We have been testing the OnePlus 12 since its introduction last week in India. So this is our in-depth review of OnePlus 12. Given that the design is quite similar to the OnePlus 11 from the previous year, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages as well as what has changed. It costs about Rs 64,999 in India and includes the top Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC processor for 2024. The device is the successor to last year’s OnePlus 11, but still lacks the IP68 certification; however, it does come with a wireless charging capability this time. Let’s discuss it further in the review of the OnePlus 12 below.
In This Article
OnePlus 12 Review: Design and Display
Many of the features from the previous generation are still present in OnePlus. Actually, the design has remained the same and has a striking resemblance to the OnePlus 11 (as said). Despite having a similar appearance, the design has been improved. A few design modifications have been made, particularly to the weight and thickness. The smartphone now has a larger battery capacity, which undoubtedly makes it heavier and thicker.
Looking at the design language, OnePlus has continued to use the previous generation’s style. Again, the camera device is circular. Within the module, the Hasselblad logo sits on a glossy marble finish module housing four camera lenses. We also observed some gorgeous glitter in it that gives the appearance of the brightness of the night stars. There are two colour options for the OnePlus 12: Silky Black and Flowy Emerald.
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For the review, we got the Flowy Emerald colour variant, which has a matte finish and a marble-like design that actually looks pretty fantastic. According to the company it is inspired by the magnificent sight of New Zealand’s braided Dart River, where emerald ribbons pulse with vivid energy. Flowy Emerald captures the essence of natural wonders and uses cutting-edge AG technology along with a precise etching process to give the phone’s glass back cover a premium texture with exquisite dynamism.
Take note that Corning Gorilla 5 protects the back panel.
Despite having a matte appearance, the back feels a little slick to the touch. Therefore, we advise you to put a silicon case on it to prevent accidental drops or slips from your hand. Using a back cover will safeguard the glass-made rear panel and provide you with a firm grip. And yes, the back cover is present inside the box, so need to purchase a new one, unless you want a different appearance.
The phone is undoubtedly heavier due to its larger battery and the usage of glass and metal materials. But despite this, you don’t feel like it’s a very heavy handset.
In addition, the edges have rounded corners and a curved finish. Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection has been added to the display. The bezels are kept to a minimum, which looks pretty good. In addition, it has a high-quality appearance and feel thanks to the metal frame and the soft curves on both sides. Our small hands could comfortably use the phone with one hand because it is not overly broad. The gadget is not waterproof, but it does have an IP65 classification for dust and splash resistance.
The alert slider is on the left side of the frame, and the power and volume buttons are on the right. It includes an IR blaster on top, a dual SIM card slot and a USB Type C port speaker unit at the bottom.
Let’s proceed to the display next. The main feature of the OnePlus 12 is its 6.82-inch quad-HD+ LTPO OLED screen, which boasts a resolution of 1,440 x 3,168 pixels. The variable refresh rate of the front panel spans from 1Hz to 120Hz. Furthermore supported is a screen brightness of 4,500 nits. Keep in mind that this OnePlus smartphone’s screen is the brightest we’ve ever seen.
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It provides incredibly smooth and lifelike images for an excellent viewing experience. Additionally, TÜV Rheinland certifies it for Intelligent Eye Care because of its capacity to efficiently decrease blue light output and intelligently modify the colour temperature in response to varying ambient conditions.
Because it is an LTPO panel, the display can automatically transition between a refresh rate of 1Hz to 120Hz while maintaining a relatively low power consumption, depending on user preferences and particular usage conditions. On the other hand, Dolby Vision is also supported, enhancing the visual experience overall with incredibly bright colours, sharp contrast, and showcasing well even the minutest details.
The touch response of the display functions perfectly. Sweaty hands and mishaps during both intense gameplay and regular use are greatly reduced thanks to the Aqua Touch’s ability to detect moist fingers and water droplets on the screen and adjust accordingly.
Dolby Atoms is supported by the dual speaker setup and dedicated spatial audio, which provides high-quality audio with less acoustic resonance even without headphones. We quite loved it.
OnePlus 12 Review: Performance and cameras
Qualcomm’s 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, one of the most potent chipsets for Android premium phones, powers the device underneath. The device supports up to 512GB of UFS 4 internal storage in addition to up to 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM.
The OnePlus 12 offers good performance in all areas, including gaming and daily use. With almost no lag or glitches, the OxygenOS optimisation made for an excellent experience.
The whole experience is powerful and quite positive even in terms of gaming. In terms of regular use, there is very little temperature rise and you also receive Vapor Chamber cooling. Thus, we would conclude that it is highly optimised for gaming.
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Because this phone has the most powerful chipset available, it can play high-end games very well. Playing games and multitasking on this device is quite effortless. Call of Duty Mobile, Asphalt 9, PUBG New State, BGMI, and other games all functioned flawlessly without any lags or frame dips.
Based on Android 14, OxygenOS 14 powers the OnePlus 12. The shelf has improved because you can configure the toggles and several currently available widgets; the previous shelf was not that large. You can change the backgrounds, style, support for AOD themes, colour, fingerprint animation, and edge lighting for notifications have been added.
Numerous additional developments are included, such as enhanced memory management, software, and performance optimisations.
The device walks in with five years of security patches and four years of Android upgrades, but with the most recent Galaxy S24 Series, Samsung is delivering seven years of software updates. Maybe OnePlus will also do that with the next version? Maybe.
What makes the OnePlus 12 a heavy lifter is its latest Trinity Engine that is a software-based feature, which is claimed to handle multitasking, offer smoother performance and also power efficiency. It does this by utilising six different technologies: CPU-Vitalization, ROM-Vitalization, RAM-Vitalization, HyperBoost, HyperRendering and HyperTouch.
Thus, the optimal performance is determined by the CPU Vitalization. It improves the device’s efficiency and smoothness. Then there is ROM vitalization, which is associated with storage usage and refers to providing you with optimal storage experiences through efficient storage utilisation. RAM vitalization works to speed up RAM access if an application requires more RAM than the engine can supply.
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And also the Hyper Boost, a crucial feature for gamers that gives you extra power to play with improved performance. For more realistic, immersive gaming, hyperrendering reduces latency and battery consumption while enhancing frame interpolation. Last but not least, the HyperTouch offers end-to-end touch control that guarantees accuracy or mis-touch protection for responsiveness and stability that win games.
Aside from this, there are no call dropouts and the call quality is generally decent. The fingerprint sensor is also working fine for us since the day we set up the device.
Now let’s talk about the cameras, the camera setup is quite similar to the OnePlus Open so let’s see how good the camera experience is on the flagship device. OnePlus 12’s standout feature is its triple rear camera setup powered by Hasselblad. It includes a Sony LYT-808 sensor with a 50-megapixel primary camera (OIS, and f/1.6 aperture), a 64-megapixel telephoto secondary lens (OIS, 3X optical zoom and f/2.6 aperture) and a 48-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens (114-degree field-of-view). The 32-megapixel front-facing camera (f/2.4 aperture) is provided for video calling and selfies. So that’s the camera aspect so let’s go straight into the camera samples to see how it performs.
Speaking of the daylight pictures, you can get excellent details and rich, beautiful colours there as well. The photographs have excellent overall quality and a very natural appearance. In actuality, the colours are rich in tones without being overly saturated, and the dynamic range is pleasant and broad. You can see that the details are good by zooming in.
The 48-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens produced remarkably similar images, and the colour reproduction was accurate once more. We would describe it as being roughly comparable to the main camera. The dynamic range appears mostly acceptable, and the sharpness levels are fairly good. It’s really useful to have an ultra-wide-angle camera.
With the ability to zoom 3x optically, the telephoto lenses can now capture a wealth of information. Additionally consistent are the colour and dynamic range. It performs well in this case as well in terms of sharpness levels.
Let’s move on to the close-up photographs, where you can see even more vibrant colours and excellent overall image quality. Also, the backdrop blur looks fantastic. Keep in mind that the telephoto lens, which handles the macro department, provides an abundance of details and has performed an excellent job with macros.
You will be able to take pictures in 1x, 2x, and 3x for portraits. The telephoto lens handles 3x, while the primary camera handles 1x and 2x. The skin tones appear rather realistic, the results are good, and there are no saturation problems. The telephoto lens has some edge detection issues, but overall quality is good and edge detection is acceptable at 1x and 2x zoom. In actuality, it is not that crisp, and in certain instances, the edges were not very good.
There are plenty of details under artificial indoor light, and the night mode provides decent details outdoors as well. It does not overexpose or over-brighten, but the details and dynamic range are excellent. In a dim light, we also observed a few lens flare incidents.
Regarding selfies, the 32-megapixel front-facing camera performs nicely; we particularly enjoyed the colour tones. The dynamic range is lovely, and the skin tones seem natural. The selfies don’t feature any beauty effects on the face, but the edge detection in the portrait selfies gives the images an unnatural appearance.
While testing, our review unit also received its first OTA update. After updating the OnePlus 12’s camera app got support for the ProXDR feature in the Google Photos app which wasn’t available before the software update landed. It is essentially a kind of display technology that uses atomization to brighten the dark areas in images.
There is also one major upgrade, which is now the OnePlus 12 has received – the Master Mode. It is basically a camera feature by Hasselblad for colour tuning. And trust us, this is the main USP of the device. If you prefer more candid shots, you will definitely adore this option. We simply can’t get enough of using this ability to snap photos. The outcomes were, in fact, remarkably close to what our eyes saw even in low light conditions. The Master Mode is visible just next to Video mode that was home to Pro mode earlier. Don’t fret the Pro mode is still there. Just tap on the Mater mode and you will see two options on the extreme left Auto and Pro.
The OnePlus 12 has good video quality when recording in 8K at 24 frames per second, although there are some noticeable issues with contrast and white balance. Additionally, the gadget can record in 4K at 60 frames per second, where the colour appears rather natural. The OIS + EIS combination stabilisation system performs wonderfully, and the overall video quality is excellent. The other video quality is also quite high; even when walking, the stabilisation is strong, and the colours and dynamic range also seem fantastic.
While the white balance appears slightly amiss in videos taken with telephoto lenses, overall we would say the telephoto lens performed well with OIS in terms of stabilisation. Films in 4K at 60 frames per second can also be captured by the ultrawide lens. You can take 4K 30 frames per second selfie videos with the front-facing camera.
The battery capacity is arguably among the best that we have seen in the flagship category or pricing range. The battery has a very long lifespan. You can easily obtain up to two days of battery life with casual to regular usage.
However, if you use the device heavily, the battery life may still last up to one and a half days, or perhaps just one day if you play a lot of games. These results are based on our testing, which involved utilising the camera, social media apps, browsing, and other apps while making a few calls.
The smartphone can be charged at 100W rapid speed in roughly 23 minutes. Additionally, it comes with built-in compatibility for 50W wireless charging which needs to be bought separately. And yes, unlike some smartphones, this one carried the charger within the box.
Verdict
In terms of build quality, the OnePlus 12 is a good gadget. Overall, the design is rather appealing and has a high-end feel about it. The display, an OLED LTPO panel with excellent colour reproduction, is incredibly vibrant and vivid. Dolby Vision and HDR10+ compatibility mean that this panel is jam-packed with the greatest features available. Furthermore, the HDR option allows for a brightness increase of up to 4,500 nits.
Everything has been handled by the Trinity Engine, including app opening times, response times, and memory management. From a software and performance standpoint, it’s a good device.
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Despite having an IP certification, the product is not waterproof. In this price range, IP68 certification is required, therefore OnePlus should have offered it, however, it’s missing.
The OnePlus 12 cameras perform incredibly well in daylight conditions, particularly in colour and dynamic range. Overall, the image processing is excellent. The telephoto and ultra wide-angle lenses perform nicely. The phone doesn’t overheat, however playing games for extended periods warms the phone, particularly the area surrounding the camera module.
In conclusion, the OnePlus 12 is a very good package, particularly considering its camera sensors. It might not have the finest photography performance available in this price range, but it won’t let you down in any way. We think OnePlus’s pricing is also really good. We wholeheartedly endorse the OnePlus 12 as a great all-around flagship device based on user experience.
OnePlus 12 pricing with configuration is listed below:
12GB RAM with 256GB storage: Rs 64,999
16GB RAM with 512GB storage: Rs 69,999
Pros
- Great design and Build quality
- Excellent displays
- Great software experience
- Decent gaming and camera experience
- Great battery life and solid charging speed
Cons
- IP68 rating should have been included
- Slightly thicker
