OnePlus was so quick with its revision to its 2024 model that the OnePlus 13 found its way into my hands before the new year rolled around, but that doesn’t mean it’s a rush job. Quite the contrary: While this phone is a fairly simple-looking upgrade over the OnePlus 12, its beating heart (the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset) is basically a revolution in performance. For $900, the OnePlus 13 enters as a mighty competitor to the best Android phones on the market already, and if Samsung doesn’t pull out all the stops with a Galaxy S25 Ultra, one of 2025’s first phones might prove to be one of its most compelling.
Design and Features
On the outside, the OnePlus 13 isn’t a major redesign of its predecessor. It carries similar looks to what OnePlus introduced with the OnePlus 11, albeit with minor revisions. One key change is to the screen, which still features rounded edges but doesn’t incorporate the display itself into that curvature. Where the OnePlus 12 saw its display bend slightly at the edges, the OnePlus 13’s display is completely flat, with only a bit of glass over the bezels curving. This makes for easier usability, as curved screen edges aren’t as easily viewable as flat ones. OnePlus also trimmed the bezels slightly, with the bottom bezel being notably smaller.
Beyond this, the visible design changes appear largely aesthetic. The OnePlus 13 has flatter metal edges with a matte finish, shifting away from the shiny metals of the OnePlus 12. The camera ring on the back also rises up directly from the rear glass rather than from a section of metal frame that curves around from the of the phone. I suspect this simplifies construction, and perhaps repairs as well. My test unit included a subtle wood grain in the frosted glass back, which feels velvety smooth to the touch, just as the OnePlus 12 before it did, albeit sans wood grain. There’s also a white color with smooth glass and a blue version with a microfiber vegan leather back. It’s an altogether gorgeous phone, though not an exciting reimagination.
The OnePlus 13 is still quite large at 6.41 x 3.01 x 0.33 inches (162.9 x 76.5 x 8.5 mm), which can make it a bit difficult to wield effectively with a single hand, especially with gesture-based navigation. It’s not unreasonable weighty for a phone its size though, at 0.47 pounds, and proves marginally easier to wield than Apple’s wider iPhone 16 Pro Max. Still, most of these big phone models are separated by just a few tenths of an inch in size.
OnePlus has a few less noticeable upgrades for the design, such as an IP68 and an IP69 rating, up from IP65 for the OnePlus 12. This is a serious degree of ingress protection against both submersion (1.5 meters for 30 minutes) and even scalding-hot water jets (for 30 seconds). I’m not saying I’d put this into the dishwasher, but if you really wanted to clean your dirty phone that way, it might survive. The display, meanwhile, is covered with a new “Ceramic Guard,” making a marked shift away from Corning’s various blends of Gorilla Glass. It comes with a pre-applied screen protector though, and this blemished lightly in my testing but prevented me from seeing any wear and tear on the actual display glass.
The LTPO OLED display on the OnePlus 13 is excellent, but it’s barely changed from the OnePlus 12. It offers the same 3,168×1,440 resolution, 6.82-inch size, 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rate, and even the same 4,500-nit peak brightness, though you’re unlikely to see that level in practice. I had few complaints about the OnePlus 12 display, though I didn’t always love the curved edge, and that’s perhaps the biggest adjustment the OnePlus 13 makes. It also introduces a higher 2160Hz PWM dimming, though I’m not sensitive to this and haven’t noticed the difference. While gaming, watching HDR movies, or playing back HDR videos recorded on the OnePlus 13’s cameras, the display is simply gorgeous, with vibrant colors and deep contrast. Some others may have even faster refresh rates, like the 185Hz of the Asus ROG Phone 9, but haven’t seen any other phone displays that stood out as anything other than marginally better. Phone displays are probably about at their peak, and the OnePlus 13 is riding that peak.
OnePlus also tucked an upgrade underneath the display glass with its upgrade to an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner. Compared to the optical scanner in the prior model, this proved very quick to register my fingerprint and did a better job if my fingers were damp or chalked and freshly abused from time on a rock climbing wall. There’s also quite snappy facial recognition available.
The display pairs with impactful speakers. These pumped out considerable volume for a phone – loud enough to listen to a podcast while taking a shower. One speaker fires out the bottom of the phone while the other is in a slit in the earpiece, with a couple small ports along the top edge. These provide effective stereo sound that helps bring games and movies to life that little bit more compared to mono speakers. The sound is crisp and rich for music, though there’s little improvement year-over-year from the OnePlus 12.
While Google and Apple have introduced satellite connectivity for emergencies on their latest phones, OnePlus misses out on that feature. Instead, it offers a feature called BeaconLink, which doesn’t get to beam into space but can make a direct Bluetooth connection to other phones within roughly 650 feet when a cellular connection isn’t available. Unfortunately, it won’t work with just any other phone – it’ll likely need to be calling another supported OnePlus or Oppo phone, and good luck finding one of those in the US.
For wireless connectivity, you’ll find a dual SIM tray as well as support for eSIM, giving you plenty of ways to connect to mobile networks. The OnePlus 13 also supports Wi-Fi 7 with the 6GHz band, giving it extremely fast Wi-Fi as well.
Software
Despite Android 15’s relative newness — even the Pixel 9 lineup didn’t launch with it — the OnePlus 13 comes with this new OS running out of the box. It gets a fairly clean setup, with plenty of customization options to tailor the look and feel to your liking. Though OnePlus is still not keeping up with Samsung or Google in terms of long-term support, the company has promised four years of software updates and six years of security updates, which is respectable.
Gaming and Performance
2024 saw a big shakeup in the performance paradigm between Android phones and iPhones, with more than a few Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 devices catching up to the latest iPhones in graphics performance. That’s shifting even further with the OnePlus 13 and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip inside, which offers simply incredible performance.
Everyday operation is trivial on the OnePlus 13, as it easily keeps up. Even when I enabled the battery saver mode it continued to run smoothly, with the only noticeable difference being that it limits its display refresh rate to conserve power.
Running Geekbench 6, I saw a stunning 3,075.5-point average for single-core performance and 9,383 points for multi-core performance. To put that in perspective, that’s just 8.87% shy of the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s single-core score while zipping past its multi-core score by 13.98%. And the OnePlus 13 takes the graphics torch and carries it even further ahead in 3DMark, where it scores 6,722 points in Wildlife Extreme (62.2% ahead of the iPhone), 2,536 in Steel Nomad Light (43.8% ahead of the iPhone), and 11,724 points in Solar Bay (63.8% ahead of the iPhone). These are staggering levels of performance for a smartphone, and the OnePlus 13 isn’t even a gaming-specific device. Across the board, it offers an almost 50% uptick in performance over the OnePlus 12 for a gobsmacking single-generation leap.
It almost goes without saying, but that performance translates well to real-world gaming. Playing Wuthering Waves for an hour with maxed out setting, the OnePlus 13 held up a steady 60fps while seeing internal temps peak at a reasonable 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit (with a heat-insulating case on, no less), which is nowhere near as hot as the OnePlus 13 and its competitors can get running benchmarks.
Heat can be a problem, though, but only when it’s running all-out. Running 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Light Stress Test, which repeats the benchmark 20 times in a row, the OnePlus 13 saw performance drop by 34% as internal temps rose from 86 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of the test. But even when it’s hot and throttled, it has enough of a performance advantage that it can still rival other devices. Its lowest score in that 20-run stress test was 1,662 points, which is only 5.8% below the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s single-run average in my testing.
Even with all that power, the OnePlus 13 isn’t the most powerful smartphone to land, but it’s still doing a mighty fine job. It puts on a strong showing against even the $999 Asus ROG Phone 9, beating it in most tests in terms of single-run performance, but stress tests are where the advanced cooling of the ROG Phone 9 help it pull ahead. Given the performance leads the OnePlus 13 is able to land, I wouldn’t be surprised if it could show better sustained numbers if it throttled its own performance down to a lower level right from the start. Still, neither ROG Phone 9 or the OnePlus 13 can keep up with the actively cooled gaming beast that is the $650 RedMagic 10 Pro. The fact that the OnePlus 13 even comes close to a gaming-focused device, though, is a testament to its might.
It may lag behind the leaders in sprints, but the OnePlus 13 is a solid marathon runner. It never once struggled to make it through a full day, even if I squeezed in a handful of benchmarks and enabled the always-on display. With modest use, two full days of operation are well within reason. That’s in part thanks to the 6,000mAh battery, which is quite a bit of juice for a phone that’s actually thinner than its predecessor. Even if the battery gets low, there’s support for 80-watt wired charging and 50-watt wireless charging, providing very speedy options for getting back to 100%. For comparison, the iPhone 16 Pro Max tops out at around 30 watts.
Cameras
While I’m used to seeing phones with great gaming performance make sacrifices in the camera department, the OnePlus 13 isn’t one of those. It aims to provide photographic quality that can rival even Samsung, Google, and Apple, and it certainly comes close. Here are the stats on the cameras the OnePlus 13 packs:
- 50MP Wide, f/1.6, 1.12-micron (binned to 2.25-micron), 1/1.4”, OIS, Laser AF
- 50MP ultrawide, f/2, 0.64-micron, 120-degree FOV
- 50MP telephoto, f/2.6, 0.8-micron, 3x optical, OIS
- 32MP Selfie, f/2.45, 0.8-micron
The camera system is nearly seamless as you transition between them. Punching in from the ultra-wide through the main to the telephoto, the cameras provide a consistent look and feel that’s wonderful to see. With all three sensors offering a 50MP resolution, there’s no major drop in sharpness when switching between them either. And the system is powered by laser autofocus for quick and snappy focusing, albeit with better results on closer subjects.
I’m a big fan of the colors on the OnePlus 13’s images. There’s ample vibrancy in photos without leaning into an oversaturated look. In other words, pictures pop but don’t look artificial. The main sensor captures simply beautiful, richly detailed shots with strong low-light performance thanks to a wide f/1.6 aperture and large pixels. The ultra-wide sees only a minimal falloff in quality that’s largely the fault of its lower light-gathering capabilities, but it looks much closer in quality to the main sensor in broad daylight.
The telephoto sensor is quite powerful. It zooms in effectively, and though it can appear a little bit soft, it does so while avoiding the artifact-laden looks of an over-sharpened image. It also better preserves contrast and texture for a more natural look. The result may not be the most precise images when zoomed far in, but the photos end up looking half decent. Next to even the Pixel 9 Pro’s zoom at 10x, I preferred the feel of the OnePlus 13. If you’re looking to glean information from a distant zoom, the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Pixel 9 Pro are more accurate, though. While the OnePlus 13 allows for 30x and even 100x digital zoom levels, these are practically useless as the autofocus struggles and the visuals in the viewfinder make it hard to anticipate the final product, plus OnePlus applies some very unusual enhancement at these levels that basically ruins the image.
The selfie camera rounds out the bunch quite well. It’s similarly vibrant, capturing lifelike colors with excellent detail. Whether it’s the fuzz of my hat or the scruff of my beard, it’s presented well. There’s a bit of softness noticeable when zooming way into the photos the selfie camera captures, but with the large pictures coming from the 32MP sensor, there’s little reason to actually zoom in that far.
Video is also fairly impressive on the OnePlus 13. I recorded a bit of 4K/60 Dolby Vision footage strolling around at night, and while it struggled with darker areas, the video looked stunning for brighter subjects, like a Christmas tree. Even at that high recording setting, the camera continued to work with stabilization, allowing me to capture very smooth panning and tracking shots. Slow-mo options are available, but only at 1080p/240 or 720p/480, leaving no option for the sort of slowed-down 4K visuals the iPhone 16 Pro Max offers.
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