First Impressions
The Nord 4’s all-metal design separates it from every other 5G phone on the market, and coupled with a decent spec and a tempting price tag, it could prove popular.
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All-metal designThe Nord 4 is the first phone in the 5G era to offer a full metal body design. -
Capable screenThe 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with 1.5K resolution and 120Hz refresh rate looks great, complete with surprisingly slim bezels. -
Big batteryThe Nord 4’s 5500mAh battery is bigger than much of the competition, which should lead to strong battery life.
Introduction
OnePlus has revealed its latest mid-ranger, the OnePlus Nord 4, and I’ve been hands-on ahead of its launch in Milan.
While I’m not yet ready to deliver my final thoughts, I’m very excited by what the Nord 4 offers; not only is it the first unibody metal phone of the 5G era, but it’s backed up by a premium display, fast charging tech and the longest software promise of any OnePlus smartphone yet.
The question is, could it be your next smartphone purchase? Here are my initial thoughts.
Design and screen
- (Almost) full metal body design
- IP65 dust and water resistance
- 6.7-inch 1.5K AMOLED screen
The OnePlus Nord 4 feels like a blast from the past. Not because it looks dated or uses old smartphone tech, but because of what it’s made from.
The Nord 4 is the first 5G-era smartphone to come in what OnePlus boasts is a complete metal unibody, made from aluminium – though there is a little plastic window alongside the camera on the rear that undoubtedly helps with connectivity.
Because that’s the reason we’ve not seen any metal unibody phones since the 4G days; 5G needs more antennas and more power, and that’s conducive to a metal design – usually, anyway.
OnePlus claims that it has a unique antenna arrangement that still manages to deliver fast 5G speeds with that fully metal frame, and even boasts that the material allows cellular signal to be boosted further.
Reader, I forgot just how nice fully metal phones feel in the hand. The OnePlus Nord 4 feels solid, arguably even moreso than premium options like the iPhone 15 that boast a glass back, with a cool touch and reassuringly solid feel. It does mean that it’s fairly weighty, at 200g, but I think that’s a worthy trade-off.
It not only feels nice; the metal frame means that you no longer need to worry about your rear panel shattering when dropping the phone – though you’ll still need to worry about the screen!
The Nord 4 comes in three colour options; Obsidian Midnight, Mercurial Silver and a classic OnePlus green in the form of Oasis Green.
The Mercurial Silver model I went hands-on with might actually be my favourite of the bunch. Sure, the combination of silver and white looks nice, but the machine-etched pattern on the rear gives it more of a personality than the plain-backed black and green colour options.
There’s also solid dust and water resistance on offer, rated IP65. It’s not the best we’ve seen at the price point with the likes of the Pixel 8a offering IP67, but it’s a step in the right direction nonetheless.
Let’s not forget about the display, which I was pleasantly surprised by when I first went hands-on with the phone. It’s an impressive 6.74-inch AMOLED panel, boasting specs like a 1.5K resolution, 2150nit peak brightness and a super smooth 120Hz refresh rate that should make for a pretty good viewing experience. It certainly looked bright, detailed and vibrant during my limited time with the phone pre-launch.
But, for me, the most impressive thing about the screen is its bezels. While competing mid-rangers like the Google Pixel 8a and Samsung Galaxy A55 5G have pretty thick bezels that separate them from their premium brethren, that’s not quite the case with the OnePlus Nord 4. The bezels are impressively slim along three of the four edges, bringing it closer to a flagship phone than a £429 mid-ranger, really elevating the overall look of the phone.
Features and spec
- Snapdragon 7 Plus 3 power
- 50MP + 8MP camera setup
- 4 years of OS upgrades
Within the OnePlus Nord 4, you’ll find a pretty performant Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3, along with either 8-, 12- or a whopping 16GB of LPDDRX5 RAM and a healthy 256GB or 512GB of storage. It’s a pretty standard chipset for the mid-range price, albeit with boosted RAM and storage, though that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deliver great everyday performance.
Though I’ve not had a chance to benchmark the phone just yet, it does feel pretty responsive in general use, swiping through the OS and opening apps at the tap of a button, no doubt enhanced by the 120Hz refresh rate of the display that helps everything feel responsive.
What’s more, OnePlus is confident that the phone won’t just feel responsive on day one, instead claiming that it’ll perform at the same level for a whopping six years thanks to OnePlus’ proprietary fluency testing before launch.
This essentially simulates everyday use, with a mix of installing and deleting apps, taking photos and basically anything else you’d use your smartphone for, using AI to intelligently tweak your phone’s performance to keep it feeling just as responsive. It’s an interesting idea, but we’re about six years away from seeing if that’s actually the case!
To match that six years of responsive performance, OnePlus has also guaranteed a boosted four OS upgrades and six years of security patches. That’s more than what you’ll get from flagship OnePlus options like the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus Open, and it beats much of the mid-range competition on both fronts too.
It also boasts AI features completely new to the OnePlus collection; AI Audio Summary transcribes and summarises long recordings, ideal for work and interviews, while AI Note Summary can summarise long email threads. There’s also AI Translate that’ll essentially do what it says on the tin, though it’s limited to written text rather than speech.
It also uses AI to improve your connectivity, helping to reconnect you quickly when your cellular connection drops, like when in a lift, and in a similar vein to Google’s Best Take tech, you’ll be able to fix your friends’ smiles in group shots – though that functionality won’t be available at launch.
The OnePlus Nord also seems pretty capable in the camera department, sporting a main OIS-enabled 50MP snapper with a Sony LYT-600 sensor. That’s already pretty solid, but the algorithm used truly elevates it; it’s the same as that of the OnePlus 12, meaning it captures photos in RAW for added detail, enhances the RAW file and then converts it to a jpeg for storage.
This means you should get some pretty decent snaps from the main camera, even without truly high-end smartphone camera tech – though that’s not something I’ve been able to test out just yet.
That’s paired with a pretty standard 8MP ultrawide, and flip the phone over and you’ll find a 16MP selfie camera for video calls and the like.
It should also have no problem lasting all day on a charge with a sizeable 5500mAh battery, and with 100W fast charging tech, it should seriously reduce how long you spend tethered to the wall. OnePlus claims a full charge in just 28 minutes but, again, this is something I’ll test for the full review, coming very soon.
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Early Thoughts
The mid-range smartphone market is full of competition from the likes of Xiaomi, Google and Samsung among others, but OnePlus could carve out its own space with the Nord 4.
The all-metal design separates it from every other 5G phone on the market, and coupled with a decent spec and a tempting price tag, it could prove popular – but I’ll save my final thoughts for the full review, coming very soon.
