Oneplus Nord was a phone that was so much hyped this year, With all these small events of Oneplus’ social media accounts we were expecting Oneplus nord to be a flagship killer level phone, but to me the level of hype was a little over the edge. To me Oneplus Nord was overhyped.

but….. if we talk about pricing this phone might seem like a very amazing deal. At 30,000₹ the specs you are getting on this phone are really amazing and might be the best you can buy in this price range but Samsung M51 is also a great phone at nearly the same price.

Now let’s get into details

Display

The first thing that you notice about a phone is it’s screen and I must say that the screen on device is pretty good. The fast 90Hz refresh rate makes the device seem extremly smooth. The colors on this screen aren’t exaclty perfect but are good enough at this price point.

The other thing that you will notice about this screen is the dual punch hole camera setup. The front camera setup might seem irritating innitialy but with passage of time you will adapt to it and might even not feel its presence while basic usage but when we talk about watching videos on this device that experince is totally different story. That punchole is extremly annoying in this case.
Some users have also complained about greenish tint on screen while using phone in low brightness. In my unit I didn’t feel that issue but still it might be a thing to look out for.

Look and feel

The look of this device is great, this device looks premium when you have a look at it from a distance. That glossy back gives it a premium feel but when you hold this device in your hands you immediately notice that this device is made up from plastic. The plastic is not so strong as you might think (watch jerry rig everything to know more), but when you hold it in your hands you will notice that this phone is extremely comfortable in your hand. The width to height ratio is just perfect to fit in your hands. This device is extremely comfortable for one handed usage.

To Oneplus’ credit thet did a really great job with that back panel as it really makes the phone look like a premium phone. Now let’s talk about usage. This phone features a underscreen optical fingerprint scanner which works fast and reliably.

Performance

This phone rocks a 765G Snapdragon processor. This processor is a cheap version of the 865G processor and the performance of this chip is not as amazing but isn’t bad either. Now if I say that you can play PUBG on this device on high setting it would be a lie, because you can face frames drop and frequent lag while playing on high settings, but the game works flawless on medium settings.

The device gets a bit hot while usage but that is what is expected after a gaming session on a device like this.

Oneplus Nord comes in two variants with difference in internal storage and RAM. The cheaper variant costs 28,000₹, while you get the other one costs 30,000₹. Now I thing that disappointed me is the lack of expandable memory, so you will be stuck with the memory size you purchase. So, my suggestion is to buy only the 30,000₹ variant because you might not like to spend 28,000₹ and be stuck with low memory.

Now lets talk about the most disappointing part of this phone :

The camera setup

This phone features 4 camera at back and 2 cameras at front. You might already be aware about the camera quality on this device is not exactly good. Many people belive that Oneplus should have put only 1 camera and focused on its camera quality, but I think Oneplus should have added 2 camera – one main camera and a ultrawide camera and focused on their camera quality as the sensor these cameras are using is not actually bad but instead the processing done by Oneplus is bad. The main camera and ultrawide work just fine in day but perform really bad during low light. I think that future software updates will improve the camera quality on this phone, till then you can use GCAM to get amazing photos on your Oneplus Nord.
Here are some camera samples for you:

Software

Oneplus Nord comes with android 10 out of the box and oxygen OS on top of it. Now, Oxygen OS is a thing that makes Oneplus phones special but in this device this is what breaks this devices experience. There are a lot of bugs on this phone. The one that irritates me the most was related to bluetooth(fixed now) that even if you disconnect your device from bluetooth speaker or any device like that the phone audio won’t still come. Another one was that bluetooth connection was not stable at all.

Speakers and Ports

Oneplus Nord features only one bottom firing speaker and the sound quality of speaker is decent enough, totally not the loudest and most clear sounding speaker but these speakers will do the job. One thing to take care of is that you can very easily block the speaker grill at bottom with hands.
The port selection on this device is not the best as it lacks the Headphone jack and the worst part is that you dont get a type to 3.5mm dongle in the box, you have to order it as a seperate product from Oneplus. This makes it a little uncomfortable to use.
This phone features a Type C charging port and the charging speed is that typical Oneplus speed.

Conclusion

My final word would be that if you are thinking to but this device then only buy the 30,000₹ variant, dont purchase the cheaper variant and if you can compromise on that screen and little bit of power samsung M51 might seem like a better choice at lower price.