OnePlus 12 Review

After two years of drift the 12 was the OnePlus phone people had been asking for. It launched in China in December 2023 and worldwide the following January. The 6.82-inch 3168 x 1440 LTPO panel from BOE was rated for 4500 nits peak and stayed readable in direct sun, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 ran cool under a large vapour chamber, and the 5400 mAh battery was the biggest in any mainstream flagship that spring, reaching two days for light users. Wireless charging returned after the 11 had dropped it, at 50W on OnePlus's own stand, and the 80W wired charger in the box filled the phone in around half an hour. The 12/256 model was $799; 16GB of RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.0 came in at $899.

The camera was the real change. The 50MP Sony LYT-808 main sensor produced natural colour and reliable exposure, the 64MP OmniVision periscope gave a true 3x that held up to 6x, and Hasselblad's tuning stopped being a sticker and started showing in skin tones. It still ranked behind a Pixel 8 Pro for consistency and the 48MP ultrawide was ordinary.

OxygenOS 14 was the same ColorOS-derived build as before, faster now and with fewer bugs, but the settings app still felt like Oppo's. The limits were an IP65 rating where rivals had IP68, a curved edge that caught reflections and palms, and four years of Android updates when Samsung and Google had moved to seven. On the whole, though, this was the best value flagship of 2024 and most reviewers said so.