Svelte, light and nice

When I saw images of the Nord CE I was very sad because one of OnePlusrsquo key distinguishing features was missing The Alert Slider was gone this for me is a very useful feature and I couldnrsquot for the life of me imagine a OnePlus device without it Yet the Nord CE came without oneNow that I have used the phone for a few weeks I can tell you that I still miss the slider However this phone is plenty impressive even without it In the box you get the phone with the screen guard preattached a warp charger the signature red cable a plastic phone cover and some documentationThe Nord CE is a svelte and light device Its finish feels premium even though the back is made completely of plastic This phone is light at just 170 grams and is thin at just 79 mm That shedding of weight and thickness have dramatically improved the hand feel of this phone over its predecessor On the bottom of the phone there is a USB TypeC charging port a headphone jack and a speaker port I was pleasantly surprised to see the headphone jack make an appearance The single speaker port at the bottom makes a fairly decent amount of noise The sound isnrsquot the best quality though but it is passableThe phone also comes with a 30T fast charger which means you can charge your phone to 70 per cent in just 30 minutes from zero The 4500 mAh battery does a good job of keeping the Nord running through the day you can squeeze out even more performance if you turn off the alwayson display and reduce the refresh rateThe screen on the phone is a 2400X1080 AMOLED and it is bright enough to be viewed under direct sunlight The display also supports a 90Hz refresh rate which means scrolling and gaming on this looks beautiful It should be noted that there is no motion smoothing option for a video like on other OnePlus phonesThe Snapdragon 750G is a robust processor It performs well in daytoday tasks and I never felt it stutter or behave oddly at any point The builtin Adreno 619 GPU performs well in most common games even on high settings Though intensive games like Genshin Impact suffered some drop frames on Ultra settings The processor throughout managed to keep its cool with the phone only getting warmer with increased loadsThe camera on the Nord CE is also another point of difference offering a 64MP rear main camera supported by an 8MP Ultrawide and a 2MP depth sensor On the front there is a 16MP selfie camera Photos from the device were great overall It captured colour well and the images were sharp With lowlight the wideangle pictures without night mode turned on were terrible while the pictures with the mode on were just about okay The main lens however shot great lowlight images Portrait mode created a decent bokeh effect while keeping the subject in focus especially around curly hair which was impressive Slomo video on the NORD CE was a little disappointing going up to 240 frames on 720p mode Regular video output was great in both full HD and 4K In low light videos there was a fair amount of noise At 4K you can only capture 30 frames per second which 1080 has the option to capture at 60 frames For this budget overall the phone does have a decent cameraI was disappointed to see the slider missing from the Nord CE and for me that was a little part of the OnePlus design that was lost However this phone in every other way is a success The smooth AMOLED screen the superb Snapdragon 750G processor and the feel of holding a light phone just make this device magic While other brands at the price point of Rs 22999 crowd their phonersquos OS by pushing ads and apps OnePlus has instead stuck to the beautiful Oxygen OS which comes devoid of such distractions That alone is enough for me to recommend this phoneIf you are looking for a non flashy clean phone experience on a budget you canrsquot go wrong with the new OnePlus Nord CE 5GOverall Score 910User Experience 910Features 9510Camera 810Performance 910Design 9510gtgt 90hz AMOLED screengtgt Headphone jack includedgtgt Oxygen OS offers a point of difference over competitorsgtgt Missing alert slidergtgt Video in low light is grainygtgt Phone speaker is not impressiveImage samples httpsbitly36jEHlB