OnePlus 13R

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. 

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.OnePlus 13RRealme GT 6Xiaomi 14 CiviPre-installed apps475353OS + security updates4 years + 6 years3 years + 4 years3 years + 4 years

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.OnePlus 13ROnePlus 12RRealme GT 6Charging speed80W100W120WCharging times (20 to 100 percent)47 minutes26 minutes27 minutes