OnePlus 11 long-term review

Camera

The OnePlus 11's camera system is high-end, while not quite reaching the top tier. Sort of like its price, you might say. Our expectations were set accordingly - we thought this phone would produce great images overall, that nevertheless may in some scenes fall short of the best we've ever seen. And of course it can't compete in zoom with devices that have periscopes, that's just physics.

So, were these expectations met in real life then? Well, generally yes, pretty much. This isn't a phone that will necessarily surprise you in day to day use once you've read its spec sheet and found out its price. But it does have some nice tricks up its sleeves, like an ultrawide camera with autofocus, and it doesn't disappoint on any front.

The main snapper is using Sony's 50 MP IMX890 sensor, the ultrawide is 48 MP, and the tele is new, using a 32 MP Sony IMX809 RGBW sensor for 2x optical zoom. This is marketed as a portrait-centric camera but don't worry, it can do zoom shots too. Let's see them in action then.

During daytime, the main camera produces great pictures, with almost no noise, good sharpness levels that don't go overboard, and pleasant colors that 'pop' ever so slightly but not so much that they look fake. Contrast is high and the dynamic range is great.

Daytime samples from the main camera

As usual for our long-term reviews, we've not captured any full resolution (50 MP in this case) shots since these sensors are meant to be pixel binning, which is the default behavior. And it's the default that 99% of people will use 99% of the time, so we find that it's the most representative of the output on offer. That said, if you take a peek at our normal review, you'll see that it's not really worth going the 50 MP route anyway.

The ultrawide shoots some great looking images during the daytime too. These are sharp and detailed (more so than what comes from most ultrawides out there), but the colors, while fine, do seem a bit off from the main camera's at times. The ultrawide can do macro shots too, and if you're wondering how well it does take a look at the samples in our normal review. Spoiler alert: they're good, but could be sharper.

Daytime samples from the ultrawide

The 2x telephoto camera takes excellent shots during the day, with good detail levels, again pleasant sharpness that isn't too much, good contrast and dynamic range. Like the ultrawide, the telephoto sometimes produces slightly different colors compared to the main shooter, and while this isn't as bad as it used to be on most Android phones a few years ago, it's getting more noticeable now that most don't have such an issue. You can also, in some cases, get a moire effect on faraway textures if you go and pixel peep.

Daytime zoom samples

At night the OnePlus 11 is unique. It's the first Android smartphone we've reviewed long-term so far that has an Auto Night Mode that is a) 100% identical to the manual Night Mode and b) always on. You simply can not turn this off, which means that, for the first time ever on a device with a Night Mode, we don't have two sets of samples to present to you for each camera. There was no need. The Night Mode shots are identical to the Auto shots, which naturally makes us wonder why there's a separate Night Mode still in there. Anyway, it is what it is.

With all this in mind, you'll be happy to know that capture times are among the lowest we've encountered so far. So when you get a nice shot, it probably won't be hindered by you waiting for the (Auto) Night Mode to do its thing. Unless we're talking fast moving objects, as capturing them in anything but well-lit conditions thus becomes a real challenge.

For everything else, though, the Auto mode works well enough, and the main camera produces excellent images with great dynamic range and sharpness, low noise, and nicely resolved detail. These aren't overly brightened as the fashion used to be a few years ago - how quickly that all changed. Don't get us wrong, there is a brightness boost here, but the point is it will never feel like these shots were taken during the day. They're clearly nighttime shots, just very good ones.

Nighttime samples from the main camera

The ultrawide is obviously the weakest of the three snappers at night. It just can't keep up with the detail levels of the other two, especially shadow details. Then again, it still produces very good images, among the best we've seen from an ultrawide at night, with pleasantly vivid colors. Interestingly, this is the darkest of the bunch, so its shots come out more 'atmospheric', for lack of a better term, than what the others produce. That most likely has something to do with the hardware on offer here, but even so, it's all managed well.

Nighttime samples from the ultrawide

The 2x telephoto camera at night is barely ever used, instead what you get most of the time is a crop from the main sensor. You need to have a lot of light around for the dedicated camera to spring into action, and we only managed to trigger it a handful of times.

Nighttime samples from the telephoto camera

While the resulting crops from the main sensor aren't bad, they are lacking in detail levels, while sharpening can go a bit overboard with these sometimes. The colors remain pleasant, contrast is good, but shadow details are often crushed. And 1 or 2 times out of 10 you might get a result that looks more like an oil painting than a photo. Of all the different sample sets we've shown you so far, these are by far the worst - but they're not bad per se, just not as good as the rest.

Nighttime zoom samples cropped from the main sensor

Selfies come out of a 16 MP camera that OnePlus seems to have ordered billions of units of many years ago, as it keeps using it over and over again. It sports the Sony IMX471 sensor, first used in the OnePlus 7 Pro. Yes, really. Despite the hardware's age, with computational photography improvements the results are very nice, with very good color tuning, plenty of detail, a wide dynamic range, vivid colors, and high contrast. If you shoot directly into the sun, you'll get some clipped highlights, though. Portrait selfies aren't always amazing, but when the subject separation algorithm works well, they're impeccable.

At night things understandably depreciate in quality, so we recommend using the screen flash function for a better view of your face. With this mode employed, and with some traces of ambient light still available around you, what you'll get are perfectly decent shots that you can even use for a quick social media share or two.

Selfie samples, day and night, Portrait mode off/on

Overall then, the OnePlus 11 has a very capable camera system that produces good images in all environments, with the exception of zoom shots at night, which are the worst of the bunch. As we said already, they're not necessarily very bad per se, and we've definitely seen worse, but compared to all of the others, they do unfortunately stand out.

The ultrawide isn't the best we've ever encountered but is very good and has autofocus too, the zoom shots during the day are very good, and the main camera produces some excellent pictures that, once again, aren't the best we've seen but they are pretty close.

So in the end it looks like you may be getting just a tad more than your money's worth when it comes to cameras and the OnePlus 11. If you expected a competent, capable camera system that produces great images in almost all conditions - you were right.