A better Android phone, but not the best

OnePlus 13 review: Design

Looking at the OnePlus 13, I feel like I’ve written about this phone several times already. The design is similar OnePlus 11 and OnePlus 12except for some minor differences. The phone comes in three colors: Artic Dawn and Midnight Ocean, and it has a “vegetarian” leather back.And the Black Eclipse you see here. The large circular camera bump contrasts with the polished ‘glass grain’ design on the back side. The notch has a 50-megapixel primary camera, a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with up to 3x optical zoom, and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera.

The OnePlus 13 is a first for the brand truly Waterproof smartphone. It is IP69 rated, which means it is protected against standard immersion in water for up to half an hour and can withstand the pressure of water jets and water temperatures of up to 80°C. It’s good news for people with hot tubs. OnePlus claims that you can sterilize your OnePlus 13 in the dishwasher if the setting is not hot. Of course, I want to try that. But I didn’t do this review. (My friend, Jason Howell, I did the deed on YouTube. The phone still works for him, so.)

The edges on this generation’s OnePlus 13 are squarer than before. They are much clearer than those found on Apple devices iPhoneAnd Google Pixel 9, and soon, Samsung. But not OnePlus. It goes to the rhythm of its own square shape.

The OnePlus 13 comes with a 6.82-inch display with 2K resolution. The company is doing great with its results DisplayMateAnd in the world of pixels per inch, maximum brightness and color gamut, the OnePlus 13 does well. but I only mention this because He – she It was mentioned in for me surround. The average person wouldn’t be able to do that I can immediately tell the difference in color accuracy between this phone and the Pixel 9 Pro Super Actua, so this is good news for everyone.

I’m a fan of smaller devices with screens under 6.3 inches, so the larger size of the OnePlus 13 feels huge by comparison. The only thing that helps me keep it is… MagSafe compatible case Which OnePlus sells, which I can use with many PopSocket accessories. The larger phone gets you a 6,000mAh battery, which is what this phone is all about.

OnePlus 13 review: Battery life

The battery lasts a long time. Six days after turning off the charger, the percentage is still hovering around 22%. This is with Pokemon Go It’s constantly running in the background so I can log in to Community Day. I also watched several YouTube live shows to kill the battery and edited some videos to post memes in the future. I’ve been using Google Chat exclusively on this phone, letting it launch the OnePlus 13 when I receive a message.

I have yet to run the phone through Gizmodo’s full battery benchmark to see how the larger battery pack performs against the iPhone 16 Pro, the current champion on this site. I don’t think that will happen because Apple’s hardware is locked, although OnePlus’ performance has been promising. I will update this section when I finish it.

Like its predecessor, the big feature of the OnePlus 13 is that it supports 100W fast charging as long as you use the special red charging cable and charging module that allows for these speeds. OnePlus promises a full battery in 36 minutes this way compared to two hours for the iPhone 16 Pro. But that’s if you have all the right equipment; Other than that, the OnePlus 13 charges like everyone else. I reduced the phone’s charge to 13% before charging it with a 30W public charger. It only took an hour to replenish.

OnePlus 13 review: Software

I don’t like the style of OxygenOS 13, not since Oppo took over from OnePlus. OxygenOS used to look a lot like the Android platform, but now it feels like a hybrid of what it used to be and what ColorOS is now on Opp devices overseas, a version of Opp’s iOS placed on top of Android menu screens. The bones of Android are still present on the OnePlus 13, but you have to carefully move through the interface to avoid accidentally triggering something, like a split quick settings menu. This will split the Notification Center and Quick Settings into two parts, so you’ll have to force swipe down from the left or right to access either/or. I don’t like change, especially in gestures, so I stick with the classic mode: a drop-down menu for quick settings and another for everything else.

OnePlus offers some similar styles for iOS if you want to create your own wallpaper or change the look of the icons. You can also download icon packs from the Play Store for further customization. Although this is nice, it’s not a reason to buy this device. However, it sets the tone for what OnePlus is; It’s still a device that caters to a specific niche audience, and I can appreciate its versatility. However, I still miss the old OnePlus UI.

OnePlus 13 review: Camera

The OnePlus 13 is a great camera for people who don’t want to think about anything before posting online. I also like that there is a “beauty mode” built into the camera app; I don’t care who knows it. There’s a bit of angle movement in photos taken with the OnePlus 13, thanks to the 85-degree field of view of the primary camera. Colors are always rich, which bodes well for photos of landscapes and people during the golden hour. The Pixel 9 Pro’s algorithms are more flexible compared to trying to produce a somewhat natural-looking image.

I prefer the OnePlus 13’s vibrant photos, except when there are too many. And then I had to accept the fact that I’d rather have a smartphone produce an image that I can pass through a third-party filter to look the way I want rather than produce the image with the filter intact, making it difficult to edit after the fact. Sometimes, the OnePlus 13’s camera algorithms are too aggressive, and things look more saturated and yellow than they would in real life.

I was pleased with the maximum 3x optical zoom on the OnePlus 13, even though it advertises up to 6x in the camera app. I could see snow on the mountains about 150 miles away. There is a 120x digital zoom view if you have the phone on a tripod. I’m waiting for the next Samsung Galaxy Ultra to do the zoom test. This is where I’m curious to see the disparity.

OnePlus 13 review: Verdict

I haven’t mentioned much about the internals of the OnePlus 13 because, for most people, it’s about how it performs as an everyday device, not the numbers the benchmark suite shows. As you can imagine, this is a new phone from a brand that makes a new phone every year; The OnePlus 13 does my job, from cutting up Joost Klein videos with InShot to capturing Pokémon He goes-I plan to use it to run the game in the next month or so since it has extra memory. Works on the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite processor and offers up to 16GB of memory with a maximum of 512GB of storage, which is the variant sent by OnePlus. This is the first device to launch in the US using the Snapdragon Elite platform, but we’ll have more smartphones to compare it to as the year goes on. Feel free to give OnePlus kudos for being the first one out of the gate.

The OnePlus 13 deserves attention for people who are tired of Samsung and Google’s race to be Android number one. But it comes with caveats, the main one being that you’re not on Google’s schedule for software updates. This may become annoying as Google brings more Gemini features to Pixel and Samsung devices that work well. But maybe it’s also a selling point for you. For a starting price of $900, you can buy an Android phone that’s more about being a smartphone rather than pushing an AI-driven future. This phone wants to serve utility, which makes it a solid device, even if there’s nothing that keeps me going like other flagship phones do.