OnePlus 13 review: An all-round Android flagship with cameras one can easily recommend

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra was merely an iterative upgrade. It didn’t excite the customer. It was just a Galaxy S24 Ultra with a new chip, a hefty dose of new artificial intelligence (AI), and a slightly better in-hand feel.

Google’s Pixel 9 Pro may have come swinging out of the doors with the Tensor G4 chipset, a new camera island, the best of Android OS, and so much more. Yet, it is a smartphone riddled with bugs and falls short of its battery life promise.

On the other end of the spectrum is the iPhone 16 Pro. Yes, it’s also an iterative upgrade like the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It’s speedier, smarter, and comes with a new Camera Control button, which might not be enough to sway consumers. Yes, it still excels at videography and is probably the best iPhone to date, but that isn’t enough.

There’s the Vivo X200 Pro and the Oppo Find X8 Pro. They may have excellent cameras, bar none, but as an overall package, they don’t provide the kind of value for money that they used to.

With all that said, I have had one smartphone as my daily driver for over a month. It’s probably the best phone from the company to date and a massive contender for smartphone of the year 2025 (yes, I know the year has hardly begun). I say that because the best smartphones from various Chinese companies—read Oppo and Vivo—aren’t launching globally.

The smartphone I’m talking about is the OnePlus 13. After years of missteps, OnePlus returned with the OnePlus 12 last year. For 2025, the OnePlus 13 has taken it up another notch.

Starting at Rs 69,999, the OnePlus 13 is currently India's best value-for-money Android smartphone.

What I like about the OnePlus 13

Design, display, and in-hand feel: Straight off the back, you’ll notice that the OnePlus 13 is gorgeously crafted. It’s available in white, blue, and black variants. My favourite is the blue microfibre back variant (microfiber vegan leather). I got the white model for review, which has grown on me since day one.

The company has switched to flat sides for the OnePlus 13, which makes it bulkier but retains the same in-hand feel as the OnePlus 12. It also has a big camera bump on the back, with the Hasselblad (H) branding on its right side. Nonetheless, it’s good to look at and hold for long periods and an overall pleasing design.

The gorgeous 6.82-inch AMOLED display has a 120Hz refresh rate. It’s colorful and vivid and one of the best displays. Metal sides flank it.

While the OnePlus 13 is IP68 water resistant, it surprisingly has an IP69 rating against 80C water jets. We Indians don’t use dishwashers, but it will be fine if the smartphone accidentally ends up in one.

The latest Qualcomm chipset: It’d be an understatement if I were to say that the OnePlus 13 flies through any task you throw at it. It’s rapid, fluid, and an over-achiever. There’s the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip under the hood. The chip is way faster than its predecessor and much more efficient. Whether you’re opening 50+ Google Chrome tabs, playing the latest games, photo editing, or just doing daily mundane tasks, there isn’t anything the OnePlus 13 can’t handle.

All-day battery life: Yes, the OnePlus 13 can comfortably last a whole day on a single charge thanks to its 6,000mAh battery. There was never a day that I got to bed with less than 5 percent of the battery left. Not even on the heavy usage days. The smartphone can last 40-50 hours, with an average of about 8 hours of SoT (screen on time). That’s pretty remarkable and up there with the likes of the Vivo X200 Pro.

Thankfully, OnePlus still includes a charger in the box. The 100W SuperVooc charger can juice up the smartphone from a wholly drained state in just 36 minutes. It can also quickly charge the smartphone to 50 percent in 13 minutes. A 45W USB-C charger will complete the task in just over an hour, or roughly 70 minutes. The smartphone, like the OnePlus 12, supports 50W wireless charging.

Cameras: It’s finally come to a time where I can easily recommend OnePlus for its camera setup. It has always been the case that OnePlus released a smartphone with the greatest hardware and good software to support it, but it lags in the photography department. It’s high time the company stepped up its game. The OnePlus 13 is the first smartphone worthy of the Hasselblad branding on its back.

The OnePlus 13 has three 50-megapixel cameras on its back, all standing tall on their own. I constantly got photos closer to reality with the primary camera than other smartphones like the Galaxy S25 Plus and the iPhone 16 Pro. The exposure levels are on point, and the mood is captured perfectly.

The company introduced a new dual exposure algorithm alongside the OnePlus 13, which is used in every smartphone capture.

There’s an upgraded action mode, which, in conjunction with the new algorithm, ensures that photos are never blurry. There’s also a new Clear Burst algorithm. Hold the shutter button down, and you get a burst of photos. The AI-based processing model does the job of picking the best photo of the lot.

One last thing I’d like to discuss is the telephoto performance. The new Sony LYT-600 sensor (seen in many other smartphones) is combined with the latest flat Triprism lens. OnePlus offers up to 120x zoom, though I’d never recommend that. OnePlus delivers breathtaking photos using the telephoto lens, which is something I could rarely say after using a OnePlus smartphone in the past. At 3x, you’ll notice just how detailed, sharp, and crisp the photos are.

There is just one elephant in the room that needs addressing. As exceptional as the quality of the photos (stills, not video) is, with its Zeiss branding, Vivo just does a better job overall. With the Vivo X200 Pro, I constantly got better portraits of human beings, and there was no area I could complain about.

Also, just one last note. The photos from the OnePlus 13 are sometimes overbrightened and over-sharpened.

 There’s also a “master” mode for manual control, slow-mo, time-lapse and several other modes.

What I didn’t like about the OnePlus 13

 Software: The OnePlus 13 comes with OxygenOS 15 sprinkled with a whole load of AI features. Honestly, the software is clean and fluid, but nothing stands out. I hardly used many of the AI features. The one I used the most, Circle To Search, is available on many other Android smartphones. There’s that pop-out dock at the top-right of the screen that I also hardly used. OnePlus only provides four years of Android updates and six years of security patches. That falls short of the updates Google, Samsung, Apple, and others offer.

OnePlus also created a fake Dynamic Island, which, honestly, is admirable. It mimics the pill-shaped island and can even work in landscape mode.

Alert slider: It’s that fateful time when we all collectively get angry at OnePlus. The ever-beloved Alert Slider on the top left-hand side of the OnePlus 13 (a feature I use multiple times a day) is being replaced with a button (similar to the Action Button on iPhones). We don’t know which upcoming OnePlus smartphone will get the “button” first, but it sure will be a drastic change for OnePlus loyalists to digest.

The competition

- Apple iPhone 16 Pro: You’ve got the smartphone which takes the best videos. A smartphone that is easy to learn and easy to use. A smartphone with Apple Intelligence, a Camera Control button, one of the most efficient chips and more.

- Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: All-day battery, a fantastic set of cameras, OneUI 7 (which, honestly, is quite a good Android skin), the best-in-class hardware, and a smartphone that is comfier to hold than before.

- Vivo X200 Pro & Google 9 Pro XL: Two smartphones with some of the best camera hardware and software processing out there.

I can hardly find fault with the OnePlus 13

It’s 2025, and OnePlus is back to ruling the roost. The OnePlus 13 is one of the best smartphones you’ll find this year. Yes, I know the year has only just begun (we’re only in March), but I stand by what I’ve just said. With the combination of the latest and greatest hardware, along with clean and fluid software (even though I called it boring), and a camera setup I can finally recommend to any and everyone, the OnePlus 13 has got it all. It’s the best all-rounder. Period.

It’s got a fantastic display, is built like a tank, has all-day battery life (with rapid charging), and has excellent haptics.

If you want the absolute best camera slapped on a smartphone, then get the Vivo X200 Pro. If you want a pure gaming smartphone, look at the ASUS ROG line of smartphones. But, if you want an all-around smartphone that is a non-stop workhorse and can snap realistic-looking photos? That’s the OnePlus 13 for you.