For your money, you get an exceptionally bright OLED display, solid performance in both system and games, 128GB of storage, and OnePlus’ take on the Android experience. Storage is also expandable on the Nord N20 via a micro SD card – a luxury few phones have afforded us in recent years. With its reasonably sized 4500mAh battery, the Nord N20 easily achieves a two-day runtime with about 50% charge left at the end of the first day if we started at 100%. And when the battery gets too low for comfort, the fast charging technology offered here will save the day. The included charger will charge the phone about 20% in 15 minutes. Thanks to the combination of a Snapdragon 695 processor and 6GB of RAM, navigating the phone’s Oxygen OS interface is a smooth experience, and we were able to multitask between multiple open apps with very little slowdown. Even taking Extra HD photos at full resolution (64 or 108 megapixels) didn’t cause the system to slow down when processing these large files. One thing to note about the N20 is that it’s a T-Mobile exclusive in the U.S. for now, with unlocked models coming later. T-Mobile’s push service prompts you to install bloatware apps multiple times during and after installation, but you can opt out of the majority of them. However, the phone will ask you several times during and after installation to install “premium app suggestions” from the carrier. The phone is also a bit disappointed with its disappointing camera system, which impresses with its design but has average performance. Photos look very different in the viewfinder and after being processed by the phone, making it hard to tell if a shot will be better or worse once you press the shutter, and we could have done without the gimmicky macro camera. OnePlus could have improved the photographic experience considerably by focusing its efforts on a single 64MP camera, but as it is, the setup we’re stuck with leaves a lot to be desired.
