The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G is cheap, but you wouldn’t know it
A 108MP camera and 120Hz display plus fast charging means the Nord CE 3 packs a lot in
OnePlus’ Nord series was a mid-range hit and the CE series took that to new highs in terms of what you could get for your cash – a premium-looking phone for not-premium prices.
Following up on last year’s CE 2 Lite, the larger 6.72in CE 3 Lite is is a pretty powerful device for £299/ €329, though there are compromises of course. It’s serious competition for Samsung’s recently-revamped A Series though, that’s for sure.
The phone is pushed along by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 695 5G platform and has 8GB of RAM (though you can swap storage for extra memory power should you really want). The FHD+ (2400×1080) 120Hz adaptive LCD display is capable of a max brightness of 680nits so will seem to be a little lacking compared to flagships.
The camera should be a doozy for the price when we come to review it – it’s got a 108 megapixel main unit featuring electronic stabilisation (EIS) and 9-in-1 pixel binning. There’s a 3x zoom that OnePlus claims is ‘lossless’ plus a 2MP ‘depth assist camera’ for portrait mode.
And yes, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack while everything runs on OnePlus’ latest version of Oxygen OS – version 13.1 – based on Android 13 of course.
The charging speed is, of course, slower than higher-up OnePlus devices, but at 67W it won’t struggle to impress and you’ll be able to charge 80% of the 5000mAh battery in 30 minutes. The fast charging is a first for the Nord CE series, while dual speakers are also new.
The new handset is available in a rather spring-like pastel lime in addition to black – we really like the lime and hopefully we’ll get that for review.
OnePlus has also announced the second generation of the OnePlus Buds that it revealed this time last year – unsurprisingly known as OnePlus Nord Buds 2. They boast Dolby Atmos tech on board as well as basic noise cancellation with a transparency mode.
Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 
