OnePlus officially revealed the OnePlus 13 today. OnePlus’ new flagship phone comes with an as-yet-undisclosed model that sits below the OnePlus 13 in their lineup. I already had the opportunity to try the new OnePlus 13 in November, during the European phone presentation event at the Beurs van Berlage site in Amsterdam.
Highlights of the new phone showcased at the event include camera improvements, such as AI-enhanced images across the phone’s three sensors. Additionally, the OnePlus 13’s battery gets a boost from 5,400 mAh to 6,000 mAh for the OnePlus 12, an improved IP rating, and a new energy-efficient chip: the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The phone is also the first to receive an A++ rating from Displaymate, who commented that the screen comes with a “Excellent, world-class leading smartphone display with near-perfect text book calibration accuracy”.
At the event, I got to try out some of the OnePlus 13’s new camera features. First, there’s a newly added AI Reflection Eraser tool that removes reflections, which requires a connection to the cloud. I tried this mode by taking photos of a few OnePlus products inside a store window. The mode manages to subtly but clearly remove most reflections, leading to a sharper image and improving otherwise mostly unusable images.
Also new for the cameras is the burst shooting optimization, which OnePlus calls Clear Burst. There were several opportunities to test the improvements. There were two breakdancers at the event who showed off some impressive moves. I took several images of them while holding down the shutter button, which automatically activates burst mode. Using the main camera, I got a succession of sharp images, while the 3x zoom camera struggled more. I also took photos of the rear wheel of a racing bike spinning, which resulted in sharp photos despite lots of movement.
According to OnePlus, the camera’s portrait modes have also been improved. The three camera sensors on the back of the phone are all tuned to mimic different Hasselblad cameras with distinctive portrait looks. I did some test shooting with these devices, including the selfie camera. Finally, the camera showed an impressive zoom of over 10x thanks to the AI improvement. I even tried zooming 120x on photos hanging from the ceiling to test this feature. The results were quite impressive to a point, with details being filled in by the AI, making zoomed images much clearer. However, from 120x onwards, the AI was mostly guessing at details and the images became very distorted.
I took a sample of the OnePlus 13 home with me after the event, and you can see all my thoughts on the device in our OnePlus 13 review.
