OnePlus 13 vs OnePlus 12 Comparison - Wait or Skip?

What happens when the OnePlus 12 goes to the gym, sheds a little bit of weight, loses some of its curves, builds endurance and becomes way more powerful? Well, you get the OnePlus 13. So yes, the OnePlus 13 has been considerably upgraded, but there are a few curious downgrades as well. And I'm going to be talking all about that in this video on this unit imported from China. If you're here for the first time, I'm Aishat. You're watching TrakinTech English, your destination for detailed, incisive gadget reviews. My biggest problem with the OnePlus 12 has always been its size. It's bulky and it's heavy. The OnePlus 13 in comparison to the OnePlus 12 has slimmed down and has shed a few grams as well. And it's not curved all around like the OnePlus 12. It's boxier and has flat edges too. All of these changes immediately impact the in-hand feel and it's definitely got a better in-hand feel than the OnePlus 12. Also, this unit that we imported from China has a vegan leather texture on the rear and it's got the nicest, softest vegan leather feel that I've had on a phone yet. I also like the fact that the camera bump is not too protruding. And initially, when I saw the renders, I didn't like that line. But when you take it in your hand and hold it, you see that it actually does look very good. Of course, you get your OnePlus standard alert slider. Plus this time around, OnePlus has upped the IP rating to IP69 now. And that's up from IP65 on the OnePlus 12. One curious change is the fact that OnePlus doesn't use Gorilla Glass. There's no Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which was there on the OnePlus 12. But it uses its own solution. And that solution is called Crystal Shield Super Ceramic Glass. Very short name, OnePlus. You could have kept it longer, I think. Better. Yeah. Terrible naming aside, OnePlus says that the solution is fantastic. It's got 500% better drop protection and 70% better impact protection compared to what we don't know. So what we're going to do right now is... Yeah, both the phones are fine. The other significant change on the OnePlus 13 is the fact that you get a micro quad curved panel. Now it's not entirely curved. It's like a solution between flat and curved. So that's good. Of course, Xiaomi started this trend. But Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Realme, iQOO. Everybody's going to follow it this year. Rest of the display technical specs are the same though. You get the same 6.82 inch display. It's an AMOLED panel with LTPO. So it can refresh down to 1Hz and up to 120Hz. And 4500 nits of peak brightness when you're watching HDR content or Dolby Vision. Both of which are possible on the OnePlus 12 and the OnePlus 13. And of course, yeah, the specs are similar. But there are a couple of upgrades that OnePlus has made to display technology. The haptic feedback, despite being a slimmer body, has been improved. And there's an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner now. It's not an optical one. Like the improvements that OnePlus has made to the haptic feedback and the ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner, I'd like to see our subscriber numbers improving. Almost embarrassing for me to ask now, guys. Come on, go ahead. Hit that subscribe button. Of course, the OnePlus 13 is more powerful now because there's Snapdragon 8 Elite inside. But more importantly, the RAM variants start at 12GB but go up to 24GB because AI. And when you look at the storage, the variants start at 256GB and go up to 1TB. And all of this is very fast RAM, which is basically LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage as well. And the Type-C port at the bottom is USB Gen 3.2, which is also very good. Everything's flagship class here. Now, when we got the OnePlus 13, I was very curious to see how OnePlus has tuned the Snapdragon 8 Elite inside this phone. But this Chinese variant gave us a lot of trouble. It wouldn't let us install APKs and gave us sleepless nights. Thankfully, we managed to install Antutu. And in Antutu, we got a score which is very similar to what we got on the Realme GT 7 Pro. But the interesting thing to note is that I didn't have to get the phone's temperature down to 6 degrees like I did on the GT 7 Pro to get that score. So OnePlus's tuning seems to be slightly better. Actually, definitely better than the Realme GT 7 Pro. In fact, when you compare the OnePlus 13's Antutu score to OnePlus 12's Antutu score, you'll see a 30% increase in performance as well. Despite being slimmer and lighter than the OnePlus 12, the battery inside this phone is a 6000 mAh unit now, up from the 5000 mAh one inside the OnePlus 12. And that's possible because OnePlus uses silicon carbide battery, which is the same tech that is going to be used by Vivo, by Oppo, and even iQOO and Realme as well. These higher capacity batteries are denser, and therefore they consume less space as well. Charging speeds are the same 100W wired, 50W wireless, and 10W reverse wired charging. And the 100W charger inside the box can charge this phone from 0% to 100% in 36 minutes, which is very, very fast. Alright, now time to talk about the cameras. And well, they're largely similar in terms of the setup. You get a primary, ultrawide, telephoto, and a selfie camera. But the telephoto is now a 50MP unit instead of a 64MP one. Now megapixels don't mean much. And I did see some slight improvements and some slight downgrades here. Let me tell you. So the primary camera captures sharper textures and better details now. And I'm going to attribute this improvement to the new Snapdragon 8 Elite's ISP because that is the only major change. Even the HDR tuning controls the highlights better, plus brings out slightly more details from the shadows as well. In low light, I didn't see any perceivable differences as such. But in this second image, you can tell that the lens flare is not as pronounced as it is on the OnePlus 12. In fact, there was a white balance correction issue on the OnePlus 12 where pictures would look a little too warm sometimes. That has been fixed as well. Good job. Now just like the primary camera, ultrawide on the OnePlus 13 has been improved to capture crisper details. It's no more soft. When shooting people, OnePlus 13 definitely captures more details on Tanish's face. But the skin tones are off. This is mostly a problem with the Chinese units that we've tested. You get a pinkish hue in skin tones, which is not the case with the global unit or the Indian unit on the OnePlus 12. So when the OnePlus 13 comes to India with proper India tuning, then I'm sure that the skin tones will be better. The findings are similar for the 3x shots that you can see, and even for the portrait shots. You do get better skin tones on the OnePlus 12. In fact, even with the selfies, I noticed that the OnePlus 12 has a look that is closer to neutral and better looking in terms of skin tones as well. Now talking about the 3x camera, the sensor is a bit of a downgrade for sure. The older 64MP unit on the OnePlus 12 takes sharper, more natural looking images without all that added contrast. And this matters because at longer zoom ranges like 6x, the OnePlus 12 is actually performing better. However, when you look at videography, there are some useful upgrades. So you can shoot 4K 60fps with every single camera in this stack. Yes, including the selfie camera. So the 4K 60fps video recording quality with a selfie camera is better on the OnePlus 13 compared to 4K 30fps on the OnePlus 12. In primary, ultrawide and telephoto 4K 60fps video comparison, we noticed that the HDR performance is definitely better on the OnePlus 13 compared to the OnePlus 12. In fact, OnePlus has even upgraded the Ultra Steady to work with 4K 60fps now. Until the OnePlus 12, Ultra Steady was possible only at 1080p 60fps. So like I said, with the camera on the OnePlus 13, there are very minor improvements. And for the most part, OnePlus 12 users will not find too much of a difference. Now, if you weren't aware already, in China, OnePlus uses ColorOS 15. But when it comes globally, you'll get OxygenOS 15. And we have a detailed video on the features, the new features that are available with OxygenOS 15. So if you haven't watched that yet, go check it out. A link should pop up right now. But what's important to note is that it is one of the most feature-rich updates that we've seen to Android 15-based skin yet. So with parallel animations, the animations are so smooth and fast now. Plus, more importantly, you also get a bunch of AI features which genuinely feel fairly useful. Plus, of course, the live activities that you get with Dynamic Island on the iPhone, that has been improved upon as well. So for the most part, OxygenOS 15, when it comes to OnePlus 13, when it launches in India, it will be great. But for now, I don't want to comment too much on the software that's running on this Chinese variant. Now, before I close this video, as far as networking capabilities are concerned, the OnePlus 13 is no slouch, of course, because you get support for umpteen 5G bands, you get support for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and NFC as well. So everything's there. Alright, so what I felt after using the OnePlus 13 is that the upgrades are very useful, but they're also more expensive. So silicon carbide batteries are definitely more expensive than lithium-ion batteries. Ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner wasn't used until now because optical ones are cheaper. And finally, of course, Snapdragon 8 Elite is bound to be more expensive than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is why we don't see any upgrades to the camera. And the telephoto performance is a bit of a downgrade compared to the OnePlus 12. Now, the thing to note here is that in China, the base variance price has gone up slightly, which is the trend that I expect to happen in India as well. So when it launches, when the OnePlus 13 launches in India, I expect the starting price for the 12 to 56GB variant to be about 69,000, 69,990. So basically about 70,000 rupees. For that price, it's of course going to be expensive, but I still think that the upgrades could be worth it. However, if OnePlus pulls the rabbit out of the hat and reduces the price to about 65,000 or 60,000, oh man, this is going to be a crazy deal. So what do you guys think of the OnePlus 13? Do you like it or not? Let me know in the comment section below and I'll see you guys in the next one. Until then, keep tracking and stay safe.