ISSUE 88 • ANDROID ADVISOR 35Pro– butbearin mindthatthoseuse
LCDratherthanAMOLED.
BystickingtoAMOLED,OnePluscan
offersuperiorimagequalitytogether
withthehighrefreshrate,andcanalso
includean under-displayfingerprint
sensor.Most peoplewill probablyfind
thisa smarttrade-off– andtobehonest,
therearediminishingreturnstorefresh
ratepast90Hzanyway.
Allin all,thisis a greatlookingscreen
and remainsone of the best you’ll find
fortheprice– I’mverygladthatthis
is oneareaOnePlusdidn’tmakeany
concessionswiththeCE.
PERFORMANCE
That’snotquitesotruewhenit comes
totheinternals.TheNordCEis
primarilypoweredbythelowermid-
rangeSnapdragon750Gchipset,which
comeswitheither6, 8,or12GBofRAM,
andeither 128 or256GBofstorage–
thoughnotethatthere’snomemory
cardslottoexpandthis,sowhatyouget
is whatyouget.
I’vetesteda modelwith12GBRAM
and256GBstorage,andin benchmarks
itdoes lag behind last year’s Nord,
though not by all that much. In our
CPU-focused test it even fell behind the
budget Nord N10, though did surpass
that phone on the more graphically
intensive GFXBench tests.
Geekbench 5 (multi-core)
OnePlus Nord CE 5G: 1,807
OnePlus Nord: 1,963
OnePlus Nord N10: 1,852
Poco F3: 3,184
Realme 8 Pro: 1,721
Google Pixel 4a: 1,640GFX Manhattan 3.1
OnePlus Nord CE 5G: 29fps
OnePlus Nord: 34fps
OnePlus Nord N10: 23fps
Poco F3: 61fps
Realme 8 Pro: 27fps
Google Pixel 4a: 27fpsBenchmarks are only part of the
story though and, unfortunately, the
Nord CE didn’t impress me as much
day-to-day. In my week with the phone
I’veexperiencedseveralstuttersand
freezes,with apps hanging or becoming
entirely unresponsive.
I suspect most of these issues come
down to software, rather than hardware,
and so with luck things will improve with
software updates. Performance most of
the time is still impressive for the price,
and outside of these occasional glitches
the phone runs fast, and the 12GB RAM
model handles multitasking well too.
The Snapdragon 750G delivers 5G
support too, though you don’t get the
latest Wi-Fi 6 standard, and Bluetooth is