OnePlus 13R review: strong gaming, balanced photography

The OnePlus 13R gets a faster chipset, a bigger battery, and a telephoto camera compared to the OnePlus 12R. Are these upgrades enough to upgrade to the new OnePlus phone?

• By Sanket Vijayasarathy
Published On: 19 January 2025 | 13:43 IST

The OnePlus 12R (review) was a terrific value flagship last year, delivering high-end performance, terrific battery life, and a premium design language, all at a very sweet price tag of Rs 39,999. The OnePlus 13R is now here with all the makings of a successor, such as a faster processor, improved camera system, and bigger battery, among other things. Read on to know if the OnePlus 13R is the de facto choice for anyone looking for a phone under Rs 50,000 this year.

Verdict

The OnePlus 13R is a solid successor to the OnePlus 12R, offering some notable upgrades. While the flat screen and frame design might be a polarising choice, the hardware remains top-notch, featuring a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, a large 6,000mAh battery, and a 50MP telephoto camera, among other highlights. Without significantly increasing the price, OnePlus has delivered a well-rounded flagship in the OnePlus 13R, appealing to both gamers and casual photographers.

Design and display

The OnePlus 13R looks completely different from the OnePlus 12R, as it has undergone a significant redesign. Firstly, OnePlus has replaced the curved front and back with a flat design. The aluminium frame is also flat. When I asked OnePlus about their choice of a flat design, they explained that gamers in this price segment prefer a flat display for a better gaming experience. As a result, the OnePlus 13R seems to be designed with gamers in mind.

The OnePlus 13R’s soft-touch aluminium frame and matte-finish glass back make it quite slippery to hold, and its sharper edges feel less comfortable in hand compared to the curved frame and glossy glass back of the OnePlus 12R. Personally, I preferred the premium feel of the OnePlus 12R. Last year’s model featured an elegant curved design and a unique metal accent that connected the rear camera module to the frame – something the OnePlus 13R lacks.

In that case, the OnePlus 13R now resembles many other flat-designed phones on the market, including the latest iPhones and Find X8. While the OnePlus 12R shared a visual similarity with the OnePlus 12, the OnePlus 13R looks distinctly different from the OnePlus 13 (review). That said, the flat design will undoubtedly appeal to some, especially gamers, making the OnePlus 13R’s design a polarising choice.

All the usual buttons are still there, including the Alert Slider. The front and back of the phone are protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, a decent choice for mid-range phones. It is, however, less durable than the Victus 2 which protects the OnePlus 12R (if at least we go by Corning’s name scheme). The phone is offered in Nebula Noir and Astral Trail colour options. I received the latter for review and it offers a silver hue with concentric rings growing out from the camera module.

OnePlus is sticking to an IP65 rating for water and dust protection much like the Realme GT 6 (review), while phones like the Vivo V40 Pro (review) and OPPO Reno 13 Pro (review) offer IP68 and IP69 under Rs 50,000.

Regarding the display, the phone features a 6.78-inch 120Hz ProXDR screen with a 2,780 x 1,264px resolution and up to 4,500 nits of peak brightness. The display is exceptionally bright and does not exhibit the cool, blue hue seen on the OnePlus 12R. I was unable to test the brightness under direct sunlight due to the current smog situation in Delhi. The phone is also certified for both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, making it ideal for streaming high-definition content on platforms like Netflix and Prime Video. Overall, it’s an excellent device for enjoying media content.

The display also supports Aqua Touch 2.0 and Glove Mode. The former makes the screen responsive to touch even with water on the screen, while the latter lets you use the phone while wearing woollen or sheepskin gloves up to 0.5cm thick. I can confirm that both features work, particularly the latter, which proved useful on a bitterly cold winter morning in Delhi.

Cameras

Everything about the OnePlus 12R impressed me last year, except for the cameras. Thankfully, this is one area where OnePlus has worked on for the OnePlus 13R. In addition to a 50MP Sony LYT-700 primary sensor, the OnePlus 13R gets a 50MP telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom, an upgrade over the 2MP macro lens on the OnePlus 12R. The new telephoto lens allows you to capture some good-looking portraits at 2x zoom, and you don’t really miss the lack of a barely useful 2MP macro camera.

Daylight

The OnePlus 13R takes respectable photos in daylight, delivering good brightness and contrast. Colours look vibrant and often punchier than they really are, making them social media-ready. In the below comparison shot with the Xiaomi 14 Civi (review), the OnePlus 13R did a much better job with dynamic range and brightness, making its rival’s image look duller in comparison.

A cropped version of the same scene (below) shows the OnePlus 13R capturing sharper, if not oversharpened, details compared to the Xiaomi 14 Civi.

Portraits

The biggest visible upgrade in the camera department is in portraits. The OnePlus 13R gets a 50MP telephoto sensor that can capture sharp and detailed portraits in up to 2x optical zoom. This is a significant upgrade over the OnePlus 12R which does not feature a telephoto sensor. To show you just how much has changed, take a look at the 2x portrait shots with the OnePlus 13R and OnePlus 12R below.

You can see that the OnePlus 13R’s portrait shot looks far more sharper that the OnePlus 12R, showing more details of the face and hair along with a uniform and deep background blur. Below is a closer look at the 2x portrait shot.

Low-light

The OnePlus 13R’s primary camera allows more light to enter compared to its predecessor, making low-light shots appear well-lit if there are enough light sources around.

Selfie

When it comes to selfies, the Xiaomi 14 Civi remains undefeated in this segment. With its 32MP dual selfie setup, it naturally captures better-looking selfies that are sharper and more accurate compared to the softer-looking selfies captured by the OnePlus 13R’s 16MP camera. The selfie camera does not support autofocus, which is another downside.

Like the OnePlus 13, the OnePlus 13R has a few AI features for photos as well. When editing a picture, you’ll see an AI Editor option, which includes tools like AI Detail Boost, AI Unblur, AI Eraser, and AI Reflection Editor. I found some of these features a bit hit-and-miss. I tried the AI Detail Boost on a selfie to see if it could enhance my facial features, but it ended up doing the opposite. It softened and almost blurred out my face and hair, while oddly enhancing the clothes and background.

Performance and software

The OnePlus 13R uses the same chipset that powered the OnePlus 2024 flagship, the OnePlus 12. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 delivers superb performance and is also well-optimised now that it is a year old. Paired with up to 16GB LPDDR5X RAM, the OnePlus 13R is easily one of the most powerful phones under Rs 50,000 right now. In our dedicated performance review, the OnePlus 13R outscored the Realme GT 6 and Vivo V40 Pro in synthetic benchmarks like AnTuTu and Geekbench. It also did impressively in our performance throttling test, dropping down to around 67 percent while rivals would throttle down to under 50 percent.

As mentioned earlier, the OnePlus 13R is designed with gamers in mind, and it performs well in gaming. It delivered consistent FPS while playing BGMI, Real Racing 3, and Call of Duty for 30 minutes each. The phone is also quite battery-efficient, showing the least battery percentage drop after 90 minutes of gameplay compared to its rivals. However, OnePlus could have optimised the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset better for thermal efficiency, as the phone heated up significantly during gaming, despite the phone being equipped with a dual cryo-velocity vapor chamber.

The OnePlus 13 series ships with OxygenOS 15 based on Android 15 and OnePlus is promising four years of major software upgrades and six years of security updates. OxygenOS 15 is a fairly clean user interface with barely any third-party apps pre-loaded. You can make tons of tweaks to the UI, such as changing the shape of the app icons, colour themes, and so on to suit your specific taste. OxygenOS 15 also brings a host of new features, such as ‘Share with iPhone’ which allows you to transfer files between the OnePlus phone and an iPhone via the O+ Connect app.

OnePlus also said that the OnePlus 13 phones get the Open Canvas multi-tasking feature from the OnePlus Open that allows you to work on three apps simultaneously with a triple split-screen view, though we could not find this feature on either the OnePlus 13 or OnePlus 13R.

OnePlus has also introduced a few AI features, such as AI Summary, AI Speak, and AI Writer, which can be pulled up from the Smart Sidebar. These AI features show up on specific apps, like Gmail or a web browser, to help you quickly summarise content, proofread what you’ve written, and more.

Importantly, both the OnePlus 13 and OnePlus 13R are among the first phones in India to support next-gen 5.5G connectivity in partnership with Jio.

Battery and charging

OnePlus has upgraded the battery in the OnePlus 13R by fitting a 6,000mAh single-cell battery, which is 500mAh larger than the one in the OnePlus 12R. In my dedicated battery review, the OnePlus 13R delivered impressive backup in both gaming and video streaming tests, outperforming the likes of the Realme GT 6, Vivo V40 Pro, and Xiaomi 14 Civi. Indeed, the OnePlus 13R provides reliable full-day battery life under normal to heavy usage. However, I feel that the OnePlus 12R offered slightly better battery backup than the OnePlus 13R, despite having a smaller battery.

Unfortunately, the OnePlus 13R charges slower than its predecessor. This is due to two reasons: switching to a single-cell battery from dual-cell and dropping the charging speeds from 100W to 80W. The reason behind this could be to preserve the phone’s battery health, but the end-result is a slow-charging affordable flagship that takes close to 50 minutes to charge from 20 to 100 percent.

Final verdict

The OnePlus 13R is a great value flagship phone that excels on multiple fronts. Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, it delivers flagship performance that will satisfy power users and gamers alike. The phone’s flat design might get mixed reactions but is likely to appeal particularly to gamers. To support heavy usage, the OnePlus 13R features a large 6,000mAh battery that easily lasts a full day and then some. While fast charging has been downgraded, you can still fully charge the device in under an hour.

Unlike the OnePlus 12R, which offers an average camera experience, the OnePlus 13R shows genuine improvements and includes a highly usable telephoto camera, ensuring decent portraits and a well-rounded smartphone experience. While its cameras may not rival the likes of the Xiaomi 14 Civi or Vivo V40 Pro, the OnePlus 13R strikes a good balance, offering something for both photographers and gamers.

Editor’s rating: 8 / 10

Pros:

• Excellent performance for gaming and regular usage.
• Stunning display with Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support.
• Useful telephoto camera for portraits.
• Reliable battery life for gaming and streaming.

Cons:

• The design might not appeal to all.
• It charges slower than the OnePlus 12R.
• The phone has underwhelming selfies and ultrawide cameras.