Our test and opinion on the OnePlus 12 phone

Published on August 28, 2024

Vincent Paquette

OnePlus is looking to carve out a niche for itself in the Canadian smartphone market. The company has a lot to offer with its OnePlus 12 phone, which we reviewed. If there was one word to characterize the entire phone, it would be: fast.

In the Canadian smartphone market, it is mainly dominated by Apple, Samsung and Google.

These companies bombard us with advertisements to promote their devices.

In the shadow of these, we find OnePlus, which first made its way to our southern neighbors in the United States and now intends to open up more to the Canadian market.

Some of their devices were available here until now, but we didn’t hear so much about them.

A situation that they intend to change, notably with the OnePlus 12 phone. A phone that wants to compete with high-end devices from other companies by focusing in particular on speed.

OnePlus 12 Features

So let’s dive into what makes this OnePlus 12 smartphone stand out.

A distinctive design

The first thing that strikes us when looking at the OnePlus 12 is its looks. Especially the back of the phone, since it really stands out from the designs of other phones on the market with its photo sensors placed in a circle.

When you turn it sideways, you get a screen with curved edges. A look that was popular a few years ago, but which many manufacturers have abandoned.

You either like it or you don’t. Some will find it tiring, others will find it aesthetic.

Otherwise, we have a rugged phone with an aluminum chassis and glass back.

A superb and super bright screen

If we look at the screen, the OnePlus 12 has nothing to envy from the high-end phones on the market.

The 6.8″ screen is really superb, especially thanks to HDR10+. The contrasts are striking and the colors are really precise.

The resolution is also very good. By default, it is set to 1080p, but it can be increased to 1440p via the settings.

Same thing for the image refresh rate. It is 60Hz by default, but we can adjust it to 120Hz. Better yet, we can actually select the refresh rate for each of our applications.

The OnePLus 12’s display also stands out for its brightness. It offers 1600 nits of brightness and this can go up to 4500 nits when you’re outdoors. It’s crazy how bright the phone is, which is perfect on a very sunny day.

Conversely, if you walk outside in the rain, you will find a technology that OnePlus calls: Aqua Touch. This then offers better screen sensitivity when there are water drops on it.

Speaking of water, the phone has an IP65 resistance rating, which means it can withstand splashes, but you can’t submerge it.

A device that offers high performance

In terms of performance, the OnePlus 12 features the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and 16 GB of RAM.

The phone is really super fast. Launching our apps, browsing, multitasking, everything runs like clockwork.

There’s even a high-performance mode in the settings, which lets us squeeze the most out of the components. Obviously, this comes at the expense of battery life.

However, this aspect will certainly interest video game enthusiasts who can really push the FPS into the carpet without fear of slowdowns.

As for the artificial intelligence (AI) features seen on several other devices, you shouldn’t look for them on the OnePlus 12.

There are no functions to edit our photos with AI, instant translation or that kind of thing offered directly on the phone without going through a third-party application.

Half-tone photos with cameras

As mentioned when talking about design, the camera system on the back of the OnePlus 12 is really distinctive.

There are essentially 4 sensors, namely:

• Grand angle 50MP
• Ultragrand angle 48MP
• 64 MP 3X Optical Telephoto Lens
• Multispectral sensor

Looking at this, the first question we ask ourselves is: what is a multispectral sensor? It is a sensor that can capture images in multiple wavebands of the electromagnetic spectrum.

In simpler terms, this sensor allows us to capture colors that we cannot see with the naked eye. This information is then collected to reproduce the colors that we capture as faithfully as possible.

After all, that doesn’t make the OnePlus 12 the best phone for taking photos.

Yes, he takes some good ones, but it depends on the circumstances.

Unless you’re in an environment where the lighting isn’t great or it’s dark, the OnePlus 12 can struggle.

We nevertheless appreciated the photos taken when we zoomed up to 3x thanks to the optical zoom. But beyond 3x we fall into digital zoom which can go up to 120x, and there it really does not become beautiful… But hey, it is true for any digital zoom.

As for the front camera, it’s a 32MP sensor, which can simply be described as decent. It doesn’t take extraordinary photos, but it doesn’t take bad photos either.

The battery champion of phones

OnePlus stands out in the smartphone market for the batteries of their devices, but more precisely their fast charging. Ultra-fast, one should say.

The OnePlus 12 packs a 5400mAh battery from which you can squeeze out about 36 hours of battery life. That’s provided you leave the resolution at 1080p, the refresh rate at 60Hz, and don’t activate high-performance mode.

If we activate all of this, we will still be able to get a good full day of use out of it.

Anyway, if you need to charge it quickly, you can’t be better served than with this phone.

Right in the phone box, there’s an 80W charging block. 80W!!! That’s completely crazy, when it takes about 12-13 minutes to charge from 0 to 50%, then less than 30 minutes to charge from 0 to 100%.

This is without counting the compatibility with wireless charging up to 50 W.

Just to give an idea, the majority of phones on the market only support wired charging up to 30W, then wireless up to 15W.

The OnepLus 12 just surpasses them with wireless charging! However, in this case you have to buy the compatible wireless charging stand separately.

A very permissive ecosystem

We end with everything related to the ecosystem and connectivity.

The OnePlus 12 is an Android phone, but one on which OnePlus has added its own Oxyegen OS operating system.

The latter offers several customization options. You can get a little lost through all the possibilities offered in the settings, but fans of open systems and customization will be in heaven.

The device also stands out with its USB-C 3.2 port which not only allows for ultra-fast charging, but also file transfers at ultra-fast speeds.

Still on the subject of speed, the OnePlus 12 is compatible with Wi-Fi 7.

Another distinctive and unique aspect of the phone is the presence of an infrared sensor. This is the same type of sensor that we find for example in the remote control of our television. This makes it possible to control compatible devices.

On the storage side, there are two options. You can opt for 256 GB or 512 GB. And no, there is no slot for a microSD card.

Finally, in terms of update support, OnePlus intends to offer updates until February 2028 and security updates until February 2029. This is a bit below what we see from Google and Samsung in particular, which offer 7 years of updates.

Is the OnePlus 12 a good value buy?

The OnePlus 12 with 256GB of storage is sold at $1069, then the one with 512GB at $1199.

Frankly, even at these prices, we have a good “deal” considering the high-end characteristics of the phone.

This is a phone that offers so much speed in many ways. Performance, battery charging, data transfer via wire or Wi-Fi 7.

But it gets better when you learn about OnePlus’ unique exchange policy.

You can actually lower the OnePlus 12’s price by trading in a relatively new phone from any other brand. You can get around $400 to $900 off that.

This is without counting the offers that we sometimes find in combo with the Watch 2R or the OnePlus Buds 3 Pro.