This is the OnePlus 12R, the little brother to the flagship OnePlus 12.

But don’t let the term “little brother” fool you, because this OnePlus 12R is powerful enough to compete VERY closely with the latest flagship smartphones.

 

Unboxing

The OnePlus 12R, as usual, comes in a really nice striking red box with 12R written in front. And in the box, there is: 

• the USB-C to USB-C charging cable.
• a SIM ejector tool
• some welcome cards
• a manual
• a safety guide
• and OnePlus stickers

 

Then underneath, there is the phone itself.

 

Design & Build

Let’s talk a bit about the phone’s design. Overall, it is very similar to the OG OnePlus 12 but with very few slight differences. 

Firstly, the style of the camera bump reminds me of a luxury watch with its grooved bezels around it over there. The cameras are arranged like the OnePlus 12, but without the Hasselblad logo. I will discuss about the cameras later on.

It is a glass back phone so it is quite reflective, so be prepared for some fingerprints and some smudges to be seen at the back.

But this was something that I didn’t mind compared to a typical black-colored glass back phone because this Cool Blue color made me appreciate the back of the phone even more.

OnePlus says that the phone has 20% aluminum built into the device, which includes the sides and the buttons as well.

But aluminum or not, I do appreciate the build quality of the buttons because it was nice and clicky without making the phone feel “cheap.”

Then at the top of the phone, there is the microphone and the IR blaster, which is something that I wish more phones had because it is so convenient to use your phone as a remote for your TV, for your fan, or even your aircon, something that I used more than I predicted I would.

Then the button positions have been switched this time around where the Alert Slider has been moved to the left-hand side, and the other buttons are on the right. 

According to OnePlus, this decision was made based on their research on gamer preference and playing style as well. And another benefit of this slider’s changed position is that it allows OnePlus to move around the phone’s antennas. 

So with all of this, it apparently gives better performance when gaming in landscape mode. Hence, the company calls this Alert Slider, Gaming Edition. 

But from a usability standpoint, I quickly got used to this Alert Slider being on the left, as it didn’t really affect my daily usage because ultimately, I don’t mind which side it is, as long as it is not removed from the phone, so OnePlus, please don’t take this away.

Then finally, the phone also comes with IP64 water and dust resistance as well.

 

Display

As for the phone’s display, it is a 6.78-inch AMOLED display, up to a 1.5k resolution screen (2780 x 1264). It also has Dolby Vision, HDR10+, 10-bit color, and a whopping 4500 nits of peak brightness, and that is similar to its elder sibling, the OnePlus 12. 

 

The display also uses Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, so you don’t have to worry too much about scratches and the overall durability of this display’s glass.

When it comes to the display technology, it is OnePlus’ most advanced display yet, a fourth-generation LTPO 120Hz ProXDR Display with upgraded color levels and better-than-ever responsiveness. 

And since it is LTPO 4.0, it allows the phone to switch between 1Hz to 120Hz refresh rates even quicker. This not only gives you a smoother experience but also helps save more battery life on the phone as well.

One thing that I really enjoyed when I was using the phone was my video consumption because I just love watching videos on this phone.

And just to appreciate the phone’s screen even more, I even decided to rewatch the new X-Men ’97 series on Disney+ Hotstar. The colors were really nice and very well-balanced and the screen gets nicely bright even against the bright sun. 

Coupled with the very capable and loud stereo speakers, it makes the whole viewing experience with the phone really satisfying.

By the way, X-Men ’97? The BEST Marvel-produced show EVER! Hands Down!

As for Netflix, the playback is at Widevine L1 playback, HDR 10, and Dolby Vision certified as well, together with Spatial Audio.

Also, something that you should know is that, out of the box, the display will be defaulted at 2376 x 1080 resolution, so don’t forget to toggle to its maximum resolution (2780 x 1264) to really take full advantage of this beautiful display.

One more feature that OnePlus also included with this phone is that the display can also intelligently detect whether the phone is wet and eliminate any mistouches or delayed touches. 

This is also a pretty useful feature and something that I never really thought about wanting until now.

 

Camera

Now, let’s talk cameras. The phone has a triple camera setup: 

• a 50MP Sony IMX890 sensor for the main camera, with OIS
• an 8MP ultra-wide Sony IMX355 camera
• and a 2MP macro camera

Now, since there is no Hasselblad collab on these cameras, how is the camera’s performance then? 

 

High Megapixel

Well, starting with the high megapixel mode, the 50MP photos really shine well over here, with amazing details and sharpness even when you zoom in close, as how you’d expect a high megapixel mode should be.

 

Ultrawide

And I have to say that I really loved the Ultrawide lens images during the day, as these 16mm lenses not only captured the best focal length from an ultrawide perspective but also maintained the dynamic range and overall colors, with no softness at the edge of the photos.

 

Main Lens & Zoom 

Another place where it really performed very well was the main lenses of course; since we are looking at a really high-quality sensor. You will get the best image possible on this phone using these specific lenses all the time.

And the 2x zoom images look great too at 48mm, and yes, I can really appreciate the fact that the frame watermark also includes the focal length and the aperture value at the bottom of each image.

Then the 5x zoom is at 120mm, and it looked great in bright daylight.

And while it can go up to the maximum zoom of 20x or 480mm, you will expect the image quality to drop significantly, and of course, that is to be expected for a phone within this range, so that was fine by me.

 

Rear Portrait

The rear portrait mode has two ranges, one at 24mm and the other at 48mm. Because the 48mm to 50mm focal length is how our eyes see things in real life, I did prefer the images at this particular focal length. The shallow depth of field and edge detection were great on objects, even with some complicated shapes.

Skin tones were also great for people too and once again, looking nicer in the 48mm mode.

 

Macro

While there is a dedicated Macro camera, I don’t know whether or not I am good at taking macro shots, but I did find myself having trouble trying to nail the focus in these modes, so that could be a user problem, so I won’t fully judge the pictures but here is how it turned out.

 

Selfie

Now, another area that really surprised me was the image quality for the front cameras. The skin tones were also perfect, the dynamic range for the portrait selfie was really good too. And I love how it immediately indicates the amount of aperture that you can adjust even before taking a shot on the camera app itself, unlike other phones where you will need to touch into another option to see the aperture value.

And it can go all the way down to F1.4, which still gives a very good edge detection, but I would say that F2.8 would be the best setting to maintain a nicer visual of the background blur.

So, to me, the selfie photos are surely one of the biggest strengths of the phone’s cameras.

 

Night

Ultrawide

Switching over to the night photos, the Ultrawide images were great at capturing the darker areas of the skies and some shadows without any visibility of noise.

 

Main + Zoom

Of course, the main lenses did a way better job not only on those areas mentioned, but the highlight rolloff was also amazing too.

But for the zoom, compared to the daytime shots, I would go as far as 48mm, or 2x zoom, not anything further, as you start seeing the image quality dropping, especially in a low light situation.

 

Portrait Mode

Portrait Mode also did well at night and once again looked nicer on the 48mm focal length for people and the 24mm focal length was better on objects

 

Selfie

Then, as for the front camera, while I knew the daytime photos looked great, I am happy to report that the nighttime selfie photos were really good too

While there is an option to use the flash, I personally did not like how the pictures looked as the non-flash selfie photos gave a better face contour in the darker shades.

 

Video

[Sample video footages available in my YouTube video]

As for the video, the Ultrawide lenses shoot at the maximum resolution of 1080p but still with great quality, but of course, the main lenses were way better at 4K.

Image stabilization for the ultrawide was really good, and there is an option to turn on Ultra Steady in the app, but even with it turned off, the 4K video on this main lens was greatly stable too since there is OIS in it.

Then the front camera also records at the maximum resolution of 1080p but here is where you will need to turn on the UItra Steady to get the best stabilized shots.

Then for the videos at night, the rear ultrawide and main lenses performed great, but the stabilization at night was not as good as in the daytime shoots, and there were some noise visible as well.

And don’t forget to turn on the stabilization for the front video too to get the best out of it.

 

Gaming

Next, let’s talk gaming. Firstly, just so you know, the phone comes with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, with 16GB RAM with 12GB of software RAM expansion and 256GB internal storage. 

Now, before you start commenting about how the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is an older generation chipset, one thing is for sure, it still packs a punch when it comes to gaming. 

Fun fact, the chip first appeared on the OnePlus 11 among all the other phones too, so OnePlus knows this chipset better; hence it was tuned very well for this phone.

And I personally feel that the thermal performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is better than Gen 3. I played COD Mobile at max graphics continuously for about an hour plus, and the phone only hovered at around 37°C. 

The heat did crank up a bit when I started playing heavier games like Genshin Impact, but even then, the temperatures were nowhere near uncomfortable. 

There’s no doubt that the cooling system that OnePlus included in the phone also really helped out as well. OnePlus calls this the Cryo-Velocity, which has two vapor chambers—one large and one small.

On top of that, OnePlus also added a new high heat conductive graphite to help even more with the cooling. 

So with this, the phone handles many games like a dream, as it also managed to give consistent 120fps in COD Mobile at max graphics even a very long gameplay. 

Genshin Impact also played quite smoothly also at max graphics. The game ran at an average 60fps with occasional dips to about 40 frames here and there, after a very long gameplay. 

One thing of note is that some games may not run at 120fps, even though the game has native support for it.

I was scratching my head as to why Pokémon Go couldn’t hit the 120fps mark even though the game itself can support the phone’s native refresh rate. 

Turns out I have to enable games to run at 120fps through the phone’s settings because not all games have this turned on by default, so keep that in mind.

 

Battery

As for the phone’s battery, it has a 5500 mAh battery inside, supporting a whopping 100W SUPERVOOC fast charging and SUPERVOOC S for battery charging management too.

Firstly, I did not know how they managed to put in a huge battery in this thin form factor, but I am glad they did. The phone fully charged in just 26 minutes, which is absolutely crazy to me. 

However, even with a glass back, the phone does not come with wireless charging, so keep that in mind too.

As for the battery life, the phone managed to last me almost one and a half days during my usage daily for the entire week.

And it is hands down one of the best battery life that I got on a smartphone in a while, where I was averaging a screen on time of close to 6 hours at 10% battery with dark mode turned on. And it is at the highest screen resolution with heavy usage of gaming and taking lots of videos and photos during the day and also at night.

So if you want to get even more battery life, you can reduce the screen resolution, but for me, that is plenty of screen-on time on this particular phone for my daily usage before the phone battery dies.

 

Software

Moving over to the phone’s software. It runs OxygenOS 14, which is based on Android 14 and it comes with a plethora of AI and other quality-of-life features. 

The biggest feature included with the device is the platform called Trinity Engine. This feature can enhance the phone’s CPU, RAM, and internal storage performance.

But how does the OxygenOS fare in real-life use then? Well, it is pretty freaking good! 

There are a lot of functionalities that the software offers and a lot of them are very user-friendly. 

For example, I used the OnePlus Games a lot during this review and I must say that it is quite an essential tool to monitor the game’s performance. Just simply swipe from the top right of the screen, and you can see the FPS count, CPU level, and the temperature of the phone. 

You can also toggle between high-performance mode to give you that extra oomph while gaming. 

That’s not all, as OnePlus has also added the ability to boost the game’s visuals using the Hyper HDR function. This feature bumps up the game’s color and saturation, making the game overall look even better.

There are also many gesture features included in the device, which makes the overall usage very lovely. Another thing that I really like is the fact that you can swipe up with three fingers while you’re using one app, and simply open the other for an instant split screen use. 

This is lovely for opening apps like Google Docs at the top and YouTube at the bottom for taking notes or even pointers. I know that Android has had this split screen feature for quite a while, but this makes it even more fun when using this phone daily.

The typing experience on the stock keyboard was really good, and the haptic feedback also felt great. And besides the fingerprint unlock, I even decided to use the Face Unlock too and it worked very seamlessly too.

Then the overall camera app was really nice and snappy, exactly like how a flagship would perform.

But, if I had one complaint with the software, is the fact that the phone does come with a few bloatware out of the box. Not necessarily a huge issue, because you can always uninstall them easily, but it is a tedious process to go through. But yeah, that is something just worth mentioning for the sake of.

 

Conclusion

All in all, I am a very big fan of this phone. The OnePlus 12R was first announced in January and is available now in Malaysia, priced at RM3,199 (~USD675).

Overall, it meets many of my gaming needs and the screen is absolutely gorgeous to look at. And of course, even without the Hasselblad collab, the camera performance was really amazing.