At this point in time, OnePlus’ “Nord” lineup has been one of the more budget-friendly choices when it comes to Android phones, at least on this side of the world. First launched back in 2020 with the original Nord, the product line has since evolved to offer a variety of different devices with different pricing tiers, without matching the cost of OnePlus’ more expensive premium flagships.
With that in mind, OnePlus has once again added another entry to the Nord series with the CE4 Lite. As you can probably tell from the name, it’s an even more wallet-friendly device (priced at £299) although it does come with some notable hardware specs, and while it’s not a perfect phone it might be one that’s best-suited for folks looking to try out OnePlus’ more basic handsets.
Design and Display
OnePlus keeps things simple with the Nord CE4 Lite’s design, adopting a look that’s pretty much in line with the rest of its smartphones – a large screen, dual-camera island on the rear panel, that kind of stuff. Of course there are some compromises to be made, such as the plastic design and the lack of the alert slider, a hardware addition that’s one of OnePlus’ trademark features.
As such, the phone does pack a large 6.67-inch screen, which should be ideal for content consumption, web and social media browsing, and even a bit of gaming thrown in. It’s fairly sharp with a 1080×2400 pixel resolution, and gets really smooth thanks to its 120Hz refresh rate – furthermore, there’s a peak brightness of up to 2,100 nits, meaning that you won’t have any trouble viewing your screen outdoors.
Internal Specs and Software
For performance, OnePlus has decided to stick a rather basic Snapdragon 695 5G chipset inside the CE4 Lite, an understandable decision given its price. However, the 695 is a bit old at this point, and in terms of what it can do it does come with some limitations. That’s not to say that it’s a terribly slow chip though, and with the 8GB of RAM on board it should be capable enough for most smartphone tasks, bar graphics and resource-intensive games. The CE4 Lite also comes with 256GB of storage, which should be more than enough for most users.
The phone comes with Oxygen OS 14 based on Android 14, which comes with a suite of OnePlus-exclusive apps and software. For battery, there’s a large 5,110 capacity cell with support for 80W SUPERVOOC charging, meaning that you can fully charge the phone in a pinch. Other details include a 3.5mm headphone jack, NFC, and USB C 2.0 connectivity.
Camera Hardware
The Nord CE4 Lite also packs a pretty decent camera system. The main rear camera features a Sony LYT600 sensor with a large 1/1.95-inch size and a wide f/1.8 aperture with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) and Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS), and there’s a 2-megapixel depth sensor for capturing portrait mode photos with a blurred background effect.
Due to the Snapdragon 695 chipset, video recording is capped at 1080p resolution at 30fps, but you can also record slow-motion video at 720p at 120fps or time-lapse videos in 1080p. The front-facing camera features 16 megapixels with a fixed focus and an f/2.4 aperture for capturing selfies.
So will you be grabbing the OnePlus Nord CE4 Lite once it launches? Let us know in the comments below!
