The OnePlus 12 Is a Slick Flagship Phone That’s Off the Beaten Path

OnePlus has made a name for itself thanks to its branding as a flagship killer, offering affordable flagship phones that often compare to the top end options like the Galaxy S24 and the iPhone 15 Pro Max. However, past OnePlus devices have always fallen a little short of the flagships that they claim to compare to, whether it's missing features or differences in how the hardware performs.

Over the past few weeks, I've spent an extreme amount of time putting its latest device, the OnePlus 12, to the test. As the newest flagship device in OnePlus' arsenal, it has a lot to live up to. Not only does it have to stand up against the other flagships releasing this year, but it also needs to deliver a better experience than OnePlus has delivered in the past, especially if it wants to be the long-lasting smartphone that OnePlus is marketing it to be.

This time around, OnePlus does everything it can to stand tall against the top mainstream options on the market, and it does so with flying colors. Here are my thoughts after a few weeks with the latest OnePlus flagship.

Design and display

Right off the bat, let's talk about one of the most divisive things in the smartphone market: design. Looking at it, it's almost impossible to tell that the OnePlus 12 isn't the OnePlus 11. Both devices share a similar design, including their screens with their curved edges and the massive camera bump on the back sporting a Hasselblad logo. That isn't a bad thing, though. The OnePlus 11 was a slick-looking phone, and the 12 continues that slick look—but it also comes with a textured casing on the back, which is great at helping repel smudges and fingerprints.

Speaking of screens, the display on the OnePlus 12 is absolutely gorgeous. Its adaptive refresh rate made playing games and watching videos super smooth, and all around it delivered great brightness indoors and outside in bright lights. It really is a display that feels right at home among other flagships on the market, and the built-in face and fingerprint recognition sensors in the display both work great, though the face recognition did run a little slow sometimes. All in all, the design is really clean, and while I'm not the biggest fan of curved edges on smartphones (something that has become a mainstay in Android phones over the past several years), I'm more than willing to put up with that minor dislike for a phone that delivers as much as the OnePlus 12 does.

OnePlus has also moved the alert slider from the right side to the left, which makes it a bit easier to manage. It's more akin to where you'd find the new Action Button on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and this is just something that feels good for a button like this, especially as someone who has spent a good few years in Apple's ecosystem.

The design of the OnePlus 12 also feels really dense, and because of the large camera bump, it definitely feels more top-heavy than some other phones. That weight still feels good in your hand, though, and while it isn't my favorite camera bump ever, I do really like how slick this phone looks in hand.

Specs

Which brings us to the next part of the conversation: specs. The OnePlus 12 is an absolute beast when it comes to specs, and while OnePlus has taken some compromises in the past (like the lack of wireless charging in the OnePlus 11) there are far fewer compromises here. You can expect a top-of-the-line camera system, a top-end processor, and even support for 50W wireless charging thanks to its AirVOOC wireless charging system.

As a side note, OnePlus did send over one of its 50W wireless chargers as well, and while I didn't have it for the entire time I was using the device, the tests I ran with it did deliver fantastic recharge times, bringing my battery up to 100% from 51% in less than 15 minutes.

As far as actual specs go, though, here's what you're looking at in the OnePlus 12:

• SoC: Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform

• RAM: 12GB/16GB LPDDR5X

• Storage: 256GB/512GB UFS 4.0

• OS: OxygenOS/Android 14

• Display: 6.82-inch 2K OLED with 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rate

• Battery: 5,400 mAh (Dual-cell 2,700 mAh, non-removable)

• Charging: 80W SuperVOOC (wired) and 50W AirVOOC (wireless) support

• Audio: Dolby Atmos Support

• Rear Camera: 50MP main, 48MP ultra-wide, 64MP 3x telephoto

• Front Camera: 32MP selfie

Performance

As you can see from the specs list above, you're looking at some really great flagship hardware here, and that pays off well in performance. Using the device in my day-to-day, I never experienced any kind of lag or drops in how slick the interface and device felt. Everything was easy to use, and the gestures never gave me any issues when I was moving between apps, multitasking, or even running multiple heavy apps like games.

I never noticed any significant hitches or frame drops when playing intensive games like Genshin Impact, which is notably rough on smartphones. Sure, it wasn't buttery smooth all the time, but that's to be expected in games that are as intensive as Genshin. That said, the Geekbench 6 benchmarks revealed some interesting numbers, with the device's CPU scoring 2246 in single-core and 6,836 in multicore when using High-Performance mode.

But what do these numbers actually mean? Well, the entire point of Geekbench 6 is to simulate the daily tasks of a smartphone and then measure how well it handles those tasks. It measures all of that by giving the device a score, which you can use to see how devices stack up against each other. The higher the number, the better the phone performs. Of course, benchmarks don't fully account for your day-to-day usage, and are just one way we can measure how well a phone performs.

The OnePlus 12's scores when the phone was not in High-Performance mode were much lower, sitting at 949 for single-core and 4994 for multi-core, but that mode was still more than enough for everyday use without a lot of gaming and high-intensity apps. The GPU scored 14,166 when in High-Performance mode, and overall, the benchmarks are on par with the iPhone 15 Pro Max, though a little lower. If performance is important to you, though, the OnePlus 12 won't disappoint.

One downfall to all the new and higher performing hardware phones use now is that it often generates more heat in the system. I've seen this in newer phones that have suffered from overheating, like the iPhone 15 Pro Max. However, OnePlus has introduced a new dual cryo-velocity cooling system that is absolutely fantastic. It essentially uses a vapor cooled chamber within the phone to help fend off excess heat, providing a cooler device even when you're putting it through the paces. The back of the device never felt overly warm during my usage, and when it comes to battery life, I was able to use the OnePlus 12 extensively throughout the day and still end the day with over 40% battery left. Mind you, using it more normally without the extra stress testing, I could easily get two days out of this device before I had to worry much about recharging it.

Camera

OnePlus has always made a big deal about its cameras, especially because of its Hasselblad partnership. The cameras here include a 50MP Sony sensor, a 48MP ultra-wide Sony sensor, and a 64MP OV64B telephoto camera.

All of the sensors in this 4th Gen Hasselblad system are designed to produce professional-grade portraits, and while testing it, I didn't see any big issues with the camera. It takes great-looking photos, though they are definitely less saturated than those taken by the iPhone 15 Pro Max. This isn't a bad thing, especially if you like more true-to-life coloring, but I can't help but prefer the look of the photos taken by other smartphones like the 15 Pro Max.

In low-light, performance is good enough, though I will say it doesn't take nearly as good of photos as the Pixel 8 Pro in low light, but Google's background AI systems could have something to do with that, too.

The mundane things

It's easy to get caught up in all the cool tech and features that smartphones offer these days, but what about the everyday tasks? Well, the OnePlus 12 delivers excellent quality when taking phone calls, and I didn't have any issues using it on both AT&T and Google Fi networks. The messaging system is exactly what you'd expect from an Android device in this day and age, and battery life was consistently great when I was testing it, so I think that's something that many will appreciate, especially at a flagship comparable price of $799.99.

Overall, I'm really happy with the OnePlus 12. It's probably the best phone that the company has released so far, and the nicest thing is, it doesn't rely on a lot of AI features to make it a worthwhile purchase.

You can pre-order the OnePlus 12 on OnePlus' site now. It starts at $799.99 for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage version, and $899.99 for 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage (although the company currently has it on sale for $799.99, as well).