OnePlus Nord 5G (Blue Marble, 8GB RAM, 128GB Storage)

I purchased Nord in prelaunch. I researched in my price band <40k, and this phone seemed like the best option.Let me go through multiple factors about the phone, I personally like to find cons in the phone to make sure I don't blindly recommend it -1) screen -It's great, you can easily compare it with sub 20k phone. you can consider it great 8/10 .People complaining about tint issue, well its there but u need very keen eye to notice in pure dark background(room) and phone screen should have grey filled (like chrome incognito). But trust me, nobody stays on grey screen doing nothing while they experience tint2) Size, design- Again, phone is durable. I dropped it couple of times, oneplus themselves shown stress test. The plastic build is not an issue as pre 2018 phones were all plastic. Size i think its more of elongated , slightly larger in hands, ideally should be around 6 inch. (8/10)3) Battery, charging - Well battery is 4115mah, and its good . How did I measure? i have accubattery app which measures overall %/hr and amount per app , gives me complete statistics. I compared with old onplus and nokia i think the avg unload is 9.8%/hr which is lower than rest smartphones. Total time is unmeasurable because its heavily varied acc to usage. Charging of this phone is insane, goes near 60%/0.5hr with app temp of 36-38.5 degree. Considered as industry best. Insanely fast patches and guaranteed 3yrs update. 9.5/104) Software - One word -Sleek and insanely fast. No bloatware at all. (10/10)5) Performance - The performance is not comparable to >845 chipset. So do not compare. Daily you won't even notice , exact same app times and same sleep performance unless measured side by side. 8/106) Camera- Here I think It lacks quite a bit in terms of below pointsa) Low light ultra wideb) Overall macroc) Useless depth camerad) Poor detail n ultra wide selfieComing up to main camera it's great, now great is only measurable if u compare it with apple or pixel right? not exactly, those phones are camera centric while this is overall balanced phone.Trick - Use google camera app and you will feel upgraded to a pixel in most situations. Yes most. (7/10 thks to google camera app)6) Bugs - There are occasional bugs, but they do provide quick updates so ,.. (7/10).People complaining about the phone being bad, is it unusable? Think about it . My dad uses redmi 4, which is slow, horrible bugs , ads etc. which is truly unusable

I've been using my OnePlus 3T for almost 3 years now and I still didn't feel the need to upgrade from there since my screen of that phone is gone. Being an OnePlus fan I was eyeing for 7T. But I couldn't justify the price for that according to my day to day needs.So not being a hard-core user of mobiles I started looking for other options which will fulfill my usage without spending extra bucks. And the day 1+ announced the Nord i knew this will be my next mobile. It's a fantastic daily driver with decent camera quality (unless you're a mobile photographer please wait for the Pixel 4a)Now coming to my pros and cons-Pros:1. Battery life is excellent. Getting almost more than a day with 100% charge.2. Display is fluid and "big" (do keep in mind I was using 3T for 3 years now so screen is a big improvement for me. May not be valid for the ones who has used 5T or 6T in recent times)3. Still love the Oxygen OS with the add-on features4. Bluetooth connectivity is fast. I'm using OnePlus Wireless Z earphones which connects to Nord quite fast compare to my 3T5. Design is good though I still love my Gunmetal design of 3T. Don't think any other latest 1+ phones can beat that design (just my perspective)6. Signal strength is good too. Don't have any problems with my cellular calls.7. 128GB storage is plus.8. Already received 2 updates within a week.Now coming to the cons -1. Camera set-up. I really don't like the design of "Quad-camera" set-up at all. The kind of audience they are targeting with Nord i think it would be much more appreciated if they just give 2 camera selection with some good image processing software.2. Now talking about image processing unit, they could have done better. I mean night images are okay but it could have been good. If they followed the simpler approach like pixel 4A I don't think anyone would buy Pixel unless someone is Pixel fanboy.3. Next thing speaker. Again this is decent mono speaker but they could have added stereo one instead of macro and useless lens. People like us we don't do macro photography and never going to do it with a phone but we will definitely watch some videos and songs on our phone. But don't take me wrong because quality of the speaker is good but it lacks the base. Compared with my wife's 1+ 6T (yeah we got 3 OnePlus phones and one earphone in our house)Summing up, 1+ Nord is a good budget phone for those who are planning to use it on day to day basis. Good screen, good battery life, decent camera and speaker will definitely justify the price. Having said that it would have been a real "budget killer" if OnePlus opts for two camera set-up with better quality and stereo speakers. My take if someone is really into mobile photography then wait for Pixel and buy that without any second thought. But if you want a good phone and ready to compromise the camera quality then look no further. Hope this helps. Cheers

ras

Very quick delivery and packed very well.Fantastic phone, light and fits in my back pocket! Big fan of OnePlus for a long time now so I'm probably a little biased.Only downside is I believe the phone is from India so when I tried sign into my google pay account in the preloaded app, it only gave me the option of using a phone number from India and wouldn't let me change the country code...