Official OnePlus Nord CE 5G design revealed
OnePlus has revealed an official product shot of its upcoming mid-range handset, the OnePlus Nord CE 5G, ahead of its expected launch this week.
The image above was shared directly from the company to TechRadar, and shows the phone in its new “Blue Void” colour, which doesn’t seem to be a million miles away from the “Blue Marble” shade that the original OnePlus Nord was available in.
The “CE” of the OnePlus Nord CE 5G stands for “Core Edition”, with the name reflecting the company’s plan to strip back the specs of the original Nord to its most valuable features for an appealing phone with a lower cost of entry. “The whole design philosophy hinges around the idea of ‘core’,” OnePlus Head of Product Oliver Zhang told the site. “The essence of ‘core’ is reduction – distilling the product down to the most important things.”
One such change is visible in the shot above: while the original OnePlus Nord had a quad-camera setup on the back, only three lenses are visible here. The flash has also been relocated from the top of the vertical camera hump to the bottom.
Zhang went on to list some of the things OnePlus view as “core” that will be included with the new handset: fast charging, 5G and a screen with a 90Hz refresh rate.
Previous leaks have suggested the OnePlus Nord CE 5G will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G processor, which is the same chip featured in the excellent £399 Samsung Galaxy A52 5G. Given the OnePlus Nord launched for £379 and the Nord CE 5G is set to undercut it, we could be looking at a serious contender for inclusion in our list of the best mid-range smartphones.
OnePlus has also revealed a couple of extra specifications on a page dedicated to the upcoming 10 June event.The phone will apparently be “stupid skinny” at just 7.9mm thick, and the triple-camera array will be led by a 64-megapixel lens. Another feature is due to appear on the page today, but is blank at the time of writing.
We’ve reached out to OnePlus to confirm the validity of the new image, and to see whether the company has anything else to share ahead of the handset’s launch on Thursday. We’ll update the piece when we get a response.