King of the Nord

The first thing you will notice about the Nord 2 5G is that it looks and feels similar to the previous Nord This is good because the handfeel of the first Nord was very good the new one feels good to hold as well I tested the Green Woods version with dual SIM support 12GB RAM and 256GB storage Unlike the other two variants this one has a leatherlike material at the back The other two have glass Despite the body being made of plastic this in no way feels like a cheap phone Not bad for a phone that starts at Rs 29999The screen on the phone is a 643inch Full HD AMOLED with a 90hz refresh rate The screen is bright enough for outdoors and the colours are crisp If you donrsquot like the colour profile and instead prefer more vivid colours you can change it in settings While the display is pretty much the same as last yearrsquos model this one doesnrsquot come with a huge dualcamera cutout instead of opting for a single 32MP selfie camera Under the screen included is a fingerprint sensor as well The headphone jack reintroduced in the Nord CE is visibly missing here fortunately the OP team has included the physical sound profile slider which was missing on the Nord CEThe major change in the phone this time is the switch from Qualcommrsquos Snapdragon OnePlus has instead opted for MediaTekrsquos Flagship Dimensity 1200 Soc systemonachip Switching the chipset is a blessing Dimensity 1200 is phenomenal Not only does the chipset manage to perform reasonably well even when compared to more expensive phones but it also manages to conserve energy well offering at least an entire dayrsquos usage from a single charge During daytoday operations the phone didnrsquot heat up Only heavy games like Genshin Impact struggled at max settings and also generated a lot of heatThe battery is built for highspeed charging as well On the inside of the phone it is split in two and uses the provided 65W charger to go from zero to 100 per cent charge in under 40 minutes It is a killer feature when combined with Dimensityrsquos ability to sip the power The audio on the phone is pretty loud and it is stereo That said it isnrsquot the best quality but it is good enough for watching Netflix Call quality and general network handling are very good I didnrsquot experience any call drops or bad audio quality during my testWith most One Plus phones the camera setup needs a lot of time and updates to mature With the Nord 2 however it is mostly good out of the gate It is a triple camera setup at the rear with a 50MP Sony main camera with builtin optical image stabilisation an 8MP Ultrawide angle and a 2MP depthmacro lens During the daytime and inadequate light the camera performed well The OIS was very useful in shooting videos and stabilisation was available even when using wideangle to shoot In lower light conditions the images were a bit grainy and there was a loss of sharpness In my experience One Plus usually improves on these issues with updates and this could be the case with this phone as wellThe true hero of the Nord and all One Plus phones is still Oxygen OS The OS makes the system work like magic There is no adware and bloatware and that in itself warrants the extra you are paying for this phone over something similar from say a Xiaomi or Realme Now that One Plus has merged teams with Oppo I hope that they donrsquot replace Oxygen with Colour OS in the future That would be tragic The term flagship killer gets thrown around a lot these days However here it should be applied liberally The lethal combination of an allrounder phone at a budget price point and an adfree operating system make One Plus Nord 2 5G the only sane choice in the budget category This is one of One Plusrsquos better and wellthoughtout phonesApple launches new iPads iPhones and a new watchApple announced new products including a 102inch iPad 83inch iPad Mini iPhone 13 with Mini Pro and Pro Max versions and Apple Watch Series 7 The 102inch iPad will feature the A13 Bionic chip and a 12MP UltraWide frontfacing camera will start at R30900 The new iPad Mini will house the A15 Bionic chip and will also come with the new 12MP Ultrawide frontfacing camera starting at Rs 46900 The new iPhone 13 will feature A15 Bionic chip and the lineup will start at R69900 for the Mini and Rs 129900 for the Pro Max versionsIntel Arc could rival cards from Nvidia and AMDIntel has already confirmed its foray into highend graphics and we could be seeing Intel Arcbased computers and laptops as soon as early next year The latest rumours surrounding the card revolves around its performance which could be close to Nvidiarsquos RTX 3070 The current chip crisis has caused major supply problems for graphic cards With the shortage in play it could be the right time for Intel to make its move into gamegrade graphicsNintendo enables new featureNintendo enabled Bluetooth Audio for Switch with a new software update The device can connect to the controllers and Bluetooth Audio devices at the same time The update comes four years after the device was first released in 2017 Better late than neverProsgtgt 65W warp chargergtgt Great allroundergtgt Premium looksConsgtgt More expensive than competitorsgtgt Camera performance could be bettergtgt Speaker audio isjust about okay