After eagerly unboxing the OnePlus 12, I’ve had a chance to thoroughly test this latest flagship contender in everyday use. My verdict? OnePlus mostly nails the premium experience but a few flaws persist.
Starting with positives, OnePlus 12 truly excels at haptics and signal reception. Its finely tuned vibration motor provides the best tactile feedback of any Android I’ve tried, call quality and network speeds impress thanks to antenna optimizations that outdo even Huawei Mate 60 Pro.
Cameras likewise punch above their weight, capturing crisp ultra-wide and portraits belying the OnePlus 12’s cost, night photography delivers solid results though lags a bit behind rivals. The Hasselblad tuning brings useful color science improvements too.
Performance stands up well with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip keeping everything swift and responsive, battery life is frankly outstanding thanks to smart optimizations and a sizable capacity cell, easily get 1 days of use per charge.
But it’s not all rosy. A few irritations still nag. Most vexing is the uneven display with significant color shifting when viewed off-axis. For a flagship phone centered around media consumption, the screen disappoints.
The designers also made a few odd choices for openings along the top and bottom edges, array of asymmetrical holes looks downright cheap given the otherwise stellar hardware.
My main gripe with cameras is inconsistent white balance and processing between lenses, same scene appears drastically different shot on the main versus tele or ultrawide modules. Hopefully tuning updates will improve cohesion.
So is the OnePlus 12 worth buying? At its price, yes – the core experience punches far above its class. But given a choice, I’d still opt for the more refined Vivo X100 Pro that rectifies OnePlus’ few deficiencies with better software and photography. Regardless, don’t expect perfection with the OnePlus 12, but barring a few caveats, it nails the basics.