OnePlus 12, the high-end that competes with Apple or Samsung and costs less than 1,000 euros

The year has started strong in terms of mobile phone launches and as usual, many of them are ahead of the Mobile World Congress. An example of this is the OnsPlus 12, which has been on sale for a few weeks now and we have been able to test it to see if it is really a true competitor to the high-end equipment of the moment.

Well, after several days of testing I can say yes, especially because it is an unbeatable terminal in terms of quality-price ratio: 969 euros with the most powerful processor of the moment, an impressive battery and a good camera.

Obviously there are aspects, such as the camera itself, in which the Pixel 8 Pro or the Galaxy S24 Ultra may fall behind the iPhone, but we are also talking about the fact that it costs 300 or 400 euros less than many of them.

As points against, perhaps the IP65 water resistance instead of IP68 like the competitors, but it still withstands splashes without problem. Something I have also missed in the year of generative AI is precisely that, some AI to jump on the bandwagon. We'll see if in future updates this stops being a 'but'.

The first thing that catches your attention about the new OnePlus 12 is its great resemblance to the OnePlus 11, with the same body and the same camera module, although if you go into detail, in reality this year's model is larger in all respects. senses: width, length, weight...

Specifically, it has a 6.82-inch Quad HD LTPO AMOLED screen, better than the 11, and support for both HDR10 and Dolby Vision. It also boasts an adaptive refresh rate of 1 to 120 Hz.

The fingerprint reader is also located on the screen, which, as is common in Oneplus and BBK Electronics terminals in general (to which Oppo also belongs, for example), works at high speed. The same goes for facial recognition, which is also very very fast.

One of the strong points of the OnePlus 12, and that undoubtedly makes it have to be positioned as high-end, is the processor that it fits. The Chinese company has chosen the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, the most powerful Qualcomm chip for mobile phones and which makes the OnePlus the cheapest mobile phone with this processor.

Compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, it has a 30% faster GPU, a 20% faster CPU and a more than 40% faster neural processing unit, highly designed for the use of AI.

If we continue with the strong points, the battery is undoubtedly one of them. The new OnePlus mobile boasts 5,400 mAh, a real brutality compared to the competition and which gives the device a lot of autonomy. In addition, it has 100W super fast charging that has the phone at 100% battery in half an hour. And the 50W AirVOOC wireless charging is also much faster than any competing phone in the high range.

Regarding cameras, OnePlus maintains its collaboration with the well-known Swedish photography firm Hasselblad to offer very high quality. In total, The OnePlus 12 consists of 3 sensors, a main camera, a wide-angle camera and a telephoto lens, and with all three we have obtained great results, especially with the first two.

The terminal captures light very well and offers high quality shots that can compete well with those of the competition, especially considering its price.

The OnePlus 12 shooting modes include standard mode, portrait, night, high-resolution shooting up to 64 MP, action...

In general we could say that it is designed to compete with the big ones, although in some aspects for my taste it is far from, for example, the Pixel or the iPhone, such as in portraits or selfies.

Another plus point this year is 4K video in the main camera and in the wide angle and zoom at 60fps and 4K has also been incorporated into the front camera.

As we said, the price is the great advantage that OnePlus plays with. It has risen slightly compared to the previous year's model, but it is still very attractive that it remains below 1,000 euros while the competition exceeds 1,500 in some models.

Specifically, the Onelus 12 is sold in two configurations, with 12 Gb of RAM and 256 Gb of storage, for 969 euros and with 16 Gb of RAM and 512 Gb for 999 euros.