OnePlus announces the Nord N20 at $282 and an 18-month-old operating system

OnePlus launches a new mid-range phone in the US: The OnePlus Nord N20 5G. This is a $282 phone and will be available starting April 28th exclusively at T-Mobile.

For that price of just under $300, you get a 6.43-inch “FHD+” (that’s 2220 x 1080) OLED, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 4,500mAh battery. The SoC is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695. This is a 6nm chip with two ARM Cortex-A78 2.2 GHz cores, six 1.7 GHz Cortex-A55 cores, and an Adreno 619 GPU. There is an in-display fingerprint reader, microSD slot, and the phone supports Always View Mode, so you can always From seeing your time and notifications.

At $282, this phone looks like a sequel to Nord N200, which came out nearly a year ago as another T-Mobile exclusive and is priced at $240. Last year’s phone had a 90Hz screen, which really helped it stand out at this price. N20 is reduced to 60 Hz only. You will also have to settle for a smaller battery (the N200 was 5000 mAh) and the loss of the headphone jack.

As for the rear cameras, OnePlus’ press release lists “a 64MP main camera, a monochrome lens, and a macro lens.” OnePlus doesn’t provide a full spec sheet, but if the megapixel count of these other two cameras is worth showing off, they’ll be listed in the press release. Nord N200 has a main camera, a 2-megapixel monochrome lens, and a 2-megapixel macro lens. Megapixels don’t technically matter, but high-quality camera sensors also don’t come in 2-megapixel sizes. Assuming the N20 follows the same mold as the N200, these other cameras are mostly for decoration.

The phone features 33W charging, which is quite rare at this price. This is actually faster than the leading competitors of OnePlus Samsung And The Google.

The OnePlus budget phone is shipped with Android 11. And as a reminder, this operating system is shipped September 2020, making it an 18-month-old version of Android. Previous Nord phones received One major operating system Update, so this phone will likely be updated to Android 12 – which is six months old – and OnePlus will connect to it daily. I know this is technically a major update, but OnePlus’ lag makes it seem like it zero Major updates. The N200 update plan also included three years of semi-regular (not monthly) security updates, so that’s probably the case here.

With the acquisition of OnePlus flagship phones More expensiveNord’s mid-range line is turning out to be OnePlus’ biggest seller. Counterpoint Research for Fourth Quarter 2021 The report generated a staggering 524 percent year-over-year increase in OnePlus sales, capturing 2 percent of the US market. The report says OnePlus’ growth has been driven by exactly this narrative: Nord devices being sold at T-Mobile. In an interview with ForbesOnePlus co-founder Pete Lau says the company expects to sell 25 million Nord devices by 2023, likely on the back of devices like this.