OnePlus 13 – Review

It is now time to start the review for the OnePlus 13. I have been using the device for about two weeks, and during that time, I have formed some opinions, which I’m going to share in writing with you now. Overall, this is a fantastic device for 2025, and anyone who would be buying it will be suitably impressed. Before we get into any of that we need to give the OnePlus 13 a thorough going over.

Design

First of all, let’s have a look at the design.

If you prefer this in Video form then please check the Unboxing video i have done previously.

So starting at the very top, we have some cutouts for the speaker vent on the far left. We then have some pinhole microphone cutouts, and we also have an infrared blaster, which is really useful if you ever need to control something that works off infrared, such as a TV or air conditioner.

Moving around to the right-hand side, we have the volume rocker and the lock, unlock, and power keys, which are both the same keys. This can also be long-pressed to activate Gemini Assistant, which is pretty useful. You also have some antenna break lines on the left hand on the right-hand side.

Moving around to the base, this is where we will find some more pinhole mics and a loudspeaker output and in the middle, you have the USB type C 3.2 port that is capable of up to 100 watts. Power if used with a Supervooc 100-watt charger. In the US I believe this is limited to 80 watts on Supervooc. You will also find the SIM card Slot which has a waterproof ring on it hinting at the IP 68/69 rating that the OnePlus 13 is rated for. This sim tray is a dual sim so it is possible to have two working sim cards in the phone at one time if you want to.

Moving around to the left-hand side again we’ve got some more antenna brake lines and the all-important OnePlus toggle Alert Slider for vibrate mode, silent mode and all sound. This is a really nice button to have and it’s something that OnePlus used to be unique with. I believe Vivo now offer it as well, but still, it is great to see that it’s still here.

Up front, we have the display which is a 6.82-inch diagonal display with a resolution of 3168 x 1440 making it QHD. It has a PPI of 510 with an aspect ratio of 19.8:9. The display is capable of a peak brightness of 4500nits but is normal High Brightness Mode is 1600 when manually cranked up this is the total average measured across the panel in direct sunlight. We also have a dynamic Refresh rate of between 1-120Hz as this is a Pro XDR display with LTPO 4.1 technology on board. All of this is covered by a Ceramic Guard glass panel. It is a very good looking display and I have been very pleased with it.

Here around the back is where we find the camera module which consists of three different sensors All the sensors are rated at 50 megapixels sensors. You have a normal camera, a wide-angle camera and a telephoto camera. You also have a 2 tone flash and another microphone pinhole.

Underneath the camera is where you would be able to find the Qi charging coil (if you were to remove the back panel), which does not have MagSafe. If you wish to use Magsafe, you do need to use one of the optional OnePlus magnetic cases. I have been lucky enough to be able to use the OnePlus Sandstone Magnetic case, which does work very well. However, if you just want to use a non-magnetized Qi charger, you can use it without the case.

So that pretty much rounds up the design aspects of the phone.

One thing I will say, the Black Eclipse back panel is a nice-looking panel. I love the way that they’ve tried to recreate the look of black rosewood with the etching that they’ve done on the glass. If you go with the Artic Dawn one, I believe the panel is just a plain white panel. And if you were to go with the Midnight Ocean version, then you do get a vegan leather microfiber back panel instead of a glass back panel, which does provide a nicer feel without using a case. 

However, I would always recommend you use a case with these phones as all it takes is one drop to end up in some hot water!

Hardware

The OnePlus 13 has been designed for durability. What I mean by this is that the manufacturer has been able to increase the IP rating over its previous generation to IP 68/69. Now, while this may not mean very much to most users, myself included, It is reassuring to see that companies are actually thinking beyond the typical use case scenario.

A lot of reviewers who were able to attend. In-person events have stated that they were able to expose the phone to various tests such as high-pressure water jets, high-temperature water jets and even going as far as the phone being put inside a mini washing machine. Now, I have not done this with my review device and I have no intention of doing it with my review device.

But the phone does feel adequately solid in the hand and in my time using it, I have not sustained any damage or scuffs or marks. To the side rails of the phone. The rear of the phone. The only Mark I have managed to get is on the replacement screen protector which is there for that reason. Underneath the screen protector though, the screen is a hardened glass. I believe it uses Ceramic guard glass type, how does that relate to Corning Gorilla Glass ratings? I can’t be certain, however, that I have no concerns about any damage to this phone. As I’ve previously mentioned, I would always recommend using a case with the phone.

OnePlus does offer some very compelling options for cases. Looking more closely at the cases, I was given the Sandstone Magnetic Charging Case. This came with a strange piece of plastic in the box. Now it turns out that this piece of plastic is designed as a spacer insert because the OnePlus 13 in Black Eclipse or Arctic Dawn is ever so slightly thinner than the Midnight Ocean, So they made the cases slightly bigger to fit in the Midnight Ocean and have shipped a spacer. If you are using the Black Eclipse or Arctic Dawn

Performance

Regarding the OnePlus 13’s performance. It is very difficult for me to quantify performance on any smartphone, recently released i.e. within the last year and a half to two years. As I don’t really do tasks that explicitly would affect the performance of a phone, the most task-intensive or memory-intensive task that I would potentially do would be having Either a game running or potentially running two apps side by side. I no longer do video editing on my device.

But just to give you an idea of the performance, in terms of power that this phone actually has, I have performed a 3D Mark  Benchmark, And I will provide the comparative results of this against a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Platform Device. In this case, the OnePlus Pad 2 I reviewed recently. The results are as follows.

• OnePlus Pad 2 score  = 4576
• OnePlus 13  Score = 6717

That is almost a full 3rd better in that result alone. Now while this is a graphical test it does show a marked leap in performance.

In terms of signal strength, Please see the signal and reception. Details below. As for battery performance, I have found that the phone will easily get me through one day and most of the way through a second day. Now, this is even with a high-load app running. It uses GPS called Life360, which is an app that I can my family to keep track of us all so we know when each of us will be home  I have been very, very pleased with the battery life and I’ve had no reason to have any concerns. 

The phone will manage the application and battery usage fairly well without requiring any input from me. Unlike some of the other more Chinese style devices. I recently was able to test an Honor Magic V3 which continually tells me that apps were causing High battery drain in the background.  I haven’t had anything like this on the OnePlus 13.

Gaming

As for gameplay, on the OnePlus 13, this this not an out-and-out gaming device but it can easily be utilised for playing high-intensity games without any problems. This is thanks to the 120-hertz refresh rate on the screen plus the awesome performance offered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor.

As previously mentioned, I haven’t any high-intensity games that would specifically cause the phone to be challenged. However, during my fairly sedentary gameplay. I have noticed no performance slowdowns, dropped frame rates or anything of that kind. So if you are a gamer and you are looking to buy this phone then rest assured that from my experience and At least from what I’ve seen on other reviews. The OnePlus 13 will not present any challenge for any existing game on the Android ecosystem. If Android were ever to adopt the AAA format that we are now starting to see on iOS then potentially you could come up against some issues, but I find this highly unlikely.

Android games are developed primarily to run on mobile infrastructure and remember the Snapdragon 8. Elite chips are now also being utilised in laptops. That is capable of moderate to good gaming without too much strain and without the need for a dedicated GPU.

One of the areas where OnePlus has thought of Gamers though, is The aforementioned AirVOOC 50-watt Magnetic charger. This has been designed at least in my opinion to allow for you to have a means of recharging your phone and cooling it whilst gaming it does this very effectively via the fan.

However, even without the AirVOOC 50-watt Magnetic charger, I have not actually ever found a need for the phone to be externally cooled. Even with the case on the back as the cooling, is sufficient via the Liquid cooling chamber, that is built into the design. Which I have to say is an extensive one.

If you require more information about this, Then check out Jerryrigeverything’s YouTube channel which has unlike myself done, a complete teardown of the OnePlus 13. I would encourage you to have a look at his where he will go through this for you.

Signal and call quality

On the OnePlus 13, I have found that the call quality and signal strength I am able to achieve is much better than I have been able to get on other devices such as my Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Now, while I don’t have any scientific way of measuring this improvement that I have experienced from using the phone, I have found that in areas where I previously had weak signal strength and was unable to make calls, this is no longer an issue.
With the OnePlus 13, this is hardly a surprise as I have previously experienced this increase in signal strength quality on the Nord 4, which I reviewed in the previous summer.

I regularly have to drive a stretch of road almost every day where I can not receive or make a phone call or get any data reception at all on my Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

Whilst using the OnePlus 13, however, I have been able to see that I get a good enough signal for both voice calls and also for streaming media from the Internet, such as services like Spotify or Amazon Music. This is due in part to the new developments in antenna design that OnePlus premiered on the Nord 4 that was launched last summer.

Camera

One area that has been highly touted with the OnePlus 13 is the camera. Now as I mentioned previously, the camera is composed of three separate lenses each lens is supported by a 50-megapixel sensor and each lens is also capable of utilising the OnePlus and Hasselblad cooperation.

I have used OnePlus devices with this Hasselblad tie-in previously back in the days of the OnePlus 10. I found that it didn’t really make much difference. So going into this review, I had mixed thoughts about the camera. What I can say is in normal bright conditions, this camera is most certainly up there with one of the best cameras I have used to date with a caveat.

If you are the type of person who likes to zoom in to really capture details of items that are far away, then you may be somewhat disappointed. Although the zoom is capable of reaching up to 120 times in terms of zoom, after you go beyond 10 times zoom, you are very much in the realm of digital and AI enhanced zoom. This unfortunately does result in creating very messy and cartoon-like images. However, if you keep the zoom at a reasonable level, i.e. under 10 times, then you will have a good experience. I believe the camera will optically zoom up to six times and you will be told which lens you are using in terms of how that would relate to an actual proper DSLR camera lens.

Please take the time to look at the zoom samples as you will be able to see what I mean about the higher zoom levels and the characterization or cartoon-like effect that it provides

Another area where I was concerned about the camera quality was in low light. Now I have tried taking some low-light photos, both in complete darkness and where there is some partial illumination in complete darkness without the flash enabled. Even when using night mode, the camera struggles and you won’t get very good photos, however, most smartphone cameras would struggle in these conditions.

When you have some light around, that makes things a little bit better, especially if you use the night mode and you select the tripod setting. As long as you can keep the phone stable, then you will get some good results. I have included a couple of nighttime shots below for you to appraise and give your opinion on, as well as some daylight shots.

Some daylight shots

 

Finally some close-up product-style shots

In terms of the front-facing camera. You have a 32-megapixel front-facing camera which does exactly what it says on the tin and it will be more than adequate for your Instagram selfies and doing the occasional video conference call.

Again, I have included a few selfie examples and a brief video sample of a mocked conference call.

 

Talking about video, we need to return to the rear camera which is capable of capturing up to 4K at up to 60 frames per second. Technically you can record at 8K on the rear camera only. But I don’t see any need for anyone to be recording at such a high resolution and the file sizes will be astronomical.

If you are looking for a simple, easy-to-use camera, then the OnePlus 13 will tick that box. It will also tick the box. If you want to have a camera with some enhanced, I’ll call them filters, which is essentially what the Hasselblad software provides. However, if you are looking for a camera to out and out replace a DSLR then this is not going to be the phone for you. You would be better off looking at something with a one-inch sensor size, such as the Vivo x200 Pro or Vivo x100 Ultra.

Software

In terms of software, the OnePlus 13 is running Android 15 with an Oxygen OS skin on top in the Western markets. It is also available in Global and Chinese versions, but these versions do run the Color OS operating system, much like the phones from sister brand Oppo, OnePlus doesn’t really add too much in the way of bloat to their operating system.

There are a few extra apps here and there, and there is some app duplication in places such as the calendar, the files app, and also probably most relevant is the Photo’s app.
Now the addition of the Photo’s app is not something that bothers me that much because it does actually have a benefit above most normal gallery apps, at least as far as I know, of allowing you to access and save photos to your Google Photos account. This can be quite helpful, however, you do need to err on the side of caution if you use the burst mode for photography, as it will actually save all of those burst shots as individual photos in Google Photos, but in the Photo’s app, they will appear as a stack of photos, so something to be aware of there, but not a deal breaker.

Of course, this would not be a newly released smartphone if there was not an abundance of AI tooling added to the phone.

A couple of areas where AI has been added that I believe are beneficial is within the camera you have some AI editing tools of which I will talk about more in the camera.

One of them is a 4K Editor tool. This tool features AI Detail Boost, AI Eraser, AI Unblur and AI Reflection Eraser. These tools will allow you amongst other things enhance some old photos or zoomed-in photos. You can of course use the AI Eraser tool to get rid of unwanted objects from your shot. The AI Unblur kind of smooths everything out a bit and the AI Reflection Eraser tries to remove reflections from the shot where they may occur.

But another area where AI has been used I believe to great effect is the use of Intelligent Search. This is an optional tool that you can turn on that will allow you to, with a pull-down gesture on the home screen, perform a search not just of the phone’s apps, but also the files within the phone’s actual storage. It works alongside some of the latest Google Gemini Models 

I did find this useful when trying to find documents that I had downloaded and forgotten about, but other than that, because I’m just a bit old school, I didn’t actually use this feature massively.

In terms of actual UI and customization, there has been a lot of discussion about how iPhone-like the UI now looks, but I believe this is about the splitting of the notifications pane and also the quick settings pane, which you can actually turn off if you prefer to have both notifications and quick settings in the one drag down, which I have done. You can of course customize your Wallpapers, your lock screens and always on display. The always-on-display has neat little animations where it will tell you what your carbon footprint usage has been. It will also show you this in a pictorial representation by using a penguin on an iceberg that’s gradually melting. This is just one of the many options you can choose from.

There is one other element I do want to discuss and that is the implementation of the Open Canvas task switching from the OnePlus Open phone.

This makes having multiple apps open at the same time, a much more palatable experience. Rather than just having the standard split screen with two apps, one on top of the other, you can actually have a near as dammit full-size app open with just a peek at the app that is being split screened with and then by tapping that second app it will expand into a full-screen app, making task switching a lot more simple.

This does have the limitation of there only being one screen on the phone or a normal phone-style screen as opposed to a foldable, but it does make multitasking much more useful.

Overall, I am happy with the software implementation of Oxygen OS15 and I’m sure there is a lot more in terms of features that I have not discovered or utilized.

Conclusion

I could drone on about other bits and pieces on the OnePlus 13 for hours more but I feel that I would lose your interest as this has been quite long enough already (kudos for making it this far). However, I am not going to drag this out any more than is needed. Simply put although this is one of the 1st major brand launches of the year with the new Snapdragon Chipset onboard it is in my opinion one of the best phones currently available to the wider global market.  I would be very happy to continue to use this phone daily and if I wasn’t so hooked on foldable phones I would certainly being doing so.

While I fully expect the next phone series from Samsung to be up with the OnePlus 13 in terms of specs I also expect it to be way more expensive. To me, this is what the OnePlus phones are good at and that is making great phones that are flagships but are not flagship money. 

If you want to pick up a OnePlus 13 then you can do so now from their Store where they are also offering the 16GB RAM and 512GB Storage version for the same price as the 12GB RAM and 256 GB storage version. This price is £899, which is limited until the 5th of Feb. You can also get a free case or Watch 2R if you are quick.

Now OnePlus can we please have all of this glorious speed, battery and performance but in a Folding phone and soon…..