OnePlus Nord CE4 hands-on review
Software
The Nord CE4 runs on OxygenOS 14 on top of Android 14. Our review unit even had the March security patch, so this is as up-to-date as you could get at the time of writing.
We already have a full review of ColorOS 14 so we won't bother going into too much detail here. The version on offer on the Nord CE4 (or any OnePlus phone, for that matter) is nearly identical and the only differences come from the addition or removal of features based on the price tag. You can check it out in action in the video below.
As for the Nord CE4, the phone comes with some bloatware but the phone is polite enough to ask you before installing it during setup, and should you decline you mostly just end up with OnePlus and Google apps. Aside from that, the only inconvenience comes from the phone constantly asking you to optimize the battery usage for each individual app but that's an issue with all OxygenOS/ColorOS devices and it's not clear why these phones can't just sort it out themselves instead of bothering the user every time.
OxygenOS 14
Getting back to the topic of updates for a second, OnePlus has promised only two years of major updates and a third year of security updates for the Nord CE4. This is far, far worse than the five years for the flagship devices and is especially egregious as people buying in this price range typically end up using their devices for a lot longer.
Performance benchmarks
The Nord CE4 runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset. It features 8GB LPDDR4X memory with no higher option unlike the Nord CE3, which also offered 12GB. You do get a choice of 128GB or 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. A quick test showed the storage spec is actually correct this time.
The experience of using the device is pretty seamless as the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chip has plenty of performance for most tasks. The only area where we noticed the phone struggling was with playing high-resolution videos on YouTube, especially HDR videos, which would bring the phone to its knees for anything beyond 1080p. Aside from that and intensive gaming, the phone could handle everything we threw at it and the scrolling and app launches were quite smooth and responsive.
GeekBench 6
- Multi-core
- Single-core
Poco X6 Pro
Motorola Edge 40
Galaxy A55
OnePlus Nord 3
vivo V30
OnePlus Nord CE4
Galaxy A35
AnTuTu 10
Poco X6 Pro
OnePlus 12R
OnePlus Nord 3
OnePlus Nord CE4
vivo V30
Galaxy A55
Nothing Phone (2a)
3DMark (offscreen)
- Wild Life (1440p)
- Wild Life Extreme (2160p)
OnePlus 12R
OnePlus Nord 3
OnePlus Nord CE4
vivo V30
Motorola Edge 40
vivo V27
Nothing Phone (2a)
Reader comments
- DJ
- 09 Sep 2024
- 3JZ
Is it good phone for INR 21500? I am getting this price for 256gb variant.
- PM1
- 21 Aug 2024
- 7kk
It isn't, you have a faulty phone Or setting of camera should be checked.
- PM1
- 21 Aug 2024
- 7kk
A good set good camera and a good battery life. Costs Re 25K on Amazon in India🇮🇳