The OnePlus 12R: A Compelling Option with Some Drawbacks

When it comes to flagship phones, the OnePlus brand has always been known for offering impressive specifications at affordable prices. The latest addition to their lineup is the OnePlus 12R, a device that promises to deliver a great overall experience despite some notable drawbacks. In this article, we'll take a closer look at what makes the OnePlus 12R tick, as well as its limitations.

One of the most significant drawbacks of the OnePlus 12R is its camera setup. While it has a main 50-megapixel camera with an f/1.8 aperture and electronic image stabilization, optical image stabilization, and can capture 4K video at 60 frames per second, the ultra-wide camera and 2-megapixel macro camera are just not up to par. The presence of the latter is particularly puzzling, as it takes away from the overall camera package and feels like a unnecessary feature that could have been replaced with something more useful. It's hard to understand why OnePlus decided to include this feature instead of opting for a telephoto lens or removing it altogether.

However, when it comes to the front-facing camera, things improve significantly. With a 16-megapixel camera and an f/2.4 aperture, electronic image stabilization is present, but video recording is capped at 1080p at 30 frames per second, which feels like a missed opportunity for higher quality content. The chipset, on the other hand, is a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which suggests that it has the capability to deliver high-quality performance. It's just that the camera limitations hold it back.

In terms of connectivity, the OnePlus 12R offers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3, as well as support for multiple 5G bands, which is a major plus for those who rely on mobile data. For charging, the device features a 5500mAh battery with support for 100W fast charging, making it an excellent option for those who want to top up their batteries quickly.

One of the standout features of the OnePlus 12R is its battery life. With heavy usage, users can easily go two days without needing a recharge, and screen time on heavy usage clocks in at around 5-6 hours. The phone also doesn't heat up excessively, even during intense use or gaming sessions, which is a welcome relief.

In terms of accessories, OnePlus offers a range of cases that are designed specifically for the OnePlus 12R, as well as a pre-installed screen protector. This suggests that the company is committed to supporting their devices with a range of protective options.

Audio performance on the OnePlus 12R is also notable. The stereo speakers deliver excellent sound quality, making it an ideal choice for those who want to enjoy music or watch videos on their device without relying on external audio sources. A video showcasing the phone's audio capabilities has been included below, and readers can check it out for themselves.

Overall, while the OnePlus 12R is not perfect due to its camera limitations, it's still a compelling option for those who want a flagship experience at an affordable price. With its fast performance, impressive battery life, and excellent audio quality, it's definitely worth considering if you're in the market for a new phone.

For comparison purposes, we've also included some samples from the front-facing camera below, which showcase the device's capabilities despite its limitations.

Here are some video samples from the OnePlus 12R:

[Insert video samples]

And finally, here's what the microphone sounds like on this device:

[Insert audio sample]

We'd love to hear your thoughts on the OnePlus 12R in the comments section below. Do you have any favorite features or would you prefer a different camera setup? Let us know!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennow we saw the OnePlus 12 it was a really impressive device for the specifications and the features that it offers it's got a really good build quality and it also has a really good camera setup with the hustle blard cameras being really well tuned this time around what we looking at today is the OnePlus 12r a more affordable option from OnePlus but it's actually really feature packed so let's quickly talk about this device and see whether or not this will be a better option for you now the prices for this phone start at $39,000 $999 and that is for a lesser variant but you can pick a higher variant and it goes up to 46,000 rupes approximately you do have two color options an I see blue the one that we have is a glossy finish but there's also a gray which does have a textured almost like a matte finish that you can also pick up build and design wise this phone is very similar to the OnePlus 12 and that's been the case with the r series devices but what's also great is that the display is almost identical with a 6.78 in display going up to 4500 nits of peak brightness it's a Pro xdr AMOLED display with ltpo 4 so you get 1 Herz to 120 HZ of refresh rate as well and that is variable based on what's playing on the screen whether it's the always on display or whether it's content you're consuming it'll automatically jump between those refresh rates on the front is also cing Gorilla Glass victus 2 which again is similar to the OnePlus 12 in terms of water resistance also this phone has IP 64 and not IP 68 which none of the phones have in the OnePlus series and it's a little bit of a let down so you want to keep this phone as far away from water as possible it will prevent a few splashes and rain but nothing beyond that now what's great about this phone is what's powering it it's got the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip on the inside which makes it about a year old in terms of Flagship performance but almost half the price in terms of current flagships it's also cheaper than the OnePlus 11 and the 11t so makes it a more viable option for a lot of people this is basically a flagship phone packaged at as a slightly more affordable device at 40,000 Rupees is still not the most affordable device but it is a better option for those who don't want to jump in all the way to the 70s and the 80s and you can easily get one for 40,000 rupees with all of the features and mostly all the same spec set as the main Flagship of this year now you get two Ram options with storage options so an 8 GB variant with 128 GB of storage and a 16 GB variant with 256 GB of storage the RAM on this is lpddr 5X so basically really fast and you also have ufs 4.0 storage which is also basically very fast and you also have inbuilt Ram expansion that goes up to 12 GB so you can actually pick up the Lesser Ram variant if you're not going to be putting it through a lot of tasks and again if you don't want the extra storage you can save about 6,000 rupees and you can bump up the ram internally and get some of that storage to convert into RAM which will help in day-to-day performance improve the effectiveness of the operating system speaking of which oneplus's oxygen OS that is being sold internationally outside of China is much better than what we get in the Chinese variant we saw that on the OnePlus 12 but you still continue to get all those gestures and features that you do with OnePlus and on the display you also do have a fingerprint sensor which is fast and responsive you can customize the look of the animation of the fingerprint sensor and the always on display and you have a lot of other oxygen OS features that are built in with is definitely not the same oxygen OS that we remember it to be it's a far cry from what Cyanogen was when uh the original OnePlus was launched but that's just water under the bridge I say camera wise we've got a good package here as well we've got a main 50 megap camera with an f1.8 aperture you get electronic image stabilization and Optical imit stabilization you get really steady shots you can also capture 4K video at 60 frames per second you have an ultra wide camera but the only other thing that I don't really like in the camera setup is the the 2 megapixel macro camera which they could have really done without and they could have had just two cameras here but then the look would have changed and there would have been issues they could have put a blank there anything would have been better than a 2 megapix macro at 40,000 rupees that's the biggest let down of this phone is the camera layout they could have easily put the macro capability in the 8 map Ultra wide but they refused to do that I don't know why and honestly a telephoto would have been better than a macro I don't know how many people are using macro shots but if you prefer a macro to a telephoto let me know in the comment section below here are some samples from the camera and you can check out the video samples as well and you can see that 4K video at 60 is pretty good the front facing camera is a 16 mapel camera with an f2.4 and you do have electronic image stabilization and here are some samples from the front facing camera as well video on the front camera is capped at 1080 at 30 frames per second which is again a little bit of a disappointment at least 60 FPS would have been nice and 4K would have been awesome and the chipset can clearly do it it's a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 it's just limitations in terms of the sensor and what the company decides to give you for this price because they don't want it eating into their Flagship sales they don't want people picking this over the OnePlus 12 although despite all of these things I still feel that this is a much better compelling option in terms of what you get for the amount of money you're spending on this phone for connectivity you get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 and a whole bunch of 5G bands we list them on the screen for you now in terms of charging in battery life you have 5500 mAh battery and it does support 100 wat of super W charging the charg is included in the box which is fantastic and the phone does offer up pretty impressive battery in itself you can easily go into two days of use without any issues you'll get easily 5 to 6 hours of screen on time on heavy usage which is impressive we didn't find the phone heating up at all it does tend to get warm from around the camera area but nothing that would warrant excitement or exclamation so no issues there whatsoever there are a whole bunch of cases made by OnePlus that will be available for this device and a screen protector is pre-installed so all of those things are met wild wine L1 is supported and you can easily stream content on this without any issues you do have stereo speakers and they sound great want to go check out our video with that phone you can click on the top right and we'll have it linked in the description below as well but let's talk about this device and what I think is the OnePlus 12 in terms of How It's placed today and here is what the microphone sounds like on this device here is what what the microphone on the OnePlus 12r sounds like and uh it's pretty good in terms of performance the phone does offer up a really fast and snappy performance whether you're using it day-to-day just between applications just browsing the internet or if you're putting it through games and those kind of things because it's a flagship chip because it's been optimized well over the past couple of years you'll get that performance on this device without any issues overall the OnePlus 12r is a really impressive device minus the camera issues the 2 megap macro is really annoying and so is the video from the front-facing camera but if those two things don't bother you this is a pretty good package and almost a much better option if you're not looking for 100% of the specifications which is the hustle blood branding which is some of the new color options and also the cameras which are better on the OnePlus 12 that's our video If you enjoyed it don't forget to smash like hit subscribe we've also checked out the new OnePlus buds 3 and those impressed us a lot as well so you can go check out that video we'll have it linked in the description below and I'll see you guys in the next onenow we saw the OnePlus 12 it was a really impressive device for the specifications and the features that it offers it's got a really good build quality and it also has a really good camera setup with the hustle blard cameras being really well tuned this time around what we looking at today is the OnePlus 12r a more affordable option from OnePlus but it's actually really feature packed so let's quickly talk about this device and see whether or not this will be a better option for you now the prices for this phone start at $39,000 $999 and that is for a lesser variant but you can pick a higher variant and it goes up to 46,000 rupes approximately you do have two color options an I see blue the one that we have is a glossy finish but there's also a gray which does have a textured almost like a matte finish that you can also pick up build and design wise this phone is very similar to the OnePlus 12 and that's been the case with the r series devices but what's also great is that the display is almost identical with a 6.78 in display going up to 4500 nits of peak brightness it's a Pro xdr AMOLED display with ltpo 4 so you get 1 Herz to 120 HZ of refresh rate as well and that is variable based on what's playing on the screen whether it's the always on display or whether it's content you're consuming it'll automatically jump between those refresh rates on the front is also cing Gorilla Glass victus 2 which again is similar to the OnePlus 12 in terms of water resistance also this phone has IP 64 and not IP 68 which none of the phones have in the OnePlus series and it's a little bit of a let down so you want to keep this phone as far away from water as possible it will prevent a few splashes and rain but nothing beyond that now what's great about this phone is what's powering it it's got the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip on the inside which makes it about a year old in terms of Flagship performance but almost half the price in terms of current flagships it's also cheaper than the OnePlus 11 and the 11t so makes it a more viable option for a lot of people this is basically a flagship phone packaged at as a slightly more affordable device at 40,000 Rupees is still not the most affordable device but it is a better option for those who don't want to jump in all the way to the 70s and the 80s and you can easily get one for 40,000 rupees with all of the features and mostly all the same spec set as the main Flagship of this year now you get two Ram options with storage options so an 8 GB variant with 128 GB of storage and a 16 GB variant with 256 GB of storage the RAM on this is lpddr 5X so basically really fast and you also have ufs 4.0 storage which is also basically very fast and you also have inbuilt Ram expansion that goes up to 12 GB so you can actually pick up the Lesser Ram variant if you're not going to be putting it through a lot of tasks and again if you don't want the extra storage you can save about 6,000 rupees and you can bump up the ram internally and get some of that storage to convert into RAM which will help in day-to-day performance improve the effectiveness of the operating system speaking of which oneplus's oxygen OS that is being sold internationally outside of China is much better than what we get in the Chinese variant we saw that on the OnePlus 12 but you still continue to get all those gestures and features that you do with OnePlus and on the display you also do have a fingerprint sensor which is fast and responsive you can customize the look of the animation of the fingerprint sensor and the always on display and you have a lot of other oxygen OS features that are built in with is definitely not the same oxygen OS that we remember it to be it's a far cry from what Cyanogen was when uh the original OnePlus was launched but that's just water under the bridge I say camera wise we've got a good package here as well we've got a main 50 megap camera with an f1.8 aperture you get electronic image stabilization and Optical imit stabilization you get really steady shots you can also capture 4K video at 60 frames per second you have an ultra wide camera but the only other thing that I don't really like in the camera setup is the the 2 megapixel macro camera which they could have really done without and they could have had just two cameras here but then the look would have changed and there would have been issues they could have put a blank there anything would have been better than a 2 megapix macro at 40,000 rupees that's the biggest let down of this phone is the camera layout they could have easily put the macro capability in the 8 map Ultra wide but they refused to do that I don't know why and honestly a telephoto would have been better than a macro I don't know how many people are using macro shots but if you prefer a macro to a telephoto let me know in the comment section below here are some samples from the camera and you can check out the video samples as well and you can see that 4K video at 60 is pretty good the front facing camera is a 16 mapel camera with an f2.4 and you do have electronic image stabilization and here are some samples from the front facing camera as well video on the front camera is capped at 1080 at 30 frames per second which is again a little bit of a disappointment at least 60 FPS would have been nice and 4K would have been awesome and the chipset can clearly do it it's a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 it's just limitations in terms of the sensor and what the company decides to give you for this price because they don't want it eating into their Flagship sales they don't want people picking this over the OnePlus 12 although despite all of these things I still feel that this is a much better compelling option in terms of what you get for the amount of money you're spending on this phone for connectivity you get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 and a whole bunch of 5G bands we list them on the screen for you now in terms of charging in battery life you have 5500 mAh battery and it does support 100 wat of super W charging the charg is included in the box which is fantastic and the phone does offer up pretty impressive battery in itself you can easily go into two days of use without any issues you'll get easily 5 to 6 hours of screen on time on heavy usage which is impressive we didn't find the phone heating up at all it does tend to get warm from around the camera area but nothing that would warrant excitement or exclamation so no issues there whatsoever there are a whole bunch of cases made by OnePlus that will be available for this device and a screen protector is pre-installed so all of those things are met wild wine L1 is supported and you can easily stream content on this without any issues you do have stereo speakers and they sound great want to go check out our video with that phone you can click on the top right and we'll have it linked in the description below as well but let's talk about this device and what I think is the OnePlus 12 in terms of How It's placed today and here is what the microphone sounds like on this device here is what what the microphone on the OnePlus 12r sounds like and uh it's pretty good in terms of performance the phone does offer up a really fast and snappy performance whether you're using it day-to-day just between applications just browsing the internet or if you're putting it through games and those kind of things because it's a flagship chip because it's been optimized well over the past couple of years you'll get that performance on this device without any issues overall the OnePlus 12r is a really impressive device minus the camera issues the 2 megap macro is really annoying and so is the video from the front-facing camera but if those two things don't bother you this is a pretty good package and almost a much better option if you're not looking for 100% of the specifications which is the hustle blood branding which is some of the new color options and also the cameras which are better on the OnePlus 12 that's our video If you enjoyed it don't forget to smash like hit subscribe we've also checked out the new OnePlus buds 3 and those impressed us a lot as well so you can go check out that video we'll have it linked in the description below and I'll see you guys in the next one\n"