Though it seems like the Android smartphone market is dominated by Samsung and Google, OnePlus is a very strong competitor that you should not ignore. Since the company launched the OnePlus One in 2014, OnePlus has remained a strong brand name for Android phones.
With OnePlus devices, you usually get blazing fast performance, super fast charging over the competition, long lasting and reliable battery life, and — best of all — designs that are unique and stand out from the crowd. With all of these factors combined, it's no wonder that OnePlus is one of the best Android phone makers around.
But which OnePlus phone should you choose? Here are the best OnePlus phones to buy in 2025.
The best OnePlus phone overall
OnePlus 13
- Great design, colors, and balance
- Excellent cameras
- Long battery life
- Slick, feature-packed software
- Durable
- Alert Slider
- Unreliable notifications
- No proprietary charger in the box
- Screen is highly sensitive
As the most recent model in the series, the OnePlus 13 packs a lot of power and performance all wrapped into a beautiful, slender design. Its 6.82-inch screen is covered in a Crystal Shield Ultra Ceramic Glass, protecting the phone from the impact of drops. It's also the first to be given a A++ rating by DisplayMate, as it has a sky-high 510 pixel-per-inch (ppi) density, a 4,500 nit peak brightness, and a 1-120Hz refresh rate. The screen even runs two different refresh rates at once, which is useful if you're playing a game that runs at 60 frames per second (fps).
The OnePlus 13 is the first phone in the series to carry the dual rating IP68 and IP69, protecting it from both dust and water. But just because it can handle water jet streams doesn't make it safe to submerge it underwater for longer than 30 minutes. Although, the screen can still be used with wet fingers courtesy of OnePlus's latest version of the Aqua Touch system.
The back of the phone has a unique texture depending on the color you pick. The Midnight Ocean OnePlus 13 has a vegan microfiber back, which feels nice for those who have sensitive skin, while the Arctic Dawn and Black Eclipse don't, but they still feel nice regardless.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite processor works in conjunction with OxygenOS 15 to provide the OnePlus 13 with cutting-edge performance. It can play the latest AAA games and run other apps at the same time without overheating to the point of exhaustion. There's also no lag or stuttering whatsoever, which makes this OnePlus phone absolutely flawless.
The best value OnePlus phone
OnePlus 12
- Beautiful curved display
- Flowy Emerald is a truly unique color
- Powerful performance
- Hasselblad camera system delivers great results
- Two-day battery
- Very fast wired and wireless charging
- Back glass is slippery
- Curved screen has some annoyances
- Large size can be unwieldy
If the OnePlus 13 is out of your budget range, the OnePlus 12 will still provide you with a premium experience while giving you more bang for your buck. It comes in two gorgeous colors, Silky Black and Flowy Emerald, and show off unique patterns enhanced by the frosted back glass. The camera module even matches the color of each phone, and the frames are rounded on the sides and the flat on the top and bottom, giving them a cool Y2K-esque aesthetic. Although, you may want to cover it up with a case because the glass can be fragile despite having a matte finish.
The screen is a massive 6.8 inches with a LTPO AMOLED display that shows off high quality graphics and bright colors with a resolution of 1440 x 3168 and a 120Hz refresh rate that's smooth as silk while scrolling through social media and the rest of the internet. Those lovely graphics and colors that grace every image and video you take and search for are courtesy of Dolby Vision and HDR10+.
The OnePlus 12 comes with Android 14 and OxygenOS 14 out of the box, which can be updated to the latest versions (plus four years of updates and five years of security patches), but the performance is top-notch thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. You can multitask with a split screen to run two apps at a time -- think Gmail and Slack or YouTube and Discord -- with a three-finger swipe, your favorite shows on Netflix, take pictures and videos, play games, and everything in between without having to worry about lag, buffering, or choppy frame rates. That's because it has a dual cryo-velocity cooling system with a large vapor chamber that keeps the phone cool without overheating no matter how many apps you're running at once.
The camera quality on the OnePlus 12 feels even more premium with Hasselblad enhancements that make the color and clarity of the pictures pop. The rear camera has a 50-megapixel main camera, a 64MP periscope telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom, and a 48MP ultrawide camera with a 114-degree field of view, while the display has a 32MP selfie camera. The 64MP camera also supports 6x in-sensor zoom and 120x hybrid zoom, which helps make macro photos of plants, insects, and even raindrops look like they came out of a nature magazine. The camera handles white balance and exposure remarkably well when it takes pictures in the daytime, and it does an even better job with exposure in lowlight environments in the evening, which is perfect for those attending spring festival events like Coachella.
The OnePlus 12 supports 80W charging speed, which is pretty fast but a little slower than the 100W supported in the phones sold outside the U.S. It also has 50W wireless charging speeds, which gives the phone 23 minutes to get a 50% charge and 55 minutes to get a full charge. Those charging speeds, as well as the other premium features that come with the phone, are worth the $800 or $900, depending on how much storage space and RAM you get.
The best alternative value OnePlus phone
OnePlus 13R
- Polished and practical hardware
- Fantastic, non-curved display quality
- Two (or more) days of battery life
- Surprisingly good cameras
- OxygenOS 15 is excellent
- Seriously incredible value
- Slower charge speeds compared to 12R
- $100 price increase
The OnePlus 13R isn't as fancy as its original counterpart in terms of advanced features, but its practicality more than justifies the $600 price tag. It comes in Nebula Noir -- that's black to us -- and Astral, which is white with a lovely touch of beige. Both colors have a matte finish that's soft to the touch and is highly resistant to fingerprints despite not having a frosted glass back like the OnePlus 12 does.
The screen itself is just as big as the screens on its premium cousins with a 6.78-inch AMOLED display, and it's flatter than that of its predecessor, which had curved edges. Smoothing out the curves to flatten the screen makes it easier for you to grip your phone without worrying about it falling out of your hands or touching the screen when you don't mean to. The display boasts a resolution of 2780 x 1264 and a 1-120Hz refresh rate, with brightness levels of 1,600 nits in High Brightness Mode and a peak brightness of 4,500 nits, giving you a high-quality viewing experience.
Hasselblad enhancements are absent from the cameras, but its specs on the OnePlus 13R are still good enough to take the best pictures. The primary camera and telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom are 50MP, and the ultrawide camera is 8MP, which is a step up from the OnePlus 12R in that it matches the color capture of its subjects with the primary camera. In other words, the colors and contrast in all your photos are dazzling.
As for performance, the OnePlus 13R houses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which sounds like a downgrade from the Snapdragon 8 Elite inside the OnePlus 13 proper, but it performs remarkably well for an alternative value model. It can handle all social media apps, emails, and games without any stuttering or overheating thanks to a 73% increase in GPU performance, as well as 38% jump in single-core CPU performance and 23% boost in multi-core CPU performance from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 embedded in the OnePlus 12R. If you can't afford the original OnePlus 13 but still want a phone that closely matches its speed, the OnePlus 13R is the one to get.
The best folding OnePlus phone
OnePlus Open
- Great compact and lightweight size
- Powerful cameras
- Beautiful screens
- Anti-glare inner display
- Opens flat easily
- 67W fast charging
- Intuitive multitasking
- Hinge isn't firm enough
- Large camera bump
- Macro and 120x Super Res are not great
If a foldable phone is in the cards for you, consider getting the OnePlus Open, the first foldable phone to enter OnePlus' inventory. It comes in Emerald Dusk and Voyager Black, and is held up by the Flexion Hinge, a single-spine hinge that OnePlus designed to make it more sturdy when the phone stands up on its own, and facilitate better integration between components when its folded open and everything on the cover screen transfers over to the inner display.
Speaking of screens, the cover display is a 6.31-inch Super Fluid AMOLED with a resolution of 2484 x 1116 and dynamic refresh rates of 10-120Hz, while in the inner display is a 7.82-inch Flexi-fluid AMOLED that exhibits a resolution of 2440 x 2268. Both screens have LTPO 3.0 and brightness levels 1,400 nits (HDR brightness) and 2,800 nits (peak outdoor brightness). The inner display has a layer of Ultra-Thin Glass (UTG) with an anti-reflective screen protector layered on top of it that prevents glare from sunlight and minimizes crease visibility, as well as guards it from regular wear and tear over time. It also has a TPU layer that protects the Flexi-fluid panel from bumps, rough finger taps, and even accidental drops.
The best part about the OnePlus Open is a feature called Open Canvas, which allows you to multitask between different apps, making it a boon for productivity. The Flexion Hinge divides the app pages in half, so you can scroll through Instagram on one side, and have Bluesky open on another side, which is useful if you're a content creator sharing the same post on different platforms. You can even have another open app floating in the middle of the hinge, which can be distracting but it's an interesting little tidbit. Open Canvas also comes with a taskbar shows up at the bottom of the screen just like it would on a regular desktop computer, letting you open recent and preset apps when you need them.
The OnePlus Open comes with OxygenOS 13.2 out of the box, and it runs on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip and 16GB RAM, but you can add a little more RAM later on if the need requires. Even if you don't need the extra RAM, you can use multiple apps at once without any performance issues save for a little overheating when running more resource intensive apps and games.
The specs on the cameras within the OnePlus Open are thoroughly impressive for a foldable phone. The rear camera has a 48MP Sony LYTIA-T808 "Pixel Stacked" main camera, a 48MP ultrawide camera, and a 64MP telephoto camera with 3x optical, 6x in-sensor, and 120x Ultra Res zoom -- the latter of which is good for macro shots, but those photos won't look as good as they would on other phones because they come out a little blurry, so you might not find yourself using it as much as you would like to, even if you're a nature photographer. The selfie camera on the cover display is 32MP, while the selfie camera in the inner display is 20MP, which means the selfies taken from the inner display will look grainier than the ones taken from the former.
The best cheap OnePlus phone
OnePlus Nord N30 5G
- Nice in-hand feel
- Headphone jack and expandable storage
- 120Hz display looks great
- Good, reliable performance
- 50W charger in the box
- Bland, smudge-prone design
- Very poor camera quality
- Only promised a single OS update
The OnePlus Nord N30 5G is a good mix of traditional smartphone aesthetics with modern functionality for a great low price of $300. It's got a 6.72-inch LCD display that shows a beautiful Full HD+ 2400 x 1080 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate, and yet it doesn't make the phone feel as heavy as the others for how premium they make it appear. That's especially true for the 120Hz refresh rate makes it easier for you to scroll through apps, menus, and play games as quickly as those who own more expensive contemporaries, such as the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and Google Pixel 9 Pro, without missing out on the high-speed performance.
Speaking of performance, the Nord N30 5G runs on the Snapdragon 695, which is older than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Snapdragon 8 Elite, but it still delivers on speed without much issue. However, there are times when it can take longer to load certain apps it should. When you play games at 60fps, you need to turn the graphics down to the lowest setting, because the chip cannot handle graphics at the highest setting with that frame rate.
The cameras lenses are arranged like those on the base model iPhone 11, but with one design difference. The top lens is the main 108MP sensor camera, while the lens on the bottom has the depth sensor and a macro camera -- both of which are 2MP. The 108MP camera sounds like it takes good quality photos, but it actually doesn't because there's no optical image stabilization (OIS) whatsoever. The photos have too much blur and noise regardless of whether you take them in the daytime or in the evening. The 16MP selfie camera provides the same issue. You're better using a digital camera (you know, the kind everyone used in the MySpace era?), a Canon camera, or keep the phone you were going to sell and use that for pictures and videos only.
Remember when we said the Nord N30 5G had "traditional smartphone aesthetics"? The "traditional" part of it is the 3.5mm headphone jack, an audio feature that has been missing from most modern smartphones for half a decade. If you still have wired earbuds lying around the house, this phone gives you the perfect opportunity to plug them in and listen to Spotify, Pandora, or Apple Music. It'll be like listening to music on an old-school MP3 player.
