According to IDC data, China’s smartphone shipments have seen year-over-year growth for four consecutive quarters, signaling a new upgrade cycle. In October alone, there were over a dozen launch events. While you might remember a phone for its performance, price, camera, color, or design, the OnePlus 13 stands out—your hand will remember its feel. This is my first impression of the OnePlus 13.
A Delight to Hold and Behold
For the past two weeks, I’ve been using the white OnePlus 13 as my primary phone, mainly because it feels great in hand.
The tactile experience has been a hallmark of OnePlus since its inception over a decade ago, and it remains a strong point for the OnePlus 13. The white version features next-gen silk glass with a finely textured surface, offering a velvety feel that is both smooth and grippy, without attracting fingerprints. The slightly curved edges of the back and screen glass enhance the smooth feel and visually slim the frame.
The updated camera DECO design in the top left is simpler than previous generations, with a new periscope telephoto module that is very thin, significantly reducing the phone’s bulkiness.
Notably, the OnePlus 13 is well-balanced, feeling light despite its large size, which is quite rare. This leaves a good impression: slim, elegant, and the camera doesn’t dig into your hand.
Another positive impression comes from the display. The second-generation screen, developed with BOE, maintains high quality, supporting 2K resolution and a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. The new X2 luminescent material offers pure, transparent visuals with delicate colors, supporting HDR10+, HDR vivid, and Dolby Vision formats. With a peak brightness of 4500 nits, it remains clear and color-accurate even in bright light. The screen’s flicker and color settings are customizable, which is a big plus.
This time, the OnePlus 13 uses an under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, positioned well and responsive, even with wet hands, making it a joy to use. In terms of accessories, the OnePlus 13 supports magnetic ecosystem accessories, and with an optional magnetic protective case, it can be compatible. The case is well-designed, though it slightly detracts from the phone’s slim feel.
Overall, for today’s smartphones, ensuring a good tactile and visual experience is more important than just boosting benchmark scores. This is a real advantage, and OnePlus clearly understands this well.
Maxed-Out Performance With Room for More
Performance is the biggest highlight of the OnePlus 13. Before its release, OnePlus held a dedicated performance briefing. As one of the first flagship phones with the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate Edition, the OnePlus 13 offers up to 24GB RAM and 1TB ROM. The model I have features 16GB RAM and 512GB ROM, with GeekBench 6 multi-core scores around 10,000. Of course, the key is its real-world performance.
The OnePlus 13, equipped with the ColorOS 15 system, offers a very smooth experience with excellent task management. Even with twenty to thirty apps open simultaneously, the fluidity remains unaffected, and there are almost no instances of apps being closed in the background.
In terms of gaming, the performance of the OnePlus 13 takes it a step further.
For mainstream competitive games like “Honor of Kings” and “Peacekeeper Elite,” the OnePlus 13 can run at full frame rates with low power consumption, showing minimal performance fluctuations and negligible heat generation.
In more demanding games like “Genshin Impact” and “Honkai: Star Rail,” the OnePlus 13 also performs excellently, supporting 120 frames per second. While this showcases the performance limits, the key is power management at high graphics and frame rates. An hour of gaming consumes about 10% of the battery, which is impressive.
Recently, “Zenless Zone Zero” released a new version, and I took the opportunity to play for a while. Even in this high-intensity action game, the OnePlus 13’s performance remains stable, running at full frame rates with high graphics settings, smooth operation, clear visuals, and support for super-resolution.
The performance is outstanding, but the OnePlus 13 offers even more.
Last weekend, I took the OnePlus 13 to an amusement park, and its battery life and camera capabilities left a deep impression on me.
With the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate Edition’s excellent power management and a 6000mAh large battery, the OnePlus 13’s battery life is excellent, easily lasting a full day as a primary phone.
I spent the entire day at Disneyland from 9 AM to 9 PM, taking three to four hundred photos, playing games for an hour, and using WeChat and Xiaohongshu intensively throughout. Yet, I still made it home with battery to spare, which is impressive.
Additionally, the OnePlus 13 supports 100W wired fast charging and 50W wireless fast charging, making charging very convenient. It can charge to 50% in just fifteen minutes, providing peace of mind.
While the battery life was expected, the camera capabilities of the OnePlus 13 were a pleasant surprise.
The OnePlus 13 uses the Sony LYT-808 as the main camera, featuring a 50-megapixel, 1/1.4-inch CMOS sensor. The ultra-wide angle is a 50-megapixel Samsung JN5, and the 3x periscope telephoto is a 50-megapixel, 1/1.95-inch Sony IMX882. The overall hardware configuration is mainstream for 2024, with slight improvements over the previous generation. It offers fast capture speed and stable imaging, but the real highlights are in the software algorithm adjustments.
The OnePlus 13 and OPPO Find X8 series use the same algorithm, which is the ColorOS 15’s focus on atmospheric imaging. This is a very smart strategy—emphasizing aesthetics and experience over lens hardware improvements.
When I used the OPPO Find X7 Ultra, I enjoyed using the Master Mode, which allowed me to easily capture highly stylized photos, especially in colorful scenes. The high playability in the early stages significantly reduced the pressure of post-processing.
The OnePlus 13 introduces three new film-style filters that complement the Hasselblad Master Color, significantly expanding creative possibilities. The photos taken are perfect for sharing on social media, with a strong “Fujifilm vibe.” In an era where even Sony cameras need to include film simulation filters, having a simple and easy-to-use photography style built into the phone makes many things more convenient.
Notably, the AI image assistant on the OnePlus 13 is very user-friendly. Its AI features like ultra-clear, removal, de-blur, and anti-reflection work well, covering a wide range and achieving high success rates, saving many otherwise unusable photos.
The imaging system of the OnePlus 13 achieves a great balance in design, style, and quality. While it’s not a DSLR-level device, the photos look great without needing a large lens, making it both elegant and timeless.
One Device, All You Need
Since returning to OPPO in 2021, OnePlus has been continuously adjusting, and the release of the OnePlus 13 marks the brand finding its rhythm again. As Li Jie, President of OnePlus China, puts it, they aim to “steady the course.”
From its founding in 2013, to its return in 2021, and now completing a new layout adjustment in 2024, OnePlus has evolved from a niche brand to a mainstream one, growing from millions to tens of millions in scale.
In 2024, OnePlus released several phones. The OnePlus Ace 3, Ace 3 Pro, and Ace 3V entered the competitive market, finding their place in performance, battery life, and price segments. The OnePlus 13 is the brand’s final step into the high-end market. With this, OnePlus phones now cover a full price range from approximately $260 to $820, with the OnePlus 13 being the product that best represents the brand’s essence.
One device, all you need.
Two key words represent the OnePlus 13: performance and texture.
Performance is obvious—whether gaming is smooth, if it heats up, has a high refresh rate, or supports super resolution. The OnePlus 13 clearly excels in these areas, making it a top choice for those seeking performance.
However, those who ultimately choose to buy a OnePlus phone do so not just for performance, but often for its texture.
Texture is subtle; it’s elegant design, comfortable feel, a screen that’s easy on the eyes, anxiety-free battery life, and atmospheric imaging. All these hard-to-quantify details are the sufficient reasons for choosing a OnePlus phone.
In reviews of the OnePlus 13, the term “bucket phone” is often mentioned, meaning it has balanced features with no weaknesses. But I think the OnePlus 13 is more like a cup.
A cup doesn’t need to consider long or short sides; its experience is determined by the whole.
A handy and useful cup requires great effort in details—material choice, body design, insulation performance, grip comfort—all these are areas we don’t deeply perceive before using a cup, but these details create a good experience.
The same goes for OnePlus phones.
Source from ifanr
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