As a lifelong iOS user, I occasionally feel envious of the abundance of excellent smartphones available to Android users. For the OnePlus 11, the exact same is true.
The Chinese tech giant's newest flagship smartphone is a little iteration exercise. There aren't that many stunning new software features to experiment with or a fundamental makeover that will cause you to reevaluate cellphones in general. Instead, it offers what is perhaps the best-looking camera in the industry, fantastic performance courtesy of a brand-new chipset, and a premium feel altogether for a relatively subpar pricing.
The most opulent camera bump available
The OnePlus 11 is a large phone with a large battery and impressive-looking specifications on paper, just like last year's OnePlus 10 Pro. Additionally, it comes in green or black. The most significant specifications are as follows:
6.7-inch display with a variable framerate of 120Hz and a resolution of 3216x1440
16 or 8GB of RAM
256 or 128 GB of storage
chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
5 000 mAh of battery
48MP ultrawide and 32MP portrait lenses are attached to a 50MP main camera lens.
16MP front-facing camera
The phone's physical characteristics are first both fascinating and annoying.
Right off the bat, the phone’s physical traits are both scintillating and frustrating. OnePlus 11 is a really cool-looking phone, one that would certainly catch the eye of someone sitting across from you on public transit. Its distinctive circular camera bump (complete with the logo for Swedish camera brand Hasselblad) just looks sophisticated compared to other smartphones. It’s handsome, not just utilitarian.
Unfortunately, the phone’s backside doesn’t just offer a swanky looking camera. OnePlus’s back glass is simply too slippery, whether the phone is in the hand or laying on a flat surface. I have a tendency to lay my phone flat on a pillow next to me while I sleep sometimes, and that’s a bad idea with the OnePlus 11 because it’ll inevitably slip off and wind up lost in your bed somewhere.
That’s just one minor example, but in general, I didn’t find the OnePlus 11 as comfortable to hold as I would like. It’s a little too big for long-term one-handed use, and OnePlus didn’t fix the problem I had last year where the volume rocker and power button are on opposite sides of the phone. That’s OK with something small like an iPhone SE, but here, it just means having to pull up another hand to adjust volume.
Other odds and ends include an in-display fingerprint sensor that never wavered for me, and a similarly effective face unlocking mechanism. Aside from the relatively minor problems addressed above, the OnePlus 11 is an impressive device on the surface. It stays fairly impressive when you dig deeper, too.
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