OnePlus Nord CE4, officially announced. It’s still a serious contender for the Galaxy A55

OnePlus has officially announced the Nord CE4, its model built to compete in the market with Samsung’s Galaxy A series models. We are talking about a fairly performing mid-range smartphone with a large battery and a processor of the latest generation from Qualcomm for the mid-range range. At the moment, this device has been announced for the Chinese market, but the Nord CE models usually reach European stores quite quickly as well.

The Nord CE4 comes with a much more powerful processor compared to the previous model

The most impressive component of this phone is the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset, built on 4nm, which will ensure a high level of performance, but also better efficiency than last year’s model, which was a Snapdragon 782G on 6nm . Just on paper, comparing the specifications of the two processors, we see an almost double improvement, on the CPU side, and just as much on the GPU.

The OnePlus Nord CE4 comes with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, with the option to allocate 8GB of storage to “virtual” RAM, 128 or 256GB of UFS 3.1 internal storage, and a microSD slot for those who need more.

And the battery is promising, with a capacity of 5,500 mAh and 100W charging through Oppo’s SuperVOOC technology. You can charge this model from 0 to 100 percent in just 29 minutes, the company says, and the cells inside are guaranteed for four years of fast charging this way. And compared to other companies, OnePlus boasts that the Nord CE4 comes with the charger in the package. The mention would be that without this charger, the phone cannot really be charged at such high power, since SuperVOOC is not a universal technology, like USB Power Delivery.

And the cameras are of a higher category compared to those on the Nord CE3 last year. We are talking about a Sony LYT-600 main sensor, 50 megapixels, optically stabilized. It’s quite small (1/1.95″) compared to last year’s Sony IMX890 (1/1.56″), but could capture more light thanks to improved technologies. The ultrawide camera, however, remains the same: 8 megapixels on the Sony IMX355 sensor. Image quality on both cameras should also be improved thanks to new processing algorithms.

The 6.7″ screen is OLED type, without curved edges, with Full HD+ resolution at 120 Hz. It is HDR10+ compliant and Amazon Prime Video certified for HDR playback. It also has a 20:9 aspect ratio, better suited for movies than other models on the market.

The advertised price is very affordable

The screen has the AquaTouch function, which ensures normal operation even when wet. OnePlus boasts IP54 water and dust resistance for the Nord CE4, meaning it can withstand splashes, but not immersion. It’s better than nothing, but you can’t count on the phone to survive if you drop it in the pool, for example. It should also withstand impact with the ground from heights of up to 1.5m. We should take their word for it and not test this on our devices.

The OnePlus Nord CE4 comes with OxygenOS 14 and will receive two major system updates and three years of security updates, something to be expected for a phone in this category. The announced price in India is 24,999 rupees, which is about 280 euros for the basic variant and 26,999 rupees (300 euros) for the one with 256 GB of storage.

Prices in Europe might be higher when it gets here, but not by much. Thus, the OnePlus Nord CE4 joins the Nothing Phone (2a), Realme 12, Redmi Note 13 and the Galaxy A35 and A55 variants in the “best buy” area for 2024.