OnePlus Nord CE4 hands-on review

Design

The Nord CE4 design hearkens back to the original Nord CE with its vertically stacked camera layout. Like that model, you get three circular elements stacked on top of one another, although this time only two are actual cameras and the third is just the flash.

The cameras are placed inside a pill-shaped camera island, which, for some reason, is longer than the three stacked elements. It almost looks like there was to be something else at the bottom but they forgot to put it there. Like a car that doesn't have all the features on the dashboard enabled.

The Nord CE4 comes in two color variants. There's the Dark Chrome, which is a glossy gray color with a shiny gradient to it. Then there's the one we have here, which is the Celadon Marble. This also features a glossy back with a marbled pattern of green and white.

Unfortunately, unlike some of the other interesting designs OnePlus has done in the past, the Nord CE4 does not have any textural flourishes. Instead, it's just a standard glossy plastic back. And while the design looks interesting in pictures, in hand the phone feels overwhelmingly plasticky.

Around the sides, the frame is also made out of plastic with a matte finish. On the right are the power and volume buttons, which are unusually stiff. Missing once again is the OnePlus alert slider. It's not clear why the company can't simply commit to having it on all of its phones instead of flipping a coin for every launch but then this might just be the downside of sharing the same basic phones between three brands.

The front of the phone uses Panda Glass to cover the flat display. The display has fairly thick bezels by modern standards and they are especially thick around the top and bottom. The display also has a palpable rubber gasket around the edges.

The plasticky back aside, the phone feels reasonably well-built and sturdy in hand. It also gets an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance. However, the glossy plastic back is easy to scratch and you're better off using the bundled case.