It’s a good thing the OnePlus 10R 5G says 10R in bold black on the red box and it’s a good thing there’s the familiar logo on the back of this phone, because I wouldn’t have otherwise known it was a OnePlus device. The 10R looks as different from any other OnePlus device as it can. Some have wondered whether it was ever really constructed to be a OnePlus, and remark on its similarity to the Realme GT Neo3.
There’s truly nothing signature about the OnePlus 10R 5G except the box it comes in, perhaps. It’s an all-plastic body and the polycarbonate is not the sort used before on a OnePlus — at least in my memory, and I’ve used the very first OnePlus, the OnePlus One. Design-wise, the back is split into two for a plain matte finish section and a pin-striped section.
In the bottom right corner, there’s the OnePlus logo. It looks unfamiliar, but one can get used to it. It’s what is in the top right corner and taking up almost one fourth of the space that is immediately noticeable — an enormous camera window, if I can call it that. One big camera circle and two smaller ones sit in this large glass square on the OnePlus 10R 5G and while I love phones that look like they have serious cameras, this glass chunk protrudes and looks really vulnerable to damage. The case given in the box, however, will offset the protrusion somewhat and improve the situation. The camera circles look bug-eyed in their slightly disconcerting arrangement.
Looking around the sides of the phone, you’ll find no curved edges. This is a very flat handset. All the usual can be found but no 3.5mm jack slot and, more shockingly, no alert slider. One imagined its removal was reserved for absolute budget phones such as from the Nord series, but surely the same treatment can’t be given to a phone that’s hovering around the ₹40,000 mark? Well, it seems otherwise, because there’s no sign of it.
The OnePlus 10R 5G is overall a medium-weighted device, lighter than glass ones but not particularly ergonomically sound. The absence of curved sides calls for a bit of extra effort to grip the phone; and your fingers curled around the back keep touching the camera square. It won’t harm it, but it is a little unnerving.
Lightning fast
If you think the OnePlus 10R lighter than usual, wait till you see the charger — a massive brick that twice the weight of the phone. That’s because this is a 160W adaptor that supports 150W fast SuperVooc charging; it can charge the phone’s 4,500mAh battery in under 20 minutes and you’re ready for your day. So come to think of it, you don’t have to carry the charger. A regular charger will also work for when it needs to be portable, but it just won’t be as fast. There’s another variant of the phone with an 80W charger and a 5,000mAh battery.
The screen is a 6.7-inch Fluid AMOLED which is really quite nice, specially as the OnePlus 10R 5G has a 120Hz refresh rate. You can drop manually to 60Hz to preserve power if you want to. The display even has thin bezels and is barely disturbed by a small camera dot. There are stereo speakers that are loud enough, but don’t have much depth to them.
Powerful chip
It is not very typical for a OnePlus to use a non-Snapdragon chip, but the OnePlus 10R 5G one runs on the MediaTek 5G Dimensity 8100 Max. There’s a whopping 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage to power it. The phone feels fast and I didn’t manage to get it to heat up. The software is OnePlus’ once-loved OxygenOS, now in version 12 (though trying to see that on the phone leads to a ‘no network connection’ message even when the device is online).
Android 12 works with the OS, which has changed with its ColorOS influence. There aren’t any unwanted apps, thankfully, but the interface is a lot more intrusive now. Be that as it may, everything works okay except for the brightness and visual enhancement handling which is too obvious, in my opinion.
The set of cameras on the OnePlus 10R 5G is more or less average. The primary camera — a 50MP — doesn’t take bad pictures and reproduces colours quite well. The camera is quite quick and gives adequate detail and sharpness while keeping noise down. The 8MP ultra-wide drops the light in an image, specially in indoor settings, and washes colours out a great deal. The 2MP lens is along for the ride.
The OnePlus 10R 5G costs ₹38,999 for the 8GB+128GB version, ₹42,999 for 12GB+256GB version, and ₹43,999 for the 150W /4,500mAh battery version
Published on
May 22, 2022
