Have you forgotten about the OnePlus Nord 2? It was a phone that was crowned as one of our favorite OnePlus phones that had ever been produced, and there was a good reason for that crowning. It delivered an outstanding performance, a respectable camera, and a satisfying software experience all in a package that was quite reasonable in price. In my opinion, this is the most fundamental aspect of what OnePlus is all about. Now the business is making a comeback with an updated version of the OnePlus Nord 2T, and while it is mostly the same, it does include some new additions and other alterations that are more subtle.
If you’re trying to get a good smartphone for the mid-range price range and you didn’t get the Nord 2, then you should really consider getting the Nord 2T instead. If you already own a OnePlus Nord 2, then there is nothing else that you are missing out on. Because the difference between the 65W charger and the 80W charger is, at best, insignificant, the inclusion of the latter is referred to as the “greatest boost” here. This was something that we discovered when conducting an analysis of the OnePlus 10 Pro.
According to the information that we were able to obtain, the MediaTek Dimensity 1300 and the Dimensity 1200 are virtually comparable in appearance on the outside, and when using the two devices side-by-side, the screens appear to be nearly identical. If you own a OnePlus One 2, you shouldn’t feel jaded or as if you’re missing out on anything since the truth is that you actually aren’t losing out on anything at all. The Nord 2 did, however, establish a rather high bar, and the Nord 2T maintains that goal, making it a great smartphone for the price if you are in the market for a new one.
OnePlus Nord 2T design
The OnePlus Nord 2T appears virtually identical to its predecessor, the OnePlus Nord 2, and this is due to the fact that it is in fact an extremely similar gadget in and of itself. The placement of the rear camera, which appears to be somewhat off-kilter in comparison, is the most significant alteration. There are two tiny cameras located within the bottom circle of the larger circle that contains them. These cameras are identical to those that were accessible on the first generation of the OnePlus One 2, with the exception that they have been rearranged somewhat.
In terms of the display, it will be very difficult for you to identify any key changes between the two. It has the same dimensions, brightness, and resolution as before, as well as the same design. When viewed from the front, neither of these two gadgets exhibits any discernible differences from one another. There is still a notification slider located on the side as well. When seen on my device, the display is reliable in terms of both its color consistency and its 90 Hz refresh rate.
Overall, it’s pretty much the same as what we discovered with the first generation of the Nord 2 keyboard. The design, in my opinion, is a step backward, but in terms of functionality, it is identical to the previous version in every respect. My research has shown that there are no significant drawbacks to the product, and the packaging still contains the same gel case and a screen protector that has already been applied.
I am not sure why OnePlus even bothered to modify the design, while it is possible that they did so in part to create the perception of change given that nothing else about the device has really been altered. The speakers are the same lackluster quality, and the fingerprint sensor is still located underneath the screen.
OnePlus Nord 2T performance
The Dimensity 1300 is an octa-core system on a chip (SoC), with one “prime” Cortex-A78 core clocked up to 3GHz and three other performance cores clocked up to 2.6GHz each. The prime core is the fastest of the four performance cores. The maximum frequency of the other four cores, which are all Cortex-A55, is 2.0 GHz. While OnePlus and MediaTek worked together to develop the Dimensity 1200-AI processor that is found in the Nord 2 smartphone, the Dimensity 1300 appears to be more of a standard off-the-shelf offering.
In regard to the graphics processing unit (GPU), it features a nine-core ARM Mali-G77 GPU that is compatible with MediaTek’s HyperEngine 3.0 gaming technology. This includes support for simultaneous 5G calls and data transfers, as well as a multi-touch boost for enhanced responsiveness of touchscreen devices. The total package enables support for ray tracing in games and augmented reality applications, in addition to conserving a significant amount of power in super hotspots.
You would expect that the upgraded chipset would result in at least some positive outcomes, right? But, it would appear that this is not the case, which is something that we kind of anticipated given the fact that we were unable to identify any significant differences between the Dimensity 1200 and the Dimensity 1300. Both the CPU Throttling Test and Geekbench 5 produce results that are, for the most part, identical, suggesting that the performance is, for the most part, identical as well.
When it comes to functionality, the OnePlus One 2 and this phone are virtually indistinguishable from one another. When I asked OnePlus about the variations between the chipsets, they told me that the areas of video and photography were the ones in which they were able to identify the most significant discrepancies. As was the case with the OnePlus One 2, our findings are still applicable to this device, and I used a few other games and benchmarking software to check that this was, in fact, the case. You won’t have any trouble playing games like PUBG Mobile or Call of Duty Mobile on your device, and you’ll have varied degrees of success playing games through emulators like Dolphin Emulator. Although it won’t be a perfect emulation device, it performs a reasonably good job as a portable emulation machine on a budget, especially considering the price and the performance it delivers.
In any other case, you have access to as much as 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of UFS 3.1 storage. It is a quick and streamlined tablet, and if you are not a gamer, you probably won’t even realize that it does not come with a flagship chipset because it performs so well overall. Yet, given that the hardware of the Nord 3 is almost identical to that of the Nord 2, there is practically no reason to upgrade from the Nord 2 in terms of performance alone.
The OxygenOS
The OnePlus Nord 2 was the first handset from the business to launch with the blended result of ColorOS and OxygenOS, and the software that is present on this device is identical to what was found on the OnePlus Nord 2. Although it is still obvious that there is a skin on top of ColorOS, this is not always a negative thing. The ColorOS that comes pre-installed on the OPPO Find X3 Pro, for instance, is one of my favorites, and it comes packed with many useful functions. In terms of the software, the OnePlus 10 Pro provided me with one of the smoothest and most refined experiences that I’ve had with a OnePlus phone in recent memory.
When it comes to features, the OnePlus Nord 2T includes all of the ones you like best from the OxygenOS operating system. It is equipped with the same user interface, the OnePlus Shelf (which is included as part of the OnePlus Launcher), gaming mode, zen mode, and parallel app support, to name a few of its features. As a result of the integration, all of the features that users cherished in OxygenOS have been brought over, and as a result, the typical OnePlus sweetness should be present.
It’s intriguing that OnePlus promises the Nord 2T will receive software updates for the next two years, despite the fact that it ships with Android 12. In theory, its software support window will bring it an additional platform upgrade ahead of the OnePlus One 2; although, given the similarities between the two devices, I wouldn’t be too surprised if the company decided to treat them more or less the same when it came to updates.
OnePlus Nord 2T cameras
When it comes to the camera, the OnePlus Nord 2T and the OnePlus Nord 2 is, strangely enough, the same phone in pretty much every respect. OnePlus stated that users should see superior nightscape results as a consequence of the upgraded AI capabilities, but other than that, the photographs and videos will remain unchanged. The OnePlus Nord 2 was used to take the photographs and the video that are presented here; however, they should be indicative of what you can anticipate. Although the secondary cameras are not quite as good as the primary camera, they are still capable of producing pictures of a high quality.
The video performance of the OnePlus Nord 2 was also very impressive to me at the time, as was previously mentioned. It performed admirably in extremely noisy venues and was of considerable assistance when recording Gorillaz’s “On Melancholy Hill” at a concert in London.
It would have been nice if OnePlus had upgraded some of the cameras on this device, especially the auxiliary cameras. The wide-angle camera does not perform particularly well, and the depth sensor could have been repurposed into virtually anything else that would have been more helpful. The primary sensor works well, but other than that, there isn’t much else to get excited about here.
OnePlus Nord 2T battery life
Another issue with the so-called “upgrade” to an 80-watt charging system is as follows. According to what we mentioned in our review of the OnePlus 10 Pro, it’s not much of an upgrade, and the 80W charger is actually pretty much worse than the 65W charger that came packaged with the Nord 2.
The OnePlus 65W charging brick is an excellent charger not just because of the high amperage that it is able to supply to OnePlus phones, but also because it is actually one of the best USB Power Delivery compliant chargers available in general. It is capable of charging a wide variety of devices at 45W without producing any errors, and I frequently used it to charge laptops, my Google Pixel, my Nintendo Switch, and other electronic gadgets that are compatible with USB Power Delivery.
In other words, increasing the charging power to 80W appears to be nothing more than a clever marketing ploy. It doesn’t do too much, and even if you save a couple of minutes of your time that you wouldn’t have spent charging (if that happens), you’re still missing out on a lot of the functionality that the charging brick provides.
In addition to that, the battery life has not altered based on my personal experience with it. You’ll still be able to obtain the same five to six hours of screen time regardless of how intensive your usage is, which is better than what the majority of flagship devices are now capable of achieving. In addition, the OnePlus Nord 2T can get a full charge in about half an hour, which is an impressively quick time.
The OnePlus Nord 2T
Don’t get me wrong—the OnePlus One 2T is an outstanding smartphone in its own right—but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why the company even bothered to release it in the first place. In most cases, when the corporation rolls out a “T” upgrade, there is a significant new feature or functionality that has been added; however, this is not the case in this particular instance. In addition, the OnePlus Nord 2 was already a fantastic smartphone, but no one had expressed a desire for the company to release a successor to it right away.
According to my speculation, the introduction of the MediaTek Dimensity 1300 indicated that the previous model, the Dimensity 1200, had been superseded. According to our findings, they are virtually the same chipset, but there have been some modest changes made to them that the majority of customers probably won’t even notice. OnePlus made the decision to re-release the Nord 2 in this scenario because it was a device that was said to have good sales, but the company was unable to continue producing more of it due to the Dimensity 1200. Because of this, we have reason to believe that the Nord 2T will be released alongside the Dimensity 1300, together with 80W charging technology simply because the firm already possesses it. It would have been highly confusing for customers if OnePlus had just launched this phone under the exact same “Nord 2” name; hence, the T moniker makes it simpler to discern these updated technical specifications.
It’s quite possible that this is just a guess, and it’s also possible that this isn’t the explanation at all, but right now that’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense. It is not a gimmick to attempt to persuade people to upgrade from the Nord 2 early because I can’t fathom a reason why anyone would actually do that — the majority of users also do not upgrade from year to year. Instead, it appears to be a problem that OnePlus is having with its supply chain, and they are trying to find a solution to make the best of a bad situation.
Should you go ahead and purchase the OnePlus Nord 2T? The response is very definitely a positive yes. In the event that you are in need of a new smartphone but do not like to spend the most money possible on one, the Nord 2T is a fantastic choice, just as its predecessor, the Nord 2, was. It even maintains the same price point as the previous Nord, beginning at €399 for the most basic variant. Simply said, it is an excellent piece of hardware in its own right, but virtually every review of the OnePlus One 2 that you’ve ever read will also apply to this product as well. The most significant difference is, in all honesty, the slightly altered design, and you do not need to possess the phone or see it in real life to form an opinion on whether or not you like it.
You will still have access to the flagship experience, and for the vast majority of people, that will be more than sufficient. Even though it’s practically the same phone, you might as well get this instead of the Nord 2, especially if you’re in the market for a new smartphone… unless you really want the older 65W USB PD-compliant charger instead. For me, making a decision between the two options would be extremely challenging.
Would you like to read more about OnePlus Nord 2T-related articles? If so, we invite you to take a look at our other tech topics before you leave!
