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The OnePlus 12 adds something extra in almost every department as compared to its predecessor, making it a Pro without the suffix read more
 "A true Pro in every sense")
Image Credit: Firstpost | Ameya Dalvi
Pros:
- Sturdy build, IP65 ingress protection
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC - as fast as they come
- Ample RAM and fast internal storage
- Excellent QHD+ AMOLED display
- Good camera performance across the board
- New telephoto camera is a great addition
- Impressive battery backup with fast and wireless charging
- Four years of OS updates, five years of security updates
Cons:
- Feels a little bulky and heavy in hand
- Ultra-wide camera is a bit underwhelming in low light
- Performance throttles under heavy load
Price: Rs 64,999 to Rs 69,999
Rating: 4.3/5
Six months ago, OnePlus launched its current flagship phone, the OnePlus 12. On the day of its first sale, we shared a little more than our initial impressions of the device. They were largely positive. But there’s only as much you get to know about a phone in a week, and the company is known for releasing multiple software updates soon after the launch to fix the initial bugs.
In order to factor that in and some more, we decided to take it for a long drive – well, a six months long drive – and observe its evolution along the way. At the end of this journey, it is time to tell you everything you need to know about the OnePlus 12, right from its hardware and camera performance to battery backup to what improved in the last six months and what stayed the same. We present the OnePlus 12 long-term review.
OnePlus 12 Design: OnePlus 11 design language with a bit more bulk
The OnePlus 12 continues with the OnePlus 11 design language, and there is no reason to complain. It looks a lot like the 11 with a curved display, slim bezels and a punch-hole at the top of the screen for the selfie camera. The screen protection has been upgraded from Corning Gorilla Glass Victus to Victus 2. The front camera has now moved from the left corner to the centre of the top edge, where I prefer. The back of the phone has a striking resemblance too, with a matte scratch-resistant glass and the circular camera island.
A keen eye will notice the increase in size of the camera cutouts as well as the island itself. On the topic of change in size, while the OnePlus 12 looks quite similar to the OnePlus 11 at a quick glance, it feels noticeably larger and heavier in hand. The 15-gram increase in weight can be given a pass considering the larger display and battery, wireless charging and a few extras that the company has packed into this device. However, the 0.7 mm extra thickness cannot be overlooked as it makes the phone feel a tad bulky.
OnePlus has also changed the button layout with the volume rocker and the alert slider swapping edges. Having used the OnePlus 11 extensively, I feel the button accessibility was a little better on that, but it’s a personal preference. The back panel of the Flowy Emerald variant of this phone that we got for review looks extremely elegant and reminds me of the Marble Odyssey edition of the OnePlus 11 but in a green shade. A green tinge extends to the glossy metallic rim, and the combination works well.
A SIM tray, speaker and a USB-C port can be found along the bottom edge. An IR-blaster has now been added on the top edge to use the phone as an IR remote control with certain older TVs and devices. The in-display fingerprint scanner is located a good inch and a half above the bottom edge, which makes it ergonomic, and it’s highly responsive. The phone gets an IP65 rating for ingress protection, making it splash-proof. All in all, despite the extra weight and thickness, the OnePlus 12 looks stylish and elegant, and the build quality feels premium.
OnePlus 12 Display: One of the best displays around
The OnePlus 12 retains the curved QHD+ display of the 11 but takes it a couple of notches higher. It is a bit larger now at 6.82 inches with a similar resolution of 3168 x 1440 pixels and a variable refresh rate ranging between 1Hz to 120Hz for a flicker-free experience and better power efficiency. Being an LTPO display, it automatically drops the refresh rate to as low as 1Hz for an always-on display or when looking at a still image, and takes it higher when it’s needed in things like scrolling or playing games.
The biggest change here is the peak brightness with a massive jump from 1300 nits on the OnePlus 11 to 4500 nits. It does feel a lot brighter and is great for consuming HDR content. Speaking of HDR, the 10-bit ProXDR display here is compliant with HDR10+ as well as Dolby Vision, just like the 11. Watching HDR videos from Netflix and Prime Video on the OnePlus 12 screen is a treat.
It’s not just about the brightness but the colour accuracy is quite good too. You get three screen colour modes - Natural, Vivid and Pro, along with elaborate colour temperature adjustments. Natural mode is the most colour-accurate and easy on the eyes too, but some may find it a little dull. In that case, you may switch to Vivid or Pro mode for slightly boosted but lively visuals. When using Vivid, use the Warm colour temperature option for best results. You get other display presets for different activities like reading or doing so in low light.
OnePlus 12 Performance: As fast as it gets at the moment, as always
No surprises here. OnePlus has opted for the latest and the most powerful Qualcomm SoC around, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. You get two variants of the OnePlus 12 in India, one with 12GB LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB internal storage, while the other offers 16GB RAM and 512GB storage (our review unit). Both variants have UFS 4.0 storage, unlike the base variant (128GB) of the OnePlus 11 that offered slower UFS 3.1 storage.
We ran a few synthetic benchmarks to gauge its performance, which has only gotten better with more updates since launch. In Geekbench 6, the OnePlus 12 scored 2158 and 6451 in the single-core and multi-core tests respectively. These are by far the highest scores I have observed in this benchmark. In comparison, the Google Pixel 8 Pro with the Tensor G3 managed 1661 and 4455 in the respective tests. The OnePlus 11 with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip could go as high as 1473 and 4353 respectively.
The PCMark Work 3.0 benchmark score was also significantly higher at 13380 with the Pixel 8 Pro and 11 scoring 11147 and 10877 respectively. To test the gaming capabilities, we ran the Wild Life and Wild Life Extreme tests from the 3DMark suite. Both OnePlus phones were too powerful for the Wild Life benchmark and maxed it out. In the Wild Life Extreme benchmark, the 12 scored 4920 with 29.46 average FPS, while the OnePlus 11 5G managed to score 3623 with 21.7 average FPS and the Pixel 8 Pro got to 2477 with 15 average FPS.
We also ran the Solar Bay benchmark for future reference with the OnePlus 12 scoring 8255 points with 31.39 average FPS. As you can see, there is a noticeable jump in performance, not just compared to its predecessor but also its rival in every benchmark. Needless to say, the OnePlus 12 managed to run every game we tried on it smoothly without a stutter at the highest setting. There was absolutely no lag in day to day operations either, no matter what we threw at it. However, we did observe noticeable throttling when under heavy load. It won’t hamper normal operations but may impact high-end games after an hour or so.
This phone has two speakers, one behind the earpiece and the other at the base of the phone. Collectively they produce a surprisingly loud and punchy sound output with good stereo separation. The phone is Bluetooth 5.4 compliant and has tri-band WiFi with support for a/b/g/n/ac/6/7 standards. The call quality and reception were perfectly fine during the course of our testing.
OnePlus 12 Battery performance: Solid battery backup with fast and wireless charging
The battery capacity has seen an increment from 5000 mAh on the 11 to 5400 mAh here. What’s more, the OnePlus 12 also supports wireless charging; a feature once reserved for OnePlus Pro models. It supports 50W fast wireless charging but you will need to purchase the requisite AirVOOC (wireless) charger separately. The company does bundle a 100W wired SuperVOOC charger, similar to the one provided with the OnePlus 11. Incidentally, the charging times are similar for both phones despite the extra battery capacity here.
To get the fastest charging time, one needs to enable Smart Rapid Charging from the Battery section under Settings which is off by default. Once enabled, you can charge the phone from 1% to 100% in under 27 minutes. Otherwise it takes 5 extra minutes, which is no big deal. I also tried using an older 65W OnePlus charger with this phone, and guess what! It took exactly 32 minutes to charge the OnePlus 12 with Smart Rapid Charging off. So if you have one around, it would make a great travel charger given that the bundled 100W brick is quite bulky and heavy.
Moving on to the battery life of the OnePlus 12, it easily lasts for a day and a half of moderate use, and at times even close to two full days on a lighter load without any gaming. Clearly the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip is as power efficient as it is powerful. Of course, long hours of gaming will drain the battery faster, but for normal use, it is above average for the segment. We couldn’t get our hands on an AirVOOC charger to gauge its wireless charging time.
OnePlus 12 Camera performance: Excellent variety and very good image quality
The OnePlus 11 had a good mix of cameras and the OnePlus 12 has upped the photography game further. One can safely say that the company has equipped the OnePlus 12 with the same rear cameras present on the more expensive OnePlus Open. This phone has a 50MP primary camera with OIS (optical image stabilisation) with a Sony LYT-808 sensor with a wider aperture and larger pixel size. The 48MP ultra-wide camera here is similar to that on the 11 with a Sony IMX581 sensor and autofocus and doubles up as a macro camera too.
The telephoto camera sees a significant upgrade in the form of a 64MP periscope telephoto camera with an OmniVision OV64B sensor and OIS that provides 3X optical zoom and 6X in-sensor zoom. It can also be used to click some high-quality portrait shots with a handful of Hasselblad tricks. Yes, like all recent OnePlus flagship phones, the 12 also is graced with Hasselblad’s colour tuning as well as their expertise in portrait photography. Lastly, the selfie camera finally sees a jump from 16MP to 32MP; it was stuck at 16MP for generations.
The primary camera clicks some excellent shots with impressive dynamic range. Colours look lively and are as close to natural and images exhibit very good detail. The main camera does a great job in low-light photography too capturing a good amount of detail with minimal noise. The colours are fairly accurate in low light too. When the light drops further, the Night Mode kicks in automatically.
The Night mode here is spot on as it makes things just a tad brighter to capture more detail in darker areas without making the image unnaturally bright. The low-light captures are highly impressive as you can see in the camera samples below. I cannot say the same about the ultra-wide camera though. While it does a serviceable job in low light, the images tend to look softer in comparison to the ones captured using the main camera and not as detailed.
In well-lit conditions, however, the colour reproduction as well as the dynamic range of the ultra-wide camera are comparable to that of the main camera, and the images have ample detail too. The edge distortion has also seen a significant improvement since the OnePlus 11. As I mentioned earlier, the ultra-wide camera has auto-focus and doubles up as a macro camera. When you get closer to a subject, the phone automatically switches to macro mode; something that can be disabled. The macro shots are decent but not the most colour-accurate or detailed.
A better option to handle close-range photography is to switch to the telephoto camera and zoom in on the subject from a distance for superior results. Speaking of which, the new telephoto camera is a great addition, and captures some excellent 3X zoomed shots. The 6X hybrid zoom does a surprisingly good job too. The captured images have ample detail and sharpness and it’s hard to tell there’s a bit of digital zoom involved unless you pixel peep, especially in well-lit settings. In low light, the quality drops a bit but is very much usable.
The telephoto camera can be used to capture some top-notch portrait shots. You get 1x, 2x and 3x zoom options that mimic Hasselblad cameras with XCD 30 mm, 65 mm and 90 mm lenses. The portrait shots on the OnePlus 12 are quite impressive with excellent foreground and background separation, especially with human subjects. It works reasonably well with other subjects like animals and flowers too. To sum it up, the rear cameras on the OnePlus Open do an impressive job and cover most key bases. The selfie camera is pretty decent too and has seen a noticeable improvement post a few software updates since launch.
Before I forget, the OnePlus 12 camera app has a Master Mode that gives you access to a lot of manual settings if you prefer more granular control over your photography. Moving on to videos, all the rear cameras on this phone can record videos in 4K resolution at 30 or 60 fps with support for HDR and Dolby Vision. You can now record 8K videos too at 24 fps. Super slo-mo Full HD videos can be captured at up to 480 fps. You get OIS and EIS support to compensate for shaky hands. Captured 4K footage looks sharp and stabilised but still not in the Apple or Samsung league. You can now record 4K videos at 30 fps using the front camera too.
Click here for unedited camera samples.
OS and user interface: Not unique, but fluid, customisable and fairly future-proof
The OnePlus 12 runs the latest Android 14 with OxygenOS 14. OxygenOS may never be back in its old glory; we have accepted the fact and moved on. It is pretty much ColorOS now with a couple of minor OnePlus extras thrown in like font and themes. Having said that, it is perfectly usable and fluid and remains free of ads or excess bloatware, which is great. The UI is smooth, lag-free and easy to comprehend even for a novice.
You get more than a handful of tweaks to customise it further, and it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it even if you haven’t used a OnePlus, Realme or Oppo smartphone before. Even better, the company has promised four major Android updates and five years of security updates from the date of launch for this phone. It may not be as high as Samsung or Google’s commitment of 7 years for their flagship phones, but one can live with four major Android updates.
One strange observation, the OnePlus 12 is still stuck on the May 2024 security patch at the time of writing when even the OnePlus 11 has received the July 2024 security update. Probably just an odd hiccup and the update should arrive sooner than later given the company’s impressive track record in this department.
Final words: Certainly a Pro!
The OnePlus 12 is priced at Rs 64,999 for the 256GB storage variant and Rs 69,999 for its 512GB variant, with a one-year warranty. Yes, the 256GB variant is Rs 3,000 more expensive than the launch price of the OnePlus 11 5G with similar capacity, but it does offer more than a handful of extras and upgrades to justify the difference. While we termed the OnePlus 11 as almost a Pro, the OnePlus 12 is certainly a Pro even without the suffix.
You get a phone with the most powerful SoC around, ample RAM and storage, an excellent QHD+ display, good battery backup with fast and wireless charging and last but not the least, versatile and competent rear cameras. Add to that a fluid UI with four years of OS and five years of security updates, keeping the phone relevant and secure for long. All things considered, the OnePlus 12 is an excellent flagship phone that ticks a lot of boxes.
As for alternatives, check this out!
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English (US) ·