Wednesday, August 4, 2021

OnePlus Nord 2 5G Hands-on

A couple of weeks ago, OnePlus launched the successor to the OnePlus Nord, the OnePlus Nord 2. it sports a 6.43-inch FHD+ Fluid AMOLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate, a MediaTek Dimensity 1200-AI CPU, up to 12GB of RAM, triple rear cameras, and a 4,500mAh battery with 65W Warp Charge. Check out our initial thoughts as well as benchmark scores below.

Starting on the front, the OnePlus Nord 2 5G looks like your typical 2021 smartphone. It has a large 6.43-inch screen with FHD+ resolution or 410PPI. In addition, it’s a Fluid AMOLED panel, so we’re getting rich colors with deep blacks. Protecting it is Gorilla Glass 5 and already has a screen protector pre-installed.

It also has thin bezels with a hole punch on the upper left for the 32MP selfie shooter. Found above it is the earpiece, which also doubles as a secondary loudspeaker for stereo sound.

Look on the left side, and you will find the volume buttons.

While on the right is the power/lock button and the switch for activating silent, vibrate, or ring. The buttons are made of plastic, clicky yet firm. They’re also easy to reach, although the switch is a bit of a reach.

At the top, we have the secondary microphone.

While down at the bottom, we have the card tray for two nano-sized SIM cards, the main microphone, USB-C port, and loudspeaker.

Flip it on its back, and you will see the camera module that houses the three cameras: 50MP main, 8MP ultra-wide, and 2MP mono. The ring of the lenses themselves are raised higher than the module, so it’s a bit worrying that it might get scratches over time when you put it on hard surfaces. So better use the protective case included in the package.

Although the OnePlus Nord 2 5G has a plastic frame, it still looks and feels premium thanks to its metallic paint job. The back panel is also Gorilla Glass 5 with curved sides, so it feels nice in the hands and comfortable to grip. At 73.2mm, it’s a pretty narrow device. It also feels thin and has a decent heft.

The OnePlus Nord 2 5G comes in three colors: Gray Sierra, Green Wood, and Blue Haze, which is the unit we have right now. Powering it is a MediaTek Dimensity 1200 with a 3.0GHz octa-core CPU and Mali-G77 MC9 GPU. Our unit has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, but there’s also a 12GB + 256GB model. For the software, it runs on OxygenOS 11.3 based on Android. Battery-wise, it has a 4,500mAh capacity with support for 65W Warp Charge. Check out the benchmark scores below.

• ANTuTu v8.3.4 – 548,758
• 3D Mark – 4,317 (Wild Life) – 25.9 Ave FPS, 1,303 (Wild Life Extreme) – 7.8 Ave FPS
• PC Mark – 13,170 (Work 3.0)
• Geekbench 5.4.1 – 845 (Single-Core), 3,350 (Multi-Core), 5,674 (OpenCL)
• AndroBench – 1,783.59 MB/s (Seq. Read), 973.22 MB/s (Seq. Write)

We also tried playing Genshin Impact, and it defaults to Medium graphic settings. We put it in the highest settings at 60FPS, and so far, it was able to run it easily. We’ll further test it out in our full review.

The OnePlus Nord 2 is priced as follows:

• OnePlus Nord 2 5G 8GB + 128GB Blue Haze – PHP 21,990
• OnePlus Nord 2 5G 12GB + 256GB Gray Sierra – PHP 25,990

OnePlus Nord 2 5G specs:
6.43-inch FHD+ (2400 x 1080) Fluid AMOLED display, 410PPI
90Hz refresh rate. HDR10+
Corning Gorilla Glass 5
MediaTek Dimensity 1200-AI CPU
ARM G77 MC9 GPU
8GB, 12GB LPDDR4X RAM
128GB, 256GB UFS 3.1 storage
Triple rear cameras:
• 50MP F1.8 (main)
• 8MP F2.25 (ultrawide)
• 2MP F2.4 (mono)
32MP F2.45 front camera
5G, 4G LTE
Dual-SIM (nano)
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax
Bluetooth 5.2
GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, NavIC
NFC
Dual stereo speaker
Fingerprint scanner (in-display)
OxygenOS 11.3 (Android 11)
USB Type-C
4,500mAh battery w/ 65W Warp Charge
158.9 x 73.2 x 8.3 mm
189g
Blue Haze, Grey Sierra, Green Woods