But is this the most balanced smartphone under ₹20,000? Well, I have been using the Nord CE 4 Lite for a couple of days now, and below are my thoughts about OnePlus’ cheapest smartphone during this limited usage period.
Unboxing and design:
Inside the box of OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite, you get the device itself, some paperwork and transparent PU case which is bundled nicely inside a black cardboard packaging, a red coloured Type A to Type C cable and a 80W adapter.
The phone comes in three color variants: Super Silver, Ultra Orange, and mega blue. I received the mega blue variant, which is a little too flashy for my liking.
To the back of the phone, there is a pill shaped camera cutout, which houses the two rear cameras and the flash. The rear of CE 4 Lite has a glossy plastic which is very prone to fingerprints and smudges. I would strongly advice using the bundled case before you get your hands on the device.
OnePlus has got rid of the curved textured panel it had for the Nord CE 4 with its younger sibling and has instead opted for a flat panel which makes the phone feel a little boxy and the sharp edges could be an issue while taking phone calls for long hours. Stay tuned for the full review to get an idea of how the CE 4 Lite performs in the long run.
The Nord CE 4 Lite features an flat display with punch hole style notch mechanism. The phone comes with an in-display fingerprint scanner, a stereo speaker setup, a 3.5mm headphone jack, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.1and IP54 rating for splash and dust resistance.
Display and software:
The Nord CE 4 Lite features a 6.67-inch 120Hz AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 pixels and a peak brighenss of 2100 nits (1200 nits in High Brightness Mode).
The phone also comes with support for Aqua Touch feature which is claimed to improve usability when the screen gets wet during rainfalls or while using the device with wet hands. But my experience with the OnePlus 12 and later devices reveals that the feature has been a hit or a miss so far. We’ll have to do a more thorough analysis of the Nord CE 4 Lite to see if OnePlus has worked on improving the implementation somehow.
On the software front, the CE 4 Lite runs on Oxygen OS 14 running on the Android 14 operating system and security patch update will May 2024. The phone does come with some bloatware apps (9 to be exact) including Candy Crush, Bubble Pop, Tile Match, Myntra and LinkedIn, but all of these apps can be installed and there are no ads in the UI whatsoever.
In general, Oxygen OS is not the most feature rich Android skin going around but it does offer a relatively cleaner user interface as compared to other Chinese smartphones on the market.
Camera:
The Nord CE 4 Lite comes with a dual-camera setup, including a 50MP Sony LYT primary sensor with OIS and a showpiece 2MP Mono sensor, which is said to improve portrait photos. For selfies and video calls, there is also a 16MP selfie shooter on the front.
Performance:
The Nord CE 4 Lite is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G chipset based on TSMC 6nm process, which is paired with Adreno 619 GPU for handling graphics-intensive tasks.
The processor choice by OnePlus is disappointing to say the least, given that Snapdragon 695 is almost a 3-year-old chipset and was also used to power Nord CE 2 Lite and the Nord CE 3 Lite. In my opinion, OnePlus missed a trick here by not opting for a newer 4nm based Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 or MediaTek 7200 chipset which would have made it one of the most balanced devices under ₹20,000.
Processor choices aside, in terms of day-to-day usage, the phone did not throw up any issues and the . I also tried playing a few deathmatches on BGMI and Call of Duty Mobile and the gameplay was surprisingly smooth. A more thorough analysis of the device’s performance, along with benchmark scores and comparisons, will follow in a more detailed review.
Battery:
The OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite gets a 5,500mAh battery pack, a major boost from the 5,000mAh battery on its predecessor and takes the phone on par with other OnePlus devices launched this year like the 12R and the Nord CE 4.
It comes with support for 80W fast charging, which is claimed to take the phone from 1-100% in about 52 minutes. In my limited testing with the CE 4 Lite, the phone took a little over 1 hour to fully juice up using the bundled charger.
Price:
The OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite is priced at ₹19,999 for the 8GB RAM/128GB storage variant, while the top-end 256GB storage variant will sell for ₹22,999. The phone can be bought from Amazon, OnePlus’ own website, and the company authorized stores from June 27 onwards.
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Published: 24 Jun 2024, 08:49 PM IST
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