After the debut of the OnePlus 11 in China last month, the phone has finally made it to the shores of the US. Pre-orders open today and it will ship on February 16th. The phone’s US price is $100 lower than last year’s release, which could help it out in the current dire smartphone economy. The OnePlus 11 starts at $699, which is $100 less than the base model Galaxy S23 announced last week and $200 less than the OnePlus 10.
OnePlus is mopping the floor with Samsung at prices this year. Aside from the lower price, the OnePlus 11 is a higher-end device than the base Galaxy S23 with better specs and more features. Compared to the S23, the OnePlus 11 has a much larger screen (6.7 inches vs 6.1 inches), a much bigger battery (5000 mAh vs 3900 mAh), Wi-Fi 7 support (which Samsung doesn’t offer at any price). and significantly faster charging (80W vs 25W). Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra with similar specs costs $1,200 and still won’t win a clean spec battle against a $700 OnePlus device.
OnePlus has made some cuts to keep the price down. The device is only rated “IP64″for dust and water resistance. That’s the usual dust rating, but while something like IP68 would be fine for full water immersion, IP64 is only good for “splash water”and it would certainly be nice to have better water resistance.
Another cut – wireless charging – it’s not there. OnePlus hopes you don’t mind given the industry-leading wired fast charging system, which is 80W on this phone in the US. The company manages 100W internationally, but 80W will still charge a phone in about half an hour.
Other specs include a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, 128GB UFS 3.1 storage, 8GB RAM, and a 50MP main camera. There’s also an $800 version with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of much faster UFS 4.0 storage. It gets OnePlus’ new flagship update plan for four years of major OS updates, but you’ll only get security updates every two months.
Listing image from OnePlus