OnePlus Nord CE 4 First Impressions: Signs of Improvement

OnePlus has been delivering its so-called ‘Core Experience’ for years with its Nord CE series of phones. While this experience ensured a smooth and lag-free software experience for the most part, it often fell short in other areas. Despite offering an average camera for years, it still made sense as an overall package. But with some rather competitive smartphones like the Realme 12 Pro+ sliding into this sub Rs. 30,000 segment, how can OnePlus keep its CE relevant? Some of these answers may be available with its newest Nord CE 4.

The OnePlus Nord CE 4 comes with a 100W wired charger in the box

For starters, this is a heavily-embargoed phone and so we aren’t allowed to give out plenty of details (display, software, and more) as OnePlus is still in its “hype-building” phase for the smartphone. But we will try our best to give you an idea about what this smartphone is all about and what’s new.

For starters, there’s a brand-new design. It looks and feels very different from the Nord CE 3, the Nord CE 3 Lite, and the more recent Nord 3 as well. It is available in two colourways – Dark Chrome and Celadon Marble. We received the Celadon Marble review unit which has a minty green finish that looks like marble. OnePlus states that both of these colours are meant to appeal to the youth, which is the target audience for its Nord series of devices.

The OnePlus Nord CE 4’s design is a mix of rounded corners, straight lines and sharp edges

The phone has a fairly large footprint (as big as Pixel 8 Pro) and also feels quite heavy at 186 grams. While I appreciate the curved edge rear panel, it ends abruptly into the polycarbonate frame, which has flat sides and sharp edges. Just like the previous model, the Alert Slider is missing on the Nord CE 4 as well. And there are two more aqua-centric features about its design, which I’m not at liberty to disclose at the moment.

Its display looks familiar to the previous model in terms of design but has a thick lipping around it which feels a bit obtrusive. Just like the previous model, the Nord CE 4’s display is of the AMOLED variety. It sports a full-HD+ resolution and offers a 120Hz refresh rate as well. In the box, OnePlus offers a charger, a Type-A to Type-C charging cable and a rather premium-looking soft case.

The soft case included in the box feels quite premium and looks good as well

Coming to the factor that drives OnePlus’ core experience. There’s a new Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 SoC, which should give this smartphone quite the performance bump over previous models. The chipset is also quite power efficient, which should technically translate into better battery life. The phone has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and it also offers up to 1TB of expandable storage via a microSD card slot.

While I’m not allowed to disclose the battery’s capacity I can tell you that it’s a really large one. Surprisingly, OnePlus has also managed to deliver 100W wired charging which is the fastest for a Nord device till date. In theory, it should make for a proper road-warrior.

The OnePlus Nord CE 4 has a dual rear-camera setup

Indeed, there’s plenty more that needs to be explored until we can whole-heartedly recommend the new OnePlus Nord CE 4 over the existing competition which has also gotten quite fierce this year. So, do stay tuned for our detailed review which will be out soon.