OnePlus Nord 3: Should You Buy This Phone Instead of the iQoo Neo 7 Pro or the OnePlus 11R?

OnePlus Nord 3 is the latest mid-range handset from OnePlus and the newest entry in the Nord series of smartphones. Unlike its predecessor, the Nord 3 brings some notable improvements in the performance and camera department. The phone competes with several similarly priced smartphones in India such as the newly launched iQoo Neo 7 Pro, the Samsung Galaxy A34 5G, and the Motorola Edge 40 — as well as the slightly more expensive OnePlus 11R 5G, which offers a more powerful Snapdragon 8 series chipset and slightly faster charging. 

On this week's episode of Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast, resident smartphone expert Pranav Hegde talks to host Siddharth Suvarna about the latest Nord 3 smartphone from OnePlus. We discussed some of the most notable upgrades that the OnePlus Nord brings to the table.

OnePlus has equipped the Nord 3 with a powerful MediaTek Dimensity 9000 SoC. This is a flagship-grade chipset that is based on a 4nm fabrication process. You also get LPDDR5X RAM, that is typically found on flagship phones. This means that the OnePlus Nord 3 offers a huge jump in performance over the OnePlus Nord 2, which featured a weaker Dimensity 1200 SoC.

For photography, the OnePlus Nord 3 is equipped with a triple rear camera setup, comprising a 50-megapixel Sony IMX890 primary camera with optical image stabilisation (OIS). You also get a 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, and a 2-megapixel macro camera. The phone lets you capture up to 4K 60fps videos, while the 16-megapixel front camera can record videos at 1080p 30fps.

This is the first OnePlus Nord-series phone that is promised to receive three OS updates and four years of security updates. It is preloaded with a few third-party apps — colloquially known as bloatware — such as Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Spotify. OnePlus' OxygenOS 13.1 skin supports the Material You theming engine introduced with Android 13, which means you can easily customise and select a specific colour palette for the system interface.

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