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Introduction:
The most hyped phone of 2025, the OnePlus 13 S is finally here. But to be honest, I have been using it for the last 1 month. But I will tell you everything, both the good and the bad, and if you think that this is the same OnePlus 13 T that was launched in China, then it is not. There are some big differences in it, I will talk about them too.
Let’s know about OnePlus 13s review,
OnePlus 13s Compact Phone or Not?
Ok, so let’s talk about the biggest point of this OnePlus 13s review, the size.
This is the first compact phone from OnePlus with a screen size of just 6.3 inches. To give you an idea, all other OnePlus phones have had a bigger screen size, but this one is smaller than them. You might be thinking that 6.3 inches is not compact. I get it, even the pro iPhones are 6.3. You are not wrong, in the Android universe, phones are literally getting out of hand. And the options for compact phones are very limited. And the ones we have, some of them don’t have good battery life, some have performance issues, and some don’t have the best software experience. So maybe this phone is trying to fill that gap in the industry.
Design and Build Quality:
For the last 1 month, I have been using this phone. And I really liked its in-hand feel. It is quite handy, it weighs just 185g and the matte textured back gives you a lot of grip, so you don’t have to hold it too tight, and it doesn’t slip from your hands, just like the s25. The camera housing is neat with one piece aluminum, and doesn’t wobbly much even if you type on it.
And if I talk about the looks, I really like it. It is quite effortless, and the silk green color looks very premium. One interesting thing to note here is that the alert slider is now replaced by a plus key.
This is a customizable button that lets you set anything like switching sound modes, DND, screenshot, and more. By default it is set to mind space, which I will talk about in a moment. I like the button idea, but the placement, it doesn’t feel right. The design is not comfortable. Apart from that, you get a dual sim slot at the bottom, a slow type c, and the IP setting is limited to only IP 65. I wish it was IP 68, but at the same time, I am quite impressed with the build quality of this phone. In fact, I am already using this phone without a case. But coming to the point, there is no scratch on it.
Display and Multimedia:
Now it’s time to talk about the display. Even though this is a small display, it’s still plenty bright, even outdoors. I never had any visibility issues. It’s a flat 120Hz LTPO panel, and in my tests, it reached 1600 nits in high brightness mode, which is good. The in-display fingerprint scanner is optical and not ultrasonic, but it works fine. It’s placed a little low, so it will take some getting used to but not too much. As I mentioned in the OnePlus 13s review, these display characteristics offer a solid balance between performance and usability, even if it’s not the most high-end panel out there. Now, coming to the most important question, how do movies and shows look on this small screen? The answer is, everything looks great. I watched the movie on Netflix and that too in Dolby Vision, and the experience was great.
Speaker Output:
The stereo speaker output is not the best as it has a 30 – 70 ratio but it is good enough for watching movies. Finally, the display is protected by a crystal shield glass.
Performance and Benchmark:
Let me tell you about the performance of this phone, as it has the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite with 12 GB LPDDR5X RAM and up to 512 GB UFS 4.0 storage. OnePlus 13s also has a paper chamber and an additional cooling layer, making it the first OnePlus phone to have a cooling layer on the back.
But does it help, let’s find out in this OnePlus 13s review.
First of all, in AnTuTu, this phone scores just 2.5 million, which is not as good as the OnePlus 13 or even the iQOO 13, but the temperature is the highest. In 3D Mark Solar Bay, it’s the same story—scores aren’t as high as others, stability is also the lowest, and again, the temperature is the highest. And finally, in CPU throttling, it dropped to 20 threads after just 15 minutes. Looking at all this, the OnePlus 13s review clearly shows that while performance may be lacking compared to rivals, thermal management is an even bigger concern.
Gaming Performance:
Now let’s talk about how this phone performs in terms of gaming.
This phone does not heat up at all while gaming. I played a lot of different games and the gameplay and fps were quite stable and even during long gaming sessions, the temperature never went out of control. So, the gaming experience is really better than what I expected. And if you are wondering about BGMI, by default, it runs at 90 fps but with adaptive frame booster, I got 120 fps even in the lobby and the gameplay was pretty smooth. If you’re looking for strong gaming performance, the OnePlus 13s review definitely reflects how well this phone handles intense gaming without thermal issues.
There are some other gaming features like bypass charging, championship mode and a lot more. I did not face any issues even during day-to-day usage, even during heavy camera usage, it was very smooth. RAM management was also very impressive. So, the performance is top notch.
Software and AI features:
But if there is one thing that adds a lot to the experience, and that too, this phone excels.
First, you get Oxygen OS 15 which is based on Android 15, and it will get 4 OS updates which will be 6 years of security patches. The software is pretty sorted. There are only two bloatware that can be uninstalled, and the animation is pretty great. Remember I talked about Mindspace in the beginning? It works like this. Let’s say I’m in a chat. I press the plus button. It analyses the chat by taking a screenshot, and Mindspace stores it. In this case, it created an event, and you can just tap to add it to the calendar. Convenient, right? It also works on the camera app. Maybe it will get better with time. Interestingly, features like this remind me of what I highlighted in the OnePlus 13s review where similar smart assistant functions were already in place.
Another interesting feature is AI voice calling. So, let’s say you’re on a video call. You can use this feature to record, transcribe or summarize the meeting. It works with apps like WhatsApp or Google Meet, and it’s really great.
There’s an AI call assistant that works just like Samsung’s, and a lot of other features for editing photos, writing better, and more. Overall, the experience of using this phone has been quite positive. You get a pretty powerful performance, and you also get a clean, feature-rich software experience.
Battery Life & Charging Test:
Now, let’s talk about the most important thing, battery life. These phone comes with a 5850mAh battery with 80W fast charging support. This is not the silicon carbon battery we were expecting, and it’s not the same battery that the OnePlus 13T gets in China. But when it comes to battery life, this is the best I’ve ever gotten on a compact phone. In fact, during my OnePlus 13s review, the impressive endurance really stood out as one of its strongest features. It was easily giving me 6 to 7 hours of sleep with regular usage, which is pretty good for a phone of this size. I never had to worry about the battery on this phone during my usage. OnePlus 13s was easily lasting me a full day. In terms of charging, it gets fully charged in less than an hour with the provided charger, but there is no wireless charging support.
Camera Test:
And now we will talk about the camera,
There are two 50 MP cameras at the back and a 32 MP selfie camera on the front. There is no Hasselblad branding on this phone, which is fine, but it would have been nice if they had given an ultrawide camera instead of the telephoto lens, but it is what it is. In my experience, the main camera was pretty good with photos, both day and night, but it does boost the colors a lot, although the details and HDR handling are well done. The 2X shots from the telephoto lens are equally good.
It has punchy colors, good clarity, but has a warmer tone. Portraits also come out detailed, and edge detection is pretty good. The only problem is that the portraits are locked at only 2X, which means you can’t zoom in. But what impressed me the most was the clarity of the selfies clicked. There’s a lot more detail in this, even more than that. In my OnePlus 13s review, this camera performance, especially in the selfie department, stood out as one of its strongest points.
In terms of video, both the rear cameras can do 4K60 in Dolby Vision HDR, but the front camera is limited to just 4K30. Colors look good, there is no focus hunting and the stability is also very good. Overall, the camera is good.
Connectivity and WIFI Test:
In terms of connectivity, everything worked flawlessly during my testing. I used both Jio and Airtel networks and didn’t face any signal drops or call issues. Wi-Fi reception is strong as well. The phone supports Bluetooth 6.0, Wi-Fi 7, NFC, and even e-SIM functionality. However, one downside is that the Type-C port is limited to USB 2.0 speeds. In this OnePlus 13s review, while the overall connectivity package is impressive, the outdated USB port feels like a missed opportunity..
Pricing:
(12GB+256GB)
Price: Rs 54,999
Bank Discount: Rs 5,000
Effective Price: Rs 49,999
The phone gets a lot of things right for the price. The performance is good, the software experience is pretty good, the battery is pretty good for a compact phone, the display is sharp and bright, the design is also pretty good. This is one of the best and compact phones.