OnePlus 11: Great battery life and display, with improved cameras for most users I reviewed the OnePlus 11R, which came out to be quite a performer in its price range, and it’s now time to check its bigger sibling, the OnePlus 11, which I have been using for three weeks now. Starting at a price point of Rs. 56,999 and going up to Rs. 61,999 (which is the one I used, too), let’s see what it brings to the table.
Design: The OnePlus 11 kind of reminds me of the Nord 2T – with its shimmery and premium-feeling back, the phone is quite heavy, weighing a little over 200grams. It sports a 6.7-inch 20.1:9 aspect ratio display with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus on top (Gorilla Glass 5 on the back). On the right side, you have the alert slider (yup, it’s back) as well as the Power/lock key; while the left side houses the volume buttons. All these buttons are tactile and require just enough pressure to register a tap. The bottom locates one set of loudspeaker, USB type C port, SIM card tray slot and the primary mic; while the top only has the secondary outlay for loudspeakers. Both the top and bottom are flat and glossy with a distinct look from the rest of the device. The phone really follows on the OnePlus design we have been seen for a while, feels nice in the hand and, expectedly, has quite large footprint.
Display: The device sports a 6.7-inch (3216x144) AMOLED (LTPO 3.0) display that support refresh rates of up to 120Hz. The display here is one of the stronger points of the devide. It’s bright, it’s sharp and it handles multimedia and text for reading pretty well. I would like to see it handle HDR content a bit better in terms of contrast and detailing around shadows, but otherwise, this is a really good screen that doesn’t disappoint in any major way.
Camera: The smartphone sports a triple camera system on the back – a 50MP (f/1.8) main camera, 48MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera and a 32MP (f/2.0) telephoto camera. The main camera has been tuned in partnership with Hasselblad for colours calibration, and it’s the lens I preferred the most on the phone to take day to day shots, which came out better tuned and less noisy compared to non Hasselblad shots. The HDR mode can also lift your shots at times in terms of highlights, though it can overdo things, too, that we have seen on OnePlus phones earlier. It also seems close-up shots have been improved in terms if details and sharpness in general, which is nice to see. The camera app, now closer to oppo’s camera app, is responsive and has many different options to choose from even if you don’t want to fiddle around too much. You can shoot videos in 8K at 24FPS, though 4K HDR at 30 or 60FPSshots are quite sufficiently good with OIS in place, if you want to try. On the front, there’s a 16MP camera that can take good enough and detailed shots for your social media needs with some improvements for shots taken in less-than-ideal lighting conditions indoors (helped by EIS in place) .
Performance and software experience: The OnePlus 11 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset (3.2Ghz octa core processor, Adreno 740 GPU, x70 5G modem) along with 16GB of Ram and 256GB UFS 4.0 storage (also comes in lower 8GB + 128GB configuration). It runs on OxygenOS 13.0 based on Android 13 with the March security patch installed. In terms of general day to day performance, the phone can handle it well enough. Even for handling graphic intensive games like Asphalt 9, the phone does a good job in keeping up with the game playback without dropping too many frames. Having said that, like previous OnePlus phones, I did notice frame rates dropped during scrolling in apps such as Instagram and YouTube; it happens such that there’s a noticeable delay in video playback and audio sync, or sometimes while simply scrolling within these apps and you would notice a bit of stuttering around. It’s not every single time, but it does happen every now and then, which is a little weird considering how high end the hardware in place is including the higher refresh rate display and RAM. On the other hand, apps close and open quickly, and so does switching between two apps without having to wait for an app to resume after switching to it a few minutes later.
Battery experience: Powered by a 5,000 mAh battery unit, the phone comes bundled with a 100watt SuperVooc charger. Maybe 90% of the days I used the device, it lasted me a aday and then some. Even with two SIM cards used, highest resolution and adaptive refresh rate selected, the phone lasted me a day. It charges from 1% to full in nearly 30 minutes, which is pretty fast, and importantly, the phone didn’t heat up alarmingly either.
Verdict: The OnePlus 11 seems to be a good performer when it comes to battery life and display quality, while giving improved camera shots most of the time. In terms of performance, it can be a little jittery at times, though that isn’t the majority. With a familiar software experience, the phone shouldn’t be a new path to take on for somebody who is using a OnePlus device. Having said that, it pretty much makes the OnePlus 11R an even better value for money, giving, in my opinion, about 80%-85% of total performance and experience (except for camera and maybe display), while charging a decent difference for that upgrade.
