OnePlus 13 review: The Flagship Killer is back to impress

struggled to maintain its once-strong appeal fee years ago, necessitating a significant reorganisation. User feedback highlighted concerns about the escalating prices, the absence of IP ratings and questions surrounding device durability, even as the company pursued a more premium market positioning. Following this restructuring, OnePlus embarked on a journey to reclaim its former prominence.
A crucial step in this process involved tackling the long-standing issue of green line display defects that had plagued OnePlus devices for the last couple of years. The company made a commitment to rectify this problem in future products. The OnePlus 12 played a significant role in mitigating these past issues and reshaping the brand's image.
With these fundamental challenges addressed, OnePlus proudly introduced its highly anticipated successor, the OnePlus 13, which builds upon the success and well-rounded capabilities of the OnePlus 12. The OnePlus 13 signifies a bold new direction for the brand, showcasing a completely redesigned aesthetic, integrates a range of AI-powered software enhancements, and delivers substantial improvements in both performance and battery life.
In our comprehensive review, we found that the smartphone delivers flawless performance across all areas and encompasses everything a user could expect from a flagship device, all at a starting price of Rs 69,999 for the 12GB RAM/256GB storage configuration. We put the phone through rigorous testing over several weeks. But can the OnePlus 13 truly be considered one of the brand's most ambitious smartphones to date? Let's delve into our in-depth review to find out.

The OnePlus 13 exudes OnePlus’ design foundation -- tall stance, gorgeous display, attractive back panel and slightly off-centered circular camera module that has been an identity of oneplus smartphones for some time now. The phone still features a quad-curved display, ensuring a comfortable fit in hand whether held in portrait or landscape mode.
While the OnePlus 13 arrives with another stunning design, a few subtle changes have a significant impact beyond mere aesthetics. For example, a move away from curved display to relatively flatter sides, aligning with the current industry trend away from curved edges.

OnePlus has slightly refreshed its colour palette, moving beyond the familiar design to three distinct options. The Black Eclipse variant moves away from the basic design to a wood-like experience.
There’s the Arctic Dawn edition, a shimmery whitish-silver model that boasts an anti-fingerprint matte finish and is featured in this review. The third is the vegan leather Midnight Ocean Blue that looks absolutely stunning and distinct.
Further, the OnePlus 13 also gets a streamlined design with the metal elements surrounding the camera module now gone in favour of a new glossy strip that spans across the phone’s width. The Hasselblad “H” branding has also been repositioned on the right of the camera module, which means that the back cover will hide the branding and the phone will pretty much look like the OnePlus 13R.

The design remains largely consistent with its predecessor with the signature OnePlus alert slider is once again prominently featured. The display of the OnePlus 13 is protected by a Ceramic Guard material, essentially providing the required toughness in a smartphone that users will welcome.
Crucially, OnePlus has joined the ranks of other Chinese manufacturers by adding IP68 and IP69 ratings for water and dust resistance. This means the OnePlus 13 is designed to withstand both submersion in water and high-pressure spray, another welcome addition.
The display of the OnePlus 13 mirrors last year's OnePlus 12. It features a 6.82-inch QHD (3168x1440, 510 ppi) LTPO OLED 2K ProXDR display with a peak refresh rate of 120Hz. It gets an aspect ratio of 19.8:9 (a taller stance), a peak brightness of 4500 nits as claimed by OnePlus.

OnePlus also claims that the display has achieved an industry-first DisplayMate A++ rating and rated the “Best Smartphone Display”, swiping into over 20 display performance records. Those are pretty big claims and our tests indicate they are largely true. The OnePlus 13 excels in the display department with both colour depth and accuracy.
Another tech behind the display is the “RadiantView” system that dynamically adjusts the display's colour, contrast, and brightness even under the blazing sun, essentially delivering enhanced visibility and readability.
The OnePlus 13's display gets 2160Hz PWM dimming to minimise screen flicker and reduce eye strain during extended use. Further, there’s LPTO 4.1 that adjusts the refresh rate in separate areas for enhanced power efficiency.

Apart from the OnePlus 12's Aqua Touch, which improved screen usability when wet, the OnePlus 13 goes a step beyond with extending this functionality to oily screens and, more importantly, to gloved hands.
The new Glove Mode, as it implies, allows users to register touch even when wearing gloves. In real world usage, the feature is pretty helpful for two-wheeler riders in winters who can easily use the feature (after manually enabling it in Settings) to navigate the phone without removing their gloves.
While promising, the feature isn't without its limitations. It doesn't function seamlessly with all gloves as one might hope. Thicker gloves, especially those made of heavy wool or leather, resulted in inconsistent touch registration, requiring us to adopt a more deliberate approach to taps and touches.
Still the feature is usable and makes the OnePlus 13 stand out in a jungle of other Android phone brands that lack such features.

OnePlus has always put the performance of its flagship series on the highest pedestal and the OnePlus 13 is no different. Under the hood is the most powerful chip that Qualcomm has to offer -- the Snapdragon 8 Elite clocked at 4.32GHz -- similar to what we have found in gaming-centric phones like iQoo 13 and Realme GT 7 Pro.
The OnePlus 13 is available with either 12GB or 16GB of RAM and 256GB or 512GB of storage. The OnePlus 13 clearly demonstrates its ability to compete with the top performers in the mobile market.
In real-world use, the OnePlus 13 delivers impressive performance in everyday tasks and multitasking and the interface is incredibly responsive. We pushed the smartphone by rapidly launching and navigating through multiple apps. Throughout our testing, the phone remained unfazed, handling everything we threw at it with ease.
The real test comes when gaming, which is a smooth and visually impressive experience. For example, during a session of BGMI, the phone maintained consistent frame rates without any discernible glitches, frame drops, or lag, even when running the game at its highest graphics settings.
The overall performance during exploration and combat was consistently fluid, showcasing the device's processing power.
This smooth and consistent performance extended to other demanding titles as well. Genshin Impact, another graphically intensive game, ran flawlessly on the OnePlus 13 at maximum settings, further demonstrating its gaming prowess.
Another solid aspect of the phone’s performance is the software experience that is smooth and seamless. The OnePlus 13 runs OxygenOS 15-based on Android 15. The phone gets a bunch of AI features -- something that we have already seen in various smartphones. All of them are basically a version or renamed features that Google Pixel devices have to offer.
There are a bunch of AI features, including Intelligent Search that understands information from on-device files and notes, Google Gemini, Circle to Search, Magic Compose in Google Messages, AI Detail Boost to sharpen cropped photos and AI Unblur. They may be flawless or can be tagged “work-in-progress” depending how you perceive the results.

OnePlus has refreshed the camera hardware with changes coming to both ultra-wide and telephoto cameras while the main camera remains similar as the OnePlus 12.
OnePlus 13 gets a 50MP main sensor with a lens that has f/1.6 aperture and OIS. The telephoto camera gets a 50MP sensor paired with a lens that has f/2.65 aperture and OIS in a triprism layout. The ultrawide camera is home to a 50MP sensor married to f/2.05 aperture lens.

The OnePlus 13’s primary camera captures sharp images with near accurate colour reproduction. The OnePlus 13 offers impressive dynamic range even in the night conditions. A classic example of such a scenario is a photo of a street light shining through leaves, forming a tyndall effect. We were able to click a satisfactory photo of that scene after making some adjustments.


In conducive lighting conditions like daylight, the main camera of the One Plus 13 maintains a good balance of contrast and delivers a wide dynamic range. In challenging lighting conditions, such as cloudy days or nighttime scenes, the OnePlus 13 captured impressive images.
Also, the phone truly shines when capturing fast-action moments. For example, we captured a photo of a garden fountain. The photo had enough details such as bubbles and even the smallest of the waves.

The 3X triprism telephoto camera is a strong performer, producing brilliant details even at the lossless 6X magnification. The ultrawide camera is also an upgrade with photos preserving detail, producing clean images with minimal noise.



Low-light performance is also strong, providing ample dynamic range and revealing good detail in both the dark and bright areas of the image.


The selfie camera gets a 50MP sensor paired with f/2.45, fixed focus lens that has a field-of-view of 90 degrees. Selfies taken in daylight are sharp and crisp with good edge detection.
In several key areas, the OnePlus 13's camera system is remarkable, particularly when it comes to zoom photography and capturing action shots. While the 3x zoom relies on AI enhancements for long-distance shots, the OnePlus 13 delivers impressive detail and sharpness with minimal blur, even in low-light action scenes.

The OnePlus 13 gets a massive 6,000mAh battery with 100W wired and 50W wireless charging support. The company also provided us with the 50W AIRVOOC charger that stands out as one of the fastest wireless charging solutions in India.

While individual usage patterns vary, in our testing, the OnePlus 13 easily lasted for 2 days when used as a secondary device mostly used for social media consumption and office work. When used as a primary device, the phone delivered a day’s run time without breaking a sweat.

The big battery is complemented by a fast charging tech. The company provided us with a 50W AIRVOOC Magnetic Charger that has a fan which throws out the excessive heat that is generated while charging. Our tests showed that the 50W AIRVOOC Magnetic Charger fully replenished the OnePlus 13's substantial 6,000mAh battery in fairly above an hour’s time. The wired SUPERVOOC 100W charger achieved this feat in about 45 minutes.

The OnePlus 13 stands completely true to the company’s ‘Flagship killer’ tagline. OnePLus 13 represents a significant step forward for the brand. It addresses past shortcomings, delivers top-tier performance, and boasts a refined design. The display is excellent, the performance is blazing fast, and the battery life is impressive. While the camera system is not perfect, it excels in key areas. The fast charging capabilities are a definite plus.
Priced starting at Rs 69,999, the OnePlus 13 is a strong contender in the flagship market, offering a compelling combination of premium design, performance, features and value.