Say hello to the Nord CE 3 Lite, OnePlus’ entry level smartphone for 2023.
While the cheapest OnePlus phone it may be, the CE Lite still offers some pretty interesting features like a 108MP camera and an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate for its display.
Is it good enough to entice you away from other lower mid range phones? Let’s find out.
Design
It looks like light green is the colour of this season, and this Pastel Lime on your review device looks incredibly cool in my opinion. However, it surely is a fingerprint magnet and keeping it in the bundled case is recommended.
The rear design of the Nord CE 3 Lite is something we’ve seen on a lot of BBK Group phones now. You get two large camera housings which look quite neat. However, the lower one actually houses two sensors.
The rear panel is made of plastic, but it's incredibly well built and feels like glass at first.
What I’m not a fan of however, is the flat plastic frame. The CE 3 Lite is a big smartphone, and flat sides make it uncomfortable to grip. Despite its big footprint, however, the phone is pretty well balanced.
At the front, you have a standard hole punch camera layout. The display bezels and chin are pretty standard for the segment.
Utility
The Nord CE 3 Lite is a 5G-enabled dual SIM smartphone. It has a hybrid microSD card card slot which is always a welcome addition.
You also get the legendary headphone jack here, this is probably the only new Oneplus phone to have one.
The phone has a side mounted fingerprint scanner, which was fast but not very accurate in my experience.
The phone also comes with dual stereo speakers which are quite loud and make for a good content watching experience.
Display
The phone has a 6.72-inch IPS LCD with a resolution of FHD+ and a refresh rate of 120Hz. The refresh rate is also adaptive from 30-120Hz, but games are stuck at up to 90Hz.
You also have widevine L1 support here. This display has a peak brightness of 680 nits which makes it quite usable outdoors, but it's not segment leading.
The colours and viewing angles of this screen are quite good by LCD standards, but it is worth noting that some phones do offer an AMOLED screen at this price point.
Performance & Software
The Nord CE 3 Lite is powered by a Snapdragon 695 chipset. This is not only the same chipset as the CE 2 Lite, but at this point, it has been overused in a lot of mid-range phones.
Granted, many Dimensity chipsets offer better performance at this price, but on the flipside, the 695 is tried and tested, with a lot of games being well optimised for it. For instance, it can handle call of duty at high graphics and frame rate.
The device also comes with up to 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of internal storage.
On the software front, you have Oxygen OS 13.1 built on top of Android 13. The software experience of this phone was actually quite good by lower mid-range standards because everything functioned quite smoothly.
The bloatware is kept under check and can be uninstalled.
Cameras
The star of the show here is this phone’s 108MP primary camera. Not just that, it also promises 3x lossless zoom thanks to its super high resolution.
Accompanying this is a set of two 2MP sensors, just to make up the numbers.
The primary camera does take some pretty impressive photos with good detail and a wide dynamic range. The colours are on the saturated side, and you can make them pop even further with the AI enhancer on.
The night mode works quite well, but you do have to keep your hands pretty stable to achieve good results.
Talking about the lossless zoom, 3x zoom photos look pretty good, but I won’t exactly call them losses, because there is a lot of oversharpening going on here, and indoor zoom shots are also prone to noise.
Talking of videos, this phone, disappointingly, does not shoot in 4K.
So, you only take up to 1080p 30fps videos with this phone, and they come to average in terms of quality and stability.
The secondary 2MP macro camera gets the job done, that’s the biggest compliment I can give it.
The 16MP front camera softens skin tones quite a bit, so some will like it, some won’t.
Battery Life
There’s a 5,000mAh battery on the Nord CE 3 Lite which easily provides a screen on time of well over 7 hours with mixed use.
It also charges very quickly thanks to its 67W superVOOC charging support. Interestingly, you get a powerful 80W adapter bundled with this phone.
Verdict
At a starting price of under ₹20,000, the Nord CE 3 Lite offers great value for money.
It does most of the things right, and comes across as a sensible option for anyone looking for a well-rounded midrange smartphone.