OnePlus 11 Review: OnePlus makes one with (almost) everything!

OnePlus 11 Review: OnePlus launched several devices at its Cloud 11 event last month, but the one which grabbed all the eyeballs was OnePlus 11 smartphone. This is because the smartphone manufacturer apparently took a U-turn, for all good reasons, to launch the latest device. It is now again back in the business - of manufacturing 'flagship killer'. The company has managed to tick almost every box required to deliver a near-perfect smartphone with the OnePlus 11. With this, you would end up paying just the right price for a flagship device. Let's find out everything in detail that places the OnePlus 11 among the best flagship devices available in the market.

OnePlus 11 Review: Design

Before going into detailed specifications, let me tell you that this smartphone feels very comfortable in hands. But the only stumbling block for me, during the initial days, was the huge camera bump because most of the times I would end up rubbing my fingers with the curves - which was quite jarring. However, in a week or so I kind of got used to it and things really worked out well after I started using the soft case provided in the box. OnePlus sent us the Titan Black colour variant of the OnePlus 11 smartphone with 16GB RAM and 256GB storage.

The smartphone has a matte-finished back that will not attract fingerprints or smudge, however, it is quite slippery and the only thing that saves your smartphone from falling is the metallic body. It not just looks premium but provides a good grip over the device as well. The huge camera hump merges gracefully into the body frame. On the right side, is the power button, which has been placed in just the right position. The smartphone also marks the return of the OnePlus' trademark alert slider that is placed just above the power button and comes with three preset modes - ring (bottom position), vibrate (middle), and silent (top). Volume rockers are on the left side of the device. The device weighs around 205 grams and its dimensions are - 163.1 x 74.1 x 8.53mm.

OnePlus 11 Review: Display

The OnePlus 11 comes with a curved 6.7-inch display that is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus. It has a QHD+ Super Fluid AMOLED panel with a 3,126x1,440-pixel resolution and 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. It offers a maximum brightness of 1,300nits which is good enough to use the device under direct sunlight. It also offers Dolby Vision support. Content consumption on this device is awesome and the experience is enhanced by a dual-speaker setup with Dolby Atmos support. The good part is that the punch-hole selfie camera is placed at the top left of the screen and hence not noticeable while watching videos. You can enhance your video consumption experience even further with the help of various options like video colour enhancer and bright HDR video mode, which are part of the display settings.

OnePlus 11 Review: Battery and charging

The OnePlus 11 comes with a 5,000mAh battery and supports 100W SuperVOOC charging. Your smartphone can very easily last for the entire day. And in case you run out of juice, it takes less than 25 minutes to take charge your battery from 0 to 100 per cent.

OnePlus 11 Review: Software and performance

The OnePlus 11 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, one of the most powerful chipsets available in the market. Be it multitasking or playing heavy games like Asphalt 9 for a long duration, this device will not feel stressed and can handle all your tasks quite easily. Even while playing games at full specifications, I didn't notice any considerable heating issues. It has 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM which makes sure that the device will not stutter even when you have multiple apps running in the background. Also, it has an internal storage of 256GB based on the new UFS 4.0 standard.

While I didn't face any issues in the performance of the device, I ran some tests to see how the OnePlus 11 performs under sustained load. The results were not very satisfactory. In the 3D Mark Wild Life Stress Test, I found that the phone delivered top results for just two loops and then started fluctuating sharply. From its best score of 3,609, it dropped to as low as 1,264.

As you can see above, the OnePlus 11 got a stability score of just 35 per cent, which is nothing at par with other flagship devices. However, the overall Antutu score of the device is above 12 lakh and the Geekbench 6 multi-core result of 4,203 are quite impressive.

In terms of software, the smartphone will boot into OxygenOS 13 based on Android 13 out of the box. It has plenty of scope for customisation and is bloatware free.

OnePlus 11 Review: Camera

Now let's talk about the most important part of the OnePlus 11 - cameras. It has a triple camera setup at the back with a 50-megapixel main camera that comes with optical image stabilisation (OIS), a 48MP ultra-wide camera and a 32MP portrait camera. Once again OnePlus has worked with Hasselblad to give a better colour scheme to users.

The images produced by the main camera in well-lit conditions are detailed and vibrant with a  good colour dynamic range. Even during the night, the OnePlus 11 manages to take crisp images with good contrast levels without any noticeable noise and distortion. However, details will be missing occasionally.

The ultra-wide camera too manages to produce decent images with a nice colour combination.  

The portrait mode works really well and detects edges quite well both in good lighting and low-lighting conditions. Also, the bokeh effect is quite visible.

For selfies, the OnePlus 11 comes with a 16MP punch-hole camera. The selfies look perfect and are very close to natural skin tone, though slightly leaned towards the warmer side.

The best part about the selfie camera is that it clicks some amazing images in portrait mode as well with quite good edge detection.

OnePlus 11 Review: Verdict

We have already seen several flagship launches this year and many more are lined up. But the OnePlus 11 stands out not only in terms of design but also in terms of performance and camera. Also, you get a clean user interface and fast charging. The cherry on the cake is four years of Android updates and five years of bimonthly security patches, which makes it a perfect companion for the next several years.