At the end of the second full day of use on a single battery charge, I really got it: the OnePlus 13 is a great phone.
I loved it right off the bat. I’m a sucker for a soft-touch back panel, and the dark blue “vegan leather” I had from the moment I unboxed it. “Touch this phone,” I ordered my friends when we gathered for holiday drinks. The OnePlus 13 is not just a looker. In two weeks of testing, it has proven itself again and again, with top-level performance and battery life for days. Literally.
Most nights I set the OnePlus 13 on my bedside wireless charger. New Year’s Eve was different; Fireworks threw off my routine, and I ended up camping out on the pull-out bed next to my fireworks-averse toddler. Sleep was fine and my phone charger was out of reach.
I could have phoned the next morning, but it didn’t even cross my mind. In fact, I completely forgot about the missed charge overnight until I set it on my charger with 40 percent left. Sure, it was a light day spent on Wi-Fi, but going through two days on a single charge without a care? It is very special.
Cruising for two days on a single charge without care? It is very special.
There were many moments like this when I tested the OnePlus 13 — things that made me sit up and take notice. I took a series of portrait-mode photos of my toddler running around in dim light, and every frame came back sharp. I spent 30 minutes playing my little games while the phone warmed up only slightly. I carried it around in some very linty pockets and bags, and the vegan leather looks just as good as it did right out of the box.
This is a true flagship phone, and it comes with a flagship price starting at $899. It’s a jump from the $799 OnePlus 12, but crucially, the 13 comes with everything I’d expect from a phone at that price: top ratings for dust and water resistance, wireless charging, all three major US wireless support from carriers, and a strong software support policy (four years of OS updates and six years of security support). These are exactly the things that OnePlus is not Got it right in our previous attempts at a true flagship device. It took a few tries to get here, but OnePlus has done it. This is a very good phone.
The OnePlus 13 is a good phone, but it is by no means a small phone. It is every bit as big as its 6.82-inch screen. It’s a tight fit to tuck into the small outside pocket of my bike bag, and it clips onto the top of the side pocket on my yoga pants. It’s tall, so it’s quite comfortable in one hand, but reaching the far corner of the screen is impossible without two hands on the device. Also, the phone is lighter than its size, and more than one person who handled it told me they thought it felt lighter.
The thin aluminum rail that runs along the edge of the OnePlus 13 is flat instead of curved this time, which is easier for me to grip. I appreciate it every time I pick it up from the table. The phone itself carries an IP69 rating, meaning it can withstand spray from water jets. I don’t often get my phone under spray from water jets, so I’m not sure how valuable this rating is.
More importantly for most people, the phone is also rated IP68 for resistance to submersion in water, an area where previous OnePlus phones have fallen short. Personally, I sleep better at night knowing that my phone will survive being submerged in a body of water.
The OnePlus 13 uses Qualcomm’s latest, greatest chipset: the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The version I’m testing comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, costs $999 and also comes in Arctic Dawn (white-ish) or Black Eclipse (it’s black). There is also a 12GB/256GB version, but it only comes in black. Boomer. In any case, the system easily handled every task I threw at it, including around 30 minutes of tooling. Pocket City 2 City in 3D-rendered free roam mode that would normally make a phone look great. The OnePlus 13 was barely warm.
Battery life is another strength, and it’s no wonder why the OnePlus 13 can go so long on a single charge: it has a 6,000mAh cell Inside it’s huge, with most other Android phones topping out at around 5,000mAh. It would take a lot of time to drain everything in one day; I sure wasn’t when I was testing it. I turned on every battery-draining feature I could find: high-performance mode, always-on display, and maximum settings for screen resolution and refresh rate.
With all this enabled, the battery was usually between 60 and 70 percent by the end of the day. Using the default “Balanced” performance mode saved me 80 percent a day. This is a multi-day phone battery no matter how you slice it.
Despite its large battery, recharging is fast because, well, that’s a OnePlus thing. The phone supports 80W charging with the included charger (the last in-box charger you’ll find with a flagship phone these days) and 50W wireless charging if you pick one up. OnePlus’ $49 compatible wireless charger. The phone doesn’t support Qi2 charging, but OnePlus has a handful of cases for the OnePlus 13 that include Qi2- and MagSafe-compatible magnetic rings, so you’ll at least be able to use magnetic devices and have one. You will be able to charge (slowly). Qi2 charger.
The OnePlus 13’s rear camera array is roughly the same as the OnePlus 12: a 50-megapixel main camera with stabilization, a fixed 3x camera, and an ultrawide. You can record videos up to 8K/24p with the main camera, and there’s a 32-megapixel selfie camera with fixed focus on the front.
The Hasselblad-branded color calibration that’s been a fixture on OnePlus’ high-end phones for the past few years is here, and it’s generally good. It tends to pump up reds and oranges, especially in indoor lighting, to the point of channel clipping — you’ll know this is happening when red tones start to look pink. But it handles mixed light well and knows what to do with hot golden hour sun. Overall, I like the color treatment: punchy without going over the top.
The OnePlus 13’s camera uses a new dual exposure algorithm that mixes a short exposure with a long exposure to help freeze subjects in low-light situations – the perennial smartphone camera problem. This is the way of Apple and Google Been taking for years nowAnd it’s a welcome improvement over the OnePlus 13. I’m definitely seeing less blurry pictures indoors in dim light than I got with the OnePlus 12, especially with the telephoto and 2x focal length. Finally it feels like OnePlus has created a camera that can hang with the best.
The OnePlus 13 is slightly more expensive than its predecessor. But it’s a better phone in some big ways: the camera is meaningfully improved, the water resistance rating is higher, and it’ll get longer-term software support. No worries on battery life OnePlus 12But it’s class-leading at 13. OnePlus flagships are asking for money, but for the first time, it’s made a phone that feels worth the price.
That said, the competition is strong. The Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus And Pixel 9 Pro XL — the other top big Android phone candidates — are $999 and $1,099, respectively. And honestly? I don’t think there is a clear winner among the three.
The OnePlus 13 is a better phone in some big ways
This is a new position, where Samsung’s S-series devices have been running as premium Android phones for the past few years. Google played some major catch-up with the Pixel 9-series, and now OnePlus is also in the conversation. This is wonderful.
Samsung and Google would have you believe that special AI features are a must for their phones, but I don’t think that’s true — not yet, anyway. The OnePlus 13, of course, offers all the AI features available to high-end phones through Android, such as Circle to explore And GeminiThat is enough. I’d bet more people care about better battery life than AI tricks right now, and that’s where the OnePlus 13 delivers.
Both Google and Samsung offer richer ecosystems than OnePlus, which is still in the early stages of building out its family of earbuds, wearables and tablets. This may be a deciding factor between this trio for some people. But that aside, we now have another option for a high-end Android phone in the US, and a pretty good one at that.
Photography by Alison Johnson/The Verge
