Half a decade after the launch of the original Nord smartphone, OnePlus has finally gone on and unveiled the OnePlus Nord 5, its latest device in its midrange smartphone lineup. The phone was launched along several other OnePlus products, although for this one we’re taking a look at the top-spec’d handset in OnePlus’ 2025 midrange offerings.
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Let’s talk about that design—OnePlus has pretty much ditched the all-metal chassis that we saw with the OnePlus Nord 4, which is a bit of shame as that one really stood out against a sea of glass-and-metal sandwiches. This time around, we’re getting a matte finish glass rear panel, joined together by a metal aluminium frame that links it to the display in front. The IP65-rated design isn’t anything too interesting, and you might even mistake it for an Xperia or Samsung phone at first glance.
As for its display, the OnePlus Nord 5 features a rather large 6.83-inch AMOLED display, with a peak brightness of 1800 nits and a 144Hz refresh rate, which takes it a step above most other smartphones on the market. It’s pretty sharp as well with a 1272×2800 pixel resolution, which should make for an immersive viewing experience with content and media, as well as gaming. OnePlus adds that it’s designed the phone to stay cool even with intense gaming sessions. Powering the phone is a 5200 mAh battery, which comes with support for OnePlus’ 80W fast-charging technology.
For performance, the Nord 5 runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 (no 8s Gen 4 chip on here, sadly), and OnePlus says that it’s worked closely with Qualcomm to optimize the chipset for the phone, and you’re also getting 8 to 12GB of RAM, along with a handful of storage options from 256GB to a more generous 512GB. The phone also comes with Android merged with OxygenOS, and OnePlus promises four years of Android version upgrades, with up to six years of security patches as well; you’re also getting a plethora of AI software features, in addition to a new button that can be assigned to other functions (much like Apple’s action button).
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In terms of mobile photography, the phone features a dual camera setup, which consists of a 50MP main camera and an 8MP ultrawide camera, with support for 4K video capture at either 30 or 60 fps. It’s a setup that we’ve seen before on countless other Android phones, and this includes the 50MP front-facing camera. We suppose OnePlus was aiming to play it safe with the Nord 5, as it is after all a midrange device. As for its price, the phone starts at £499 for buyers in the UK, and this comes with the base 256GB + 8GB configuration.
