OnePlus is carrying out its usual early flagship launch in China. OnePlus 12 Official there But it won’t be released in the US until 2024. However, we can still turn on Google Translate and review it.
This will be one of the first devices on the market to feature the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, Qualcomm’s new SoC for 2024. This uses an Arm Cortex X4 CPU and an innovative 1:5:2 core arrangement, all built on a 4nm process. That’s two large X4 cores, five “medium” A720 cores, and two A530 cores for background processing. The base model has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, while higher tiers will let you up to 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. The phone is only rated IP65 for dust and water resistance; In other words, it cannot be submerged in water like most other flagships.
The battery gets a big boost beyond the usual 5,000 mAh capacity phones have been stuck with for years and is now up to 5,400 mAh. The Chinese version has 100W wired fast charging (this will likely be reduced to 80W in the US) and sees the return of 50W wireless charging. Both will need OnePlus-specific chargers. The display is a 6.82-inch, 3168 x 1440, 120Hz OLED display that can reach up to 4,500 nits. Unlike some other flagship phones that ditch curved screens, this one is still curved.
The design is almost a complete copy/paste of the OnePlus 11. Naturally, the front is an all-screen display with a punch-hole front camera. The rear camera bump places all the camera lenses in an off-center circle and then this shape wraps awkwardly around the edge of the phone. The only difference we can see is that the LED flash, which used to live in one of the four black ‘viewfinder’ circles, has moved to the upper left corner of the camera bump.
For the cameras, we have the 50MP Sony LYT-808 sensor as the 1/1.4-inch main sensor. There’s also a 64MP 3x optical zoom telephoto camera, a 48MP wide-angle camera, and a 32MP front camera. The back has three cameras but is designed to look like four, with a camera sensor at the fourth spot. We’ll guess it’s the “rear spectral sensor” listed on the spec sheet, but keep in mind we’re dealing with a Chinese translation here.
Chinese prices aren’t particularly relevant to the rest of the world, but in China, the base model (12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage) starts at 4,299 yuan (about $600), while the extra-large model with 24GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage. The model is priced at 5,799 yuan (about $811).
Listing image by OnePlus