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00:00Hey what's up guys, MKBHD here, and OnePlus Nord is here, it's official, as you probably
00:08already know by the avalanche in your sub box, or maybe not, maybe this is the first
00:12time you're ever hearing about this phone.
00:14So I dropped my first impressions video and all the specs and all the official stuff about
00:17a week ago, you can check out that video if you haven't seen it already.
00:20This is the full review, I'm going to button some things up, and also just talk about this
00:25place OnePlus is in, and the truth behind this phone.
00:30So like I said in that impressions video, and I'll stand by this, pretty much every
00:34part of this phone is second best for the price, meaning there's not going to be a super
00:40standout flagship spec in any place in this phone, but all of them are going to be right
00:45up there with the best.
00:46So the display is maybe the best example of this.
00:49It's a 1080p, 90hz, OLED display, so not the bleeding edge, highest resolution, or
00:56highest frame rate, but still quite nice.
00:59And I've said I really like that it's a flat display, and that the bezels aren't too thick.
01:03Now to pixel peep a little bit, I do see some off axis rainbowing, and some tint issues,
01:09but it's minor, and overall this screen is better than fine.
01:12And then same with the specs, Snapdragon 765, and I'm using the model with 12 gigs of RAM,
01:18and 256 gigs of storage.
01:20Now it's no 800 series, and it is UFS 2.1 storage, and honestly just feels a beat slower,
01:27especially with the heavier stuff, like launching the big apps, like the games, and the camera,
01:32that's where it's a little more noticeable, but overall, it's fine.
01:37You know, OxygenOS for me has felt more or less like the same experience as the more
01:40expensive OnePlus 8, plus you have the bonus of 5G compatibility now.
01:45Now again, in that first impressions video, I talked about the quality of the build, feels
01:49good in the hand, metal and glass.
01:52That's not entirely true or accurate about this phone, so it is glass on the front and
01:59the back, and it's plastic rails along the outsides, and metal buttons.
02:05So it's metal, glass, and plastic.
02:08Not that there's anything wrong with plastic, we see it all the time, especially in lower
02:12priced phones, and it's technically more durable than glass a lot of times.
02:16Here it is painted to look like metal, but like I said, second best.
02:20Okay, so the other main things that we were waiting for the full review to talk about
02:23were the battery life and the cameras.
02:26So like, which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?
02:29I think most people would probably pick the good news, which is the battery, and turns
02:34out the battery is quite good.
02:36It's a little over 4,100 milliamp hours, as you may remember, and it was getting me comfortably
02:40through the end of all types of quarantine days, five hours of screen on time, no problem,
02:45ending the lighter days with sometimes 20 or 30% left, and it was definitely helped
02:50massively by it coming with the warp charger in the box.
02:54I can't understate how important that was for this phone.
02:57Now it actually comes with the European plug in the box, since this phone's not coming
03:00to the US, but I happen to already have a US warp charge 30T plug already, plus there's
03:06one in my car.
03:07I've been a fan of fast charging for a long time, so this phone, in the battery department,
03:10definitely doesn't disappoint.
03:12Really it's, in this price range, only second place to the crazy, the more gimmicky Energizer
03:18phone types.
03:19You remember that?
03:20Did you guys know Energizer made a phone?
03:22The battery company?
03:23That was a trip.
03:25So then the cameras, the bad news.
03:28And really, it's just kind of a mixed bag at this point.
03:32I really think they've fallen victim to their own marketing department's hype.
03:37So it's a quad camera system on the back, all right?
03:39An eight megapixel main camera with the hardware straight from the OnePlus 8, then an eight
03:44megapixel ultra wide camera, a two megapixel macro camera, and five megapixel depth sensor.
03:51Okay, let me try to be diplomatic here.
03:54The main camera is okay.
03:56It's the same hardware as the OnePlus 8, but it doesn't quite take the same photos I found.
04:01It's actually a little bit noisier, a little worse overall, but definitely in the same
04:05league.
04:06It's a little bit worse if you don't pixel peep too much, but once you zoom in, you probably
04:09won't be too impressed by detail or anything like that.
04:13It's fine.
04:14The ultra wide camera, it does its job with the whole dramatic wide perspective for sure,
04:19but it's immediately soft.
04:20So no matter what the lighting conditions, it's just lacking the resolution fundamentally
04:25to match the quality of the primary camera in a wider field of view.
04:29You actually need a higher resolution than the main camera to achieve this, but maybe
04:33that's just for flagships.
04:35Nevertheless, I'm fine that it's here.
04:37So you can probably see where this is going.
04:39The two megapixel macro camera on the back of this phone is just unnecessary because
04:45it is so bad.
04:47And I think even OnePlus would know right away, it's basically to increase the count
04:51of the cameras on the phone, and it's not actually here to be a great quality camera.
04:56And actually you want to know the biggest tell of the reason you know OnePlus knows
05:00this.
05:01The OnePlus 8 Pro has a macro camera, and there's actually a software feature where
05:05if you get close to a subject, it automatically switches the camera to macro mode because
05:10it's a good camera.
05:11It's useful.
05:12It'll be high quality.
05:13This phone, the Nord absolutely doesn't do that.
05:15It never automatically switches to that separate macro camera because often the photos from
05:20this macro camera are actually worse than if you just use the main camera and get as
05:25close as you can and then crop in.
05:27That's not an exaggeration.
05:28Seriously, I tried this a few times and almost every time I just take the photo from the
05:32main camera, crop in a bit, and when you put it next to the macro version, it's usually
05:37better.
05:38And this makes the additional camera module feel pointless.
05:40And then there's the depth camera, which in theory should make for some improved portrait
05:45shots and they look pretty good mostly with some occasionally quirky edge detection.
05:51But then I covered the depth sensor with my finger and kept shooting and it didn't complain
05:55once and continued to take basically the same quality portrait shots.
05:59I think it's pretty clear OnePlus and a bunch of other companies, it's not just them, but
06:03in phones like this, they want to put a triple or a quad camera setup so that it looks like
06:09visually, it looks like one of those flagship phones.
06:13And when you look at the spec sheet, it says quad cameras, just like a flagship, but because
06:17it's not, and they're trying to save money, they have to cut the quality of at least that
06:21second and third camera.
06:23So here's a crazy idea.
06:25I don't know if I've said this before, but just get rid of those last two cameras that
06:30are so bad that they're useless and put that money you save into something else.
06:34Because the camera really is one of those places where you can just cut the fat like
06:37that.
06:38Now, a place where you can't, the speaker on this phone, right?
06:41It's a bad single channel, it's a mono downward facing speaker.
06:45You can block it easily, low quality, tinny, not very loud.
06:49It's just bad, but it's better than not having a speaker at all.
06:52So they just put that speaker in there and it's functional.
06:55But these cameras, the logical thing to do here is cut it down to maybe one, maybe two
07:00cameras if you need them and take the money saved and put them into other things that
07:03might be more noticeable like wireless charging or a metal frame or just better primary cameras.
07:09But either way, that's just my opinion.
07:11It's something they could do, but clearly have chosen not to.
07:14But that brings us to my conclusion.
07:15Now, in case that wasn't abundantly clear, I really like this phone.
07:18And with the promised two years of software updates and three years of security updates,
07:22I'm actually confident I could easily daily this phone for a couple of years and be happy.
07:26But the truth about OnePlus Nord is this was inevitable.
07:31Like OnePlus right now doesn't quite have the brand clout to compete at over a thousand
07:37bucks.
07:38Now that's definitely goals.
07:39They're getting there.
07:40They're closing in.
07:41But still like ask your five closest friends what they think of OnePlus's phones and guarantee
07:46there's a couple of them that haven't even heard of OnePlus yet.
07:48And that is tough to convince people to buy something at over a thousand bucks from a
07:52brand they've never heard of over Apple and Samsung, the dominating players.
07:57And OnePlus knows that.
07:58So they know their goal is and probably always has been to get to the point where they can
08:01compete and sell those high margin thousand dollar flagships.
08:05But if they do that, they're kind of abandoning what got them there in the first place, which
08:10is all this name recognition for good, high quality, cheaper phones.
08:14So as their phones year after year after year moved up and up and up over and over
08:19again in price, it was inevitable that they had to come up with something down here to
08:23fill in the gap to keep building that brand cash and keep building that reputation of
08:27making good quality phones for the price while this continues to evolve.
08:32The only difference now though, is they can't make this a flagship killer because they make
08:37a flagship now and they're not trying to cannibalize their own sales.
08:40So this has to be a distinctly mid range, separate experience, separate branding, separate
08:47phone so that it doesn't interrupt with or overlap with their flagship.
08:51So honestly, we could have seen this coming when these phones came out.
08:54Do you think it's a coincidence that for the first time in the years and years and years
08:58of OnePlus phones, they finally added wireless charging, the IP certification, just those
09:04last couple of things people were asking them to add so that they can compete at the high
09:08price?
09:09No.
09:10They added all those things to this higher end phone to compete, of course, and make
09:13it a better phone.
09:14But also now it makes a perfect opening for a couple months later, OnePlus Nord to slide
09:19in and have basically all the same smart trade offs that they've been doing over the years
09:25with their flagships from like 2015 up until now.
09:29What are the downsides of this phone?
09:31No IP certification, no headphone jacks, subpar cameras, a little bit lower end stuff, but
09:36just making the right cutoffs.
09:38And at the end of the day, they've made the right trade offs.
09:40If you're shopping for a phone anywhere under 500 bucks or 500 euros or 30,000 rupees or
09:46whatever that magical price range is for you, this is something to look at.
09:50No question.
09:51Easy to recommend, easy to consider.
09:53But now I'm looking forward to the rest of what the Nord range will bring.
09:58I think inevitably there's a version of this that comes to the US and I'll be excited waiting
10:02for that.
10:03So there you go.
10:04There you have it.
10:05It's the truth about OnePlus Nord.
10:06Make sure to leave a like if you enjoyed this video and subscribe if you haven't already
10:09to see more videos like this.
10:12Catch you guys in the next one.
10:14Peace.