Can the OnePlus 11R bring back the glory of the original OnePlus?
OnePlus has been known for the tagline "flagship killer" ever since it came with OnePlus One which brought some of the best specifications on premium flagships and that too at a very lower price. But things did change gradually over the past few years for the brand as the price for each of its smartphones increased with each iteration thus losing the tagline of "flagship killer".
But this year the OnePlus 11 series brought in some very good specifications and definitely the OnePlus 11 (Review) is a perfect flagship as it brought one of the best specifications and gave a very tough fight to other flagships in the market. Similarly, OnePlus is also eyeing the budget flagship segment with its other offering in the form of the OnePlus 11R which is a great upgrade over the OnePlus 10R (Review).
The OnePlus 11R is the younger sibling of the flagship OnePlus 11 as it brings some similar characteristics like design, main camera and size of the battery but on the other hand, the OnePlus 11R brings last year's flagship Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset and other specifications which make it an almost complete flagship. So is the OnePlus 11R worth buying?
Let's find out in the full review.
OnePlus 11R Design:
The OnePlus 11R sports almost a similar look to that of the OnePlus 11 if you look at the back where there is a circular camera module placed on a squarish module but this time around there is no Hasselblad branding and you get triple cameras with LED flashlight. The camera module is slightly raised so it may wobble when kept on a flat surface.
The smartphone has a glass sandwich design with the back having Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for protection whereas the front glass has DragonTrail Glass for protection which is slightly inferior to the Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection on the OnePlus 11. The OnePlus 11R is available in two different colours - Galactic Silver and Sonic Black.
The Sonic Black colour variant has a sandstone finish at the back which provides excellent grip while holding it in hands and also does not catch any fingerprints. However, the back does not have any official IP rating as such but still, it can survive some splashes of water. Around the sides, there is a polycarbonate frame instead of an aluminium frame on the OnePlus 11 to keep costs low.
The OnePlus 11R weighs around 204 grams which makes it slightly heavier and is thicker to the sides at 8.7mm. To the right side, there is the signature alert slider which was missing on its predecessor, the OnePlus 10R and below it is the power button. On the left side, there are only the volume buttons. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot and a primary microphone.
There is neither support for a microSD card slot for storage expansion nor there is any 3.5mm headphone jack. On the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone, a secondary speaker outlet that doubles up for stereo output, and an IR Blaster which is a new addition to OnePlus 11R that helps in controlling various devices.
On the front, just like the OnePlus 11 you have a curved display with is slightly curved around the right and left sides with minimum bezels around the sides. The single punch-hole is located on the top at the centre of the smartphone compared to the punch-hole located at the top left side of the OnePlus 11. Overall, the build and design feel premium and are a good upgrade over the OnePlus 10R.
OnePlus 11R Display:
On the front, the OnePlus 11 sports a curved display which has a 6.74-inch 1.5K (1240x2772 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. This is the very first smartphone that is having a 1.5K resolution since usually smartphones either ship with Full HD+ or Quad HD+ in this price segment but still the display has excellent colour reproduction and viewing angles.
The display on the OnePlus 11R supports a 120Hz refresh rate which is an adaptive one as claimed by OnePlus since it varies between 45Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz or 120Hz depending on the content on the display. There are two different modes - Standard and High where if you set it to High you will see the adaptive refresh rate working but setting it to Standard mode provides only a 60Hz refresh rate.
There were very rare scenarios where could see 45Hz on the display. For example, while watching a video of 24fps or 30fps, the display switches to 30Hz, while playing games or web browsing, the display switches to 120Hz and while using social media like Instagram or Facebook, the display switches to 60Hz. There is a 360Hz touch sampling rate which provides faster touch responses during multitasking.
In terms of brightness, the display of the OnePlus 11R can reach a peak brightness of 1450nits making it very brighter but this works only while you are watching content in HDR. But under normal conditions, it could reach a brightness of around 1000-1100nits and also under sunlight, it has good visibility. Talking about the display, you get different colour modes to choose from - Vivid, Natural and Pro.
Setting to Vivid provides punchier colours with deep blues and blacks and this also covers the DCI-P3 gamut whereas setting it to Natural provides slightly off-white but natural-looking colours and if you choose the Pro mode that further consists of Brilliant and Cinematic modes for a wider colour gamut. You also get a temperature slider to set the display to a warmer or cooler tone.
Since it has an AMOLED display, there is an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works well but is located very lower on the display towards the chin. The display has support for HDR on YouTube and Widevine L1 so you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms but you miss out on Dolby Vision so Netflix can stream HDR content as of now. Overall, this is a great display for multi-media consumption.
OnePlus 11R Performance:
The OnePlus 11R is powered by 2022's flagship chipset i.e. the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset which was by far one of the best flagship chipsets from Qualcomm compared to its previous three chipsets as it was based on TSMC's 4nm process instead of Samsung's 4nm process. So this chipset was found on last year's iQOO 11 (Review) and the OnePlus 10T (Review).
So in terms of daily tasks, the smartphone could easily handle all the tasks easily without any problem whether scrolling through webpages, playing heavy games, rendering videos, etc. In heavy games like BGMI, Apex Legends, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. the smartphone handles all these easily. In BGMI, the smartphone could easily run at HDR graphics with Ultra frame rates.
However, OnePlus has underclocked the chipset slightly to prevent overheating so definitely if you play games for longer hours i.e. 4-5 hours continuously, then there were some frame drops noticed on games like Call Of Duty Mobile and BGMI at the highest graphics settings but if you turn on the High-Performance Mode, you will get better gaming results without any frame drops.
In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could maintain a sustained performance of around 80-90 per cent with minimal throttling and too with the High-Performance mode turned on. Still, you can consider this smartphone for gaming and since the chipset is underclocked, the benchmarks come out good but still lower than other Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset-powered smartphones.
In terms of network connectivity, you get good support for carrier aggregation and 12 bands of 5G. The OnePlus 11R is available in two different variants - 8/16GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256GB UFS 3.1 storage but there is no 12GB RAM option available. Overall, the performance is flagship and gaming is good but considering the flagship chipset, gaming still needs more improvement.
OnePlus 11R Software:
The OnePlus 11R runs on the latest OxygenOS 13 built on Android 13 out of the box. OxygenOS may look similar to ColorOS and also the RealmeUI but the beauty of OxygenOS has always been the clean software experience with no ads or bloatware throughout the user interface. However, there are either one or two extra applications but still, it is far better compared to other user interfaces.
You get a lot of customizations where you can change icon shape and size, choose different styles for the Always-On display and fingerprint scanner, different wallpapers and themes, etc. Now the Always-On display has been integrated with Spotify where it shows which song is playing in Spotify, an upcoming order in Zomato, and much more.
The OnePlus Shelf which provides some new features is also present if you swipe from the top left. Other software features include Edge panels where you can store your favourite applications and access them by swiping from the edge of the display, an enhanced Privacy Dashboard is present where you can see which applications are using the camera, microphone and even location with full control on them.
In terms of software updates, the OnePlus 11R will get another three years of AndroidOS updates and four years of security updates.
OnePlus 11R Cameras:
The OnePlus 11R sports a triple camera setup where the main camera is similar to the one on the OnePlus 11 as you get a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX890 sensor while other cameras are different as you do get a telephoto camera and the other two cameras include the 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera. On the front, there is a 16MP f/2.4 Sony IMX471 sensor for the camera as on the OnePlus 11.
The images from the main camera come out with sharper details with good contrast and dynamic range and noise is very less in the background. The colours come out well making the images look brighter but still, they do not look saturated as on the OnePlus 11. But there is no oversharpening in the background and using the 50MP mode also, the images come out with sharper details but have more noise in the background.
At night, the main camera takes images with a good amount of details that look sharper and have good contrast and dynamic range. The exposure is well under control but shadows have slightly more noise and contrast is also lower. The colours look punchier and with the Night Mode turned on, the images have almost no noise and they look brighter.
The 8MP ultrawide camera takes images with sharper details and good dynamic range but contrast is not so good and there is a considerable amount of noise in the background. Around the edges, there is some amount of distortion present and similarly goes for the night where images have softer details, more noise and poor exposure but with the dedicated Night Mode, the dynamic range is better and you get sharper details.
There is no telephoto camera as on the OnePlus 11 but you can use the main camera for 2x digital zoom where images have good dynamic range and colours look natural in the background but the details look slightly softer and there is some amount of noise in the background. The third camera is a 2MP macro camera that does a decent job in terms of dynamic range and noise is on the higher side.
Since it is a fixed-focus camera, the details look softer, the colours look washed out, and there is some blur produced also. In terms of portraits, the images have a proper amount of background blur and good edge detection with proper cutout. The dynamic range and contrast come out well with less noise in the background. Human skin tones look natural but there is slight oversharpening taking place in the background.
On the front, the 16MP Sony IMX471 sensor works well for selfies as they come out with sharper details with good dynamic range and contrast. The skin tones look natural and no oversharpening is present. However, there is some amount of noise present in the background and even in portraits, the background is slightly blown out but you get good edge detection and dynamic range.
In terms of videos, only the main camera can record 4K videos at 60fps which have sharper details with good dynamic range and contrast. Since OIS is present, the videos have good stabilization with almost no noise in the background. Even at 1080p at 60fps, the videos have excellent dynamic range and the details look sharper. The ultrawide camera is only restricted to 1080p video recording at 30fps.
The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with slightly softer details and average dynamic range with a lot of noise in the background. On the front, the camera can only record 1080p videos at 30fps which has a good amount of details that look a tad bit softer and since EIS is present, the noise is very low and you get good dynamic range and skin tones look natural.
OnePlus 11R Battery Life:
The OnePlus 11R sports a larger 5000mAh battery similar to the one on the OnePlus 11 and with OxygenOS 13, you have some good battery optimizations and since the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset is based on the 4nm process, you get good battery life. With normal usage that includes casual web browsing, streaming social media, etc. the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some charge left.
With heavy usage that includes playing heavy games for 3-4 hours continuously, rendering videos, taking calls for longer hours, etc. the smartphone lasted for one day with some charge left. The standard screen-on time was around 6-7 hours with normal usage and with heavy usage, the standard screen-on time was around 3-4 hours which is very good.
The OnePlus 11R just like the OnePlus 11 is bundled with a 100W fast charger that takes the smartphone around 25-30 minutes for a complete charge from 0 to 100 per cent which is very fast. However, there is no support for wireless charging or reverse wireless charging which may not be a problem.
OnePlus 11R Audio Quality:
The OnePlus 11R has a dual stereo speaker setup with dedicated speakers at the top as well as bottom and the sound output through it is very good with clear sound which does not feel muffled. There is support for Dolby Atmos also.
Verdict:
The OnePlus 11R feels like a complete all-rounder package that has the best of everything and is a huge upgrade over the OnePlus 10R which just could not do well in the market since there were many things lacking. The OnePlus 11R seems to have fixed everything and provides a premium build and design, good performance, battery life with faster charging, a display with stereo speakers, and a good set of cameras also.
The software experience is really good as there are no ads or bloatware present and also the software update cycle is very good. However, there are some areas where the OnePlus 11R could have been better. Though the design is premium, the front glass protection is not so good and you get a polycarbonate frame instead of aluminium found on the more premium OnePlus 11 and even the OnePlus 9RT (Review).
In terms of daily tasks and shorter periods of gaming, the smartphone handles everything without breaking a sweat but after long hours of gaming, there are some frame drops and slight thermal throttling noticed though you have a flagship Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. Hopefully, OnePlus claims that this will fix soon through a future software update.
The 8MP ultrawide camera just does not make sense considering its price as it provides average performance and the lack of a telephoto camera is a slight concern. But other than that, if you leave the telephoto camera, and are not concerned about heavy gaming, then the OnePlus 11R is a solid product made by OnePlus that has the best of everything and continues to rule the budget flagship segment.
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