OnePlus 11 5G review : A hardware masterpiece

Hey ! it’s been 3 weeks since i got my hands on the new OnePlus 11 5G smartphone. I have used it and tested it in all aspects. This is my detailed review of the new OnePlus 11 5G. I am a great fan of OnePlus phones. I liked them because of their stock android OS. We will see how this phone performs in this review. All the pros and cons of the phone have been listed. After reading the article you will be able decide if you want to purchase this phone or not. So without further do, lets get into it.

Specifications

Dimensions	Height: 16.31 cm Width: 7.41 cm Thickness: 0.853 cm Weight: 205g
Display	120 Hz Super Fluid AMOLED with LTPO 3216*1440 (QHD+), 525 ppi Support sRGB, Display P3, 10-bit Color Depth
Performance	CPU: Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform 5G Chipset: X70 GPU: Adreno 740
Camera	Main camera Sensor: Sony IMX890 50 MP Field of View: 84° Focal Length: 24mm Ultra-wide Camera Sony IMX581 48 MP Portrait Tele Camera Sony IMX709 32 MP 8K video at 24 fps 4K video at 30/60 fps 1080p video at 30/60 fps 720p video at 30/60 fps
Front camera	16 mega pixels 1080p video at 30 fps, 720p video at 30 fps
Memory	RAM: 8GB / 16GB LPDDR5X Storage: 128GB UFS 3.1 / 256GB UFS 4.0 Available configurations: 8GB+128GB / 16GB+256GB
Battery & charging	5,000 mAh (Dual-cell 2,500 mAh, non-removable) SUPERVOOC 100W flash charger
Network & Connectivity	2×2 MIMO, Support 2.4G/5G, Wi-Fi 7, Support WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax Dual nano-SIM slot Bluetooth 5.3 Codex supported: aptX HD, aptX, LDAC, LHDC, AAC, SBC
Ports	USB 2.0 Type-C Support standard Type-C earphones Dual nano-SIM slot
Sensors	In-display Fingerprint Sensor, Accelerometer, M-sensor Electronic Compass, Gyroscope, Ambient Light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Sensor Core, Flick-detect Sensor

Overall opinion

OnePlus 11 is the hardware king. If you look at the specs, you can see that it has a lot of hardware. 16 GB ram, 256 GB internal storage, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, 50MP + 48MP + 32MP rear cameras and 5000mAh battery etc.. are great hardware specs. My overall opinion of the phone is that it is great. Hardware and software are great. The performance of the phone the best that you can get. The Active Cryoflux cooling mechanism makes the phone stand out. In the aspects of camera and battery also, i faced no issues. The fast charging is unbelievable. More about these later in the article. But i have found some issues with design of the software. These may not be a big deal. But it does interfere while using the phone. One of the issue was with scroll in apps menu. When you scroll down, it wont come down like it was in OnePlus 7. I am used to that phone and when i use OnePlus 11 it really annoys me. I am not getting that smooth flow. Other than these nit picking, there no other issues with the phone. I will describe the issues in detail in the software section.

Overall it is value for money. The competes with Samsung galaxy S23 which is double the price of this phone. It has all flagship features at a non flagship price.

Price : ₹56,999 (amazon)
($699 in USD )

Design and build

The back cover looks and feels amazing. It has that premium flagship phone feel while holding. Its dimensions are 16.31 × 7.41× 0.853 cm. It weights 205g (gram). Feels very light to hold. You can see from the image how cool the phone looks. The phone has two color variants Eternal green and Titan black.

The build quality is also amazing. The phone’s front glass is Gorilla Glass Victus, back glass is Gorilla Glass 5 and has an aluminum frame.

Display

OnePlus 11 5G has a 17.02 cm 120 Hz Super Fluid AMOLED with LTPO display. The phone has a top-notch display. It is very smooth and fast. If you use OnePlus 11 and then use another phone, you will feel the difference. You will feel that roughness and slowness while using the other phone. When you come back to OnePlus 11, you will understand how fast the display is.

The display is curved at the edges. Like in previous versions of OnePlus phones, the front camera is punched into the display. Unlike many other phones, it doesn’t feel annoying.

Talking about the display specs, it has a resolution of  3216*1440 (QHD+), 525 ppi. You can switch the refresh rate between 60Hz and 120Hz. It also has dynamic refresh rate switching. This switches the refresh rate according to your usage so that it consumes only less power. You can see the current refresh at the top of the screen if you turn on the option for it in developer options.

All OnePlus phones have a kind of smoothness while using them. You can swipe and go with the flow. In this phone, they have made that effect better.

Camera

Now about the camera. I took many photos and videos with it and had a great experience. The camera is classic OnePlus camera with a Hasselblad branding. It competes with the best smartphone cameras in the world. There are three cameras in the back. Main camera is Sony IMX890 and has 50 MP resolution and the Ultrawide camera (Sony IMX581) has 48 MP and Portrait Tele Camera (Sony IMX709) with 32 MP resolution.

Here are some photos I took with OnePlus 11.

The portrait mode is really great. You can take good portrait photos with this phone.

You can see from the above images that the camera is very great. You can take high-quality photos with OnePlus 11. The 50MP main camera captures a lot of details.

The camera quality is the best in the market. Apart from it, the app does a lot of processing on these photos to remove noise and grains. It has AI mode. If you turn it on, it will adjust everything automatically and the picture you take will look really great. In low light conditions also, the camera performs really great. It captures every bit of light while shooting indoors. Here is a photo I took indoors.

Outdoors, in bright sun, the photos clarity is amazing. It will capture only the light needed. The photos won’t look overexposed. Also, the camera has an automatic removal feature. You can take a photo of a light bulb clearly without any glare in the photo.

The phone has a 10-bit color mode which is an uncommon feature in smartphones. You can shoot 10-bit color photos which capture additional information and make colors look smooth. The photos taken with this mode look so much better. But these photos are stored in HEIC file formation which is not supported in many software and devices. So you can upload or share these photos. You have an option within the gallery to convert the photo to JPEG.

Another thing I noticed with the camera was that it can capture photos and faces clearly in the dark also. My brother took a photo of me in a dark room and the face was clear more than enough to identify the person.

if you are a person who takes many photos and like photography, this phone best suits you.

The video quality was also amazing. You can use the phone camera to shoot high-quality YouTube videos. You can shoot videos in 4k 60 FPS which is amazing. 8k video shooting is also available but it is 24 FPS. Here is a comparison of video shot in 4k and 8k.

You can easily do a lot of editing with the photos and videos taken with this phone.

Cons

The only problem I felt while using the camera is focusing near objects. The main back camera cannot focus near objects that well. If you go very close to the object, the image gets a little blurry. The phone has a macro camera that can shoot closer objects but it does not have the same clarity as the back camera.

Front Camera

The front camera is also pretty good. It has a 16 MP resolution. The camera does very well in daylight. In low light conditions also it is good but there are some noises and grains if you zoom in.

The images taken with it do have a bit of noise in low-light conditions. But it is not that noticeable.

Cons: heating while using the camera for a long time. I will describe more about it in the performance section.

Performance

OnePlus 11 has a Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 8 Gen 2 processor. This smartphone is the best-performing smartphone I have ever used. It is very smooth. You can feel the speed of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor. The phone responds instantly to your actions. I have tested the performance in all categories. Here are the results.

Gaming

The phone’s performance in gaming was amazing. I tested the phone playing Genishin impact and call of duty. It was pretty good. Genishin impact is around 12GB. The game was running smoothly. The graphics were great and I was getting around 120 FPS (frames per second).

There was no heating issue while playing the game for around 20 mins and after that, it started getting warmer. I played the game for around 1 hour and the battery charge was 65% when I started. It went from 65% to 40% when I played Genishin impact and call of duty for 1 hour.

Daily tasks

The phone is great in doing all the regular daily tasks. You can get done works like a quick image or video editing fast. You can use the phone for days for daily usage.

Qualcomm says that they have made some improvements in the Hexagon processor for up to 4.35x faster AI performance. They said this chipset focus is on better and more efficient AI-related tasks like image processing, real-time language translation, better gaming experience, etc… OnePlus 11 is a great example of the potential of this processor.

Cons

As i said earlier the phone heats up while using camera. While taking photos, you can see that it does many image processing on the photos while you take them. Due to this, the phone does heat a little bit while using the camera for a long time. Also, the camera app automatically closes if you keep the app open without using it for a long time. I think this is to prevent heating. Most smartphones that use snapdragon 8 gen 2 processor has been reported to have this heating issue.

OnePlus talked about their new Cryo-velocity VC Cooling system in their advertisement. In their website it says “Shaped to stay cool”. But while using the camera, it didn’t feel like that.

Overall the performance of the phone stands out in the market. Oneplus 11 5G competes with Samsung Galaxy S23 which is more than double the price of this phone. The phone is value for money.

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Software

Coming to the software part, OnePlus 11 still has the amazing software experience as OnePlus 7. It has got that stock android experience. But the cons of the phone are in the software part. The phone’s inbuilt apps have so many errors and bugs. And also I was annoyed with the UI design. Performance wise it has no problem. But there are many software issues that OnePlus need to improve upon in the next versions.

Pros

It has a smooth and clean UI like in OnePlus 7. It super fast in all aspects. You wont feel any delay while using the phone. The face unlock and fingerprint are very fast. It unlocks instantly.

Cons

What annoyed me was when I opened the app menu. When i scroll down and then tries to scroll up and close the app drawer, it wont close.

As you can see in the above video, i am not able to pull down the app drawer after i scroll down. I have to pull down from the top. It really disrupts the flow.

The next thing that i noted with the software is in the notification panel. If i get a whatsapp message in the notification , i cant read the message by again swiping on the message i have to tap on the icon to read the message.

Again these are small issues. Not a big deal. You will get used to it.

Apps provide by OnePlus like file manger has bugs. It get closed unexpectedly. It happens only sometimes.

The back buttons have changed. Now if you want to press back, you have to swipe right from the edge of the display. This can be annoying and hard to get used to. If you are swiping through your images in gallery, you might pull the back button accidentally and close the app.

Next thing is the face recognition. It is setting too fast before even showing the face. The phone start trying to unlock even when you are holding the phone down and your face slightly appear on the camera. The phone wont unlock but the number of face unlock tries finishes and face recognition wont work for 30 seconds.

Other than these small issues there are no problems with the software.

Memory and storage

The phone has 16GB ram and 256GB internal memory. Ram used in this phone is LPDDR5x ram which is the latest ram in the market. It has transfer speed of 51.2 GB/s and pin speed of 6,400 Mbps. 16GB ram is more than enough for a phone. Samsung Galaxy S23 ultra, which cost around $ 1,157 (₹1,24,999) has 12 GB ram and 256 GB internal storage.

There is a lot of internal storage that you wouldn’t face any low storage issues. But i have to say file size increase proportionally to storage. A photo taken in this photo or video has so much details that it’s size is around 5MB to 10MB.

Battery

The battery capacity of the phone is 5000 mAh. Dual cells of 2500 mAh are kept inside it to make 5000 mAh. While using the phone i haven’t faced any low battery issues. Whenever i wanted, the phone has enough charge. Also for daily tasks, it doesn’t use much of the battery. Using camera for a long time drained the battery a little bit. But again, the camera does a lot of processing on the images. Here are the details of exactly how much percentage of battery drained while doing some tasks.

Daily tasks (social media browsing, taking some photos, Browsing internet, YouTube, Netflix etc..) –

When i use camera for long time, that is for around 1 hour continuously, the battery went from 90% to 50%.

When i played Genishin impact game for 2 hours, the battery went from 50% to 30%.

As you can see, in Oneplus 11 the battery does not drain that faster. After a full charge, I got a screen on time of 6 hours. For daily usage, a fully charged phone can last for around 2 or 3 days. For processor-intensive tasks like gaming at the highest settings possible, the battery will last for about 5 hours.

There are other flagship phones which have a greater screen-on-time and video playback time in the market. But OnePlus 11 is the only one with these many features at this price tag.

Now the next thing about the battery is its lifespan. The lifespan of the phone’s battery is 2x greater than other flagship phones. The battery is rated to last 16000 charging cycles (double the number of other phones).

Charging

I have nothing to say other than super-fast about the charger in this phone. The supervooc 100-watt charger of the OnePlus 11 can charge its 5000 mAh battery from 1% to 100% in 30-35 minutes.

This powerful charger makes sure that your phone is ready to go all the time. If your phone’s battery is very low, just put the phone in charging and wash your face and come. It will be charged enough for your work.

How fast is the OnePlus 11 fast charger?

Well, the phone charged from 2% to 100% in 30 minutes. The 5000 mAh huge battery got fully charged in this short time. So the charger is super fast. Also, it has a night charging mode. When you put the phone in charging before sleep, the phone automatically switches to slow charging.

Audio and Microphone

The sound quality of OnePlus 11 is amazing. If you play a video in this phone, you will get an amazing sound experience. The sound surrounds you. It surround the person facing the phone screen and not at the back of the phone. It doesn’t come from only one side but from all around. So watching movies and YouTube videos in OnePlus 11 will be an amazing experience.

Microphone quality is also amazing. I have never used a phone that picks up sound from large distances so clearly.

Other features

The phone has many more features. While using the phone it has many effects that enhances the feel of using the phone.

It has a powerful haptic motor which vibrates when unlocking the phone or while the phone rings. That gives us a different feel and response from the phone.

OnePlus 11 has pocket miss touch prevention. So if you keep the phone in pocket, accidental touches will not work. Calls and messages wont be sent accidentally.

Conclusion

So that all in this review of OnePlus 11 5G. My overall opinion about this phone is positive. The phone outranks all other flagships in all aspects. It is best flagship phone available in the market in this price range.

So i hope this review was helpful for you to decide whether to buy OnePlus 11 5G or not.

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97%

Outstanding

OnePlus 11 5G

Best flagship smartphone in the market. Performs great in all aspects. Smooth and fast response. User experience is really great. Hardware specs are also great. Apart form small issues in the software and heating issues while using camera for long time, the phone is great.

• Design
• Performance
• Camera
• Software
• Battery and charging