OnePlus 12 5G review: A flagship in true sense

OnePlus 12 is now available at a starting price of Rs 64,999 in India, but is it really worth buying?

OnePlus 12 5G is launched in India at a starting price of Rs 64,999

OnePlus 12 5G was recently launched in India at a starting price of Rs 64,999. I got my hands on the new OnePlus flagship device and if you are planning to buy it anytime soon, keep reading for the detailed review.

In terms of design, the new OnePlus 12 looks a lot like the OnePlus 11 from a distance. The previous generation in my opinion got a lot of things right, and you don’t fix what is not broken. What I like about this smartphone is that it is unabashedly itself.

In an age when smartphones are getting slimmer and many design changes with every new addition, this smartphone is quite bulky. I reviewed the Flowy Emerald colour variant with matte finish at the back, which, in my opinion, kind of grows on you. It doesn't look like anything else in the market, so full marks for being iconoclastic and disrupting the space, but it seems a little bit too marble-y for me, perhaps not entirely my style.

OnePlus 12 houses a triple rear camera setup that is tuned by Hasselblad. It is pretty much a similar setup to what we've seen on their foldable, the OnePlus Open. However, in the front, the selfie camera is no longer a 16MP sensor, it is a 32MP camera. As for the camera quality, I did not encounter any unnecessary processing and it did a fairly decent job. With the Hasselblad partnership, the camera is genuinely yielding good results with good colours.

The triple rear camera setup includes a 50MP primary sensor, a 64MP telephoto camera with a 3x optical zoom and a 48MP ultra-wide camera. You can easily get a 6X zoom on this optical lens without cropping it. In terms of video, it performs well, but since it does not have the option of 0.5X which can be a little bit of a letdown for content creators who like to use the wide angle lens images.

When it comes to display, it features a 6.82-inch QHD+ LTPO display that offers a 120Hz refresh rate and ProXDR and Dolby Vision support. You can stream your favourite show or watch the content on this smartphone just fine. This device shines through in scenarios both indoors and outdoors. This is because it comes with a 4,500 nits of peak brightness which is also a highlight of this device. It comes with the same curved display at the edges which I personally like because all the other companies are copying iPhone, but OnePlus has an identity of its own.

Now, if you're selling smartphones in India in 2024 and you've adopted a no-nonsense approach to break the clutter, like I think OnePlus has, then you need to back this up with good software and good hardware.

OnePlus 12 comes with this new technology called Aqua Touch which is just IP65 in terms of water and dust resistance and that’s one level below IP68. But this Aqua Touch technology is mind-blowing. It will be interesting to test it in Mumbai monsoon.

With some of these innovations that we've seen on the OnePlus Open and now on the OnePlus 12, we can safely say that these are features which will make your life a lot easier on OxygenOS. I think the OnePlus 12 does a fairly decent job. It also comes with features like 3D Spatial Audio, support for Dolby Atmos and more that makes it flagship in its true sense.

One thing OxygenOS needs to do is ensure that the battery on this device is used efficiently and that it does a stellar job behind the scenes. OnePlus 12 comes with a massive 5,400 mAh battery, and it comes with 100W Super VOOC fast charging support and 50W wireless charging support. It can go from 0 to 100 in under 30 minutes. OnePlus will give you 5 years of software updates for this device, which is fairly decent.

In terms of pricing, the OnePlus 12 is priced at Rs 64,999 for the 12GB + 256GB model and the 16GB + 512GB storage variant will cost you Rs 69,999.

Verdict

As I mentioned before, with the OnePlus 12, the company has been unabashedly themselves. They haven't really settled, but they haven't introduced any Al features like the Samsung Galaxy S24 series either. However, if you do not have the budget to buy a high-end Galaxy S24 Ultra model or iPhone 15
Pro Max and still want flagship performance, then the OnePlus 12 is a good choice. It comes with stable performance, a decent camera and a good software experience.

Now, if you’re on an even tighter budget and still want a bang for your buck, there's the OnePlus 12R that is launched at a starting price of Rs 39,999. OnePlus 12 is a practical flagship that you can choose to buy in 2024, but with all the new Al features being launched in the market, the company might soon need to cover a lot of ground with upcoming software updates.