OnePlus has officially unveiled the OnePlus 13 today. OnePlus’ newest flagship phone comes alongside an as of yet undisclosed model that sits below the OnePlus 13 in their line-up. I already had an opportunity to try out the new OnePlus 13 in November, during the phone’s European preview event in the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam.
Highlights of the new phone presented at the event include improvements in the camera department, such as AI enhancement of images on all three of the phone’s sensors. Also, the OnePlus 13’s battery receives a boost from OnePlus 12’s 5,400 mAh to 6,000 mAh, an improved IP-rating and a new energy-efficient chip: the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The phone is also the first one ever to receive Displaymate’s A++ rating, who commented that the screen comes with an “excellent top tier world class smartphone display with close to text book perfect calibration accuracy”.
At the event, I was able to try out some of the new camera features on the OnePlus 13. Firstly, there’s a newly added AI Reflection Eraser tool that removes reflections, which requires connection to the cloud. I tried out the mode when shooting photos of a couple of OnePlus products inside a display case. The mode manages to subtly but clearly remove most of the reflections, leading to a sharper image and enhancing otherwise mostly unusable images.
Another novel feature for the cameras is optimisation of burst shooting, which OnePlus calls Clear Burst. There were several opportunities to try out the improvements. There were two breakdancers at the event showing off some impressive moves. I took several images of them while holding down the shutter button, which automatically activates the burst mode. Using the main camera, this resulted in a succession of sharp images, while the 3x zoom camera struggled more. I also took pictures of the spinning rear wheel of a racing bike, leading to some sharp shots despite lots of movement.
Also improved according to OnePlus are the portrait modes on the camera. The three camera sensors at the back of the phone are all tweaked to mimic different Hasselblad cameras with distinctive portrait looks. I did some test shooting with these as well, including the selfie camera. Lastly, the camera showed off an impressive zoom past 10x using AI enhancement. I even tried out zooming in 120x onto pictures put up on the ceiling to test the feature. Here the results were quite impressive up to a point, with details filled in by AI making zoomed images much more clear. However, at the top 120x zoom, AI was mostly guessing the details and images became very distorted.
I took a OnePlus 13 sample home with me after the event, and you can see my full thoughts on the device in our OnePlus 13 review.