OnePlus 13 review: Worth the upgrade?

Design diary

Pick it up and it’s equal part refreshing, equal part familiar—there’s a medley of classic OnePlus and modern design elements on the OnePlus 13. As ever, the alert slider to switch between notification profiles makes a return, as does the circular camera island accompanied by the shiny Hasselblad ‘H’ wordmark, but you now get the du jour, iPhone-inspired flat-edges with the flat screen and rear panel curving ever so slightly to meet them. That mild curvature makes all the difference, when you’re holding the phone in your hand or slipping it into your pocket, a stark contrast from the excessively sharp edges on other phones these days.

Also read: Vivo X200 Pro review

The almost signature green colorway has been rested this year, giving way to a blue in a textured vegan leather material that feels luxurious to the touch. You could pick an almost pearlescent white Arctic Dawn or the woodgrain textured Black Eclipse reserved for the top-end 24GB/1TB memory/storage variant (Rs. 89,999), but the Midnight Blue variant is quite the looker, in my opinion.

No matter which variant you pick, you get a phone that’s quite a bit thinner than the outgoing OnePlus 12—8.55/8.9mm vs the 9.2mm on the 12, and this assumes greater significance when you realize the 13 packs in a 600mAh bigger battery, packs in fast wireless charging and has a better IP 68 + 69 water resistance, officially rated for the first time.

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For those curious, the IP69 rating allows it to withstand high pressure jets at up to 80 degrees Celsius, should you be careless enough to leave the OnePlus 13 exposed in a dishwasher or a car wash. I’m not saying you should, but you could. The front is covered in a Crystal Shield Ultra Ceramic Glass, not Corning’s Gorilla Glass as we have come to expect, but OnePlus claims it does well with drops, a fact I inadvertently tested when I dropped the test unit on the concrete parking floor.

On display

As sleek as it is, the OnePlus 13 is by no means a small phone, and it’s every bit as big as the 6.82-inch AMOLED display indicates it will be. It’s a largely flat display save for that aforementioned slightest of curved edges on all four sides, but you get quad HD+ resolution, LTPO 1-120Hz refresh rate, 4500 nits peak brightness and 2160Hz pulse width modulation for less fatiguing late-night use. There’s a new glove mode that should come in use for colder climes, and the Aqua Touch system which enables use with wet fingers is handy as ever.

The display is excellent, with punchy colors and solid brightness levels, and the RadiantView tech boosts brightness for outdoor use. Under the display is a new ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, replacing the optical sensors OnePlus has traditionally used. And before you ask, OnePlus has provided a lifetime warranty on the OnePlus 13 in case a green line crops up—the number of folks who popped the “is the green line issue solved?" when asking for my recommendation of this device anecdotally tells me the brand still has some ground to cover in this regard.

Points for performance

Qualcomm has really delivered with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, and never once did I see the phone skip a beat, whether it’s normal day-to-day use with music, browsing, heavy camera use or playing games at full tilt with maximum graphics and frame rate settings. OnePlus has never held back on performance on its numbered flagships, but the OnePlus 13 feels even more fluid, thanks to a new feature which kicks of a new screen-heavy process without wholly ending another, so if you’re the sort who finds yourself open several apps in quick succession, you’ll notice the difference.

What you will notice and appreciate even more is that OnePlus has brought one of the best multitasking features OnePlus Canvas—from its foldables line to its candy-bar shaped phones. Canvas takes a free-flowing, multi-tile approach to multitasking, where apps occupy almost the entire screen, allowing another app to be visible from the top/bottom, ready to be tapped into view and used when you need. It may not sound like a big deal, but it makes is super easy to copy/paste notes into Teams or drag camera images onto an email, without having to adjust the divider between the two apps in split screen mode.

AI features make an appearance too, such as AI Eraser, AI Unblur and AI Reflection Eraser tools in photos, AI Summaries and Replies, and it’s good to see OnePlus catch up to the rest of the pack in these must-haves for 2025 flagships. Elsewhere on Oxygen OS 15, OnePlus has nailed the cleaned-up, simplified interface, although its four years of Android updates and six years of security patches is quite a bit less than its premium flagship peers in Samsung and Google.

Charging on

A big draw for OnePlus flagships over the years has been fast charging speeds, with chargers bundled in the box, a significant factor in reducing battery anxiety since you don't need more than 15 minutes to top the battery up. The 100W charger managed well over 50% in 15 minutes, with the entire process taking a bit under 45 minutes, and a topped-up battery lasted me well past a day and a half with moderate use and a solid early-morning-to-late-night day with heavier use. If anything, the lack of integrated Qi2 charging support is a miss, though OnePlus is the only brand to supply official cases which include magnets and full Qi2 support, with wireless charging speeds at 15W. The brand retails an interesting accessory – an AIRVOOC 50W Magnetic Charger, complete with a cooling fan to reduce battery degradation while still charging wirelessly at a blistering 50W speed.

Photo finish

The cherry on the icing is the massively improved cameras, traditionally the Achilles’ Heel for OnePlus flagships. OnePlus has retained the 50MP primary and selfie cameras from the OnePlus 12, upgrading the telephoto to a larger, 50MP Sony LYT-600 sensor with 3X optical zoom in a thinner, triprism layout, and the ultrawide sees a bump up to a 50MP sensor. The primary camera expectedly produces sharp photos with good color reproduction and good dynamic range, and low-light photos are handled well, just as we saw on the OnePlus 12.

Although there is a noticeable shift in color profile on the telephoto, its ability to nail the details in good light is commendable, even as its low-light telephoto photos take a bit of a hit. The ultrawide is unquestionably an upgrade, with better low light results and reined in barrel distortion around the edges. On video, the phone offers 4K Dolby Vision HDR recording at up to 60fps across all cameras, including the selfie camera, which is impressive. Overall, it’s a legitimate upgrade over the already respectable OnePlus 12 in most shooting conditions, and while it may not challenge the Vivo X200 Pro just yet, the camera is reliable enough for me to leave the Pixel and the Vivo behind on short day trips and rely solely on the OnePlus.

Verdict

One tried hard to find the gotcha with the OnePlus 13, but really, there is none. It checks off all the boxes, including some that the OnePlus 12 hadn’t, and then some. Sure, you can find a Snapdragon 8 Elite toting iQOO 13 with marginally better runed performance at a lower price, but the OnePlus 13 silences the segment peers with many Pro-level upgrades—better software, wireless charging, a slicker design and overall better cameras—for it to be worth the premium.

Heck, even though I’m usually not one to suggest a previous gen OnePlus user to upgrade, the sum of the parts of the OnePlus 13 damn well convinces me this is a stellar upgrade even for owners of the OnePlus 12.