Finally, a OnePlus phone I trust to do it all

OnePlus flagships have put me in a tricky spot over the last few years. For as much as I’ve liked them and wanted to recommend them wholeheartedly, they’ve always come with a pretty major caveat or two. From skipping an official IP rating to adding and removing wireless charging in back-to-back generations, there’s always been something for me to question. Now, with its 2025 Android flagship, both wireless charging and IP ratings are back, but in my head, the damage is done — I still go into every OnePlus review waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Only this time, with the OnePlus 13, that shoe hasn’t dropped yet. In fact, after the better part of a month with the phone, I’ve found myself liking it more and more. The $100 price hike over the OnePlus 12 may sting for some, but don’t let that put you off: this phone has stepped up to the plate time and time again and surprised me in places where previous OnePlus flagships have let me down. Here’s what the OnePlus 13 gets so right.

I should have known something was different about the OnePlus 13 from the moment I took it out of its signature red box. Why? Well, for starters, this flagship doesn’t come in OnePlus’s classic green finish. No, the color that I’ve looked forward to just about every year since the launch of the OnePlus 8 is nowhere to be found. And, perhaps more surprisingly, I don’t mind that one bit.

I don’t mind what might otherwise seem like a massive change for OnePlus because I think the color that replaced its ever-reliable green is even better. OnePlus traded its lightly textured back panel of glass for soft eco-leather in a new Midnight Blue finish, and it almost feels like a crime to cover it with a case — though you’ll probably still want to for a reason I’ll come back to in a moment. It’s just the right shade of blue to offset the white camera bump and silver aluminum frame nicely, with only a thin silver strip and Hasselblad logo to interrupt the otherwise fingerprint-free material.

Of course, Midnight Blue isn’t your only option for the OnePlus 13 — it also comes in a white Arctic Dawn and a Black Eclipse meant to imitate wood grain, which is much more fun than a slippery slab of glass. Both are made of glass, but OnePlus’s clever texturing makes them feel much different in the hand. Anyway, no matter which color you pick, the rest of the OnePlus 13’s design looks and feels just as good. The Alert Slider remains in its rightful place, high on the left side of the device, while the power and volume controls sit opposite on the right side of the now flattened frame.

That flat, almost iPhone-like frame is another sign that the times are changing for OnePlus. By that, I mean this is the most comfortable OnePlus phone to hold in several years. Unlike the last few generations, which have sported increasingly steep waterfall displays that meet razor-thin metal frames, the OnePlus 13 is comfortably flat all around. I should say that it’s a comfortable mix of flat where you want it, with curves where you need them.

For me, that means the eco-leather back panel meets the aluminum frame with an almost seamless edge, as does the now flat 6.82-inch AMOLED display. Yes, this is a OnePlus flagship with a flat display for the first time in a long time. I haven’t accidentally pressed the edge of the display one single time in my month with the OnePlus 13, and I couldn’t be happier about it. And yes, I realize this is only the latest example in a long line of Android flagships ditching the waterfall display for a much more usable flat panel, but it’s worth praising every time.

Actually, OnePlus has nailed down the best of both worlds, as its Ceramic Guard glass still has slightly rounded edges that meld it seamlessly into the frame. Or, they would meld seamlessly if not for the plastic screen protector that comes preinstalled on the OnePlus 13 but doesn’t extend across the rounded edges.

The display itself is impressive, too, becoming the first to secure an A++ rating from DisplayMate. To my naked eye, that doesn’t mean much, but I can say that everything I’ve tried on the Quad HD Plus display has looked excellent. From pulling what feels like my 50th Pikachu in Pokemon TCG Pocket to watching the pitch-black Nosferatu trailer ahead of a New Year’s Eve screening, the OnePlus 13 has been excellent. It hasn’t been my favorite way to keep up with the Premier League’s festive fixtures, but that’s probably more due to Chelsea’s lack of finishing than any actual struggle with the OnePlus 13’s display.

And then, there’s the OnePlus 13’s durability. After several years of calling lesser IP ratings good enough or skipping them entirely, the OnePlus 13 has stormed back in impressive waterproofing fashion. It’s not only IP68 rated (yes, officially), but it’s also IP69 certified against jets of water at up to 1,450PSI and temperatures up to 176 degrees Fahrenheit (around 80 degrees Celsius). That means you can toss your OnePlus 13 in the dishwasher or washing machine after a particularly messy day, and it’ll come out the other side working just as good as new. I’m still not sure I’d love to put my phone through the spin cycle for an hour or more, but I guess it’s nice to have the option.

While most of my recent issues with OnePlus phones have come from odd hardware decisions, the gradual evolution of Oxygen OS caused its own complaints. In my eyes, it just kept inching closer and closer to OPPO’s Color OS, gradually losing the things that made me appreciate Oxygen OS in the first place. Light, simple animations were replaced with heavier ones, duplicate (or redundant) apps exploded, and the whole experience felt a bit more like a version of Android that we usually associate with Chinese devices.

But now, with Oxygen OS 15, it feels like OnePlus is turning back to many things that users liked in the first place. From the minute I fired up the OnePlus 13, I couldn’t help feeling like it was a much lighter experience than I’d used on the last few devices. The widgets look simpler, the settings menu is easier to navigate, and the home screen populates with, well, not much at all — just how I like it.

Of course, the more important development in the Android 15-based Oxygen OS 15 is that OnePlus is finally entering the AI race. After it surprised us by not talking about AI at all on the previous OnePlus 12, new features are everywhere this time around. Honestly, they’re pretty similar to what you’d find on most other flagships these days — there’s an AI note taker, a magic composer, and Circle to Search makes its debut — but OnePlus has a few helpful wrinkles, too.

I particularly like the idea behind Pass Scan, which allows you to take a picture of a physical boarding pass or train ticket and upload it into your Google Wallet. Personally, it’s been a few years since I used a paper boarding pass, but I could see how this would be helpful if you were traveling in a group and wanted to keep several boarding passes safely together. OnePlus also added a few other AI-powered camera features, which we’ll return to in a second.

Also, it’s not necessarily an AI feature, but Oxygen OS 15 introduces OnePlus’s version of Apple’s Dynamic Island, which it calls Live Alerts. On the surface, it looks like a simple copy of one of the more confusing iPhone features, but the more I’ve explored OnePlus’s approach, the better I like it. It’s both easier to interact with — a simple tap opens a larger widget rather than opening a full app — and disappears into nothing when you’re done with it rather than shrinking into the still-too-large notch replacement that lives on iPhones these days.

Oh, and the OnePlus 13 also marks the first time that Open Canvas has appeared outside of the OnePlus Open, and I couldn’t be happier. The multi-tile approach to multitasking makes it much easier for me to copy and paste notes into Slack or drag camera samples into an email to myself, and I never have to worry about cramming apps into smaller halves of the OnePlus 13’s display.

Unfortunately, though, there’s still one problem with Oxygen OS: OnePlus’s update commitment. Even though it feels like OnePlus has nailed the rest of its cleaned-up, simplified interface, I don’t love that the OnePlus 13 is only in line for four years of Android updates and six years of security patches. Samsung and Google have committed to seven years of support, making that the standard I’d expect for a premium flagship like this.

Despite my previous problems with hardware and software — well, parts of both — one thing I’ve never really questioned from OnePlus has been power. After all, it’s always packed its flagship devices with the latest Qualcomm chipsets and more than enough RAM for checking email and playing a few light games. As Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson put it, “It’s about drive, it’s about power,” and OnePlus has usually been happy to supply both. So, when I heard that the OnePlus 13 would be carrying the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset under the hood, I was all too ready to put it through our gauntlet of tests.

So, I did what I always do — I loaded up our slate of CPU and GPU-intensive benchmarks and sat back to see what would happen. Maybe it’s because this was my first experience with a Snapdragon X Elite chipset, but the results floored me. I stacked OnePlus’s latest flagship against several of what I thought would be its closest competitors: Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro, Google’s Pixel 9 Pro XL, OPPO’s Find X8 Pro, and Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra. No, none of them pack the same updated chipset from which the OnePlus 13 benefits, but they should be about as close as I could get.

Well, the OnePlus 13 more than held its own against them. Although it came up just short of Apple’s A18 Pro in single-core performance, it blazed past it (and the rest of the competitors) in multi-core performance. More impressive to me, though, was the way the OnePlus 13 handled our GPU-intensive Wild Life stress test. It started the first run higher than any phone I’ve ever used — scoring around 25,000 — before settling at around 16,000 by the end of its run, significantly higher than any of its competitors. By the way, if you want a much deeper explanation into how all of the latest chipsets stack up against each other, we put them together into a video which you can watch here.

Of course, there’s only so much that a controlled set of benchmarking numbers can tell you about a phone. Sure, the OnePlus 13 looks great on paper, but how does it stack up in day-to-day usage? Well, it’s pretty good there, too. It’s breezed through my varied days of music streaming, light gaming, and plenty of college football bowl game coverage over the holidays.

Because I headed home for the holidays, I often found myself without the comforts of my apartment — my own TV, a quiet room, you get the idea — but the OnePlus 13 was perfectly happy to cruise through whatever I asked, thanks, in part to parallel animation processing, which allows the phone to start one screen-heavy process before fully ending another. It’s kind of like those clips where you see someone open and exit every app on their phone to slow it down, but I’ve found that it works pretty well when I’m trying to split my attention span into several different directions.

But, with great power comes a great responsibility to keep one’s battery from dying too quickly. So, another significant part of our benchmarking process is to drain the OnePlus 13’s 6,000mAh battery — almost a full 1,000mAh more than the Pixel 9 Pro XL or Galaxy S24 Ultra — to see how long it might last. This time, though, the OnePlus 13 fought back against me. Its optimizations thwarted my battery drain at every turn, leaving me without good, clean numbers to add to a graph. Once I figure out a way around OnePlus’s ruthless efficiency, I’ll report back with some official battery numbers, but for now, you have to trust my real-life experience.

And, on that front, this 6,000mAh battery is a beast. I was first handed my OnePlus 13 review unit on a Royal Caribbean cruise, where power outlets and reliable internet service are notoriously tough to come by. In my head, both of those things meant that the OnePlus 13 would probably struggle and likely warm up in my hand when asked to do too much of anything. Once again, it did not. Instead, I’ve found the phone almost frustratingly hard to drain in my day-to-day life. Granted, things like Spotify, Pokemon TCG Pocket, and streaming football games aren’t too intense, but I haven’t found many other reasons for adventure during the holidays.

But when I finally drained the OnePlus 13 after about two days of consistent usage, it was time to bust out my old friend, the 80W USB-A SuperVOOC charger. Once again, I’ll ask, “Why are we still doing this in early 2025, OnePlus?” Sure, I’m glad the phone comes with a charger, but I’d be much happier with a USB-C block and cable. After all, it’s more likely for my friends to have USB-C chargers for me to borrow if I happen to forget my SuperVOOC charger while out and about.

Anyway, when you finally need your charger, the OnePlus 13’s 80W wired charging speeds — in the US, of course, it charges at 100W internationally — are excellent. They continue to run circles around most of OnePlus’s competitors, filling the massive cell in just about half an hour compared to the full hour needed for the Galaxy S24 Ultra, 75 minutes for the Pixel 9 Pro XL, or 100 minutes for the iPhone 16 Pro (which has the smallest battery of the bunch).

Also, if you prefer to charge without wires, the OnePlus 13 supports up to 50W AirVOOC wireless charging, complete with an in-house alternative to Qi2 or MagSafe. Remember when I said you’d probably want to keep your OnePlus 13 in a case? That was because OnePlus has a new set of magnetic cases and a new magnetic AirVOOC charger.

Essentially, rather than putting a ring of magnets in the back of its phone, thus adding weight and thickness, OnePlus has made them entirely optional via the cases, which you can then attach to its new high-speed charger, which also packs a cooling fan to keep your OnePlus 13 comfortable while you charge it back up. I still prefer the blistering speed of OnePlus’s SuperVOOC charging to the convenience of a wireless fill-up, though, but only because it gives me the best chance to get back on the go.

Most days, you’ll find me with Google’s Pixel 9 Pro in my pocket, no matter what I am reviewing. It simply offers the best mix of processing with overall camera flexibility — I trust it when I need to pull out my phone and grab a shot in a hurry. So, for me to say that I’ve been ditching it recently in favor of the OnePlus 13 means that something must be up. And yes, it is. Right now, in the fifth year of OnePlus’s partnership with Hasselblad, the results are better than ever, thanks to upgraded hardware and well-placed use of AI.

Before we get to that new processing, though, we should probably start with OnePlus’s updated camera sensors. While the circular camera bump might look almost identical to its predecessor’s, the OnePlus 13 packs refreshed hardware for its telephoto and ultrawide cameras, making them thinner and reshuffling the megapixels. On the 3x optical telephoto sensor, OnePlus cut from 64MP to 50MP but increased the size of the sensor itself, allowing for better light capture. On the other hand, the ultrawide sensor added two megapixels, bumping from 48 to an even 50 and expanding from a 114-degree field of view to 120 degrees.

Personally, I’m pretty pleased with all four of the shots above. As you can probably tell, they all came from the Royal Caribbean cruise on which I received the OnePlus 13, but they show off four distinct strengths of the camera setup. I’m particularly impressed by the ultrawide shot of the ship from our day on shore, as it establishes the scale of modern cruise ships nicely while bringing out the incredibly vivid colors of the Royal Caribbean logo.

I was also somewhat surprised by my selfie with my unaware friend in the background. I expected the sun to destroy the image with glare, but the OnePlus 13 seems to have minimized the sun nicely, allowing for a perfectly usable shot. Sure, there’s still some glare around the sun, but it adds to the overall color profile rather than washing us out.

Up next, a few more familiar scenes and faces. Because I was given the phone at a media event, I figured I’d take the chance to grab portraits of a few familiar faces, including Michael Fisher (YouTube’s Mr. Mobile) passionately talking about a boat or Brooklyn, New York, or something. Given the just-okay lighting at the bar we were sitting in front of, I was pretty impressed with how well the OnePlus 13 could pick out the edges of his hair against the dark bricks and the tree behind him.

Interestingly, OnePlus’s approach to HDR in low light doesn’t translate very well once removed from the phone itself, so it’s much harder to pick out some of the details around the glowing blue Top Golf logo in the second picture. That said, I’m reasonably impressed with how well the OnePlus 13 restricted the blue glow to right near the neon itself rather than blowing out parts of the wall or the palms in front of the sign itself.

Perhaps the closest thing to a miss I came up with in my shots above is the view from the airplane window on my way to CES 2025. It didn’t exactly nail the focus on any one point, so as much as I like the composition of the shot, I would have appreciated a bit more sharpness on my fellow passenger or the clouds.

Up next, another camera feature I was initially skeptical of: Long-range zoom. See, OnePlus has offered up to 120x zoom on its flagships for a year or two now, but it previously struggled with just about anything past 30x. So, when the OnePlus 13 arrived with the same maximum of 120x, I figured I’d try it once or twice and laugh at the sharpening or lack thereof. I was, again, wrong.

Although there’s a noticeable shift in the color profile once you’ve switched to OnePlus’s tri-prism telephoto sensor, the way it holds onto detail is nothing less than remarkable. I figured that the closer I got to the name of the yacht in Miami’s harbor, the worse the text and details would look, but the OnePlus 13 held on pretty well. You can still easily make out the silver balls along the ship’s railing and the small stains where the rainwater runs down from each letter. Since Google’s Pixel 9 Pro and Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro call it quits around 30x, OnePlus might have a claim of being the best Android flagship for long-range photos unless you’re willing to splurge on Samsung’s more expensive Galaxy S24 Ultra.

More impressive than the performance of the sensors themselves, though, is OnePlus’s new set of shooting modes. In most cases, I dread pulling my phone out to capture a concert or snap a shot of fireworks on New Year’s Eve, but OnePlus has once again given me an exception. It’s added tuned Smart Modes for stage performances, fireworks, and silhouette shots, which automatically adjusts your image’s ISO for the clearest result. At first, I figured the final photos would come out heavily processed and AI-ified, but I’m pretty happy to have been proven wrong.

Of the three shots above, the one in the center is my favorite. I was sitting at a concert with a friend and pulled up the OnePlus 13 to grab a quick shot of the guitarist from Low Cut Connie, expecting very little of it. Instead, every last bit of him is crisp and detailed. Granted, if you look at the singer in white in the background, there’s a bit more motion blur, but I was very impressed to get the normally animated guitarist in a moment where he was standing still.

The Smart Mode for fireworks turned out decently as well, though it’s another one where you have to look at the subject (the red explosion) and the surrounding clouds while ignoring a few of the taller buildings along Baltimore’s skyline. Although the firework looks excellent, most buildings are tougher to make out, having been reduced to their lights and mostly blending in with the black sky.

And then, there’s the new set of AI image-processing tools. Honestly, most of what OnePlus has come up with feels very similar to what Google offers on its Pixel lineup, with an option to unblur faces and sharpen details when cropping in on an image, but OnePlus has one tool to go a little further. It’s called the AI Reflection Eraser, and it does pretty much what it describes. It can be challenging to grab a clear shot through a window — whether looking in or out — so the OnePlus 13 can apply special processing to remove the glare while enhancing what might have been distorted behind it.

Last but certainly not least, we have video. Once again, OnePlus’s motto seems to be that more is always more, as its flagship offers 4K Dolby Vision HDR recording at up to 60fps across all cameras, including the selfie camera. I’ve been pretty impressed by the quality so far, never feeling like I was short on detail or let down by poor stabilization — OnePlus is finding ways to do it all.

If you want a closer look at the camera samples above (and plenty more to showcase the impressive zoom capabilities), you can check out a larger gallery in this Google Drive folder.

For a guy who went into yet another OnePlus review expecting something to disappoint me, I have to admit that’s not what happened at all. Everywhere I’ve struggled in the past, OnePlus has finally come up with an answer on the OnePlus 13. No IP rating? This time, you get not one but two. No wireless charging? Now, you can choose whether or not you want magnets on the back of your phone. Software that feels more and more like an OPPO clone? Oxygen OS 15 finally brings back some personality. It’s almost like OnePlus made a little note each time I found something to complain about and turned all of my issues into one of the best Android phones I’ve used in a long time.

Honestly, that’s just addressing my complaints — it’s not even considering the ways that OnePlus already delivered some pretty great features. Once again, the OnePlus 13 charges like a bullet, filling a massive 6,000mAh cell in half the time of a Samsung device that costs several hundred dollars more. It also packs a fifth-generation Hasselblad-tuned camera setup that’s become my go-to in several situations and will probably stay that way after I move on to my next review. Oh, and the 6.82-inch AMOLED display ties it all together in a bright, bold, and, most importantly, flat package — so long, waterfall displays, I won’t miss you.

Don’t get me wrong, the OnePlus 13 has its quirks. It still comes with fewer Android and security updates than its closest rivals and ships with a bulky USB-A block in early 2025. To some, the decision to keep the magnetic Qi2 alternative in accessories and use scratchable eco-leather for the back panel might feel like a misstep, too, but I’m a fan of both choices. Besides, while I might complain about a slightly inconvenient charger, I certainly won’t complain about 80W wired speeds.

And yet, I know that some people will be a bit harder to convince to try the OnePlus 13. For many, it will be impossible to pull them out of the Samsung or Google ecosystem that they’ve gotten used to, even though the OnePlus 13 undercuts its rivals by at least $100 in most cases. For many, though, that’s not a bad place to be.

Before I get to those non-OnePlus alternatives, though, I should point out that the OnePlus 13 didn’t launch alone. Instead, it launched at the same time as the more affordable (but still impressive) OnePlus 13R ($599.99 at Amazon). At a glance, the upper-midrange offering looks quite a lot like its true flagship counterpart, though it packs the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset under the hood and trades its eco-leather back panel for Gorilla Glass Victus 2. It also has a slightly smaller display and a lower-resolution 8MP ultrawide sensor as ways to keep the price a bit more approachable, but you still get the same Oxygen OS 15 experience and reliably fast wired charging. We’ll be reviewing the OnePlus 13R separately very soon.

Prior to reviewing the OnePlus 13, Google’s Pixel 9 Pro ($999 at Amazon) had a permanent place in my pocket for basically everything that this flagship now does just as well. I can’t help but love Google’s light, playful version of Android, and I’ll still put its Tensor-powered image processing right up there with the best of them. Our best phone of 2024 winner also has a few advantages over the OnePlus 13, notably in its faster and longer-lasting updates. I’ve compared Google’s latest flagships to everything from the best iPhones ever made to the small Android phone that I’d been longing for, and if you’re still not sure about a sweeping 6.82-inch display on your next phone, I’d still send you into the waiting arms of the Pixel 9 Pro.

However, if you want a slightly bigger phone, the Pixel 9 Pro XL ($1099 at Amazon) also fits the bill for all the reasons mentioned above. I’d also steer you to Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra ($1419.99 at Amazon) — another device I’ve referenced throughout this review. It’s big, powerful, and ready to keep you productive, thanks to its built-in S Pen. That same stylus means that Samsung’s top-end traditional flagship won’t work with any magnetic case, so you’ll have to make do with more traditional charging options. More importantly, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is one flagship that can give OnePlus’s improved camera zoom a run for its money thanks to 100x Space Zoom from its dual-telephoto setup. Just remember that we expect the next Galaxy S25 Ultra to be right around the corner and offer upgraded specs similar to the OnePlus 13.

Of course, the hardest thing for the OnePlus 13 to do will be to win over long-time iPhone users. While some bits of Oxygen OS 15 feel a bit more like iOS 18, like the redesigned quick settings menu, it still comes without features like iMessage and FaceTime that will keep iPhone fans reaching for the iPhone 16 Pro ($999 at Amazon) instead. Furthermore, Apple’s video recording might still have a bit of an edge over the OnePlus 13, and its longer-lasting update commitment makes four years of major updates seem a bit short.

Yet, if you’re willing to take the plunge and give the OnePlus 13 a try, it will reward you with great camera shots, impressive battery life, and a design that’s as durable as they come.