The OnePlus 13 is good enough to be the best phone of 2025

3 hours ago 4

OnePlus 13 review

The OnePlus 13 is truly excellent (Image: OnePlus)

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The OnePlus 13 excels with top tier performance, screen and battery life, with the quality of its camera and software not far behind. A superlative Android smartphone.

What we love

  • Genuinely incredible battery life
  • Very fast performance
  • Outstanding main camera
  • Thoughtful software tweaks
  • Best haptics on a phone

What we don't

  • AI isn’t very useful
  • No charger in the box
  • Shorter software support than rivals
  • Not available on contract in the UK

“Here we go again,” I thought when I first unboxed my review sample of the OnePlus 13. I’ve tested many phones from the company dating back to the OnePlus 3T in 2016, and was disappointed to see the new 13 looks very similar to the 11 and 12 from the past two years.

But after several weeks of using the OnePlus 13, it is clear that this is not only the best OnePlus ever by a country mile, but it’s also one of the best phones ever, period. It’s not missing any major features, unlike its predecessors. The 13 is an all-round winner.

OnePlus is a regular fixture of the UK smartphone scene but it has struggled to breakthrough in sales compared to Android mainstay Samsung. With the OnePlus 13, the firm has made a phone that more than matches the Galaxy S24 Ultra and can truly compete for your hard-earned pounds if you’re in the market for a new premium smartphone.

The sleek design is joined by a superb main camera, excellently quick and thoughtful software and top battery life that can easily last for two days. It’s a big and heavy phone - many of the best are - but if that doesn’t put you off then you should consider the OnePlus 13 in the same breath as any alternative from Samsung or even Apple if you want to step away from the iPhone.

OnePlus 13

There's a black model, but these are the two best colours. (Image: OnePlus)

It is an expensive phone at £899, but that price undercuts the Galaxy S24 Ultra by £350, and though it’s £100 more than the £799 iPhone 16 it has a better camera, screen and battery life compared to the Apple device.

The OnePlus 13 is not available on contrat with any UK operator, so you'll have to buy it outright from OnePlus.

OnePlus has refined the design of the 13 from the OnePlus 11 and OnePlus 12, keeping a circular camera bump with triple camera. The lenses are all protected with a sheet of glass over the top, and thanks to a new zoom lens design that doesn’t protrude as far, it’s an impressively slim camera module compared to other large phones. My review sample is Arctic Dawn (white) with a nice matt glass finish on the back that hides fingerprints, ditto the black version. The same can’t be said for the glossy sides that get greased up quickly.

You also get OnePlus’s excellent Alert Slider seen on most of its phones to quickly flick a switch to cycle between Silent, Vibrate or Ring modes.

I initially thought the design was boring, but it - just like the phone as a whole - has grown on me. It’s quite minimal but less garish than the marbly, sparkly green OnePlus 12 and fits snugly inside the official sandstone-finish case I’ve also been testing.

It is an expensive phone at £899, but that price undercuts the Galaxy S24 Ultra by £350, and though it’s £100 more than the £799 iPhone 16 it has a better camera, screen and battery life

There’s also a handsome navy blue version that’s coated in microfibre vegan leather. But you’ll probably stick the phone in a case anyway, and OnePlus’s official ones have magnets in the back that mean you can charge the phone easily on an Apple MagSafe charger, or OnePlus’s own 50W wireless charger (sold separately). Annoyingly the phone has no magnets, so you need a case if you want the charger to cling on. The phone will still charge wirelessly, though.

It's one of the first smartphones on the market to have IP69 water and dust resistance. This means it can not only be submerged but can handle water jets, extreme hot and cold and even has been shown to survive a dishwasher cycle. I wouldn't recommend testing this, but it's a tank of a phone.

OnePlus 13

The OnePlus 13 is built to be durable. (Image: OnePlus)

50W is very fast indeed, but this phone can charge at 100W wired, which can fill it from zero to 100 in little over half an hour. Unfortunately OnePlus opted not to include the charger in the box for UK buyers, so you’ll have to fork out £59.99 for the right one, which stings.

Thankfully however you end up charging it (most USB-C chargers will work, if slower) a fully charged OnePlus 13 will last you two full days before you need to refill. This phone has the best battery life of any phone I’ve tested, besting the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Vivo X200 Pro, my previous battery champs.

It’s partly down to the new silicon carbon battery tech inside, which has higher energy density than traditional lithium ion cells. It means the phone has a 6,000mAh pack as opposed to the S24 Ultra’s 5,000mAh (which itself is big for a modern phone).

The phone runs OxygenOS 15, OnePlus's flavour of Android 15. There are thoughful additions and less cruft than older versions and it's very customisable to get your home screens tuned to your liking. It's a polished and performant operating system, clearly one of the fastest phones ever made. That's aided by the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor that can handle any task - this phone didn't freeze or lag once - and is surely helping with battery efficiency alongside that new battery tech.

This phone has the best battery life of any phone I’ve tested

There's also a load of AI in here but frankly, like with the 13's competitors, I emjoy ignoring it. If you want to edit text to change the tone or summarise your notes, it works here. But thankfully you can blissfully use this phone as normal and ignore all the AI gimmicks.

One downside to the software is it'll only get four years of Android updates and five of security patches. This lags Google and Samsung, both of whom offer seven year all round for their premium smartphones.

On the front is an enormous 6.82-inch OLED screen that’s flat save for very slightly rounded edges, but this is not a fully curved display and it’s all the better for it as this trend that didn’t add to devices’ functionality seems to be dying out. The panel gets incredibly bright, works when it's wet and even with some gloves on. The plastic screen protector that’s pre-installed out of the box is easily removed, if you prefer.

That big screen means this is a massive phone that you’ll need two hands to do most things on, except mindlessly scroll (sigh). I preferred snapping photos with the excellent cameras. The main lens is a 50MP sensor and OnePlus, for the fifth year running, has worked with storied camera brand Hasselblad to tune the photos the phone pumps out. This is how phone cameras work: the hardware takes the shot but the software processes the image to make it look good.

OnePlus 13 camera sample

OnePlus 13 camera sample (Image: Express Newspapers)

OnePlus 13 camera sample

OnePlus 13 camera sample (Image: Express Newspapers)

OnePlus 13 camera sample

OnePlus 13 camera sample (Image: Express Newspapers)

I enjoy the photo processing on the OnePlus 13. It can go toe-to-toe with the iPhone 16 and Samsung Galaxy S24, and usually bests them for clarity and colour reproduction. OnePlus claims the lens can photograph moving subjects without blurry results, and while it sometimes can achieve this, it’s certainly not every time.

A 50MP 3x optical zoom lens is also of great quality here, though OnePlus’s use of AI at 10x zoom isn’t as good as the firm claims. If you want to zoom in further, the S24 Ultra will suit you better. The OnePlus’s arty XPan mode additionally lets you shoot a very wide aspect shot in colour or black and white with a film effect as you press the shutter. It’s a little cute, but you can get really atmospheric monochrome shots this way.

All of this makes the OnePlus 13 more than capable of competing at the very top of the smartphone pile.

Something you might consider a minor point but I believe is well worth highlighting: the OnePlus 13 has excellent haptics. The vibration motor is the best I’ve used on any phone, even better than the iPhone 16’s, and Apple usually leads the field here. OnePlus has tuned the phone’s vibrations very well, from the rapid thrump when you dismiss several notifications to the keyboard pips that, unlike many competitors, are barely audible in a quiet room. If you value how a phone’s haptics feel, you’ll be in heaven here.

All of this makes the OnePlus 13 more than capable of competing at the very top of the smartphone pile. It costs hundreds less than the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and very likely the upcoming S25 Ultra, while offering similarly excellent performance, camera and battery life. It’s also at least £100 less than the iPhone 16 Pro with like-for-like features across the board.

If you don’t fancy these phones or a Google Pixel 9, the OnePlus 13 is a top pick. It’s also worth checking out the Oppo Find X8 Pro, a phone that’s made by the same company as OnePlus. It has an extra camera lens, but costs £1,049, £150 more than the OnePlus. For my money, the OnePlus is the better buy.

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