OnePlus 13 vs OnePlus 11: The Great Leap

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The impressive OnePlus 13 is here! You can buy the premium handset with a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. The flagship arrives with a free storage upgrade, saving you $100. You can trade in any phone in any condition to save $100 on it. On top of that, you'll get a OnePlus 13 case free of charge (value of up to $39.99).

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In terms of hardware, there aren't any surprises. The OnePlus 13 comes with the latest and greatest Qualcomm silicon, namely the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The OnePlus 11, on the other hand, features the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which is now two generations old compared to the silicon on the new flagship. 

Synthetic benchmarks paint an expected picture, showcasing a huge advantage for the new chipset. When the Snapdragon 8 Elite first launched and benchmarks began to surface, the chip created quite a stir in the industry, scoring close to Apple's A18 and even outperforming the previous champion in some tests.

However, as always, benchmarks are not fully representative of real-life performance. Even though the OnePlus 11 is two years older, you’re unlikely to notice any lag or stutter in normal day-to-day use.

The RAM and storage situation is in favor of the OnePlus 13, the phone starts at 12GB or RAM paired with 256GB of storage in its base configuration, while the OnePlus 11 base memory option is 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

There's a brand-new camera system on the OnePlus 13. The phone features a triple setup consisting of a 1/1.4" 50MP Sony LYT-808 primary sensor with OIS support, a 23mm focal length, and an f/1.6 aperture.

The ultrawide camera is a 50MP Samsung JN5 sensor with 15mm focal length equivalent and an aperture of f/2.0 and there's a 1/1.95" 50MP Sony LYT-600 telephoto-periscope camera system with OIS, an f/2.6 aperture, and 3x optical zoom or 73mm focal length equivalent.

The OnePlus 11 also comes with an ample camera system; the phone features a 50MP main camera sensor, a Sony IMX890 sensor. The ultra-wide camera sensor is a 48MP with macro capabilities, and the third rear camera is a 2X zoom lens—no periscope magic, but still great for portrait shots. 

Main Camera

Surprisingly, the IMX890 performs quite similarly to the newer LYT-808. Both sensors capture a lot of detail and deliver a wide dynamic range. However, there’s a slight difference in color tone: the OnePlus 11 produces softer, warmer photos, while the OnePlus 13 tends to go a bit overboard with contrast and saturation.

Night shots highlight these differences. The OnePlus 11 tends to create a slight halo around some light sources and even in darker areas. In contrast, the OnePlus 13 takes a more aggressive HDR approach, producing very dark patches of sky against extremely bright sections of lit areas in the photo, such as the pavement. Overall, the newer sensor holds a slight advantage, as it’s larger with bigger pixels, enabling it to capture more light and deliver better detail in low-light conditions.

Zoom Quality

The OnePlus 13 introduces a new periscope zoom system featuring a special prism that OnePlus calls "Triprism" (sounds familiar?). The native optical zoom is set at 3x, while the OnePlus 11 has a more modest 2x telephoto lens. These days, most modern flagships can achieve 2x zoom by cropping from the main sensor, making the need for a dedicated 2x telephoto camera largely obsolete.

Ultra-wide Camera

Images from the ultrawide cameras of both phones look very similar, with little to no differences, aside from the same algorithms that saturate photos from the main camera, making them appear more dramatic on the OnePlus 13. Other factors such as dynamic range, white balance, exposure, and level of detail are all quite similar between the two.

Selfies

Selfie shots are nearly identical, despite the hardware behind them being quite different. The new OnePlus 13 features a 32MP front camera with an f/2.4 aperture and a 0.8µm pixel size (binned to 1.6µm), while the OnePlus 11 has a 16MP selfie camera with a 1.0µm pixel size and a slightly larger focal length (25mm vs 21mm). The end results are, as we’ve already mentioned, very similar, and we had to double-check the hardware to confirm the difference.

More Camera Samples

Here's a short video sample comparison between the OnePlus 13 and the iPhone 16 Pro Max (OnePlus 11 sample is coming shortly)

The OnePlus 13 is the latest flagship phone from China to adopt silicon-carbon battery technology. This hybrid approach enhances the anode of a lithium-ion battery with silicon material, increasing capacity (pure silicon has up to 5,000% more potential capacity compared to lithium—emphasis on potential). This advancement allowed OnePlus to fit a 6,000mAh battery into the OnePlus 13 while keeping its size roughly the same as, say, the OnePlus 11 we’re comparing it to.

The OnePlus 11, by contrast, comes with a 5,000mAh battery, and this 1,000mAh difference clearly translates into better battery life. In browsing tests, the OnePlus 13 outlasted its predecessor by an impressive eight hours! However, the difference is less pronounced in YouTube streaming, where the gap is under an hour. Interestingly, in our gaming test, the OnePlus 11 managed to outlast the OnePlus 13 by two hours.

PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:

The charging situation is virtually identical: both phones support 80W wired charging and 50W wireless charging via magnetic induction. However, due to its smaller battery, the OnePlus 11 can charge to full in just 32 minutes. In comparison, the 6,000mAh battery inside the OnePlus 13 takes 43 minutes to charge from 0 to 100%.