OnePlus 12 gets $800 US release along with the interesting $500 OnePlus 12R

  • The OnePlus 12.

  • The design looks just like last year, but there’s this new marble green color.

  • This weird circle + wraparound camera bump is still here.

  • The top and bottom. There’s an IR blaster on the top.

  • The black version.

  • The sides. That camera bump makes the phone unstable on a table.

OnePlus previously announced the OnePlus 12 flagship smartphone in December, but now it’s getting a US release and pricing. The phone ships on February 6 in the US and Canada with a $800 price tag. OnePlus is also bringing the rather interesting OnePlus 12R to the US, a 6.8-inch device running last year’s flagship Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, for $500.

$800 is a pretty good price for a flagship phone. Samsung’s 6.8-inch flagship is the $1,300 Galaxy S24. The Pixel 8 Pro is a $1,000, so OnePlus is undercutting the competition quite a bit. As we said, this device was already announced in December, but the highlights are an impressive 5400 mAh battery and super fast charging. The phone has 80 W proprietary wired charging in the US and 100 W internationally, while wireless charging is 50 W. OnePlus says 80 W is still fast enough to go from 1 percent to 100 percent in 30 minutes. OnePlus only promises an IP65 dust and water resistance rating, so it’s not submergible, which is worse than most flagships. Other than that, it’s a lot of normal flagship things: a 6.82-inch, 3168×1440 120 Hz OLED that—unlike Samsung and Google—is still curved, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and too many cameras.

The 24GB of RAM/1TB of storage spec apparently isn’t coming to the US—the $800 model is 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and there’s a single higher tier of 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $900. The white color is also not arriving here. You get black for $800, with the $900 model arriving in black or green.

  • I had to double-check this, but this is OnePlus 12R. It’s nearly identical to the other phone.

  • There’s still a mute switch on the side there.

  • The sides.

  • The top and bottom.

As for the OnePlus 12R, these “R” models usually don’t come to the US, but this one is headed here on February 13. On the surface, you’re not missing a lot with the lower price. There’s still a 6.78-inch 120Hz OLED display, and while the resolution is 2780×1264 that’s still totally fine 450 ppi. There’s a plenty-fast Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, what must be an industry-leading 5500 mAh battery, an in-screen fingerprint reader, NFC, and 80 W charging. Compare this to a $500 Pixel 7a, which still has a “flagship” class SoC, the Google Tensor G2, but it only has a 6.1-inch, 90 Hz display and a barely there 4385 mAh battery. OnePlus is jumping back into the value phone game.

Now we’re starting to find downgrades: The phone has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of UFS 4.0 storage. The cameras are downgraded, too. The main sensor is a 50 MP Sony IMX890, which is usually a secondary camera on other phones. Then the other two rear cameras sound like junk: an 8 MP wide-angle camera with no autofocus and a 2 MP “macro lens. The front camera is 16 MP and also doesn’t have autofocus. The phone has an IP64 dust and water resistance rating, which means it’s only “splash proof”—I don’t even think you can run it under a sink faucet. (Sometimes, I wash my IP68 phone in the sink like it’s a dirty dish!) There’s also no wireless charging.

Listing image by OnePlus

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1998304