You can’t buy the OnePlus 12 yet, but OnePlus has revealed the phone in China. An international launch is coming soon, and there’s not much left to learn besides North American pricing. The OnePlus 12 has the latest Snapdragon chip, ultra-fast charging, and more RAM than you’ll probably ever need.
Despite the narrow bezels, the OnePlus 12 is a huge phone thanks to the 6.82-inch OLED screen. The construction is typical of a non-folding smartphone in 2023, with an aluminum frame and glass on both the front and back. It’s available in black, silver, and a marbled green color. Unlike most OnePlus phones, this one will be IP65 certified for water and dust resistance. It might not be as robust as the IP68 offered by most Samsung and Google phones, but a quick dip won’t hurt it.
This is the first device announced with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, revealed just a few weeks ago. This advanced 4nm chip is paired with 12GB of RAM in the base model, but the Chinese release includes 16GB and 24GB variants, with up to 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage. OnePlus also claims to have an improved thermal solution to keep the Snapdragon chip cool. The details are fuzzy, given they are all translated from Chinese, but OnePlus has consistently squeezed more performance out of processors than competing OEMs.
There’s another Hasselblad-branded camera setup this year, helmed by a 50MP f/1.6 sensor with 1.12μm pixels. It’s backed by a 64MP f/2.6 telephoto (3x) sensor and a 48MP f/2.2 ultrawide. A 32MP selfie camera peeks through a hole punch in the display. The Hasselblad partnership has been more marketing than results, but OnePlus’ camera performance has improved over the years. It’ll be interesting to see what it does with the imaging capabilities of the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
The OnePlus 12 is toward the top of the size and weight distribution for smartphones, but it makes the most of that heft. This phone sports a 5,400mAh battery, and the Chinese variant has 100W charging with the custom Super VOOC charging. We expect the charging to be fast in the US, too, but it won’t be that fast. China has 220V electricity, which makes it easier to hit higher charging wattages. Using previous OnePlus phones as a guide, the 110V AC power in North America should still be good enough for 80W charging. That’s substantially faster than Samsung, Google, and Motorola phones.
The latest OnePlus phone will ship with Android 14 under a thick layer of OxygenOS (ColorOS in China). Android 14 just launched this fall on Google phones, so it’s good to see OnePlus starting with the current version rather than trying to push through a quick update.
The Chinese phone starts at ¥4,299, which converts to about $600. If OnePlus can hit a $599 price point, that would be a fantastic deal. However, the OnePlus 11 was $699, so that seems more likely and in line with the rest of the market.
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