OnePlus is the world’s first and “only metal unibody 5G smartphone” (keywords body(The screen is still made of glass).
The new OnePlus Nord 4 is made from a single piece of precision-machined aluminium, is just 7.99mm thick and sports a bright 120Hz AMOLED screen. Metal phones are nothing new, but the arrival of 5G technology (and its rapid growth in recent years) is influencing the way smartphones and other mobile phones are designed, with the need to accommodate more on-board antennas leading brands to use less metal and more glass in manufacturing their devices.
OnePlus says it has made several technological “breakthroughs” to make this possible, including a completely reworked motherboard and antennas that are “more than 50% smaller” than previous designs.
But there’s more to it than looks. The OnePlus Nord 4 is powered by Snapdragon’s excellent 7 Plus Gen 3 processor and can be configured with up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, making it a versatile device that promises good performance across the board, including gaming. The phone is equipped with a 5,500mAh battery, which the brand says is “the largest battery ever in a OnePlus Nord phone,” and it supports 100-watt fast charging. Incidentally, this means that it takes around 28 minutes to charge the phone from empty to 100%. OnePlus even claims that users can “watch 5 hours of Netflix with just 5 minutes of charging.”
The main onboard camera features optical image stabilization and is powered by Sony’s LYT-600 sensor, which produces crisp, color-accurate 50-megapixel photos. Additionally, the OnePlus Nord 4 is equipped with an ultra-wide-angle camera with a 112-degree viewing angle and a 16-megapixel selfie camera, also made by Sony, which is the main camera. Taking advantage of the phone’s powerful processor, users can also avail AI help in editing photos on the device. Tools like AI Eraser (remove unwanted things from photos), AI Clear Face (for high-resolution photos) and AI Smart Cutout 2.0 (add a fun element to photos) are available now, while other tools like AI Best Face (which fixes group photos and “magically opens the eyes of your friends even if one of them has them closed”) are coming later this year.
OnePlus is also promising owners of the new devices six years of security updates and four versions of Android, making this its “longest support package ever” the company has offered.
The OnePlus Nord 4 is available now from the brand’s website in three colours – Oasis Green, Obsidian Midnight and Mercurial Silver – with prices starting from £429/€499. There’s no word yet on a US release, but keep an eye on Hypebeast for the latest updates.
And finally, with an all-metal phone, what else would you expect but an all-metal band? OnePlus partnered with the legendary Finnish heavy metal band Lordi for a campaign. Of course, that’s what happened.