The OnePlus 13 brings with it some typical upgrades you’d expect to see from a flagship. But in a market where iterative updates are the norm, OnePlus delivers a device that meaningfully improves upon its predecessor’s shortcomings, ultimately creating an exceptionally executed phone.
OnePlus 13
The OnePlus 13 represents a meaningful refinement over its predecessor rather than a revolutionary change. The biggest improvements come in practical areas – better ergonomics with a grippier design and improved weight distribution, consistently good camera performance across all three 50MP lenses, and exceptional battery life thanks to a new 6000mAh silicon-carbon battery that delivers two days of use. While OxygenOS 15 isn’t quite as clean as it used to be due to ColorOS influences, the overall package delivers a polished flagship experience with thoughtful improvements that address previous pain points.
- Gorgeous Screen
- Improved Cameras
- Incredible Battery Life
- OxygenOS still feels like OPPO
- Won’t work with certain US carriers
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Pricing and Availability
The OnePlus 13 is available in three color options: Black Eclipse, Midnight Ocean, and Arctic Dawn. It offers two storage configurations: 12GB RAM with 256GB storage and 16GB RAM with 512 GB storage. Note that there’s a 24GB RAM and 1TB configuration as well, but it is not available outside of China. You can purchase the OnePlus 13 directly from OnePlus’s official website, and it is available at Amazon or Best Buy, both online and in-store.
Subtle But Meaningful Design Improvements
The OnePlus 13’s design is probably the device’s most subtle attribute for improvement, especially because, on the surface, it looks very similar to its predecessor. That said, this new design addresses many of the primary ergonomic issues of the 12 through thoughtful material choices and structural refinements. For one, the microfiber vegan leather on the Midnight Ocean variant completely transforms the in-hand feel of the phone and provides a significantly better grip compared to the slippery OnePlus 12.
I loved the Emerald colorway on the OnePlus 12, but it made the phone so slippery that it would constantly fall out of my pocket. I can’t speak about the grippiness of the non-leather-color variants of the OnePlus 13, but because the overall shape of the 13 is less curved and more squared-off, the device feels significantly less slippery than before. It also helps that the aluminum frame around the phone is now flattened out.
Another subtle difference is the lighter weight of the OnePlus 13, which comes in at 210 grams. It’s a marginal weight reduction that doesn’t mean much in the way of daily usage, but this is the first OnePlus phone that I’ve used that nails weight distribution that feels in line with more expensive flagships like the iPhone 16 Pro or Google’s Pixel 9 Pro XL. Compared to the OnePlus 12 which at times felt top-heavy and hollow, the OnePlus 13 feels much more expensive in the hand.
The biggest design improvement of the phone, however, is the industry-first IP69 rating, which means that in addition to being able to submerge your phone in water, you can also have it withstand high-pressure water. Theoretically, you can put the OnePlus 13 in the dishwasher—if you choose to.
The real-world benefits of IP69 compared to IP68 are going to be very minimal for most users in most scenarios, but it’s nice to have the peace of mind of knowing your phone can survive being blasted with water at high pressures without any additional protection.
Still a Gorgeous Display
The most notable visual change to the OnePlus 13 is the screen, and this gorgeous 6.82-inch QHD+ ProXDR panel is one of the best displays I’ve ever seen on a phone. On the surface, it looks as though OnePlus is using more-or-less the same panel as the OnePlus 12, reaching a peak brightness of 4500 nits for HDR content, 1600 nits with high brightness mode, and having 120Hz LTPO adaptive refresh rate for smooth navigation.
Compared to last year’s screen, the OnePlus 13’s display features a quad-curved design, which means all four sides of the display panel have a subtle curve to it, almost as if the display bulges out at you from the phone. Visually, it looks stunning; I think it strikes a better balance between a completely flat display and the curved display of previous generations. It doesn’t curve along its sides as aggressively as before, and this creates a much nicer viewing experience, eliminating the waterfall effect that often led to content being cut off, accidental touches, and the weird “ear-bezels” that tend to be present around the corners of the phone.
This is to say that the display is excellent. Watching movies, playing games, and everything in between has rivaled that of even Samsung’s phones. The screen is easily viewable outside, and there are no instances of dropped frames when using the phone with an adaptive refresh rate on.
A Much Improved Camera Experience
The cameras on the OnePlus 13 are by far the best improvement. It now features three 50MP wide, ultrawide, and 3x telephoto lenses, which, on paper, can look like a downgrade in terms of the pure hardware specifications, but this phone dismantles any doubt in its performance once you begin to use it.
The 5th-gen Hasselblad Camera system feels like OnePlus is finally delivering a flagship-level experience that is comparable to its competition. The main 50MP Sony LYT-808 sensor addresses one of the biggest complaints about previous OnePlus phones: consistency. The larger 1/1.4-inch sensor size combined with f/1.6 aperture means you’re getting excellent light capture even in challenging conditions, and the binned pixels help retain detail that OnePlus phones previously struggled with in low light.
But where this camera system really shines is in its performance and processing. Having three 50MP sensors means consistent color science and processing across all focal lengths – something I’ve seen OnePlus phones struggle with in the past. This phone nails sharpness, brightness, and contrast on a consistent basis that rivals that of Google, and especially Samsung.
With deep contrasts, balanced highlights and dynamic range, images from the OnePlus 13 look natural and true to life.
You will notice that, at times, images can appear darker or have too much contrast between bright and dim areas within the photo, but for the most part, the phone handles these scenarios fairly well.
The Phone Can Handle Nearly Everything
The OnePlus 13 is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and the performance improvements are quite big. The 45% CPU boost and 40% GPU gains translate to real-world benefits, where apps launch noticeably faster, and gaming maintains consistent frame rates even in demanding titles like Genshin Impact. But more importantly, it achieves this while generating less heat and consuming less power.
OnePlus added an expanded “Dual Cryo-velocity VC system” to cool down the phone under intense workloads, and this means you can record 4K video or play graphically intensive games for extended periods without performance throttling. All this to say, I doubt you’ll reach the performance threshold of this phone in day-to-day use, and if you do, you’ll be equipped to handle it without a hitch.
In terms of battery life, the larger 6000mAh battery fundamentally changes how you use your phone. OnePlus is using a new silicon-carbon composite inside the battery that enables them to increase capacity without dramatically increasing the weight or thickness of the phone.
What this translates to in real-world use is that instead of nightly charging being mandatory, I was looking at genuine two-day battery life with moderate use. Even with heavy usage, whether it be gaming, camera use, and day-to-day content consumption on streaming platforms or YouTube, I was able to easily make it through a full day with substantial reserve.
It also helps that the phone supports 80W SUPERVOOC charging, which lets you get a full charge in 36 minutes. That in addition to 50W wireless charging. And the charger is included in the box. All this to say, performance and battery life on the OnePlus 13 are excellent.
OxygenOS Is Still Improving
OxygenOS 15 feels really great to use. There’s the visual overhaul of Android 15 sprinkled throughout the phone, but OnePlus also improved in smaller areas like having a 20% reduction in system footprint to create more storage, faster app launches, and better memory management, which in theory would be great for multitasking.
There’s also the incorporation of AI features, but it’s nothing too crazy. Intelligent Search, for instance, understands context within documents and photos, and is pretty useful for finding specific information buried in your files. The AI photo editing tools are okay but don’t match the consistency and efficacy of Samsung’s or Google’s models.
OxygenOS 15 overall does an excellent job with how it’s implementing Android 15, but I can’t help but feel like it’s not as clean and minimal as OxygenOS once was. It has OPPO’s ColorOS influences throughout the system, and while it’s not anything overtly bad, it takes away from the original clean OxygenOS experience of older OnePlus phones that was just so good.
Should You Buy the OnePlus 13?
The OnePlus 13 arrives at a time when the smartphone industry has largely plateaued, with each new generation bringing familiar iterative updates. But rather than chasing headline-grabbing features, OnePlus has focused on refining the fundamental aspects of the smartphone experience that actually matter in day-to-day use. Better materials and balanced weight distribution make it feel more premium than its predecessor, while the consistent camera performance finally delivers the flagship-level photography OnePlus users have long desired.
That said, it’s not without compromise. The software experience, while smooth and feature-rich, continues to drift further from the clean, minimalist OxygenOS of old. The phone also won’t work with all US carriers, which could be a dealbreaker for some potential buyers.
Overall, if you’re looking for a flagship phone that prioritizes practical improvements over marketing gimmicks, the OnePlus 13 is a compelling option. It may not revolutionize the smartphone industry, but its thoughtful refinements to ergonomics, camera consistency, and battery life make it one of the most well-rounded flagships available today.
