OnePlus Nord 2T 5G (UK) - 8GB RAM 128GB SIM Free Smartphone with 50MP AI Triple Camera and 80W SUPERVOOC Fast Charging - 2 Year Warranty - Grey Shadow

Bought this to tide me over till the end of the year when I'm out of contract and can upgrade to a newer flagship, was at the end of my tether with my old phone. Pros - Great Camera, on par with many flagships I've used in the past. Excellent low light and HDR performance. Average 4k video recording but good full hd. Great system performance, no lag, no heat and very quick. Amazing charging speed, literally increases a percentage every 15 seconds on the vooc charger. Good screen, not the brightest or highest refreshrate, but very high quality 90hz FHD Ram Boost, can use some storage to boost the ram from 8gb to 13gb if you want Great front facing camera. Excellent 'all day' battery life, getting about 6 hours Screen on time over 15 hours use. Rarely have to charge in the day. Cons - Some bugs which I'm sure OnePlus will fix, but they are quite annoying, for example, sometimes the phone cannot pick up any 4g/5g data, you have to manually turn off the data and back on. Also when in a low light environment the selfie cam seems to always default to light up the screen mode, even if you turn it off. Also sometimes the bluetooth disconnects from my car and needs manually reconnecting. Not major issues but hopefully they are ironed out as it's a fantastic phone.

Lets put this into context, I have been part of Samsung's universe since 2016 and in truth it was great, software was smooth, the experience was easy and the phones were all really solid and reliable. So when I was called in to handover my A52 to my son who was limping along with an older Samsung I straightaway went to look for another Samsung but in truth I was only willing to spend circa £400 for an upgrade and the A53 was just like buying the same phone as the A52 so I bravely looked afield and trawled the internet for reviews like a sad sack. Anyway I found that a very trustworthy brit YouTube channel regarded the Nord 2T very highlight I with much trepidation grabbed one from Amazon. Right well it arrived and the finish is superb, an all glass phone (GG5 no less) that has a better camera than the A52 and is pretty seamless to use, in fact it is lightening quick. Superb to use, no lag and very smooth. The handset is still 2020's large but it is both shorter and shallower than the A52 and easy to hold, I can even get it in a pocket. The face recognition is lightening quick, (be careful tho, security is compromised) and the OS is really slick... HOWEVER the OS in my honest view is not quite as smooth as Samsung's, it feels a bit pared back which i guess allows things to move much more quickly combined with a really strong processor so my mate at YouTube seems to say. I have to admit there are bits of the OS that just feel nicer with Samsung but comparing between the brands, this Oxygen OS thingy is just so very quick and like a Pixel so I am told. Fingerprint is miles better than the Samsung I had and I love having a physical switch to turn of notifications, I would have to recommend that you get a case and a screen protector as it will no doubt crack without one. Saying that the range of cases is not great, the Spigen one recommended was poor so I found a nice one from OnePlus themselves which fits perfectly and keeps things small but protected. Look its great, I really am impressed as i came into the Nord 2T with lower expectation but its such a nice phone with a really zippy OS and a great look and feel to the handset that I have to say this was a good move. Usually keep phones for 1 or 2 years so lets see how things go...

I've had the phone a few days now and here are my first impressions. As a videographer and occasional photographer I value certain things in my phone and whilst this handset is by no means the creme de la creme of smartphones but I think it deserves a lot of praise for what it does well. These days I'm not able to afford the flagships with their top end camera systems, but this is one of those handsets that makes you ask if you really need to anymore. The last "flagship I used was the Huawei P20 Pro. In fact I'm going to be mentally comparing quality of that handset to the main camera here in the Nord 2T. The other 2 lenses are poor and there to make up numbers, but a few years ago even our flagships packed one good camera and we were mostly happy. Today it's surprising how good phones are at capturing sharp video and images. The lightness of this handset is appreciated and there are times when it's simply not convenient to use a dedicated camcorder or my old DSLR (I'm yet to justify the jump to a superior mirrorless system). Comparing my old P20 Pro, a phone lauded for it's cameras in 2018, I have to say I'm really impressed. Autofocus on the Nord 2T is sharp, fast and accurate, the p20 would seratch for focus as soon as there was lots of movement in the frame when videoing, resulting in lots of out of focus, unuseable footage. Details are good and low light performance seems bettrr in my limited testing. Yes, there are better cameras, but for the price, this is a great little handset. I'd personally like more controls, the ability to disable OIS when my phone is mounted on my gimbal, but this phone shoots way better video than my older P20 Pro, a weakness of that handset. Still Images seem sharp, maybe overshsrpened, detailed but over processed as is the norm for Chinese phones who seem to prefer images that pop over those more natural. I quite like the look though. Low light performance of the main 50MP camera is strong for the price and better than my older handset. At 50MP, a 2x digital zoom (crop) is still a decent image and surprisingly usable . I don't zoom my images normally, preferring to crop in post, but I'd have no qualms here shooting at 2x for online use as images are detailed and sharp. The pnone itself is really nice to use. Yes, I'd prefer a more stock android as certain changes the OxygenOS 12 has made are not as good as the original Google implementation. Settings menus especially are overcomplicated and certain elements of the Material You design language does appear lost in this and every other Chinese translation I've seen. That said, I'm used to Chinese UIs by now and they tend to add lots, even if the first thing I do is put either Nova or Lawnchair launcher on them for a more stock skin. What I don't like is the default to the iPhone style home screens. We Android users like our app drawer, we don't want the chaos of multiple homescreens of randomly placed icons greeting us after a backup from our accounts onto our new handset. It takes time to clean up this mess but once done, this, is as simple to use as any other in day to day usage. The interface is snappy, the battery simply good, not amazing. It'll easily last most users a full 24 hours and when it doesn't, charging on the boxed 80w charger is simply lightning. 0% to full in about 30 mins. It doesn't get too hot, I've had no real hiccups in my first few days with it. The odd stutter but generally, apps load quicklyand everything seems as fast as any top end phone I remember using. The handset design is a mixed bag There is something a little disconcerting about the cross eyed, off centre camera alignment, the design itself possible works, though the camera bump is pretty massive and you certainly can't lay this thing at all flat until you put it in the supplied case and even then it isn't flat, but I like aspects of the design. The shadow grey frosted glass back may not pick up fingerprints, but it's a slippery and whilst feeling quality I don't think I'll be pulling this out to look at it as I did with the P20 Pro or even my old Oppo Find x2 Neo I used as my daily handset until recently. It's not the most attractive handset I've owned in all honesty but I bought this for function over form and it feels sturdy and premium, works well and was a great price. The biggest area where I am not impressed is the quality of the built in stereo speakers. With bluetooth 5.2 and aptX I'm unlikely to have to worry too much but I was disappointed in all honesty as these were a step back not only on the previous Huawei Handsets I'd owned (Mate 9 was brilliant), but worse than the Find X2 Neo which I loved (except for it's mediocre camera performance).. If you need to use them they are there, but they're pretty terrible, bassless and prone to distort at high volumes when playing music. Watching streaming services they sounded better, but they're lacklustre at best and when pushed sound exactly like the cost cutting, cheaply made speakers they are. Brightness of the screen is the only other criticism. I'm yet to use it on a bright sunny day, but outdoors it's not the brightest. I do hope I don't regret this when filming my partners American football practices on sunny days but it's just not very bright. Everything else, indoors I'm happy with the HDR 10+ screen. It's everything you expect from an AMOLED screen and the 90Hz makes the android experience smoother, I just wish it got brighter outdoors. To conclude, the Oneplus Nord 2T is a good handset for the money. Its not going to win prizes in a beauty contest and isn't flawless but you can't expect flawless in the midrange. It's got a good main camera (I didn't review the other 2 lenses as they are pretty pointless) and everything else is as good as it should be with the odd niggle, but overall this handset is a rapid little performer than makes using it a breeze and a pleasure.

👍👍