present on the higher side.

At night, the images from the ultrawide camera do a good job in terms of details but mostly they look softer and the dynamic range comes out to be decent. The colours look saturated but there is some amount of oversharpening taking place in the background. The noise is on the higher side and also distortion is clearly present around the edges.

There is no macro camera here but you can use the primary camera for some macro shots by zooming in a bit which results in sharper details and good dynamic range with less noise in the background. With the primary camera, you can use the 2x zoom for images with sharper details and great dynamic range with less noise in the background.

The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening. In terms of portraits, the primary camera does a good job in terms of details, which look sharper, and the dynamic range is good. The edge detection is perfect, and proper background blur is implemented. When it comes to selfies, the front camera does a good job in terms of details, but the dynamic range is average, with almost less noise in the background.

The skin tones look natural but there is a considerable amount of oversharpening in the background. Regarding portrait selfies, the edge detection is good, but the details look slightly softer and have a decent dynamic range with some noise in the background. The primary camera can record 4K videos at 60fps whereas the ultrawide and the front camera are restricted to 1080p at 30fps video recording.

The video footage from the primary camera at 4K comes out with sharper details and good dynamic range, but noise is slightly on the higher side since EIS does not work at that resolution. When you switch to 1080p at 60fps, the Ultra Staedy Mode kicks in, resulting in almost no noise in the videos. Other than that, the videos have good dynamic range, saturated colours with no oversharpening, and exposure is handled well.

The videos from the ultrawide camera have slightly softer details. The dynamic range is good, but there is a considerable amount of noise in the background. However, the colours look true to life, but some saturation could have been better. The videos from the front camera have a good dynamic range, natural-looking skin tones, and less noise in the background, as EIS works properly.

OnePlus Nord 4 Battery Life:

The OnePlus Nord 4 sports a 5500mAh battery which is a slight increase in battery capacity by another 500mAh over its predecessor i.e. OnePlus Nord 3. Since now you get the powerful Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset along with OxygenOS 14.1, you can expect better battery life. In terms of normal usage which includes streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, etc., the smartphone easily lasts for two days with some charge left.

With the display set to High and with heavy usage that includes playing games for longer hours, attending calls for longer durations, taking images and videos using the camera, etc. the smartphone easily lasted for a day and a half with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came out around 6.5-7 hours with normal usage and with heavy usage, it came around 4.5-5 hours which is a slight improvement over the OnePlus Nord 3.

In terms of charging speeds, the OnePlus Nord 4 supports a 100W SuperVOOC charger which is a slight upgrade in capacity over the 80W SuperVOOC charger with the OnePlus Nord 3. The 100W fast charger takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent within 40 minutes which is quite fast.

OnePlus Nord 4 Audio Quality:

The OnePlus Nord 4 sports a dual stereo speaker setup where the sound output is slightly louder in the bottom-firing speaker compared to the top speaker. The sound output has also been improved over the OnePlus Nord 3 and it does not feel distorted even at the loudest settings. There is the OHaptics which provides great haptic feedback and for enhanced sound output, there is the Dolby Atmos.

Verdict:

The OnePlus Nord 4 is a great offering from OnePlus in the premium mid-range segment as it brings a lot to the table despite the few shortcomings. Now talking about the strong aspects like a solid and unique metal body design, a great display along with dual stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, excellent performance and gaming capabilities, a solid battery life with faster charging, and a good set of cameras.

The software experience is good as you get a feature-rich experience with all AI features and the longevity of software updates has been improved here compared to the OnePlus Nord 3. There are a few areas where the OnePlus Nord 4 could have been improved. When it comes to the display, OnePlus has skipped an LTPO panel, and there is a lot of thermal throttling present which is a big concern.

The cameras are good but the ultrawide camera struggles when it comes to images in low light and even in videos, and the biggest disappointment is the presence of a few bloatware which harms the respect of OnePlus users out there. Though you get good gaming performance still does not match up to the standards of the gameplay as seen on the POCO F6 (Review) as it has the slightly powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.

So if you are someone who is looking for a smartphone with a solid build and design, a great display, good performance, a good set of cameras, and great battery life, then the OnePlus Nord 4 is a great option. When compared to the OnePlus Nord 3, there are very few upgrades like slightly better battery life, a better design, a better software lifecycle policy, and much better performance and gaming experience.

However, the software experience seems to be a letdown this time due to the presence of some bloatware and the main camera sensor is a slight downgrade compared to the OnePlus Nord 3. So if you do consider the above-mentioned upgrades, then definitely the OnePlus Nord 4 is worth the upgrade over the OnePlus Nord 3. But when you compare the competition out there, the OnePlus Nord 4 still proves to be a solid all-rounder in the premium mid-range segment with very few niggles.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Review: With fewer refinements and the presence of Galaxy AI makes it a sweet deal!!

2024-12-02T01:40:00.002+05:30

With a newer design and fewer upgrades, the foldable feels special!!

The Galaxy Z Fold series is the right innovation developed by Samsung. Ever since it came with the Galaxy Z Fold in 2019, the foldable has provided a solid form factor. You can use it folded and as a wider display like a tablet. Now, talking about the Galaxy Z Fold 5, launched last year, the foldable was a major success as it brought some outstanding specifications and had a huge amount of success in the market.

Now, its successor, the Galaxy Z Fold 6, has been launched. It brings some improvements over the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and is trying to set the benchmark for foldables. Other than that, Samsung is focused more on the AI-driven features present on the Galaxy Z Fold 6, which will be seen on upcoming and some of the Samsung smartphones out there.

So with the newer design, a slightly powerful chipset, and some other improvements, is the Galaxy Z Fold 6 a worthy upgrade over the Galaxy Z Fold 5 or is the Galaxy Z Fold 5 still a good option to consider since its price has been reduced now? Let's find out in the full review out there.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Design:

In terms of design, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 brings a slightly tweaked design and as soon as you look at the device, you can clearly see the difference where the edges are sharper and the whole surface is now flatter. Other than that, compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 5, the Galaxy Z Fold is slightly shorter, wider as well as thinner.

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is now thinner at 12.1mm when compared to the 13.4mm thickness on the Galaxy Z Fold 5 when folded but when unfolded, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is thinner at 5.6mm compared to the 6.1mm thickness on the Galaxy Z Fold 5. In terms of weight distribution, even the weight has been reduced on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 which weighs around 239 grams making it 18 grams lighter compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 5.

When folded, at the back, there is a pill-shaped capsule which houses the triple cameras and beside the capsule, there is an LED flashlight. Around the sides, just like its predecessor, there is an Armor Aluminum frame that houses the power button along with volume buttons, and a dual SIM card slot. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a single speaker, and a loudspeaker grille.

On the top, there are three microphones with a secondary noise-cancelling microphone. When unfolded, the crease on the display is almost not present and looks to be slightly improved compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 5. Even with each generation of the foldable, Samsung is also improving upon the hinge mechanism which we earlier saw with the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and it is no different here.

Also when folded, dust would not settle as Samsung has ensured there is no gap present. Another big upgrade with the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is now it gets IP4X certification compared to the IPX8 protection on the Galaxy Z Fold 5. So what it means is that now the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is both dust and water-resistant when compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 5 which was only water-resistant.

Now talking about the outer display, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 has a slightly larger 6.3-inches display compared to the 6.2-inches outer display on the Galaxy Z Fold 5 whereas the inner display remains unchanged at 7.6-inches which houses a hidden selfie camera. In terms of protection, both the front and the back are protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2.

Overall, the design is a good improvement over its predecessor and the premium build makes it feel sturdy.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Display:

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 sports a similar-sized inner display: 7.6 inches with a Full HD+ (1856x2160 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display, which has a slightly higher resolution than the Galaxy Z Fold 5's Full HD+ (1812x2176 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 also has a screen-to-body ratio of 10.5:9 compared to 10.8:9 on the Galaxy Z Fold 5.

Just like the inner display, the outer display is slightly larger at 6.3 inches and has a Full HD+ (968x2376 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 22.1:9. Both the inner and outer displays have an LTPO panel with support for a 120Hz refresh rate. The LTPO display's refresh rate can go as low as 1Hz and can stay at different refresh rates depending on the display's usage.

Just like the Galaxy Z Fold 5, the outer display of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 refreshes between 48Hz and 120Hz, and the inner display refreshes between 1Hz and 120Hz. Under the Motion Smoothness option in settings, there are two different options: Standard and Adaptive. Setting the display to Adaptive allows it to refresh based on the content on the display, whereas Standard provides a 60Hz refresh rate throughout the display.

Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a 240Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses. Even the bezels are very much thinner compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 5 in the inner display. In terms of brightness, the display of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 can reach a peak brightness of 2600nits which is a good improvement over the 1750nits of peak brightness on the Galaxy Z Fold 5.

With the High Brightness Mode turned on, the display of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 can reach around 1600nits of brightness and also the display has good visibility under direct sunlight. There is an Extra Brightness Mode which when enabled increases the brightness further by around 800nits. In terms of colour reproduction, there are two different settings to choose from - Vivid and Natural.

Choosing the Vivid mode provides punchier colors with deep blues and blacks whereas Natural mode provides realistic colors with an off-white tone. The Vivid mode covers the DCI-P3 gamut whereas the Natural mode covers the sRGB color space. There is also a temperature slider where you can set the white balance to a warmer or cooler tone.

The display has support for HDR on YouTube and also there is Widevine L1 which allows to stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Prime Video, Netflix, etc. Overall, the display on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 has minor upgrades over its predecessor which are great additions and the display is great for multi-media consumption.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Performance:

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 sports a powerful flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset also found on other premium flagships of 2024 which includes the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (Review). Just like the Galaxy Z Fold 5, here also Samsung has slightly overclocked the chipset where the primary Cortex-X4 core is clocked at 3.39GHz compared to the regular 3.3GHz on other Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 powered devices.

It is a similar iteration of the chipset also found on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. This chipset is based on a 4nm process and is coupled with a powerful Adreno 750 GPU that handles almost all the tasks thrown at it. Whether lighter tasks like scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, etc. and heavy tasks like playing games like BGMI, rendering videos, etc., the Galaxy Z Fold 6 feels faster in all the mentioned scenarios.

In BGMI, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 provided a smoother gameplay with the graphics set to HDR and frame rates set to Extreme. Similar results were obtained when the graphics were set to Smooth and the frame rates set to 90fps or Extreme. There were no frame drops noticed during the really great gameplay. Even other games like Call Of Duty Mobile and Genshin Impact run smoothly at the highest graphics settings without any issues.

After longer hours of gaming ie 3-4 hours, the back does feel a bit warmer but the slightly larger vapour cooling system does dissipate heat faster. In the CPU throttling test, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 could achieve a sustained performance of around 65-70 per cent with thermal throttling noted which is disappointing since the similar chipset on the Galaxy S24 Ultra does not throttle much and provides better sustained performance.

The benchmark scores come out really good whether it is Antutu v8 or Geekbench 6. In terms of network connectivity, you get support for carrier aggregation and almost support for all bands of 5G. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is available in three different variants - 12GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256/512/1TB storage variants with all of them having UFS 4.0 speeds.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Software:

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 runs on the latest OneUI 6.1.1 which is slightly different from the regular OneUI 6.1 on other Samsung smartphones and is based on Android 14 out of the box. Just like the OneUI on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, this one also provides a software-rich experience with some newer additions to the existing AI features which has been the biggest buzzword by Samsung named the Galaxy AI.

Talking about OneUI, there are a lot of customizations present where you can change icon shape, size, and colour and also there are a lot of themes, wallpapers, different AOD designs for the lock screen, etc. Now talking about the existing AI features like Circle To Search, Photomoji, AI Generative Wallpapers, Live Translate, etc. on the Galaxy S24 Ultra are there but there are newer additions on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 here.

Samsung has added extra features like automatic translation, and transcription, and also provides a summary of the voice that has been recorded whether in a voice recorder or some different applications like Google Meet or Teams. Along with Note Assist, there is the addition of PDF Overlay which now can translate the contents in PDF in whichever language you want and also provides a summary of it.

There is now enhanced transcription available in Samsung Notes where now you can summarize and transcribe together. For example, when you are listening to a lecture, you can open the Notes application and start the recording along with a summary which comes in handy. Now Live Translate supports Interpreter mode and lets you translate in whichever language is required.

Suppose two people are talking so one person can see the translation in the main display whereas the second person can see the translated text on the cover display which is a great move on the Galaxy Z Fold 6. There is also now a Composer integrated into the Samsung Keyboard which lets you set the tone of the things that are writing and sending.

For example, if you want to set a status on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram, the Composer composes the tone in a social media-like format or if you are sending an email, it will professionally compose the whole thing. It also works well if you want to send the text as a comment and set it to a comment-like tone. There is also the Google Gemini application integrated with the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

Now talking about the Circle to Search which lets you select a subject or object in an image or text by circling around had support for translating anything into one single language but now it lets you translate the content into three different languages at a time which is really great. Photo Assist has some newer additions like Sketch to Image as part of Galaxy AI features.

It lets you edit/draw anything in an image which gets added to the existing images or if you are drawing anything randomly on the display, it shows the different variations and transforms it to a colourful look by providing different options like Watercolor, Illustration, Sketch, 3D Cartoon, and Pop Art which is just next level thing. You can select, move, resize or remove objects in the frame and also change the different angles of the object in the image.

On top of that, you can even fill the gaps around the edges. Portrait Studio lets you edit an image in four different portrait looks - Comic, 3D Cartoon, Watercolor, and Sketch which do come with various variations to choose from and these look very cool. On top of that, all other Samsung features like Samsung DeX and Samsung Pay are available which come in handy whenever required.

You get all the usual S-Pen features like Quick Memo, Screen-Off Memo, Air View, Smart Select, etc.

Talking about the bloatware, there are very few pre-installed applications present. In terms of software updates, just like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 will receive another seven years of software updates and also security patches which is impeccable and segment-best in the smartphone industry.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Cameras:

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 sports a similar camera setup ie the camera setup from the Galaxy Z Fold 5 which includes the 50MP f/1.8 Samsung GN3 sensor for the primary camera that supports OIS, a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 10MP f / 2.4 telephoto camera which supports OIS and provides 3x optical zoom. The outer display has a 10MP f/2.4 front camera whereas the inner display has a smaller 4MP camera.

The images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a good dynamic range with almost less noise present in the background. The contrast is good and the white balance is handled very well. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening though. There is also a dedicated 50MP mode that lets you capture more detailed images providing good dynamic range.

However, the images shot at 50MP are saved by 12MP by default but there is some portion of the images that do crop in a bit and the noise is slightly higher. The colour looks saturated though. At night, the images come out with sharper details, have good dynamic range, and also the colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening. All these results are captured with the Auto Night Mode which is triggered automatically.

Even the images taken without the Auto Night Mode come out with good dynamic range and sharper details but the noise is slightly on the higher side. The contrast is on the slightly higher side auto white balance works very well. However, with the Auto Night Mode, the details in the shadows are more evident and even the exposure is very well handled by the camera with/without the Auto Night Mode.

The 12MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper, have a good dynamic range, and colours that look saturated but there is a considerable amount of oversharpening present in the background. Since the ultrawide camera lacks autofocus, the details do look a tad softer when compared to the results from the primary camera but there is clear distortion seen around the edges of the images.

At night, the ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and have a good dynamic range with slightly higher noise in the background. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening and all these results are captured by using the dedicated Night Mode but without the Night Mode, the details do look slightly softer and the dynamic range comes out average.

The noise is also on the higher side slightly but the exposure is well handled in both scenarios. The 10MP telephoto camera does a solid job in terms of images which come out with sharper details and have excellent dynamic range. The noise is almost non-existent in the background and also the colors look saturated without any kind of oversharpening.

The contrast is good and also the auto-white balance works perfectly well. The telephoto camera does an exceptional job in terms of portraits. At night, the images from the telephoto camera come out with sharper details, good dynamic range, and good contrast, but the noise is slightly higher. Tcoloursors look saturated without any kind of oversharpening. These results are all captured using the dedicated Night Mode.

Without the Night Mode, some of the details look a little softer, but they are very hard to differentiate from the images shot using the Night Mode. In terms of portraits, both the primary camera and the telephoto camera can take portraits where the former can take portraits at 1x and 2x zoom levels whereas the latter takes portraits at 3x zoom levels.

The portraits from the primary camera have slightly better details and dynamic range, and even skin tones look perfect with no oversharpening in the background compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 5. The edge detection is perfect along with the background blur which can be adjusted also. The portraits from the telephoto camera come out with similar results as on the primary camera but they do offer slightly less noise in the background.

In terms of selfies, the selfie camera on the outer display does a good job in terms of details that look sharper, have a wider dynamic range, and skin tones that look saturated without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The noise is on the lower side which is good. The inner display front camera has fewer megapixels, so the images come out with a lot of noise, and poor dynamic range, and details look softer.

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 rear cameras can also be used for capturing selfies when completely unfolded and here the cover display acts as a viewfinder. The selfies from the primary camera come out with excellent details that look sharper and have a great dynamic range with less noise in the background. The ultrawide camera also takes selfies with good dynamic range but there is some softness in the details noticed.

However, the noise is barely present which is good. The selfies from the telephoto camera come out at 3x zoom levels that look sharper and have excellent dynamic range with proper natural-looking skin tones. The noise is barely present in the background. Regarding videos, all three rear cameras and the outer display camera can record 4K videos at 60fps whereas the inner display camera is only restricted to 1080p video recording at 60fps.

The primary camera also supports 8K video recording at 30fps. The videos taken from the primary camera come out with sharper details and good dynamic range. The colours look saturated, and since there is OIS present, there is no distortion in the videos. Also, the contrast is handled very well. The situation is similar during the night except for the few noises in the background.

The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with good dynamic range and have saturated colours in the background, but the details look slightly softer with some amount of noise in the background. The videos from the telephoto camera come with excellent details that look sharper and have a great dynamic range with almost less noise in the background.

The videos from the camera on the cover display provide sharper details, have a wider dynamic range, and skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening. The noise is slightly on the higher side though. The 1080p videos at 60fps from the inner display camera come out with average details but have a good dynamic range with a higher level of noise in the background.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Battery Life:

The battery part remains unchanged as the Galaxy Z Fold 6 houses the similarly sized 4400mAh battery as on its predecessor ie Galaxy Z Fold 5. But here now you have the newer chipset ie Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and OneUI 6.1.1, so definitely we expect a slightly better battery life here. With normal usage, the foldable can last for one and a half days and with heavy usage it can easily last one day with some charge left.

With normal usage, the standard screen-on time came around 6-6.5 hours and with heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came around 4.5-5 hours which is a slight improvement over the Galaxy Z Fold 5. Just like the battery capacity, even the charging speeds remain unchanged as the Galaxy Z Fold 6 just like its predecessor has support for 25W fast charging and 15W wireless charging speeds along with reverse wireless charging support.

This is a huge disappointment since many smartphones that are priced way cheaper than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 have support for 65/120W fast charging speeds and also provide much faster 50W wireless charging speeds. On top of that, Samsung does not provide any kind of charger inside the box so there are two options to choose from - either buy some third-party charger that supports 25W fast charging or buy the Samsung proprietary 25W fast charger.

The Samsung proprietary 25W fast charger takes around 0 to 50 per cent within 30 minutes which is good but a complete charge from 0 to 100 per cent takes around 1 hour 30 minutes which is very time-consuming. In terms of battery life, there is a slight improvement but the exclusion of a charger inside the box and still the similar and slower charging speeds remain a concern as always.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 Audio Quality:

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 sports a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds equally good from both the top speaker as well as the bottom-firing speakers where you get a good level of bass and treble. Even the sound does not feel muffled at the highest volume settings. There is Dolby Atmos present for enhanced sound output.

Verdict:

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a perfect foldable that also defines what a premium flagship can do along with its foldable form factor. It enhances productivity further with the newer set of features which we discussed in the software section and the presence of AI takes it to the next level. Many things hold strong points for the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

It brings a slightly improved and solid build and design with the slightly larger cover display and also even it is lighter compared to its previous generations, the 120Hz LTPO AMOLED displays along with the stereo speakers are great for multimedia consumption, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 provides solid performance in regular activities and as well as in gaming, and the software experience is just amazing.

Talking about the software experience, with each generation of the Fold we see the addition of newer features but this time everything is seen to be AI-driven which makes things work smoother and on top of that the software update cycle policy remains the best as of now in the smartphone industry. In terms of cameras, nothing is much changed from its predecessor as you get a good experience both in terms of images and videos.

The battery life is good with a slight improvement. However, there are still some areas where things remain the same from the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and have not been addressed. The charging speeds at 25W for a smartphone that is priced way too high and the absence of a charger inside the box does not make sense as it lets it down and still, you have to rely on buying a separate charger.

Even though the camera experience is good, there are still some areas of improvement needed especially when it comes to ultrawide camera output. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 provides great performance and gaming experience, but the chipset tends to throttle a lot, which needs to be addressed. The inner display camera needs to have a higher megapixel count, also.

Another slight disappointment is that the inner crease is still visible when seen from afar. Now compared with its predecessor i.e. the Galaxy Z Fold 5, you are getting a slightly tweaked design, additional IP4X protection, a slightly larger cover display, slightly improved brightness levels and thinner bezels around the display, better performance and gaming, extra Galaxy AI features as part of the software which also be slowly be seen on the Galaxy Z Fold 5 soon.

The camera experience remains unchanged and so are the charging speeds also. So if you do consider these upgrades, then the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a good upgrade over its predecessor since the latter is also cheaper now in the market. Overall, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 serves the end user well very with its foldable form factor and the software features based on AI just elevate the experience to a whole next level.

Realme GT 6T Review: The performance oriented mid-range smartphone that impresses in almost all aspects!!

2024-11-22T23:48:00.001+05:30

An emerging smartphone that prioritizes performance first!!

Ever since Realme came to the market, it has been known for its mid-range and budget segment smartphones, which had a great deal of success in the market. Then, later, came the GT series, which focused primarily on performance and gaming. The GT series brought in some of the best specifications that were flagship level, but later, Realme came up with the GT Neo series, which did well but could not live up to the standards.

Now this year, Realme has made a comeback with the GT series with the Realme GT 6 and the Realme GT 6T. The Realme GT 6T seems to be a solid option from the brand as it brings some very good specifications for the price which includes a curved AMOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset, a larger 5500mAh battery, etc. and is priced very competitively thus giving some serious competition to other brands.

So will the Realme GT 6T outshine its competition in the premium mid-range segment and is it a perfect all-rounder? Let's find out in the full review.

Realme GT 6T Design:

In terms of design, the Realme GT 6T is not a head turner for instance, as it brings a very basic design when you look at the back that has a dual tone finish with the top portion that is rectangular in shape a mirror-like finish and surrounds the triple cameras along with a dual LED flashlight. The lower half of the back has a polycarbonate finish with a metallic design.

The back of the smartphone does catch a lot of fingerprints. Around the sides, the smartphone is curved both at the front as well as the back. The Realme GT 6T is available in two different colours - Fluid Silver and Razor Green. The smartphone comes with an IP65 rating which makes it dust and water-resistant which seems to be a great addition. The smartphone weighs around 191 grams which is slightly heavier.

Around the sides, the smartphone has a polycarbonate frame that houses the volume buttons along with the power button whereas the left side of the smartphone is completely cleaner. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a dual SIM card slot, and a loudspeaker grille. There is neither a microSD card slot for storage expansion nor a 3.5mm headphone jack.

On the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone along with an IR Blaster for controlling various devices. There is also an outlet for the secondary speaker which along with the bottom loudspeaker provides a stereo sound output. On the front, there is a curved display with almost minimum bezels which makes it look premium.

The display of the smartphone has a punch-hole located at the centre on the top that houses the selfie camera. It is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 for protection which is really a great addition as this display protection is found on many flagship smartphones that are priced much higher than this smartphone. Overall, the look is good but when it comes to build, Realme has cut corners with a polycarbonate back.

Realme GT 6T Display:

The Realme GT 6T houses a larger 6.78-inch 1.5K (1264x2780 pixels) AMOLED display which has a screen-to-body ratio of around 20:9. This display is curved around the edges making it look premium. Since it is a 10-bit display, the viewing angles are great and colour reproduction is very good with deep blacks and blues. The display of the Realme GT 6T has an LTPO panel which refreshes at 120Hz.

Since it is an LTPO display, the refresh rate scales as low as 1Hz and goes up to 120Hz which is really great. Talking about the refresh rate, there are three different settings to choose from - High, Standard, and Auto Select. If you choose the Standard mode, the display refreshes at 60Hz only. Switching to High mode allows variable refresh rates of 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz.

With the display set to Auto-Select mode, the display goes as low as 1Hz while you are viewing the content on the homepage, scales up to 60Hz while watching a video, and scales as high as 120Hz while playing games like COD Mobile. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a 360Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses which can go as high as 2500Hz during gaming.

There is also a setting where you can set the application-specific refresh rate. For example, for COD Mobile, you can set the display to refresh at 30Hz or 60Hz manually. The display of the smartphone has 2160Hz PWM dimming which lowers the brightness to as low as 70 nits of brightness while viewing the display in the dark which is definitely good for human eyes.

The display of the Realme GT 6T can reach a peak brightness of 6000nits which in itself is a huge number as claimed by the brand but it is seen that only a few amount of pixels in the display exhibit this level of brightness. Under High Brightness Mode, the display can reach a brightness of around 1600nits, which is good. Also, the display is well visible under direct sunlight.

The display of the Realme GT 6T has three different colour settings to choose from—Vivid, Natural, and Pro modes, which include Cinematic and Brilliant. The Pro mode provides a colour temperature slider, where you can set the display to a warmer or cooler tone. Setting the display to Vivid and Pro modes provides punchier colours, covering the DCI-P3 gamut space, whereas Natural mode provides closer to realistic colours, covering the sRGB colour space.

There is a feature called AI Eye Comfort that automatically enables eye protection while watching any content on the display by preventing the blue light filter from being activated. The smartphone's display has an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works accurately and is faster. The display supports HDR on YouTube, and since Widevine L1 exists, you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms.

Netflix supports Dolby Vision, which provides great colour reproduction while viewing content on the display. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption.

Realme GT 6T Performance:

The Realme GT 6T houses a powerful Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset which is based on an efficient 4nm process and has an octa-core configuration which includes 1x2.8 GHz Cortex-X4 core with 4x2.6 GHz Cortex-A720 cores and 3x1.9 GHz Cortex-A520 cores. This chipset is coupled with a powerful Adreno 732 GPU. This chipset is the successor to last year's powerful Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 chipset.

In terms of daily tasks whether it is heavy tasks like rendering videos, playing games, etc. and even lighter tasks like scrolling webpages, streaming social media, etc. the smartphone handles all of them easily without breaking a sweat. In heavy games like BGMI, and COD Mobile, the smartphone easily runs at the highest graphics settings and the gameplay is very smooth without any kind of frame drops.

In BGMI, the smartphone provided smoother gameplay at HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates without any frame drops and similar was the experience with Smooth graphics with Extreme frame rates. After 3-4 hours of gameplay, the back of the smartphone felt slightly warmer but since the back is made of polycarbonate it does not feel warmer.

Realme has equipped the smartphone with a larger vapour cooling system that helps dissipate heat faster. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could easily maintain a sustained performance of around 80-85 per cent with minor throttling present. However, at times there is some throttling on the higher side with the sustained performance going around 65-70 per cent.

The benchmark scores are the best in class whether it is both Antutuv8 or Geekbench 6. The scores are almost close to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered smartphones which is great. In terms of network connectivity, you get support for good carrier aggregation and there are around 9 bands of 5G.

The Realme GT 6T is available in four different variants - 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, 8GB RAM with 256GB storage, 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, and another 12GB RAM with 512GB storage where RAM is of LPDDR5X RAM but with 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, variant has UFS 3.1 speeds whereas all other variants have faster UFS 4.0 speeds.

Overall, performance and gaming are best in class in the premium mid-range segment.

Realme GT 6T Software:

The Realme GT 6T runs on the latest RealmeUI 5.0 which is based on Android 14. Like OxygenOS or ColourOS, RealmeUI is almost similar and the look and feel are similar. You get a lot of customizations where you can change icon shape and size, and accent colours, and you get multiple options to customize the Always-On display and also the fingerprint scanner animations.

Some other features include Smart Sidebar where you can store multiple applications in a bar which can be pulled when you swipe from the edge of the display on both sides, Split View enables you to use two applications simultaneously, App Cloner is present where you can create a clone of your application, etc. The Sidebar has a File Dock feature which enables you to save the file anywhere and use it.

Some of the AI features have also trickled down to this smartphone like AI Smart Removal where you can remove objects in an image and the background automatically gets adjusted based on the removed object, then there is another feature called AI Smart Loop and AI Screen Recognition where the former lets you select certain text or image and send to other applications.

Smart Sensing under Special Features provides two features - Air gestures and Double Tap to Scan where the former provides multiple gesture shortcuts to customize and use by hovering your hand over the display. The presence of bloatware is also very less except for some pre-installed applications. In terms of software support, the smartphone will receive another three years of AndroidOS updates and four years of security patches which is good.

Realme GT 6T Cameras:

The Realme GT 6T has a dual camera setup that includes a 50MP f/1.9 Sony LYT-600 sensor for the primary camera and another 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. It does lack a telephoto camera which the Motorola Edge 50 Pro has that is priced similarly to the Realme GT 6T. On the front, there is a 32MP f/2.5 Sony IMX615 sensor for the camera.

The images captured during daylight from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a good dynamic range. The colours look oversaturated with a slight amount of oversharpening in the background. The noise is very low in the background and the contrast is handled very well. But in some scenarios, there is a slight drop in contrast and sometimes white balance fluctuates.

There is a high resolution 50MP mode which saves 12.5MP images by default. These images have sharper details and provide good dynamic range with oversaturated colours but noise is on the slightly higher side. The HDR images from the primary camera come out with sharper details but colours look oversaturated with some oversharpening present.

The smartphone does not have a telephoto camera but you can use the main camera by applying a 2x digital zoom which results in images with sharper details, good dynamic range, and colours come out saturated but noise is slightly on the higher side. At night, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and good dynamic range, and exposure is also well handled.

The details in the shadows look good also. However, the 2x digital zoomed images do come out with softer details and the dynamic range comes out to be average with slightly higher noise in the background. The 8MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of images that come with sharper details but the details look a tad softer at times.

The contrast is slightly on the lower side and noise is slightly on the higher side. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening and the dynamic range is wide enough. The images from the ultrawide camera during the night come out with softer details, and noise is on the higher side, but colours look natural and the dynamic range comes out to be good.

In terms of portraits, the primary camera does a very good job as the dynamic range looks wider and the details look sharper. The edge detection is good and you get proper background blur which can be adjusted also. There is no dedicated macro camera here. In terms of selfies, the 32MP camera does a good job in terms of dynamic range and has sharper details but contrast is on the lower side.

The skin tones look good but look slightly undersaturated. In terms of videos, the primary camera can capture 4K videos at 60fps and the videos come out with sharper details, great dynamic range, colours look saturated, and the noise is much less in the background since there is OIS present. The ultrawide camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps only.

The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with softer details and the dynamic range looks average. There is a considerable amount of noise in the background but colours come out saturated almost close to that of the primary camera. The front camera can record 4K videos at 30fps which is great and the videos come out with sharper details, good dynamic range, and almost less noise in the background.

Realme GT 6T Battery Life:

The Realme GT 6T houses a larger 5500mAh battery which is good to see and combined with the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset which is based on an efficient 4nm process, you can expect good battery life. The battery life can easily last for two days with normal usage which includes casual gaming, streaming social media, browsing webpages, etc.

With heavy usage that includes playing games like COD Mobile for 3-4 hours, rendering benchmarks, clicking photos and videos using the camera, etc. the smartphone easily lasts for a day with some battery left. The standard screen-on time with normal usage came around 8-9 hours which is really good and with heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came around 5.5-6 hours.

In terms of charging, Realme has equipped the smartphone with a 120W SuperVOOC fast charger inside the box which takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent within 35-40 minutes and within 30 minutes it charges up to 93 per cent which is good.

Realme GT 6T Audio Quality:

The Realme GT 6T has a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately louder and clearer with proper bass and treble. The sound does not feel muffled even at the highest volume settings. The areas near the camera vibrate when the sound is played at the highest settings. There is Dolby Atmos present for enhanced sound output while watching movies, playing games or listening to music.

Verdict:

As an overall smartphone, the Realme GT 6T is a good all-rounder smartphone and tries its best to be the perfect smartphone. It brings all the necessary specifications like a good design, a great display along with stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, flagship-level performance and gaming, a good set of cameras, good software experience, and battery life is great combined with support for fast charging.

The biggest strength is its performance which is almost flagship level and the solid gaming experience. However, there are fewer areas where Realme GT 6T could have been improved. In terms of design, the smartphone comes with a polycarbonate back which does not feel premium like a glass back, the LTPO display does not work properly i.e. it does not go as low as 1Hz as it stays at 30Hz most of the time when used at idle.

Though the software experience is good and feature-rich, there is little bloatware present. The smartphone provides solid performance but there is thermal throttling often noticed. Other than these few shortcomings, the Realme GT 6T is a solid smartphone that provides the best performance and gaming experience along with a great multimedia experience with solid battery life thus sacrificing the cameras slightly.

So if you are someone who does not consider the camera as the top priority and can go along with the polycarbonate design, then considering all other specifications, the Realme GT 6T is a perfect smartphone worth considering and will definitely outshine the competition out there.

iQOO Neo 9 Pro vs OnePlus 12R: Will OnePlus settle for itself as always or will the iQOO take away the honours?

2024-10-11T17:30:00.001+05:30

Which is the best flagship killer in the budget flagship segment?

The budget flagship segment has been the territory for both OnePlus and iQOO for the past few years, as both these manufacturers launch their different smartphones catering to different price segments. Like each year, both smartphones have the 2023 flagship chipset, i.e., Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, in their respective offerings, which include the OnePlus 12R (Review) and the iQOO Neo 9 Pro (Review).

Though both smartphones run on a similar chipset, they have many differences. On the one hand, we have the iQOO Neo 9 Pro which comes with a striking design targeted towards the younger audience and along with it brings some very good flagship-level specifications at a lower price whereas on the other hand, there is the OnePlus 12R which seems to build the reputation of the brand thus offering a premium experience.

So can the iQOO Neo 9 Pro prove to be the best consideration in this value flagship space, owing to its lower price or will the OnePlus 12R take away the honours for being the best budget flagship out there? Let's find out the full comparison.

iQOO Neo 9 Pro vs OnePlus 12R Design:

When it comes to design, both smartphones sport a different design philosophy where the iQOO Neo 9 Pro sports a unique dual-tone finish on the back with one portion having white colour and the iQOO logo etched on it and the other portion having red colour thus making it look athletic if you consider the Fiery Red variant. The back has a vegan leather-like finish but still, it is made of polycarbonate.

There is no camera module on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro as you get dual cameras along with a LED flashlight. The back of the smartphone has an IP54 rating for protection. The OnePlus 12R, on the other hand, has a simple-looking design at the back with a shimmery glitter-like frosted finish that looks premium and provides a solid grip while holding in hands.

There is a larger circular camera module placed on the back that houses the triple cameras, Time of Flight sensor and an LED flashlight outside the camera module. The back of the smartphone has an IP64 rating and this back is made of glass as it is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5. On the sides, the OnePlus 12R is slightly thicker at 8.8mm compared to the 8.3mm thickness of the iQOO Neo 9 Pro.

In terms of weight distribution, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro is slightly lighter at 191 grams compared to 207grams weight on the OnePlus 12R. Around the sides, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro houses a polycarbonate frame compared to the premium aluminium frame on the OnePlus 12R. Both smartphones have volume buttons along with a power button on the right side whereas the left side of the iQOO Neo 9 Pro is completely cleaner.

The OnePlus 12R on the other hand, gets the alert slider on the left side. Both have a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a loudspeaker grille, and a dual SIM card slot at the bottom. Neither of the smartphones supports a microSD card for storage expansion nor a 3.5mm headphone jack. On top of that, both smartphones have a secondary noise-cancelling microphone and an IR Blaster to control various devices.

On the front, both smartphones have a punch-hole located at the top of the displays. In terms of protection, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro is protected by the Schott Xensation whereas the OnePlus 12R has Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 for protection which feels premium of the two. So overall when it comes to design, iQOO Neo 9 Pro looks good but the OnePlus 12R edges ahead with the premium glass design.

iQOO Neo 9 Pro vs OnePlus 12R Display:

Both smartphones have larger 6.78-inch 1.5K resolution AMOLED displays so you get deeper blues and blacks along with solid viewing angles. The OnePlus 12R houses a curved display compared to the iQOO Neo 9 Pro which has a flat display. Both of them have LTPO displays where the display scale is as low as 10Hz and can go as high as their respective refresh rates.

The iQOO Neo 9 Pro holds a slight edge with the 144Hz refresh rate compared to the 120Hz refresh rate on the OnePlus 12R but there is not much of a difference since the 144Hz on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro is restricted to a few games like Genshin Impact, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. Most of the time, the iQOO Neo 9 pro runs on a 120Hz refresh rate only but the OnePlus 12R provides the ability to set app-specific refresh rates.

There is one small difference between both displays is that the refresh rate on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro can go as low as 1Hz whereas the refresh rate goes as low as 10Hz only on the OnePlus 12R. Both smartphones provide faster touch sampling rates which is helpful during gaming. iQOO Neo 9 Pro even provides an instant 2000Hz touch sampling rate during gaming which is an added advantage.

In terms of display brightness, the display of both smartphones is brighter but the OnePlus 12R holds a clear edge as it provides a peak brightness of 4500nits compared to 3000nits of peak brightness on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. But do note that only a few pixels of the display of the OnePlus 12R exhibit 4500nits of brightness and it is only applicable while viewing the content in HDR.

As usual with the High Brightness Mode turned on, the display of the iQOO Neo 9 Pro can reach around 1400nits whereas the display of the OnePlus 12R can reach around 1600nits. Both these displays get different colour-tuning modes to choose from and you can set both the displays to a warmer or a cooler tone. Both smartphones have support for HDR on YouTube but the playback is slightly better on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro.

Both displays support HDR on YouTube and also have Widevine L1 which makes it easier to stream HDR content on OTT platforms. Currently, the OnePlus 12R supports Dolby Vision in Netflix which is not present on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro as of now. Both displays have an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works accurately and is faster.

So in terms of display, the OnePlus 12R holds an edge in terms of brightness levels, better protection, slightly better colour reproduction, and support for Dolby Vision, but the iQOO Neo 9 Pro provides faster touch responses during gaming.

iQOO Neo 9 Pro vs OnePlus 12R Performance:

Both these smartphones are equipped with last year's flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset so in terms of daily performance and gaming, both these smartphones handle all the tasks easily without breaking a sweat. All the games like BGMI, COD Mobile, Genshin Impact, etc. ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings on both smartphones.

In BGMI, both smartphones ran smoothly at Ultra HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates without breaking a sweat and there were no frame drops noticed in either of the smartphones during gaming. In Genshin Impact, the gameplay was much better on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro whereas the OnePlus 12R had few stutters during the gameplay.

iQOO Neo 9 Pro does come with a dedicated Supercomputing Q1 chip that provides additional gaming capabilities. Both smartphones have a dedicated gaming mode which has a lot of features in common but iQOO Neo 9 Pro goes a step above as it brings dedicated features like game frame interpolation, 4D vibration motor, etc.

After longer hours of gaming i.e. 3-4 hours, both smartphones played very well but there were few frame drops noticed on the OnePlus 12R whereas it was not the case with the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. Though both smartphones are equipped with a vapour chamber cooling system, the back of the OnePlus 12R becomes slightly warmer whereas iQOO Neo 9 Pro's back stays cooler.

In the CPU throttling test, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro could achieve a slightly better-sustained performance of around 85-90 per cent with very minimal throttling compared to the OnePlus 12R which could only maintain a sustained performance of around70-75 per cent and the thermal throttling is also on the higher side. When it comes to benchmarks, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro scores quite higher compared to the OnePlus 12R.

In terms of network connectivity, both smartphones have support for good carrier aggregation but the OnePlus 12R has 15 bands of 5G compared to 11 bands of 5G on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. Both smartphones are available in two different variants - 8/12GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256/512GB storage. The 8GB RAM and 128GB storage variant on both smartphones have UFS 3.1 speeds.

But the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage variant on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro has faster UFS 4.0 storage speeds compared to the similar variant on the OnePlus 12R which has UFS 3.1 storage speeds. So when it comes to daily performance, both smartphones are equally good but when it comes to gaming, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro is much better and also in a few multi-tasking scenarios, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro feels faster.

iQOO Neo 9 Pro vs OnePlus 12R Software:

When it comes to software, both smartphones run on the latest Android 14 out of the box and come with their respective custom skins i.e. OxygenOS 14 on the OnePlus 12R and FunTouchOS 14 on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. Both these user interfaces have a lot of features and come with a host of customizations where you can change icon shape, size, and colour.

Other than that you get different styles for Always-On display, lock screen wallpapers, fingerprint scanner animations, etc. Other than that, both of these user interfaces get a lot of features like app cloner, Smart Sidebar, etc. The FunTouchOS 14 comes with a lot of bloatware in the form of many third-party applications which can be uninstalled whereas OxygenOS 14 does not have any bloatware.

In terms of software updates, both smartphones will receive another three years of AndroidOS updates and four years of security patches. So regarding software experience, OxygenOS clearly holds the edge over FunTouchOS.

iQOO Neo 9 Pro vs OnePlus 12R Cameras:

The iQOO Neo 9 Pro sports a dual camera setup that includes a 50MP f/1.9 Sony IMX920 sensor for the primary camera and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera whereas the OnePlus 12R sports a triple camera setup that includes a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX890 sensor for the primary camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera. On the front, both smartphones have 16MP f/2.4 selfie cameras.

In terms of images taken during daylight, both smartphones do a good job in terms of details which look sharper and have good dynamic range. but the iQOO Neo 9 Pro holds a slight edge in terms of dynamic range and also the colours look saturated and balanced compared to the OnePlus 12R. The noise is also lesser on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro compared to the OnePlus 12R.

The iQOO Neo 9 Pro also captures slightly better details in HDR and has better contrast over the OnePlus 12R. It does not mean that the OnePlus 12R is far as it does provide sharper details and good dynamic range but there is some inconsistency in colour reproduction as it does yield warmer tones compared to the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. The OnePlus 12R suffers from oversharpening slightly.

At night, both smartphones take very good images, but the details look more sharper on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro and the dynamic range is slightly better compared to the OnePlus 12R. On the other hand, since the OnePlus 12R has a slightly wider f/1.8 aperture compared to the f/1.9 aperture on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro, it does capture more light and makes the background look brighter compared to the iQOO Neo 9 Pro.

When it comes to the images taken with the dedicated Night Mode turned on, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro comes with a brighter background but does oversaturate the colours and applies some oversharpening. The OnePlus 12R, on the other hand, maintains a good consistency in terms of colours and has a good dynamic range with less noise in the background. But the details in shadows are much better on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro of the two.

When it comes to the ultrawide camera on both smartphones, the OnePlus 12R does provide sharper details and a slightly better dynamic range of two but the iQOO Neo 9 Pro has less noise in the background and provides saturated colours compared to the natural colours on the OnePlus 12R. At night, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro holds the clear edge with better dynamic range, saturated colours, and lesser noise in the background.

The images taken at 2x zoom using the primary camera on both smartphones come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range but the colours look saturated and there is less oversharpening on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro compared to the OnePlus 12R. The OnePlus 12R comes with a 2MP macro camera which is just average as the details look softer, the dynamic range is average, and colours loo muted.

In terms of portraits, both smartphones take really good portraits with sharper details and proper edge detection. The iQOO Neo 9 Pro can take portraits at 1x and 2x modes whereas the OnePlus 12R is restricted only at 1x mode. The portraits on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro have a slightly better dynamic range and the background blur level and subject cutout from the background are better than the OnePlus 12R.

When it comes to selfies, both smartphones have identical 16MP f/2.4 cameras on the front which take selfies with good dynamic range and the details look more sharper on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro but colours look oversaturated whereas the OnePlus 12R maintain a natural look. The iQOO Neo 9 Pro has very little noise in the selfies compared to the ones on the OnePlus 12R.

The selfies taken on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro are slightly more cropped compared to the ones on the OnePlus 12R. When it comes to selfie portraits, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro provides slightly better dynamic range and the bokeh effect is better implemented than the ones on the OnePlus 12R. On the other hand, the OnePlus 12R selfies and selfie portraits do suffer from some oversharpening in the background.

In terms of videos, both smartphones can record 4K videos at 60fps whereas the iQOO Neo 9 Pro goes one step above by providing 8K video recording at 30fps. The videos on both smartphones come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range, and the noise is also less. The iQOO Neo 9 Pro has better stabilization and there is not much oversharpening as on the OnePlus 12R.

The colours look saturated in videos on both smartphones but iQOO Neo 9 Pro maintains a better consistency in terms of white balance and contrast compared to the OnePlus 12R. In terms of videos from the ultrawide camera, both smartphones are restricted to 1080p video recording at 30fps, but the video footage on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro has more sharper details and slightly less noise compared to the OnePlus 12R.

On the front, both smartphones do not have support for 4K video recording as both smartphones can only record at 1080p at 30fps. The front camera videos on the OnePlus 12R have a wider frame whereas the iQOO Neo 9 Pro applies some cropping and even the stabilization is slightly better on the OnePlus 12R compared to the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. The colours are also better tuned on the OnePlus 12R of the two.

So whether it is images or videos, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro holds a slight edge over the OnePlus 12R, but the latter has better videos on the front camera.

iQOO Neo 9 Pro vs OnePlus 12R Battery Life:

The iQOO Neo 9 Pro sports a 5160mAh battery when compared to the slightly larger 5500mAh battery on the OnePlus 12R. Considering both chipsets run on the efficient 4nm process, you can expect good battery life but there is one big thing noticed here. With normal usage that includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, etc. both smartphones easily lasted for a day and a half with some charge left.

On the other hand, with heavy usage that includes playing heavy games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc., rendering videos, taking videos and images using the camera for longer hours, etc. both smartphones easily last for one single day with some charge left. Though the iQOO Neo 9 Pro has a smaller battery compared to the OnePlus 12R, it has slightly better screen-on-time figures.

With normal usage, the standard screen-on time on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro came around 8-8.5 hours compared to 7.5-8 hours screen-on time on the OnePlus 12R. With heavy usage, the standard screen-on time was equally good i.e. around 3.5-4 hours on both smartphones. In terms of charging, the iQOO neo 9 Pro is bundled with a 125W fast charger which gives it an advantage over the 100W fast charger bundled with the OnePlus 12R.

The iQOO neo 9 Pro takes around 20-25 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent which is slightly faster than the OnePlus 12R which takes around 35-40 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent completely. The charger on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro is a USB Type-C to Type-C, so you use this charger to charge laptops or other devices since it supports PD charging.

In battery life as well as fast charging, iQOO Neo 9 Pro goes a step above the OnePlus 12R.

iQOO Neo 9 Pro vs OnePlus 12R Audio Quality:

Both smartphones sport a dual stereo speaker setup where the OnePlus 12R has a secondary speaker outlet on the top along with the bottom-firing loudspeaker. On the other hand, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro uses the earpiece along with the bottom-firing speakers for a stereo sound output. Neither of them has a 3.5mm headphone jack but the OnePlus 12R has support for Dolby Atmos which the iQOO Neo 9 Pro misses out.

Even the sound output is much better and louder on the OnePlus 12R compared to the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. The iQOO Neo 9 Pro, on the other hand, provides slightly muffled sound output but still, it is not so far behind the OnePlus 12R.

Verdict:

Overall, it is a very close call between both smartphones as both of them fulfil almost all the requirements of a premium flagship at a lower price. Both smartphones have a good build and design, great displays along with stereo speakers for multimedia consumption, flagship-level performance and gaming, a good set of cameras, good battery life with faster charging, and a feature-rich software experience.

However, there are a lot of differences between both smartphones as each of them tries to excel in some or the other areas. When it comes to build and design, the OnePlus 12R holds a slight edge with its premium glass back compared to the polycarbonate vegan leather finished back of the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. On the other hand, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro feels lighter and easier to hold compared to the OnePlus 12R.

In terms of display, the OnePlus 12R holds the edge as it brings support for Dolby Vision in Netflix and has better brightness levels compared to the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. The former gets a curved display while the latter gets a flat display so it is a personal choice which one to choose. When it comes to performance, both smartphones feel faster due to the presence of the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

However, though both smartphones provide good performance, still the iQOO Neo 9 Pro is faster in most of the tasks and it provides better sustained performance of the two and also provides better gaming capabilities over the OnePlus 12R. When it comes to cameras, definitely the iQOO Neo 9 Pro holds the edge in terms of both videos and images.

In terms of software experience, the OxygenOS 14 on the OnePlus 12R provides a cleaner software experience over the FunTouchOS on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. iQOO Neo 9 Pro holds the clear edge in terms of battery life though having a smaller battery compared to the OnePlus 12R and also supports faster charging of the two. The OnePlus 12R edges ahead in terms of audio output over the iQOO Neo 9 Pro.

So to sum it up, if you are someone who values performance and gaming other than anything else, then the iQOO Neo 9 Pro is the clear pick of the two. It also brings a great set of cameras and great battery life, and the look and feel are good with that unique dual-tone vegan leather finish. All other specifications remain outstanding as iQOO has made very few compromises to price it aggressively.

The OnePlus 12R, on the other hand, provides a premium design with a glass back, has a slightly better display, provides a cleaner software experience over the FunTouchOS, and slightly better sound quality. It also gets a good set of cameras but still, it is not as good as the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. The major downside is the thermal throttling though sporting the same chipset as the iQOO neo 9 Pro.

On an overall basis, if you are someone who prefers premium design, a great display, cleaner software experience, then the OnePlus 12R is the better pick of the two but if you are someone who considers gaming as the top priority along with a great set of cameras and battery life without bothering about the build and cleaner software experience, then the iQOO Neo 9 Pro is the better pick and also it is cheaper of the two making it a value for money option.