OnePlus 11 5G review: Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who co-founded OnePlus, tests new smartphone, says it 'lacks real identity'

The Nothing CEO, Carl Pei, who co-founded the Chinese smartphone brand OnePlus, got his hands on the company's smartphone of 2023, the OnePlus 11, days before its official launch.

Being a co-founder of the company, Pei was asked if he felt weird holding the OnePlus 11, which was launched on February 7 this year, to which the CEO of Nothing said "It is a weird feeling, yeah, but it's been a long time so it actually feels like another device I was curious to check out.”

During this period, Pei tested the OnePlus 11 and here's what he thinks of the new smartphone.


OnePlus 11: First Impression
The 33-year-old entrepreneur was quite impressed with the OnePlus 11's design and look. For Pei, the OnePlus 11 is "quite a beautiful device".

"There's all these really interesting details that kind of plays against the light. So when it's on the table and you just look at it, it actually looks pretty good and you want to almost grab it and play with it. It actually looks quite good and premium," the co-founder of OnePlus said.
OnePlus 11: Design
The OnePlus 11 5G features a 6.7-inch display that comes with a refresh rate of 120 Hz. The smartphone flaunts the 3rd Generation Hasselblad Camera with a three-main-sensor triple-camera set-up of: 50MP+32MP+48MP.

While Pei loved the rounded edges on the OnePlus 11, he is personally not a fan of the lack of polish.

What's Good:
The CEO of Nothing says that the OnePlus 11 features rounded edges which feels "really good in your hands" because of how the glass on both the back and also the front is curved.

"It makes the sides really narrow and it just feels like a much thinner phone than what it actually is if you look closely at the camera Deco. You can see there being this sparkling texture here in the middle around the different lenses you can see it almost like a CD-like texture and then along the sides, there's different textures so there's a lot of effort put into these small details," said the former director of OnePlus global.

Pei left the OnePlus in October 2020 to start his own company called Nothing.

What's Not Good:
However, the 33-year-old is not a fan on the side buttons on the smartphone.

"Things that are not super good for me personally are the buttons (on the sides) that are really really thin. They are probably less than half of the width of the buttons on the Nothing Phone, so it kind of feels a bit weird in your fingers," he said.
Pei also mentioned how the mute switch and power button do not look aligned when looked from a vertical perspective. Talking about the elephant in the room, Pei says that the OnePlus 11 "lacks real identity".

"Because each generation (of the OnePlus smartphones) looks very different from the previous ones... If you ask an Android fan to identify the device, they can probably tell you it's this product, but for anybody else or any person on the street, it would be really hard to tell," he added.

OnePlus 11: Price
About the price aspect of the OnePlus 11, Pei said that though at the time he was shooting the review video, the prices were not officially announced but as per the leaks he came across on the Internet, he believes that the smartphone is worth the buck.

"When you pay 800 USD (approximately) for a smartphone, I think you expect and deserve a very premium flagship-like experience, and I think at least on the hardware side, the OnePlus 11 delivers."

OnePlus 11: Camera
While using the OnePlus 11, Pei thoroughly went through the smartphone's camera. He even compared it with his own, the Nothing Phone (1).

"The camera on the OnePlus 11 is better tuned or there's some nuance to this. If you take photos during scenarios where there's a lot of light, the OnePlus 11 camera actually captures more details if you zoom in, as compared to the Nothing Phone (1) camera, so I think we still have to keep working on our (Nothing) camera tuning. On the other hand, it's marginally less grainy than Nothing Phone (1) during low-light scenarios but it's much softer, so you lose a lot of details when you zoom in," Pei said.

Another thing that Pei found impressive with the OnePlus 11 camera is that it sports no useless megapixel cameras. "All the cameras on the OnePlus 11 are actually useful to the consumer."

However, Pei found the telephoto camera on the OnePlus 11 slightly weird. "When I used the telephoto camera on the OnePlus 11 on 2X zoom, and compared it with the digital 2X zoom on Nothing Phone (1), it's very hard to tell the quality difference. That was kind of weird."

"All in all, solid set of cameras. They've done great work in some areas that we (Nothing) should definitely learn from."

OnePlus 11: Performance
For Pei, the haptics on the OnePlus 11 was a clear winner, which really stood out for him as he found it very comfortable.
"For instance, when you're unlocking the phone, when you're texting, it feels very very premium, very high quality," the Nothing CEO said.

OnePlus 11: Operating System
The OnePlus 11 is powered by the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset with up to 16GB of RAM. But the co-founder of OnePlus isn't a fan of the brand's current OS, which brings several tools and changes to the smartphone, allowing users to customise the device.

Pei also highlighted other things about the phone that needs fixing.

"All in all, I think it's (OnePlus) has got a lot of customisation, a lot of features but the level of polish is not there."

The Chinese smartphone-maker, OnePlus, last week launched its flagship, the OnePlus 11 at the Cloud 11 tech event. The smartphone which starts at Rs 56,999 in China, comes in two colours: Titan Black and Eternal Green.