(smooth music) - All right, now that
we're back down to Earth after all of that Vision Pro launch stuff, I've had a chance to go back and re-pick up some of the things that I was testing that got, like, interrupted by that week of chaos, and there is some really good stuff. The OPPO Find X7 Ultra design I really like more than I expected. The Zenbook Duo, the full screen, dual screen laptop for
2024, is kind of sick. And there's some other stuff
that is better than expected. But the one that stood out to
me maybe the most of them all is this guy right here, the OnePlus 12. This may have flown a
little bit under the radar, I mean, with everything
that's been going on, but it's gotten some
improvements from last year, and it is priced very competitively. Matter of fact, let's
just start with that. 799. And you also get a free
upgrade to the 16 gigs of RAM, half terabyte model for
that price if you pre-order. It's literally already marked
down to that on Amazon, so I'll have a link below. Flagship price, yes, but when it's competing
theoretically against some of the ultra phones, 1,000, 1,200, $1,300, then suddenly, it's
kind of in the category of, uh, dare I say, flagship killer? So look, it's nearly
the same on the outside. They found what they like and
they're keeping it consistent. Same shapes, same camera bump circle that kind of melts into the side with these neural details around it. It's still Gorilla Glass 5 on the back, and there's a new set
of colors and textures, but in general, you'd
be forgiven for thinking it's nearly the same as last year. Or maybe you wouldn't, but
don't let that fool you. Upfront, this screen
is I think the biggest noticeable physical
difference from last year. It gets way brighter, up
to 1,600 nits outdoors, and it's hitting crazy numbers now. 4,500 nits peak HDR brightness. Basically, it's super impressive and extremely readable
outdoors and in any light. But it also gets extremely dim too. Now, I don't like that it's
this curved over the edges, like, you can see the light fall off and the extra reflections
that come with that, but basically, from corner
to corner, this 6.8 inch, 1440p LTPO Pro XDR display is a real upgrade over last year. So then the rest of the
upgrades to this phone are definitely a case of a
bunch of little changes all, like, stacking up on top of each other to equal a large
difference from last year. Does that make sense? Like, that's what
smartphones are nowadays. I remember reviewing the OnePlus 1 and then the OnePlus 2 the next year, and just the gigantic total shift, big direction changes
between those two phones. Nowadays, it's just about, like, finding a bunch of clever little things and stacking a bunch of
little improvements on top of each other, just make the user
experience a little better. So obviously, if you're
gonna be a flagship killer, you gotta have the newest chip inside. So it does, it's the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Not that you'll notice a
whole ton of difference side by side with a
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phone, but this phone does have
much better cooling as well, so it's giving them some
headroom to play with slightly boosted clock speeds, and it's benchmarking right behind the gaming phones and the S24 Ultra. In real world use, that just
means this phone is super fast, really, really fluid, it's
a smooth phone all the time. Like, this is something OnePlus has done really well for a long time, even with high performance mode being off in the battery settings by default. But speaking of battery, this phone is definitely prioritizing battery, super long battery life, over, like, ultra high end performance numbers and getting every last
FPS out of the thing, and as a result, this is a battery champ. First of all, you just
start with a huge capacity. So it's got one of the
biggest batteries ever in a OnePlus flagship. It's now a 5,400 milliamp hour battery. That's bigger than a lot of other phones that are ultras now. And you better believe
they've kept their trademarked Super Fast Charging also. So, it's technically a split battery, it's dual 2,700 milliamp hours. and it can juice up at 80 watts wired. This combination of huge
battery, awesome battery life, prioritization of battery length, and ultra fast charging
honestly makes this at least a contender to
think about right now for battery champ of the year. Matter of fact, if you
just leave this phone and all of its out the box settings, meaning not in high performance mode, just regular performance mode by default, 1080p, which it is out the box, and then just auto frame rate, you can get two full light
days out of this phone. And then when you finally
do get down to near zero, you can charge up to half
battery in like 12 minutes. If you wanna go all the way full, that's only gonna take about half an hour. It's just so easy. And on top of all of that, there is up to 50 watt wireless charging. So if you've got a
compatible air booth charger, you obviously have to buy that separately, but the OnePlus 11 didn't
even have wireless charging at all, so this is a gigantic improvement. I almost wanna get greedy
and also wish that there was Qi2 support for wireless charging, but I don't know about you, but Qi2 has felt like it's off to a weird, rocky start,
especially this year. It's been surprisingly
uncommon for any phones to support Qi2 with the
magnets and wireless charging. This is likely because there seems to be a 15 watt charging limit with Qi2 for now, so if you wanna do fast wireless charging, you aren't doing Qi2. So yeah, no Qi2 wireless, no magnets, but very, very fast charging. Either way, way better display,
better chip, better battery, and also now the cameras
have gotten an upgrade. Now, I'm just gonna say, cameras have been a relatively weak point for OnePlus's highest end
phones for a while now. We've always wanted to
call them flagship killers, but people love cameras
in flagship phones, and it just hasn't quite been able to match that highest level. I'd say now it's on the
acceptable for a flagship level, but it's not quite beating those yet, and that's still true about this phone. Now, this main sensor, it is actually very slightly different. Instead of the OnePlus
Opens's Sony LYT-T808 sensor is the LYT-808 sensor. It's two more megapixels,
it's slightly wider aperture with the glass in front of it. Nevertheless, basically,
these OnePlus 12 photos aren't going to shock you. I've done some side by side comparisons. I've even said this before, it's pretty good most of the time. It's pretty sharp. It's a little contrastier
than the OnePlus Open. The HDR effect looks fine. It just falls apart a little too quickly as soon as there's adverse
conditions, especially low light. But here's the thing,
just for the context of that it's not that far behind,
we've already tested this, because we did the blind
smartphone camera test last year with 20 of the best smartphone
cameras in the world, and in that test was the OnePlus Open. So yeah, there's a lot
of software involved with these cameras, but basically, this extremely similar camera system, in the standard light photo, it had the third highest ELO
rating behind the two pixels. Then in portrait mode, it was also top 10. But in low light, it was
fifth from the bottom, right around the Sony and below the Razr. So in summary, yeah, the
camera system is new, it does have new hardware, it
has a new zoom and everything, but all together, it is just like a lot of the other stuff I'm showing you, a little bit better than last year. And that's gonna be good
enough for a lot of people. Actually, most people most of the time. But if we wanna consider
it flagship, it's just, there is a little bit of a
gap till it reaches the best. But I'll tell you what, they
even more keep stacking it up. There are so many little
things about using this OnePlus phone that I really like. Like, I love that I can
specifically force any app I want to be at whatever frame rate I want. Like, there's literally a
list of every single app on my phone, and by default,
you've probably noticed, all of the mapping apps,
like Waze and Google Maps, they always, even on every
other 120 hertz phone, they always override and run at 60 hertz. But on this phone, I can just fix it. Just give me all of the frames, please. I also love that this phone
has an infrared blaster. One of the least common
features in the world of a modern smartphone alongside,
like, a headphone jack. But yeah, it literally
lets you turn on and off and control appliances remotely without having to find the
remote, like this TV here, or a stranger's TV, I don't know. It's the little things. I love that this USB-C port
not only supports basically the fastest charging we've
ever seen on a phone in the US, but also supports extremely
fast data transfer speeds. This is a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port. The names and generations
are horrible at this point and incredibly confusing. All you really need to know
is that this has basically the best data speeds
available from a USB-C phone. So if you get the right cable, you can get large files, like videos, on and off of the device real quick. And then a lot of you will probably love that this new screen
supports high PWM dimming. If you've never heard of this before, it might not even matter to you, but there is a select
fraction of the population that is specifically
sensitive to the flickering that becomes visible
at super low brightness with a lot of these
smartphone OLED displays, to the point where,
like, it causes headaches and eye fatigue. So, some smartphones, including this one, are now addressing it with super high pulse-width modulation. Basically, they still flicker on and off to get that lower perceived brightness, but much, much faster than
the human eye can perceive, 2,160 hertz in this phone's case. So, it still appears liquid smooth at all brightness
levels, which is awesome. If you use your phone in
the rain or when it's wet, you probably already know
how chaotic that feels. Like, there's memes about it. Like, it just seems to
kind of act on its own when there's water droplets on the screen. But this phone claims that with a new technology called Aqua Touch, it will totally remain as usable as ever, even with water all over the screen. Now, you might have seen the ads for it. It might sound ridiculous,
but it actually works. It's not perfect, obviously,
but you can definitely feel that it's dramatically more responsive, to the point where I
can actually type things on this wet phone screen,
where I just would not wanna do that on any
other phone without this. Kind of feels like magic.
I am very impressed. And then there's even just
extra little tiny things on top of that, like 12
or 16 gigs of fast RAM. That's sick. Future-proof. Also, Dolby Atmos with
spatial audio support. Great. It also has great haptics. Like, all this tiny stuff adds up to be a great overall experience. But it's not perfect, right? Let's be real. No phone is perfect. But at least I can say about this phone that also the downsides are
also a couple small things. Like, I, for one, I've
already talked about this, but I'm kind of over the curved displays, so, this one keeping that,
it's not a deal breaker, like, you might even argue
it's a little more character to this phone in the
world of 2024 smartphones, but it definitely has its downsides. from the glare to the light fall off to the drop test durability. But okay, fine, they've gone curved. But then the fingerprint sensor underneath is also still a pretty
average optical sensor. Doesn't feel like it's
been upgraded in years. And then for having the new
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip inside, which a lot of other flagships do, this phone doesn't really have any of the AI features, like, at all, and this is something I
wanted to keep an eye on with all these phones coming out with this chip early in
this year, which is, okay, Qualcomm puts out a new chip,
small performance gains, small efficiency gains, but
also huge new AI capabilities, and this phone kind of
just skipped the AI part. Now, not that that's a disaster, but those were some
genuinely useful features. The only one I found on this
phone is in the photo editor, and it's called AI Palettes, but it's just like a color overlay. I don't even really think there's that much AI going on with this at all. So, none of that generative
fill, crop correction, none of that Magic Editor stuff, none of that auto live
transcription of phone calls or live translation of phone calls, none of that, like, speaker
labels in the voice app, none of the auto summaries in the browser or anything like that, just none of it. It's not on this phone. And then also, random bug. I don't know, but every time
I'm in the overlay browser and I reach up to my
favorite little alert slider on the OnePlus phone and change modes, it opens a search box,
like, to find in page. I don't know why, they
shouldn't be connected, but it does it every single time. But maybe the biggest legitimate
downside of this phone when you're comparing it
to the other flagships it's going up against is it's promised fewer years of software update support. Now, I've already gotten a
pretty major software update since I started testing this phone, big camera improvements and bug fixes, stuff like that, great, but they are only
promising, only promising, four years of software updates and five years of security updates. Now, that's fine, a lot of
people will only plan on keeping this phone for
three or four years, maybe five years before
moving on to the next one, but in the world of the
flagships, the Pixels, the Samsungs of the
world, even the iPhones giving you six or seven
years of software updates, this is just notably behind on that. And maybe OnePlus didn't
think it was worth the extra resources, it doesn't think people
care that much about it to actually spend money on
it to put the resources in, but yeah, four or five versus seven. So, is this a flagship killer? Well, that just depends on your definition of a flagship, doesn't it? I think this is probably
the most compelling thing about this phone, is going to be how competitively priced it is, because it's very similar
in a lot of ways to, let's call it S24 Ultra, right? But I've seen this phone,
the 16 gigs of RAM, half terabyte version,
for 899 on their site. But if you pre-order it,
you can get that for 799. But they're also advertising
it in a lot of places for 699, because they're apparently
just giving you 100 bucks for a trade-in of any
phone, in any condition. So, if you're going with 699 and this phone starts at 1,300 bucks, then yeah, that is a damn good deal. So yeah, I'd just be looking
at what's important to you. I would say if camera is
really important to you, or if long-term software support is actually super high on your list, or if any of those AI features
looked really compelling or really interesting
that you'd want them, then you'd probably end up going with one of those other flagships. But for everything else,
like, for performance, for a great screen,
for incredible battery, super fast charging, ultra smooth, like, this phone is better
than you probably think. Oh, and on top of all that, OnePlus also around the same time has
released this phone right here. It looks almost the same,
but this is the OnePlus 12R. And this is just a a
budgetedized, budgetized? A budget version even more
so than this phone already, just basically cutting a few corners. A few corners on the camera, right? It's a Snapdragon 8 Gen
2 instead of the Gen 3. There's no wireless
charging, things like that. It's IP64 instead of IP65, whatever. It's a slightly trimmed down version. Again, 500 bucks. I'm just saying. So, if these phones weren't
already on your radar, they probably should be. Thanks for watching, catch
you guys in the next one. Peace. (smooth music)
