Great Cameras & Mitten Friendly: OnePlus 13 Review

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A new smartphone is making its way to Canada, and if you're an Android user, it's definitely worth a look!

The OnePlus 13 is a premium flagship phone that's on sale as of today. In a time when smartphones are looking more and more alike, OnePlus is taking some pretty big swings in terms of its looks and features, and in my testing over the past month-ish, it connects much more often than it misses.

With an unmistakable camera module (that produces some astounding results, even if you're not a great photography), three distinctly unique finishes, and an incredible display, that Canadians without smart gloves will actually be able to swipe away on without freezing their fingers, the latest phone from OnePlus is one you'll want to pickup…and maybe even drop in a Jacuzzi (don't worry, I'll explain shortly).

Pros

Amazing Cameras
Over-the-top water resistance
Includes charger

Cons

Not sold through carriers
Thick-ish bezels
Proprietary OS

Who Is OnePlus anyway?

If you're unfamiliar with OnePlus, that's okay. They're big in other parts of the world, and thanks to a slew of really great products last year, including a smartwatch with insane battery life and the beautiful-looking OnePlus 12, they've been gaining ground.

Oneplus 13 And 13 R W Various Accessories

Overall, they're more popular with tech enthusiasts who know enough about the components of smartphones to recognize when a collection of great components also adds up to really good value.

Photographers have become familiar with this phone through their collaboration with Hasselblad, a proper camera camera company, who has lent their expertise to OnePlus to create some outstanding cameras in a very small form factor.

One Screen Photo Features Oneplus 13 Bear Carousel

And those who like to tinker with their phones, to customize the software and user experience to their personal tastes, gravitate to this OxygenOS device (that's the software that powers the phone) because of the granularity you can dig into to make OnePlus devices feel like they were made just for you!

This is all to say, if you've never heard of OnePlus before, it's because they were a bit more on the fringe of the tech world - but thanks to solid devices, like the OnePlus 13, they're ready to bring some main character energy to the Canadian smartphone landscape.

OnePlus 13 Design - Finally! A Phone That Doesn't Look Boring!

In an era where the design of consecutive generations of various phone models look the same OnePlus is doing something pretty unique with the looks of their phones.

Rather than the exact same design in three colour finishes, OnePlus has gone with three totally different materials for the design of the OnePlus 13.

I've been using the "Microfiber Vegan Leather" version which is a really beautiful shade of blue, with a soft, leatherette feel it. It has shiny silver accents on the OnePlus and Hasselblad logos and polished metal sides.

Each colour introduces a different finish. The white one, Arctic Dawn, has a glass-coated back, that's probably most similar to traditional glass-backed Android phones, with the exception being a fringer-print resistant finish that keeps the white back looking like a prairie field after a fresh snowfall (I'm writing this in rural Manitoba, so this is a very real frame of reference).

And the black one, has this really subtle wood grain. The colour is called black eclipse, and as you slide your fingers across the back of the phone you can feel this wood grain texture, which also seemed resistant to getting gunked up by my sweaty hands.

The phone also has a dedicated toggle on one side, allowing you to switch between silent, vibrate, and ring notification modes. A volume rocker button on the other side with a power vutton below. The SIM card tray is on the bottom (tragically, no micro SD expansion, which I thought there might be, since this really seems to be a phone focused on giving people the most value and longevity in their hardware). Plus the top and bottom have a collection of microphones and speakers that will help make your calls crystal clear and music and videos sound good.

The USB C style port is in the bottom and, get this, there's a CHARGER INCLUDED IN THE BOX! Who does that anymore?

Also, the phone ships with a screen protector on it. Mine scratched up pretty quickly, so this is something that you'll maybe want to replace early in your OnePlus 13 journey, but hey, nice of them to include it with the phone!

OnePlus 13 Cameras

The camera system deserves it's own article (which I hope I can get to in a reasonable length of time), so for now here's the short version:

Everyone says their cameras are really, really good on their phones, but with OnePlus this is really, really true!

Aside from the funky design aesthetics, the Hasselblad camera is the most unique feature of the OnePlus 13. There's three cameras on the back (I know it looks like four, but the one on the bottom right is actually a sensor to help out the on-board cameras).

OnePlus 13 Main Camera

50MP Sony's LYT-808 with OIS
1/1.4" Sensor Size
F/1.6 aperature
Location: Top Left

OnePlus 13 Ultra-wide Camera

50MP 120 degree field of five
1/2.75" sensor size
Location: Top Right

OnePlus 13 Telephoto Camera

3x Triprism Telephoto
50MP Sony's LYT-600
1/1.95" sensor size
73mm focal length
Location: Bottom Left

While the big draw with the camera system is that you can dig into pro settings very easily to dial in the exact look and feel you want, it's important to emphasize that you don't have to.

Out of the box, with minimal photographic skills, your pictures will turn out amazing with the new OnePlus 13.

There's a lot of reasons why (which again, I hope to cover in a dedicated camera article) but for now it comes down to really great hardware design, supported by very thoughtful software decisions, with an easy-to-use interface.

For example, if you're taking a picture of a fast moving object, like a race car or a flying bird, the OnePlus 13 simultaneously captures a long exposure and short exposure image. This gives the phone the opportunity to stitch together a single frame that has minimum photographic blur with reduced "noise" and grain. This happens automatically. You don't think about it. You snap a picture of an eagle diving for a salmon (or whatever you're photographing, maybe something less majestic) and thanks to those smart decisions by your phone's camera, your picture has every advantage to look great.

Another example worth sharing is with that Telephoto Lens. The "triprism" design allows the phone to cheat its way to get a very long focal length in a very tiny form factor, by reflecting the light in a very efficient way.

The result is higher quality, optical-like zoomed photos. Or, when you tap into the digital zoom, AI and image stabilization work together to better understand the shapes of far away objects to help you get a better picture.

Perfect example, this cruise ship picture goes from a tiny speck on the horizon, to a pretty impressive zoomed-in boat. There's a bunch of artefacts, and you lose some detail, put the results of this zoom are far beyond what you should be able to do with such a small phone and small camera! Drag the slider below and see for yourself.

Beyond the camera quality, there's a lot of different modes you can tap into for photography and video. Some I like less (the built-in filters are a miss for me personally), some I like more (portrait mode looks SO pro), but the point is, you have a LOT of tools to take photos the way YOU want, no matter what your skill level.

And if you're a hobbyist with skills or a bona-fide pro, Master Mode, let's you geek out on all the settings you'd expect to be able to tinker with on a professional camera.

OnePlus 13 Display

It's very easy to take this display for granted, because your eyes get used to looking at it very quickly, and you forget that it's quite exceptional until you pick up a lower quality phone.

With the support of the cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, this display supports zero-latency 120 fps frames videos and games on the 6.78 inch, 1.5K display. Now this is a BIG screen, but the phone doesn't feel unwieldy, even for one-handed typing, since it's surprisingly light at 210 grams.

And for for those of us who live in colder climates, this display has a nice little gift for us. You can use it with your mitts on! In my testing, my actual warm doe-skin gloves, didn't work on this because they're too thick. However, my everyday thin gloves allowed me to swipe and tap through the screen in a way I've never been able to do, even with "smart" gloves. Your fingers can be detected through wool and sheepskin gloves up to half a centimeter thick.

The display also has the newest generation of Aqua Touch (2.0), which allows you to still easily navigate your phone, even if the display has water droplets on it (from a pool or rain).

OnePlus 13 More water resistant than you'll probably ever need?

Do you remember in the intro to this article where I alluded to this phone being safe to drop into a hot tub? Well, it's true!

The OnePlus 13 has a bizarrely high water resistance rating. IP68 is the category of water resistance that protects your phone at a depth of 1.5 metres for 30 mins. So if you drop this in a pool, or bathtub, it's A-OK (NOT safe for the ocean, as the salt water wrecks havoc on the internal components).

This phone also has the bragging rights of being IP69 certified. This means that from 4 directions, under pressurized water jets, at temperatures up to 80 degrees celsius your phone will be okay for a very short period of time (30 seconds).

Is this practical? I guess it depends on your lifestyle and I had the chance to test it out in a very unique scenario.

I was given my OnePlus device ahead of release, and the company set up a little media room with various props to test out the phones, including a portable dishwasher and washing machine.

Since it was their phone and not mine, I felt brave enough to toss it into both appliances. I definitely kept it in there FAR longer than the 30 second limit that the phone was rated for and I was SHOCKED that it still worked completely normally.

Like the phone was HOT to the touch after coming out of the dishwasher, but worked fine. And impressively, the faux-leather back dried perfectly.

Is it likely that people will accidentally drop this in a pot of boiling spaghetti, forget it in their pants pocket on laundry day, or somehow leave this in their dishwasher – probably not. But I suppose there's some level of novelty to be able to say that your phone could do those things.

Is OnePlus 13 Battery Life & Connectivity

Big displays and powerful devices can take a toll on battery life. But the OnePlus 13 manages to overcome this with a chonkin' 6000 mAh equivalent battery (its actual dual 3000 mAh batteries) and some slick new technology within that battery.

Oneplus 13 W Wireless Charger — OnePlus 13 with optional "wireless" charger.

These phones use something called a Silicon NanoStack battery. It's a special coating that boosts the performance of the battery to give it a high energy density in a smaller form. In my testing getting through a whole day with heavy use was no problem.

When it comes time to charge up the OnePlus 13 you can get a full charge in 36 minutes. That's going from 1 to 100% in just over a half hour. There are a few caveats to this: using the official SUPERVOOC Power Adapter, turning on Smart Rapid Charging Mode, not using your phone while charging, etc.

So in the real world, it may not be quite that fast (I've never really let mine get down past 10 per cent so I've never tested charging from 1 - 100%) but overall you can expect fast charging to be genuinely fast.

Is OnePlus 13 Good for gaming?

This phone is poised to be an epic gaming machine.

Between that 1.5k display with 120 hz refresh rate, the massive battery, and the incredible potential in the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor I feel like it's just waiting for even more advanced titles to be released on mobile.

Oneplus 13 Grand Theft Auto Elo Controller

Developers until the past year or two just haven't had the processing power available to make the games they were developing for consoles and PCs a comparable experience on mobile. But as that changes thanks to power-packed processors on phones, the OnePlus 13 is primed to take advantage as new titles drop.

Side note - when I'm gaming on mobile, I'm using one of many different mobile phone controllers. I'm happy to report, even with the unusual shape of the camera module, I haven't encountered issues with any of my most common go-tos including the ELO Vagabond (my new personal fav), the Backbone One, the Razer Kishi Ultra, or the (sometimes frustrating) GameSir G8 Plus.

OnePlus 13 Review - Final Thoughts

After a successful 2024 with the OnePlus 12 & 12R, the incredible OnePlus Watch 2, and a slew of tablets, earbuds, and foldables to round out their ecosystem, OnePlus has really proven they deserve a place in the mainstream North American mobile arena.

The OnePlus 13 is a super-powered Android phone.

I hop between devices a lot throughout the year because of my tech coverage. The way I felt while swiping my way through OxygenOS 15, admiring the quirky and original aesthetics and feel of this phone, reminded me of the single digit Samsung S series phones, where it felt like there were major innovations between generations and that it was fun to explore new and different features on a phone.

The only option to buy this phone in Canada is to get it outright (you can buy online from Best Buy or you can buy From OnePlus) and if you've only ever bought a phone through a carrier before, shelling out $1,399 will result in some sticker shock.

To ease that, OnePlus is offering free memory upgrades and trade-in savings with instant credit.

OnePlus also has the 13R, a lower cost version ($849 CAD) which is still feature-rich where it counts.

If you do decide to make the upgrade and try out the OnePlus 13, you're going to be enjoying a very premium flagship experience.

OnePlus 13

The OnePlus 13 is an excellent flagship phone. It stands out for it's unique design, powerful cameras, and high water resitatnce rating. It has a large 6.8 inch screen and a quick-charging battery that lasts all day.

From $1249 at OnePlus

When testing out the OnePlus 12 I really liked the phone, but sometimes felt like Oxygen OS was a little buggy, but haven't felt that (so far) with testing the OnePlus 13 running Oxygen OS 15.

There's an easy to use feature to share files between this phone with iPhone users.

There's a walkie-talkie-style communication feature that's a little gimmicky, but kinda cool if more than one person in your household is going to rock.

Photos look amazing. Image editing is as good on this device as it is on others (sometimes the AI tools need a little extra finessing to remove unwanted objects).

Plus many of the productivity and writing features you see on other devices that can help you change your tone of voice or summarize long walls of text are also available on the OnePlus 13 and work about as well as it does with their peers.

Oxygen Os On Oneplus 13 Carousel Background

This is a phone I'd recommend to an Android user who might be looking for a change from Samsung or Google, but not wanting to feel like they're losing any tools they've grown used to.

While everyone claims their cameras are great (and honestly, they are for what most people need), I have been consistently impressed with the quality of photos and videos on this phone. You get amazing detail with your macro shots. Portraits are beautiful, with just the right amount of background blur (though you can easily adjust further to taste), and the AI-assisted digital zoom is mind-blowing.

Also, for anyone who feels phones look boring now, OnePlus seems to be the last brand willing to take big risks on the look and style of their devices, and in my opinion, it's paying off.

OnePlus created their own biggest competition: 13R Review

R for Really Good!