OnePlus 12 Review: Android Dark Horse

Price When Reviewed

From $799 | Model reviewed $899

Best Prices Today: OnePlus 12

OnePlus has steadily made a name for itself across the globe by offering competitively priced smartphones that undercut flagship phones from Samsung, Google and others.  

The OnePlus 12 bucks this trend, and isn’t as cheap as the OnePlus 11 was at launch. But it does justify the price hike with some new features as well as providing all the stuff you’d expect: a top-notch screen, capable performance and great cameras. Yet again, OnePlus is living up to its motto of never settling.  

Design & Build  

• Available in green and black
• IP65 rating rather than IP68
• Alert slider still a handy feature

I love the OnePlus 12’s design. To me, it looks better than any other phone I’ve reviewed, although I am biased towards green tech.

Weighing 220g and measuring 9.15mm thick, the ’12 is par for the course these days: it’s a big, weighty flagship that doesn’t easily fit into pockets.

OnePlus has kept the massive circular camera module on the back that was first introduced on the 11, complete with inscriptions indicating the specs of each camera.

The green colour is called Flowy Emerald, which is allegedly inspired by the rivers that flow down the Alps. Marketing lingo aside, the texture is like an earth-toned marble whose tones varies depending on the ambient lighting. It also comes in Silky Black for those who don’t like green as much as me.

The glass back feels smooth in the hand, as does the curved display. During testing, the phone survived an accidental drop with the Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on the rear and Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front doing a good job and not cracking or shattering.

The IP65 rating makes the OnePlus 12 less susceptible to damage from water and dust than the 11, but still isn’t as good as the IP68 standard that many other expensive smartphones comply with. What it means is that you can’t submerge the OnePus 12 in water: it’s only protected against low-pressure jets of water.

I’m a big fan of OnePlus’s alert slider. It eliminates extra taps on the screen and presses of the volume slider. It’s a good reason to go for a OnePlus phone over rivals which don’t have one.

There’s no headphone jack, which is the norm for flagship phones these days. The SIM-tray (with dual-nano SIM support) sits next to the USB-C port on the bottom, whilst the volume rocker and power button live on the right-hand side.  

Haptics – the vibrations for alerts and key presses – are some of the best I’ve used, with noticeably different patterns for alerts, calls and messages. You adjust the intensity as well as alternating between ‘crisp’ and ‘gentle’ depending on your preferences.

Screen & Speakers  

• Very bright 6.82-inch display
• 120Hz adaptive refresh rate
• Stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support

The AMOLED display has been increased to 6.82-inches from the 6.7-inch panel seen on the OnePlus 11. The resolution is also higher, at 1440 x 3168. As before it uses LPTO tech with a 120Hz refresh rate that can automatically adjust all the way down to 1Hz to save battery power.  

With support for Dolby Vision and HDR10+, it’s colourful, bold and responsive to taps and scrolls. Bright sunlight doesn’t affect it whatsoever thanks to the amazing peak brightness of 4,500 nits, around 2.5x more than the brightest current phones. It’s almost overpowering in dimmer rooms, although it does adjust automatically.

Put simply, the OnePlus 12 is sublime for streaming Netflix shows and playing games.

There’s an under-display fingerprint sensor for biometrics, and face recognition. Both work a treat, with the latter having no issues with glasses or only minor trouble with dark rooms.

The stereo speakers are great, with support for Dolby Atmos. They sound clear and produce lively sound with a bit of bass. I wouldn’t want to listen to much music on them, but they’re good for podcasts and games.

Under the Dolby Atmos section in the settings, there are four sound profiles to choose from: Smart (adaptive), Movie, Gaming and Music. Movie was my preferred opinion.

There’s also support for spatial audio and ‘holo audio’ (see below), providing you have compatible earbuds and apps for these features. The same goes for head tracking. Testing with the Jabra Elite 8 Active earbuds, spatial audio sounded decent for action scenes, but dialogue was echo-y.

…the screen is buttery smooth and sublime for streaming Netflix shows and playing games

Holo audio allows you to have different sounds coming from different directions. So, you can have your Spotify audio playing from the front, your notifications coming from the right and alarms pinging from the left. That’s the theory. When I tried it, notifications wouldn’t play over Spotify, and the timer would halt the audio altogether.

Clearly some work needs to be done there, or you need OnePlus’s own buds.

Specs & Performance  

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
• 12/16GB RAM
• 256/512GB storage

If you’re looking for flagship performance, the OnePlus 12 doesn’t disappoint. Its fitted with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, the same chip seen in the Xiaomi 14 and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, though it’s tweaked specifically for the latter.  

Depending upon your choice when purchasing, you get either 12- or 16GB RAM, and 256- or 512GB storage. Even the base model is more than enough for demanding apps and games. Needless to say there’s an abundance of performance for day-to-day tasks.

To keep that performance in check the OnePlus 12 has a Dual Cryo-velocity VC Cooling System, which has a larger surface area and a shortened gas-liquid circulation distance compared to rivals to improve heat dissipation.

Tech jargon aside, it does work. The phone stayed remarkably cool when playing the demanding game Genshin Impact. In fact, the only time the OnePlus 12 felt warm was during charging, but not problematically so.  

Genshin Impact could run at medium graphics settings without overclocking. There was no stuttering and responses to touches, swipes and camera adjustments were rapid. This is likely aided by HyperBoost, HyperRendering and HyperTouch, three new features in Oxygen OS 14 designed to improve gaming performance.

OnePlus 12 Benchmarks 

In our tests, the OnePlus 12 bested rivals in GeekBench 5. This includes the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which is an impressive feat considering that iPhones usually outpace Android models here.

However, surprisingly it fell short of the OnePlus 11 in GeekBench 6, which has the older chip – a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, as also fitted to the more affordable OnePlus 12R.

These synthetic benchmarks are just one measure of performance, though, and it doesn’t mean it’s slower overall.

The ’12 produced some impressive numbers in GFXBench, showing the graphics prowess of this phone in comparison to other flagships. It’s also got some the fastest charging out of the group, only bested by the 11, which has a smaller battery that’s quicker to recharge.

Cameras  

• Superb main camera
• Capable low-light performance
• Selfie camera not as impressive as rivals

OnePlus is continuing its partnership with Hassleblad for its triple rear camera set-up. 

The main 50Mp main camera uses Sony’s LYT-808 1/1.4 sensor and has OIS – optical stabilisation. The sensor allows for lots of light to be let in, and as such the phone can capture scenery and textures extraordinary clarity. 

The OnePlus 12 makes it easy to take an impressive photo

This also applies to photos taken in dark environments. Clouds in the night sky have incredible depth, and bright lights are handled well without too much flaring or glare. Textures appear lifelike, and colours are realistic. The OnePlus 12 makes it easy to take an impressive photo.

The upgraded 64Mp f/2.6 telephoto camera provides 3x optical zoom. There’s also 6x ‘lossless’ zoom and up to a whopping 120x digital zoom. Using optical zoom, the camera resolves details like strands of hair with ease.  

When you start heading into the digital zoom territory, it still holds up at 10x. Beyond that, details start to become fuzzier and when you get past 60x zoom, it’s hard to keep the phone still enough, and is a largely pointless exercise.

Some rivals (the iPhone 15 included) don’t have a telephoto camera, so this is a big tick for OnePlus.

The 48Mp wide-angle camera produces dimmer tones compared to the main snapper, with softer edges and generally less flair. Compare the colours below, particularly on the grass:

For selfies, there’s a 32Mp front-facing snapper with a Sony IMX615 sensor. Portrait mode has a decent amount of blur in the background, though there’s some smudging on loose hairs. This camera isn’t as impressive to use at night as the main rear one.

Photos can be edited either directly in OnePlus’s own gallery, which includes skin retouching features and an eraser tool for any unwanted background elements, or in Google Photos. I much prefer using Google’s Magic Eraser, which automatically finds background elements and pre-selects them for faster editing.

Neither are foolproof, with some weird textures sometimes left behind, but Google’s editing tools are undoubtedly superior. However, you’ll need a Google One subscription – OnePlus 12 users get a three-month free trial.

The OnePlus 12 shoots up to 8K video at 24fps, but it’s also capable of 4K, 1080p and 720p all at either 30fps or 60fps. There’s the option to turn on HDR video (Dolby Vision) and an ‘ultra steady’ mode to minimise shakes.   

Battery Life & Charging  

• 5400mAh battery
• 100W charging
• 50W wireless charging

The OnePlus 12 is fitted with a 5,400mAh battery. On average, this lasted for a day and a half but less than that if I kept the 120Hz refresh rate on permanently and used it heavily for gaming.

100W charging means the battery goes from empty to 67% full in just 15 minutes, and 100% within half an hour. 

On top of all that, there’s 50W wireless charging. You can buy OnePlus’s official charger for just under £40 at the time of writing.

It’s great to see a flagship phone with not only strong battery life, but also speedy wired and wireless charging. Not all can compete with that.

Software  

• OxygenOS 14.0 (based on Android 14)
• Four years of OS updates
• Five years of security updates

OxygenOS has long been one of the favourite Android skins among the Tech Advisor team, and that remains the case now. It’s clean, intuitive and minimal when it comes to app bloat. There’s a neat little ‘OnePlus’ folder with some of the brands own apps, but no unwanted games in sight. 

You can easily customise the home screen with large folders for apps and support for some widgets that aren’t available on other Android models – Pinterest, for example. Timers also neatly sit in the corner of the screen when active, so you can see the status even when you’re in other apps.

This is the most recent update, based on Android 14. That means it has features such as smart cutout, where you can long press and person or object in a photo to isolate it from the rest of the background. This can then be saved to your gallery or sent to someone. 

There are also new security tools such as the Safety Centre, where you can choose what data is shared on an app-by-app basis. Meanwhile, Auto Pixelate 2.0 blurs any sensitive information that the phone senses on images.

OnePlus provides four years of OS updates and five years of security updates. This is on par with some other brands, but it…