For obvious reasons, we don't usually believe anything a brand announces on April 1st, but this time, we may just believe Oneplus when it says it will unveil the latest phone in its budget lineup. Reportedly called the Nord CE 4, the phone is said to be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor and may even feature faster wired charging than the OnePlus 12.
Nord CE 4
From what we can see from the teaser images, the Nord CE 4 doesn't appear to have an alert slider, although it seems that there is an IR blaster located on the top edge. The power button and volume rocker are located on the right-hand side of the phone. The cameras are housed in a left-oriented vertical strip, with the LED flash module surrounding the lower most camera sensor. Finally, we can probably expect the Nord CE 4 to launch in black and a fancy green color which I'd probably call cloudy green if I was forced to describe it.
Following on from the Nord CE 3 5G, the Nord CE 4 should enjoy a handy 15% performance boost thanks to the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset, which packs a prime core clocked at 2.63GHz. Graphics performance increases by 50%, and power efficiency gains 20%. All told, it should be a rather slick user experience.
If, as rumors imply, the Nord CE 4 is actually a rebadged Oppo K12, we can also expect to see 100W SuperVOOC wired charging present. This is a likely scenario, as the Oppo K11 was rebadged as the Nord CE 3 5G in 2023.
If, the Nord CE 4 follows the Oppo K12 playbook accurately, we should expect it to feature a 6.4-inch display which will almost certainly be of the AMOLED type with at a 120Hz refresh rate. Besides being powered by the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 SoC, we can probably expect 8-12GB of RAM with storage options starting from 128GB.
The rear camera setup is likely to be a 48MP or 50MP main sensor which is accompanied by an 8MP ultra-wide lens and a 2MP macro or portrait lens, although OnePlus might bump up the tertiary cameras to 12MP and 5MP.
On the K12, there's an 8MP selfie camera, but seeing as the Nord CE 3 5G carried a 16MP unit, we don't see OnePlus cutting back in that department.
Making use of the fast 100W SuperVOOC wired charging is likely to be a 5,000mAh battery although the K12 actually makes do with a 4,500mAh unit. We think it will be a 5,000mAh battery because that is the industry standard right now on most phones, regardless of budget.
Another Nord?
The confirmation of the launch event for the Nord CE 4 comes after it was reported that OnePlus was also preparing to unveil the Nord 4, the successor to last years Nord 3, in the near future. Whether both Nord devices will be announced at the same time on April 1st has yet to be confirmed.
It's also likely that OnePlus will launch some new earbuds, as it tends to do in tandem with phone launches, probably under the Nord brand as well.
We've had something of a quiet period since the end of MWC 2024, but April promises to kick things into gear again in terms of phone launches with the likes of Google, Motorola, and perhaps Oppo being lined up.
Let us know what your thoughts are about the Nord CE 4 so far, and what you would like to see from this soon-to-launch budget-offering from OnePlus.
