ONEPLUS 11 5G — HASSELBLAD Camera is Bae

Just last week on 14 February 2023, OnePlus pull a full gamer move by releasing the OnePlus 11 5G alongside Buds Pro 2 as its complementary product. Now, what’s new? For starters OnePlus 11 5 G boast a huge set of camera. But I hear you, what is so special and particular about this set of cameras? Well, these sets of cameras were designed and developed by HASSELBALD. In case you’re not aware, HASSELBLAD is a Swedish company that designed, developed, and manufactured professional and sophisticated cameras for enthusiasts and journalists alike. With that being said, we’re thrilled to explore what top-notched camera the 11 5G has to offer. Without further ado let us dive deep into this absolute beast.

UNBOXING

The OnePlus 11 5G comes in a sharp Scarlett box that ramps up the “ONG” factor to 11. You see the collaboration between OnePlus and HASSELBLAD printed right below the frontal surface of the box. Proudly indicating the strategic alliance between two highly competent brands of the year. Now the box itself doesn’t shout anything too bombastic, as a matter of fact, it doesn’t have to because OnePlus is always well-known for that simplicity characteristic when it comes to package design. Much like realme and Oppo among others. It fits nicely with the OnePLus 11 5G design, and there’s no particular reason, it just did in terms of aesthetics and class. Now with that out of the way, the package that we received contains the following :

1. OnePlus 11 5G — 1 unit
2. 100W SUPERVOOC fast charger plug — 1 unit
3. Fast charging USB-C cable — 1 unit

Other than the aforementioned items, the 11 5G also comes with a small 17.4 x 8.7cm ebony small box with the “Never Settle” catchphrase etched on top. Signifying that OnePlus, as a company will never settle at one stage but will continue to strife forward with creativity and innovation. But hey that could be me over symbolising. Getting back on track, the box itself contains the following items :

1. Safety Guide booklet — 1 unit
2. Quick Guide booklet — 1 unit
3. SIM ejector pin attached to a “Welcome” card — 1 unit
4. Neat-looking stickers — 1 set

The stickers are rather a niche touch, like most flagship phones out in the wild, they all have their own little gimmicks contained within their own respective packages; some might even have their own “limited” or “special” editions. Thus, the same goes for the OnePLus 11 5G. If you pay attention to the design of the stickers, some of them actually pay homage to the 11 5G itself such as higher refresh and touch rate, and fast charging cable just to name a few.

Basically, that’s all for the unboxing. Let’s move on to the design.

DESIGN

All I could see and felt, is class, elegance, delegate, quality, and among all things, passion coming from the OnePlus 11 5G. It’s just a fantastic device that emits full competency from its adroit. The mirror-like reflection, the metallic frame, and the crystal screen are just incredible. The unit we got came in Green, or rather Eternal Green as they name it. The emerald-like shell shimmers brilliantly regardless of how dim the environment is. It just shines and reflects like any other mirror out there.

Getting down to business, let us explore how the device presents its layout to us. For starters, you’ll that the camera from the rear stands out the most. With a metallic chrome platform extending from the left side of the rear slightly to the middle, and a circular/cyclops island bumping outward on top of the chrome. But the metallic chrome is a ridiculous fingerprint magnet. A slight touch would smudge the shiny surface of the chrome platform. Other than that, the circular rear camera has a glittery layout completed with the three main cameras, one LED flashlight, and the bold “HASSELBLAD” wording etched within. In addition to that, the phone body is made with glossy grayish green.

Let’s have a quick walkthrough with the three main cameras. Starting off with the 50 MP camera which has an aperture size of f/1.8 and is 24 mm wide completed with multi-directional PDAF OIS features. The second camera is composed of 32 MP and has an aperture size of  f/2.0 and boasts 48mm for a telephoto lens. It also has PDAF function much like the first main camera as well as a 2x optical zoom function. Last but not least, the tertiary main camera consists of 48 MP, an aperture of f/2.2, and an ultrawide lens that allows up to 115˚ of ultrawide shots.

Moving on to the front side, the OnePLus boasts an incredibly magnificent smooth (but not resistant to fingerprint) LTPO3 Fluid AMOLED screen completed with a resolution of 1440 x 3216 and a 20:9 ratio. The icing on top of the cake? It’s made with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, making it 4x tougher than normal aluminosilicate. Not a big fan of the default Always-on display feature but it’s okay I can work with that. The selfie camera is situated at the top left corner with a cut-out circular notch design. It consists of 16 MP that has an Auto-HDR feature and an aperture of f/2.5 as well as a 25mm wide lens.

A returning and welcoming feature for the OnePlus 11 5G is the Alert Slider located right above the power button on the right side of the phone. In case you’re not aware, the Alert Slider allows you to swap from silent, vibrate, and ringing modes on the fly. All you need to do is just slide your thumb up and down to maneuver between those three modes. It was a rather fan-favorite feature surprise to say. While most fans favor the convenient nature of the slider, I myself on the other hand love the fidgety and clicky sound of the slider since it is rather… therapeutic, for a lack of better terms. With that being said, I love it even though it’s a niche feature.

Since we’re done with the right side of the phone let’s finish the design layout with the remaining three sides :

Left side: Typical volume button;
Top side: Secondary microphone and secondary speaker
Bottom side: A SIM card slot with a Dual SIM tray (Unfortunately, there’s no microSD slot) completed with a primary microphone and a loud stereo speaker.

That’s about all for the OnePlus 11 5G design layout. Clean and straightforward. With that being said let us explore the cameras further.

CAMERA

There we go, the star of the show, the powerhouse all that sits within a cyclops pedestal. The OnePlus 11 5G camera is not a force to be reckoned with. We’re talking about a flagship here so definitely the cameras gonna put on a great show. Starting off with the 50 MP main camera, day shots were generally great. The quality is almost seamless with little to no noise. Even when it comes to night shots, the 11 5G is able to perform wonderfully without any problem due to its auto-light adjusting feature. So the end result is crispy and muted.

Of course, when it comes to zoom shots images tend to get pixelated the further you go. anything that goes beyond 5x on a low-res setting will tentatively start to create noise. Taking shots on 4:3 with a high-res setting yields magnificent results as most details are intact without much obstruction. Generally speaking, the OnePlus 11 5G is best when it comes to scenery shots.

I managed to play around with XPAN and PRO modes and the results were generally positive. Yielding performance from adequate to peak top-notch. Of course, I’m no photography expert so I am not well-versed when it comes to PRO mode customisation. However, even by default, the PRO mode is able to hold on to its quality quite marvelously. Therefore if you’re an experienced photographer, you could definitely give the 11 5G a good try.

Portrait mode on the 50 MP camera is able to yield competent results when taken during day time. The bokeh effect is able to take its course quite naturally and quite accurately even when the optical zoom clocks in at 2x through the 32MP camera. However, when it comes to nighttime, portrait shots seem to mellow down a bit but to a point that it derails from quality. It can still produce decent quality but it may struggle a bit when it comes to image adjusting. Overall it’s great and I have no complaints about the results whatsoever.

Night shots)

Moving on to the video features, the device is capped at 8K 30fps, but peak performance is at 4K 60fps where all footage captured is almost perfect with no stutter or any kind of noise. In addition to that, the camera also comes with a pro film mode for those movie-making enthusiasts. However, like I said I’m no camera expert myself so I couldn’t go wild with the pro film mode, all I could say is the default settings for pro film mode is passable, so if the 11 5G falls in the right expert hand, they cook up with whatever they please with the feature. Anyway here’s an attachment of the video taken :

Boasting a 6.7 inches LTPO3 AMOLED display, the OnePlus 11 5G doesn’t just possess a gorgeous colour gamut, but also a refresh rate of up to 120Hz, but will jump between 1Hz to 120Hz according to the power level. You can also manually enable the QuadHD+ which in turn, makes every texture and detail extra clear and extra sharp. But by default, the device is on fullHD+ just to save battery.

Audio-wise, since it is a single stereo speaker, it may not be as immersive as a dual speaker, but the sound quality is still superb compared to other flagship phones. The only drawback is, there’s no headphone jack, so it’s either the speaker or a wireless earbud, your call. Personally, I prefer the speaker for this one, doesn’t matter whether I’m YouTubing or gaming.

PERFORMANCE

The OnePlus 11 runs on Qualcomm SM8550-AB Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, making it one of the more sophisticated and advanced androids out in the market. The device is able to handle light tasks thrown at it with no hiccups at all. In terms of internal storage, there are a total of 4 variants you could choose from, notably: 128GB, 256GB, 256GB, and 512GB coupled with up to 16 GB LPDDR5X RAM; While the difference between 3.1 UFC is only for the 128 GB while all the other 3 variants run on 4.0 UFC. Unfortunately, the OnePlus 11 5G doesn’t allow any memory extension so you could work with what you got.

Software-wise, the device runs on Android 13 with updates available in the foreseeable 3 years or more. In addition to that the device also comes shipping with OxygenOS13 for the international audience while fans from mainland China get the ColorOS 13 version. With that being said OnePlus claims that the device could run up to 40+ background apps with little to no issues. Just expect the device to get a bit warm while you’re at it. In addition to that, there’s this little sidebar where you can slide out from the top right corner of the screen for quick access to various tools such as screen translate and screen recording, above all else you could also customise the sidebar to your heart’s content.

Gaming-wise, all I could say is that it performs quite adequately as a flagship phone. Having no issue or stutter running high-end games like PUBG and also, Genshin (of course). With the Pro-Gamer mode on and clocking up the GPU settings to max, you expect some above-average graphics for your gaming experience. Though, the phone would get heated up pretty quickly. Especially while playing Genshin and the in-game graphics were set to medium. But other than that, games like PUBG and Mobile Legends run seamlessly on the device. With no stutters whatsoever, making it is one of the better flagship phones for eSports games. Or dare I say, one of the best gaming phones out there.

In terms of benchmarking, the OnePlus 11 G carries itself quite well, here is the chart for the benchmark results :

SPECIFICATION

BATTERY

As for the battery, the OnePlus 11 5G sports a 5000mAh, which sound a bit underwhelming since most midrange phone out there has up to 6000mAh batteries. But hear me out, as the battery is able to hold on for quite a lengthy time. Even a full hour of Youtube stream only takes up around 10% of battery power, provided you set all the resolutions to the lowest.

However, the phone does take a heavy hit when playing heavy resource games like Genshin, taking out more than 10% of the battery level AND getting heated up. But that aside, leaving the phone completely idle for 4 would only knock out 40% of the battery level. Which is not too bad. On top of that, charging the phone with the 100W SUPERVOOC fast charger and cable that came with the 11 5G, as well as enabling the rapid charging feature only takes 5 mins to fill the battery up from 2% to 14%, while 15 mins will fill the battery up to 56%, and finally, 30 mins to reach 100%. So as long as you bring your fast charger plug and cable, any power socket from anywhere can be a quick charging stop.

VERDICT

Okay, from a personal perspective, the OnePlus 11 5G performed seamlessly as a productive phone, even when it comes to photography and gaming. But of course, all these features do come with a steeper price tag. However, with a price of RM3,599, the device is considered one of the lower price range flagships out in the wild. With that amount of spending, you could get an almost seamless camera performance followed by a gaming powerhouse (to a certain extent). Not to mention the form factor is just gorgeous to look at. And you’ll never need to be afraid of your phone dying because, anywhere is a recharge point, as long as you bring the charging plug and the cable along.

TL:DR

Pros :

• Excellent camera performance
• Great gaming experience
• Battery powerhouse
• Beautiful display

Cons :

• Fingerprint magnet (only certain parts)
• Not so great 8k resolution (video)

As usual, if this little gem piqued your interest, do visit OnePlus’s official website or visit Lazada or Shopee to get yourself one. As always, thanks for reading.