So, OnePlus just launched the Note 5 and it's actually very interesting. See, around 30,000, there are other phones in this price segment that have very impressive specifications, but this one stands out for different reasons, and that's what we'll talk about in this video. Let me run you through the key specs in under 30 seconds. So, it's got last year's second most powerful Snapdragon chip, the 8S Gen 3 with up to 12 gigs of RAM, a 6,800 mAh battery with an included 80 watt charger, a 6.83 83 in Swift AMOLED display, nicely framed in a flat design.
So, it's got flat display, flat edges, feels really nice. A dual camera setup uh at the back with a 50 megap main camera, a 50 megapixel selfie camera, and it comes loaded with Oxygen OS 15 based on Android 15. You know, here are the more important questions. How's the actual everyday performance and battery backup? How good are the cameras? Should you get this for gaming or the IO Neo 10 or the PO F7? And should you get this or just get the OnePlus 13R instead? So, we'll answer all of that. Keep watching.First, let's see what all do you get in the box. The good thing with OnePlus is that you do get everything. The phone right here, I've got this shimmery white marble with a matte texture. So, let's get to that in a minute. You do get the charger, but with a USBA port, a USB type A to type- C cable, still in red color, and that SIM ejector tool. Now, you do get this case, and here's how it looks when it's on. Honestly, a little chunky, but it does feel like the phone will be safe in this. So, you've got everything in it right from day one. No extra expenses required. Now the phone in itself, I think it looks uh pretty good.
You know, I remember when the first Nord came out, it had this plastic and not so premium vibe, but this it not like only looks good, it also feels good. I almost don't feel like putting on a case. It's got a nice matte finish frame with a metallic vibe and a very silky smooth matte texture at the back. In fact, it almost feels like the OnePlus 13R. Very similar grip. familiar premium while even the camera bump is very minimal.
Honestly, this feels like a real step up, you know, for a Nord design. I do want to point out though, uh, the back panel is smooth.
Too smooth.
Now, I've got the white version, which has a bit of this wavelike pattern. I personally prefer plain designs, which the Note 5 does have in blue and black.
That blue looks absolutely amazing to me. Oh, and it does not attract fingerprints. like you know I've been using it in this humid mucky weather but absolutely no fingerprints whatsoever.
Now the Note 5 comes with Gorilla Glass 7i display protection which I think is acceptable in this price segment and 7i is still pretty good. However, it's only IP65 rated for water and dust resistance. So it can survive rain or perhaps you know few splashes of water but not a dip in the pool and I think that's a miss. I mean, it should have been at least IP67 and preferably IP68.
Now, for those of you who are really serious about getting this phone, here's a few extra things. It's got a dual SIM tray with no micro SD card slot, no ESIM functionality. It's got a USB 2 type-C port, Bluetooth 5.4. Yes, it's got NFC, supports Wi-Fi 6. It has an IR sensor right here, so you can use it as a remote to control any any electrical appliance that's around you and works with a remote. Lastly, it's got this plus key on the left side which you can customize to set to any function you want, which we'll talk about later. So, hang tight. So, yeah, stereo speakers, but not that great. I mean, good vocals.
It's a little high on the trebles, but I think the bass is on the lower side, and given the size, I think that should have been possible. Anyway, let's talk about the display. You know, it's not like too sunny, but even if it was, I don't think it's going to be like hard to read. So, guys, it's a 6.83 83 in Swift AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate. It's ample bright and goes up to 1,400 nits in high brightness mode. It looks very nice and color accurate given it's a 10- bit display.
And yes, it plays HDR titles in HDR mode on Netflix. 144 Hz display. I mean, that's the highest that you can get in this price segment because mostly others are giving you 120 Hz. Now, that extra 24 Hz, you don't notice it visibly. It's not a big difference, but when you use it, that extra fluid response that you get, that's where that extra 24 hertz feels special. There's an option to switch to a higher resolution, but honestly, not required. What you've got is good enough. And also, if you notice, the bezels are pretty thin and the display looks even better because of that. Now, guys, let's talk about performance. And what a freaking surprise. Like a pleasant surprise.
Okay, look. It's got Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, which if you compare to the Node 4 is actually a bump up because it had a 7 Plus Gen 3. Now, you might think it's just 8S Gen 3. What's the big deal?
Okay, hold on. I compared the UN22 performance benchmark scores uh with other phones in this price segment just to give you an idea of where it stands in terms of raw performance. And here's the thing. Even though it's not beating the Poco F7 or the IOU Neo 10 in numbers, it still delivers 144 FPS gaming on popular games like Call of Duty, Freef Fire, and BGMI. Guys, flagship phones that cost north of 1 lakh rupees or $1,000 plus, they can't do that, but this can. Also, it doesn't heat up despite gaming non-stop for a long time. and and and it's got bypass charging. So, anyone who wants to game on continuously for 5 6 7 hours, you don't want the phone to get hot or you don't want to lose battery, you've got bypass charging. I mean, it's not a gaming phone specifically, but it is. And that's why I was so surprised with the performance and also it's easily got the smoothest UI experience I think you can get under 30,000 or 35,000. No IU, Vivo, uh, Poco, Samsung, Motorola comes close to this. I mean, the Color OS 15 on Oppo phones is a close second, but Oxygen OS just feels really fluid. Now, one question that comes to mind is, should you get this or spend more and get the OnePlus 13R, which has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for a higher price. Now, practically, you will not feel the difference in performance between the two phones in terms of everyday use, but you might want to base that decision uh on the camera performance. So, let's look at the differences. So, here are some pictures I took in semi sunny to cloudy conditions from both the phones. And in general, you'll see that the 13R has slightly better dynamic range. Most times, the difference isn't a whole lot, unless you really get into the intricate details, and that's when you'll notice that the 13R has a bit more detail in the shadows. Now, here you'll notice the 13R captured better yellows and greens in this harsh condition. The Note 5 did have a little higher exposure, but again, not a huge difference. still very comparable in most of the photos and that's actually great given the Nord's price point. Now, in case of portraits, I did find Nord better and more natural.
For some reason, 13R has oversharpened the details, which looks a bit odd to me. Selfies too, not bad at all. The 13R had a slightly warm tone, while the Note 5 had more of a neutral to colder tone.
So, it really depends on what you prefer more of. Indoors, I found Node 5 to take really good pictures. It looks like uh in low lighting situation, the Note 5 generally does a pretty good job. In fact, my dedication to comparing just in stopped photos, I took video samples as well. And now, both can shoot 4K videos from their primary cameras, while the Note 5 can also shoot 4K videos from the front-facing camera, while the 13R can't. But overall, uh I think the 4K video quality from both the phones primary cameras are very similar, and I definitely can't say if one is better than the other. And so compared to the OnePlus 13R, I think the 13R does take overall slightly better photos in more scenarios than the Note 5. But how does this perform standalone? So specs- wise, it's got a 50 megap primary camera, an 8 MP ultra wide, and a 50 MP front-facing camera, but no telephoto lens. And I think that would have made this just so good. I mean, I would prefer that over the ultra wide, but okay, that's what we have. Now, let's look at the photo samples. So guys, a lot of the regular photos you've already seen when I was comparing it with 13R, but here are some indoor photos that I took with the Note 5 and I think they look pretty good. I mean, the colors are nice, you know, highlights and exposures are well balanced. This was taken in very low light situations, and I think it came out really well. But yeah, overall, you know, it's it's doing pretty good. Now, although there isn't a 2x telephoto lens, but I did try the 2x crop, and this is a 1x and the same 2x. The quality is pretty good. I took another shot just as an example.
So, you know, it's usable. Not bad. I also tried some shots in portrait mode and I think it did a pretty good job, you know, recognizing the subject and nicely blurring out the background.
Could have been better, but still not bad. I also wanted to test out the ultra wide lens. So, this is taken in 1x and then this is what I took in ultra wide and I think it looks pretty good. Of course, the dynamic range is not going to be as good as the primary.
And then this is what I took uh in ultra wide. Moving on, let's look at these selfies that I took using the 50 megapixel frontfacing camera. And I have to say these actually look really nice.
You know, they're all shot in portrait mode. The colors look good, the skin tones looking nice, and even the, you know, the background detection uh or the subject detection and background blurring is actually quite nice. All I think very well balanced.
maybe, and it came out really, really nice. There was very little ambient light, but I think it did a fantastic job in this situation. And not just selfies, like even, you know, taking photos of regular things in night, it just came out really nice and detailed.
It handles the lights very well in direct situations. Like there's no hilation around the bulbs or any kind of source of light. And not just outside, like even when I went indoors, I think it did a pretty good job for a phone in this price segment. definitely uh commendable. The colors are looking so good at 10:30, 11:00 in the night. Uh you know, the the red color in the bricks, the text, all the lights inside the shop, just look at that. There's no hellation, which is again very surprising in this price segment.
Overall, I think it's a pretty decent camera given the price segment, especially in low light because other phones in this price segment, low light's not that great. Uh except maybe the Icon Neo 10, which I think is pretty good. But you know what? You don't have to take my word for it. In the description, I'm going to leave a link.
You can download all of these pictures.
See it for yourself. Now, before I talk about the battery, you know, the pricing and the variance. Let's quickly talk about the software. So, like all OnePlus phones, you've got the latest Oxygen OS running on, you know, based on Android 15. And I'm so impressed with just how snappy and responsive the UI feels. I mean, the response to touch on this thing when you click on anything and or when you scroll, it's just really good.
And I think it's really hard to explain.
It's just something, you know, walk into a store, just use it and you'll know what I mean. Also, no bloatware except some of, you know, OnePlus's own native utility apps and Candy Crush. Not sure how that made it through. Now, I don't want to get into the nitty-g gritties of Oxygen OS because that could be a whole other video, but I think you should know a few things. So first of all plus key no more alert slider but a customizable action button of sorts that you can you know personalize to any of these functions that you see here including the ability to change sound profile.
Secondly there's something called as the mind space app which actually came with the OnePlus 13S first and now it's in it. So essentially you can just swipe up with three fingers on any screen which the phone will then analyze and thoughtfully store it in the mind space app. So, if it's a message that has some dates and time, it'll analyze and prompt you to create events out of it. I mean, it can just store everything you want to remember and organize it for you. So, it's easy for you to refer back in whatever way you want to recall it in.
And third, there's AI voice scribe that lets you record calls that you make on WhatsApp or Telegram and will even transcribe and summarize it. Now, for now, of course, it works best in English and uh you know, about other languages.
We're going to have to wait. But yeah, something to keep in mind. I mean, again, there's a lot in Oxygen OS. It's super customizable and you can personalize so many things that I could do like a bunch of videos just around that. But seriously, the best thing about Oxygen OS is just how fluid it feels. And I don't think I can say it enough. Anyway, let's talk about battery. Okay, so this has a massive 6,800 mAh battery. That's a lot. I mean, 1.5 days easy. You can even stretch it out to 2 days. You also get an 80 watt charger that takes little less than an hour to charge this from 1 to 100%. I mean, works for me. So, yeah, I think battery is definitely not going to be an issue with this phone. I mean, if you're someone who's always on the move or someone who's got a lot of battery anxiety, this is probably the phone to get. All right, now let's talk about pricing and variance. So, the base variant listed on the website is for $31,9.99. And then you've also got a 12 gigs variant with 256 and 512 gigs of storage. And there is an additional 2,000 instant bank discount. So the base price actually comes down to $29,9.99.
But yeah, that's it guys about the OnePlus note 5. You know, I think it's a fantastic phone for the price. Sure, it may not have the best processor in this price segment, but it runs smoother and more fluid than phones that do. So at the end of the day, that's what really matters. It is definitely one of the better cameras, too, in this price segment. And it's got an epic battery as well. Really good display, feels great in the hand. And so it really just checks a lot of things uh that you're looking for in an everyday smartphone.
And so you really can't go wrong with the Note 5. But yeah, if there's still anything that I haven't talked about, you want to know, put them in the comment section.
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OnePlus Nord 5