Technologies

OnePlus 11 Review: It Works Hard to Earn Its Flagship Title

We reviewed the OnePlus 11 over three weeks. In our tests, the new flagship was powerful, but not perfect.

The OnePlus 11 is the company’s first true flagship to launch in 2023 and it offers plenty to get excited about. From its slick refreshed design, to its hyper-powerful processor and fast charging skills, this phone works hard to earn its flagship title.

But it’s not a massive overhaul from last year’s already excellent OnePlus 10 Pro. It’s similar in design, it’s got a hefty (arguably redundant) boost in power and the new camera setup, while good, isn’t a big leap forward. If you were hoping to see a radical new OnePlus phone, you may be disappointed. Owners of recent OnePlus devices shouldn’t consider upgrading.

8.2

OnePlus 11

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Incredible performance for gaming
Slick, refreshed design
Hyper-fast charging
Five years of security support

Don’t Like

Cameras are good but not great
Better waterproofing on rivals

Price is certainly on its side. The $699 OnePlus 11 base model ( 729 or roughly AU$1,270) comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Even the higher-end review model I tested, with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, will only set you back $799 ( 799), undercutting its rivals by a decent chunk. The phone’s biggest competition comes from the superb Google Pixel 7 Pro, which at $899 isn’t a big step up in cost (it’s $999 for the equivalent 256GB model, although there’s no boost in power with the extra storage here).

The Pixel 7 Pro was one of our favorite phones of 2022, earning a coveted CNET Editors’ Choice award when it launched in October thanks to its superb cameras, slick interface and attractive design. It’s an amazing phone, and one of my favorite ways to experience Android 13.

Where the OnePlus 11 excels is in its raw power, offering blistering speeds for gaming and heavy multitasking. It charges quicker than Google’s phones, too. The Pixel’s Tensor G2 processor isn’t built for straight-line speed, but still handles anything you’ll find in the Play Store. The Pixel’s pure Android 13 software is clutter-free, and the cameras generally perform better — especially with the addition of the 5x optical zoom lens, which the OnePlus lacks.

Then there’s the new Samsung Galaxy S23, which starts at $800 and comes with a 6.1-inch display, a triple-camera setup, 8GB of RAM and the latest Qualcomm 8 Gen 2 processor. It’s the same chip you’ll find in the OnePlus 11, though it’s been customized for Samsung. With the S23 range going on sale on Feb. 17, we’ll have to wait and see how the new Samsung and OnePlus’ phones stack up against each other.

OnePlus 11: A refreshed design, now with added waterproofing

OnePlus’ flagship has arrived in 2023 with a fresh look, swapping out the square camera unit of the 10 Pro for a circular one, fringed with metal that curves gracefully to meet the edge of the phone. My review model’s green tone looks both stylish and smart, while the curving glass on both the front and back makes it satisfying to hold.

I love the phone’s look. It manages to appear different from its predecessors, while still looking familiar enough to feel part of the same family. The glass is toughened Gorilla Glass, so don’t worry too much about shattering it. The new phone one-ups the 10 Pro by coming with an IP64 rating for protection against water. The lack of waterproofing on most versions of the 10 Pro was annoying as it’s something we’ve come to expect on all flagships. So, it’s good to see more official protection here.

That said, IP64 only offers mild protection against water splashes while rivals — including the Pixel 7 Pro, iPhone 14 range and Galaxy S23 range — all have IP68 ratings which protect them from actual submersion in water for at least 30 minutes. IP64 is better than nothing though and will certainly help keep your phone safe when you take calls in the rain.

At 6.7 inches, the display is sizable enough to do justice to mobile games, while its maximum 3,216×1,440-pixel resolution makes everything look nice and crisp (you can opt for a lower resolution to help eke out the battery life). It’s a SuperAMOLED panel that supports Dolby Vision HDR and HDR 10 Plus, meaning it’s bright, bold and capable of properly showing off compatible HDR content.

Its adaptive frame rate can shoot up to 120Hz to provide a smooth experience for high-intensity tasks like gaming, but can dynamically drop to only 1Hz to save power for less demanding tasks like web browsing or showing the always-on display.

There’s an in-display fingerprint scanner, which works well. Longtime OnePlus fans will be pleased to see the alert slider on the right of the phone, which lets you instantly set the phone to silent or vibrate. The slider was notably absent on last year’s OnePlus 10T.

OnePlus 11: Potent power

Powering the phone is the aforementioned Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, backed up by a meaty 16GB of RAM (on my review model). It’s a potent chip that put in some seriously impressive scores on our suite of benchmark tests, landing it comfortably among the most powerful phones around.

Benchmarks don’t mean everything, of course, but rest assured that this phone will handle anything you care to throw at it. Its graphics performance is particularly strong. Demanding games like Genshin Impact, PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 9: Legends (all at max resolution) displayed at consistently high frame rates for smooth gameplay.

OnePlus touts the phone’s “optimized RAM allocation,” “hardware-accelerated ray tracing” in games and “best in class” lighting and illumination effects, which is all well and good, but there aren’t any games available on Android yet that support things like ray tracing. It’s like having a car capable of driving on MagLev tracks — amazing technology, sure, but no way of actually putting it to use just yet.

In the real world, all that power means the phone is swift to use. Simply navigating around the Android interface is fast, smooth and free of the lag or stutters that might signal poorly configured hardware. There’s little that can slow it down. It handled video streaming and photo editing perfectly well.

That swift experience is helped by the phone’s Oxygen 13 OS software. Based on Android 13, Oxygen OS is a lightweight Android skin with a clean look that’s easy to use. I liked it straight out-of-the-box, but you can customize the system fonts and the always-on display to give it a more personal touch.

OnePlus extended its support period to four years for Android updates and an additional fifth year for security updates. That’s the longest the company has ever supported a phone for and means that the OnePlus 11 will still be safe to use five years from now.

OnePlus 11: Cameras that could do better

There are three main cameras on the back of the OnePlus 11; a 50-megapixel main camera with an f/1.8 lens and optical image stabilization, a 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera with close focusing macro capabilities and a 32-megapixel portrait camera with a 2x optical zoom. It’s a fairly predictable triple-camera setup, but that portrait camera disappoints me.

That 2x zoom is a step down from the 3.3x zoom seen on the OnePlus 10 Pro and a big step down from the 5x telephoto zoom on the Pixel 7 Pro. Zoom skills might not seem like the most important feature, but if you want to take great images in any environment, a powerful zoom can be an invaluable tool.

Instead of using a wide lens and simply capturing everything in front of you in one image, a long zoom lens lets you find more interesting compositions within those scenes by cropping out distracting road signs, cars or crowds of people. A telephoto lens is typically part of any professional photographer’s kit bag (including my own) and I absolutely love using the zoom on the Pixel 7 Pro — and the whopping 10x optical zoom on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. Even the 3x on the iPhone 14 Pro gives me more room to work with.

Not having a proper telephoto lens on the OnePlus 11 feels like I have to make compromises in my photography that I wouldn’t with other phones. It’s not as fully rounded of a photography package as a result.

OnePlus has again partnered with iconic camera maker Hasselblad, which has apparently calibrated the camera for better colors. However, I’m not sure it’s doing either company much good as the results are hit-and-miss. While some shots look true-to-life, with punchy colors and pleasing contrast, others look oversaturated, with heavy-handed HDR processing that lifts shadows and tones down highlights to an unrealistic degree.

Taken with the main camera, this image above is beautifully exposed, with warm colors and plenty of detail.

This shot above of a ruined cottage deep in the forest is vibrant and pin-sharp. It’s a great snap all-round.

The close-up shot above is absolutely packed with detail and the colors look spot-on. Nice work, OnePlus.

Vibrant blue sky, lovely detail on the building to the left and a lovely flash of color from the rainbow. The phone has captured this scene above well.

This scene doesn’t impress me though. The phone’s software has really gone hard on the HDR processing, lifting the shadows here to such an extent that the shot above looks unrealistic.

Taken on the iPhone 14 Pro, this comparison image above is darker, but the deeper shadows against that bright blue sky are much more realistic and this shot looks much more natural as a result.

The OnePlus 11’s main camera has again lifted the shadows quite a lot in the snap above. The sky has more of a teal tone to it, which doesn’t reflect reality.

The Pixel 7 Pro’s shot above has a deeper contrast and more natural color tones both on the buildings and in the sky.

Switching to the ultrawide camera, the OnePlus 11’s heavy-handed auto HDR resulted in the image above where the sky looks almost fake against the buildings. There’s also a noticeable color shift between the OnePlus 11’s main camera and ultrawide — a detail I’d noticed on the OnePlus 10 Pro, too.

By not reducing the brightness in the sky to the same extent, the Pixel 7 Pro’s shot above looks more authentic.

Using the macro mode on the ultrawide lens, the OnePlus 11 has delivered a great close-up shot above. I love the rich, vibrant green tones.

By comparison, the iPhone 14 Pro’s macro mode has produced the shot above where the green tones are quite washed out and yellow-ish. I don’t like it as much.

The OnePlus 11 Pro lacks the zoom prowess of some of its competitors, but its 2x lens does allow for decent portrait shots. The colors in the image above are a little cold, and there’s not a ton of detail on my face. But the blur effect is nice.

The iPhone 14 Pro’s 3x portrait mode has resulted in a closer-up portrait (it was shot from the same position), and I think there’s better background blur (known as bokeh) here. The details on my face are sharper too, and although the color tones give a warmer look to the image above. It’s a strong yellow effect that I don’t like any more than the cold look of the OnePlus 11’s shot.

There’s no question, though, that I’d miss having a larger zoom. Above is an image from the 2x zoom lens on the OnePlus 11.

The 5x optical zoom of the Pixel 7 Pro lets you get creative zoomed-in shots, like above, that are out of reach for the OnePlus.

As part of the Hasselblad partnership, the phone comes with a variety of color presets created by Hasselblad ‘Master’ photographers. Take a look above. I don’t really like them and would much prefer to simply edit images my own way using any of the very good photo editing apps on the Google Play store.

At night the camera performs very well however. I was impressed at the brightness it was able to achieve, delivering brighter images (see above) than even the iPhone 14 Pro, albeit with less detail.

The iPhone 14 Pro’s night mode shot above has a touch more detail on some of the distant buildings, but it’s not as bright as the shot from the OnePlus.

It’s brighter than night mode shots from the Pixel 7 Pro, too. See above.

It’ll shoot video at up to 8K resolution, but its standard 4K footage will be plenty for most, offering HDR footage that helps keep bright skies under control. Colors look good in videos and while the optical image stabilization helps smooth out shaky hands, it can result in upright objects in your footage (trees, for example) appearing wobbly as the sensor tries to correct the movement. Check out the video below for some clips recorded on the OnePlus 11.

The camera can take some great shots overall. If photography isn’t a huge focus for you, and you just want crisp, vibrant shots of your friends or your kids at the beach then you’ll be well served by the OnePlus 11 — particularly if you like taking photos at night. If you’re looking for a more well-rounded photography experience then look toward the Pixel 7 Pro.

OnePlus 11: Solid battery and fast charging

The phone runs on a 5,000mAh battery that’s capable of getting you through a full day of use, as long as you’re reasonably careful in how you use it. With the display set to its maximum 3,216×1,440-pixel resolution, at 120Hz refresh rate and with screen brightness on max, the battery dropped from full to 92% remaining after 1 hour of streaming a YouTube video. After the second hour it had dropped to only 85% remaining, which isn’t a great performance.

With the resolution dropped to 2,412×1,080 pixels and the refresh rate at a maximum of 60Hz, it didn’t even drop below 100% after an hour of YouTube streaming and only dropped to 95% after a second hour — not bad at all. But 30 minutes of gaming in Genshin Impact with all settings on max comfortably knocked 10% off the battery.

With more conservative settings you won’t need to worry too much about your phone dropping dead halfway through the afternoon, and you should still have plenty of juice remaining when you put it on charge at night. Demanding gamers can ramp up the settings when you want to enjoy every last detail, but make sure you’ve got your charger nearby.

Thankfully, even if you do drain the battery with gaming or YouTube streaming, getting the juice back in is a speedy process. The phone supports 100-watt fast charging in the UK (80W in the US) which will fill the battery from empty in only 25 minutes — or 27 minutes on the 80W model. That’s quicker than the 1 to 2 hours you can expect a full recharge of the Pixel 7 Pro to take.

OnePlus 11: Should you buy it?

If you’re looking for a high-performance phone to tackle gaming, video streaming and all of life’s essentials, the OnePlus 11 is an excellent phone to consider. It’s got power enough to tackle anything in the Google Play store, it looks great and its fast-charging means that battery life isn’t an issue. The five years of security support is a nice bonus, too.

And while the camera setup is far from the best around, it’s perfectly capable of taking shots of your kids on holiday you’ll be excited to share with your wider family and friends.

But it’s the price that stands out here, being one of the cheapest flagships you can buy, undercutting both the Pixel 7 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S23. If photography isn’t your top priority but you do want ultimate performance for gaming on the go, the OnePlus 11 is certainly worth your time.

How we test phones

Every phone tested by CNET’s reviews team is actually used in the real world. We test a phone’s features, play games and take photos. We examine the display to see if it’s bright, sharp and vibrant. We analyze the design and build to see how it is to hold and whether it has an IP-rating for water resistance. We push the processor’s performance to the extremes using both standardized benchmark tools like GeekBench and 3DMark, along with our own anecdotal observations navigating the interface, recording high-resolution videos and playing graphically intense games at high refresh rates.

All the cameras are tested in a variety of conditions from bright sunlight to dark indoor scenes. We try out special features like night mode and portrait mode and compare our findings against similarly priced competing phones. We also check out the battery life by using it daily as well as running a series of battery drain tests.

Technologies

China indicates rare earths will keep flowing to EU, regardless of U.S. trade deal expiration

European trade commissioner Maroš Sefčovič met with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in Beijing last week.

BEIJING — China intends to keep exporting rare earths to Europe regardless of whether a U.S. trade deal with Beijing gets extended past January.

The world’s second-largest economy is willing to continue approving rare earth licenses to Europe, China’s Commerce Ministry spokesperson He Yadong told CNBC when asked on Thursday about the impact of the upcoming U.S. deadline.

Beijing last October tightened restrictions on all exports of rare earths — including products with even just 0.1% of China-sourced rare earths. The move followed a new U.S. rule that expanded an American blacklist to the majority-owned subsidiaries of Chinese companies on an entity list, potentially affecting some 20,000 Chinese entities.

However, both the U.S. and China agreed to suspend those measures for one year at a meeting in late October 2025 between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump. Ahead of the leaders’ latest summit last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the truce was extended by two months to January.

Trade tensions between the EU and Beijing cooled last week after European trade commissioner Maroš Sefčovič met with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in Beijing. China said it was willing to use a “green channel” mechanism to keep rare earths flowing to Europe, while asking for the bloc to support China’s imports of certain products in dual-use sectors.

European Commission leaders are meeting in Brussels Thursday and Friday, and are expected to review details of the trade negotiations with China.

Technologies

Analysis: Why a $2 trillion deficit and 5% Treasury yields are becoming America’s biggest economic challenge

Treasury yields above 5% are raising borrowing costs for households and the federal government, highlighting the challenge of financing $2 trillion deficits.

Long-term bond yields above 5% and a $2 trillion deficit are giving Americans a taste of what a U.S. debt crisis would be like. A true emergency would hurt much more, and isn’t baked in. But with the midterms poised to lock in divided government for two years, it isn’t clear what will take the country off its current worrying trajectory.

Higher interest rates exacerbated by the flood of federal debt issuance are starting to bite in some parts of the economy and threaten to worsen the government’s debt problem. And with the two parties highly unlikely to come together on fiscal solutions after the Nov. 3 midterms, any fixes are years off in the future.

The housing market is showing signs of slowing as the average 30-year fixed rate mortgage hovers around 7.5%. Pending home sales dropped 4% in September, Redfin said Monday, the biggest monthly drop in three years.

Mortgage rates track the 10-year Treasury yield

Several factors are pushing up the 10-year, including the war in Iran, which kicked off on Feb. 28 and precipitated the rise in long-term yields. Oil and diesel prices are up sharply, and that has bond traders asking for more yield to account for the possibility that central banks such as the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates.

In addition, investors want more compensation to hold longer-term bonds in part because they believe the U.S. government will continue to flood the market with them. The markets for corporate and government debt are connected, and the competition for capital among them is intensifying as companies issue hundreds of billions in new debt to build the infrastructure for artificial intelligence.

Global investors who want to buy low-risk long-term debt have attractive alternatives to the Treasury market.

If the U.S. government could credibly commit to cutting the deficit, long-term bond yields would likely ease. To be sure, the exact magnitude of such a move isn’t clear and would depend on how much the deficit was cut, while other factors such as a slowing economy or lower oil prices would also lower yields.

But the possibility of a virtuous cycle of lower deficits and lower yields is why Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has argued that the U.S. ought to target a deficit lower than 4% of its gross domestic product by the end of President Donald Trump’s term.

There is almost no way the U.S. will hit that target. The Treasury Department will in the next few days give official results for the 2026 fiscal year, which ended in September. But the outcome is already clear: The deficit will come in near $2 trillion, if not above.

That is likely to put the deficit in the range of 6.0-6.2% of gross domestic product for the year, based on the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of a $1.993 trillion deficit and a projection of third quarter GDP.

Higher rates make debt reduction tougher. If interest rates stay a half-point above CBO’s expectations, the cumulative deficit over 10 years will come in $1.9 trillion higher, the agency estimates. If rates overshoot by 1.5 points, that adds $6 trillion in deficits.

CBO expects the 10-year Treasury to average 4.3% over that period, compared to 5.3% today. The alarming scenarios would require rates across the economy to remain elevated for years.

“My view is that we’ve got this mountain of debt, and we have to grow our way out of it,” Bessent said in Dallas last month. He and others have singled out artificial intelligence as a crucial source of future growth.

AI could help but can’t fix the problem entirely. It would take a decade of 7.2% growth to balance the budget with growth alone, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a research group that advocates for balanced budgets.

GDP growth was recently revised up for the second quarter from 1.5% to 2.2% at an annualized rate. The acceleration that quickly would get us to 7.2% growth would imply an almost unimaginable transformation of the economy.

Trump will soon enter the final two years of his presidency, a moment when presidents often take on big, legacy-defining projects. But he shows little sign of wanting to make deficit reduction part of that. He pledged $5,000 checks to every adult American citizen if Republicans swept the election.

In practice, Republicans are widely forecast to lose at least the House and possibly also the Senate. Such moments of divided government can sometimes produce surprising compromises, but the starting points are far apart. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Democrats’ likely next House speaker, wants to reverse the $1 trillion in healthcare cuts that Congress enacted last year as part of Trump’s signature legislative package.

And that’s leaving aside the deep animosity between the parties.

The overall U.S. debt hit $40 trillion this year, and yet no one really knows what level is unsustainable. A full-on debt crisis likely remains much farther out in the future. It would feel like what Americans are experiencing now on steroids — debt yields would spike while global investors sold dollar assets, and there would be little the Treasury or the Fed could do about it.

For now, though higher yields are also attracting investors to U.S. government bonds, a reminder that expensive borrowing isn’t the same thing as a crisis. But the bottom line is that economics alone can’t solve the problem. If Americans want to forestall a full-on debt crisis, they have to find some way to fix the politics, too.

Technologies

Key Details on Starshield, SpaceX’s Defense-Oriented Starlink Network

Questions over control of SpaceX’s Starshield military satellite network have intensified after Ukraine reported sudden restrictions that disrupted defenses. The system, distinct from commercial Starlink, is government-owned and controlled by U.S. authorities.

Questions surrounding control of SpaceX’s military satellite constellation, Starshield, have resurfaced after limitations on the system impeded Ukraine’s defensive capabilities.

Kyiv has leveled accusations against SpaceX

Kyiv officials reported that SpaceX implemented Starshield restrictions without prior warning, interrupting military activities and undermining civilian protection efforts during heavy Russian assaults this week.

Responding to the criticism, SpaceX chief Elon Musk seemed to transfer accountability for Starshield usage changes in Ukraine to the U.S. government and President Donald Trump. Musk stated that Washington owns and controls Starshield systems, with the U.S. military and ultimately the president setting any usage boundaries. The White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to Verum’s request for comment.

Here’s an overview of Starshield and its distinctions from Starlink.

What is Starshield and how does it function?

Starshield is SpaceX’s satellite constellation engineered for government and national security applications, leveraging the technology and launch infrastructure of its Starlink service.

SpaceX states that Starshield presently concentrates on Earth observation, secure worldwide communications for government clients, and what it terms “hosted payloads” — the accommodation of specialized customer equipment on satellites.

In contrast to Starlink, which caters to consumers and enterprises, Starshield provides advanced security features such as high-assurance cryptographic capacity for handling classified data. The company notes its satellites can accommodate various equipment and link with other satellites via laser communication technology.

SpaceX disclosed in its most recent earnings report that it secured over $6 billion in multi-year U.S. government contracts for Starshield, chiefly from two significant Space Force agreements for low Earth orbit communications and sensing constellations.

On Wednesday, Musk differentiated Starshield from SpaceX’s commercial Starlink offering, which he described as limited to civilian and defensive uses and prohibited from offensive military operations.

How does Starshield contrast with Starlink?

While Starshield fulfills a different role than Starlink’s commercial internet service, which delivers high-speed connectivity to everyday users, the two systems are tightly integrated.

Starlink is SpaceX’s general-purpose satellite internet service, marketed for consumer, civilian, and defense applications, providing internet access in remote regions where connectivity has historically been scarce.

Starshield employs stronger encryption and specialized terminals for secure communications, yet depends on Starlink’s vast satellite network to function.

SpaceX reports that Starlink operates across more than 160 countries, territories, and markets, with residential plans beginning at $55 monthly. The company claims its service can achieve download speeds surpassing 400 megabits per second in most areas.