Samsung is rumoured to be announcing its Galaxy S24 series of Android phones in January, but it’s just been confirmed that another Android rival will be fighting for the limelight if that turns out to be the case. OnePlus has announced that its OnePlus 12 flagship will be launched globally on 23 January having already been unveiled in China earlier in December.
Although OnePlus has not confirmed exactly which countries the new smartphone will come to, the fact it’s splashed all over the company’s UK website is all but confirmation it will be coming to these shores – just in time to go head to head with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra that all rumours suggest will be available around the end of January.
Not only that, but it looks as though the UK will also be getting the OnePlus 12R, a mid-range model – the first time an R-series OnePlus phone will have been released outside of India and China.
As it has already been launched in China, we actually already know everything about the premium OnePlus 12 (apart from its UK price) and it looks as though it’s going to be an improvement on the excellent OnePlus 11 from earlier this year. The new phone keeps a similar svelte design with distinctive circular camera module on the back with triple cameras that include new Sony LYT-808 sensor for the 50MP main lens, along with Hasselblad branding thanks to a collaboration with the legendary camera brand.
The phone runs the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, with processing power Android fans hope will bring faster performance and better battery life, while the availability of a OnePlus 12 model with 24GB RAM is surely pushing the high-end of what is actually worth stuffing into a smartphone.
The OnePlus 12 has also gained wireless charging at up to 50W speeds (the OnePlus 11 didn’t have wireless charging at all) and wired at up to 100W, which is very fast indeed – you’ll likely be able to fully charge the phone from dead in well under half an hour. Such fast charging is annoyingly rare to see on phones released in the UK, and OnePlus has Samsung, Google, and Apple very much beaten on this front.
Around the front is a big 6.82-inch OLED screen that is curved at the edges, a design choice Samsung is said to have dropped for the Galaxy S24 Ultra, allegedly moving to a flat display. Google made this move too, with a flat screen on the excellent Google Pixel 8 Pro, but OnePlus has opted to stick with the gentle curves at the edges, which does make a phone feel a little slimmer – great when phones are so large these days.
We’ll have to wait and see how long OnePlus promises to keep the OnePlus 12 updated for – currently the company offers the same as Samsung, with four years of Android updates and five years of security patches. But Google has one upped them with the Pixel 8, offering seven years for both.
Keep your eyes peeled in January if you are in the market for a new premium Android phone, because it looks as though OnePlus will be trying to muscle in on Samsung’s S24 launch to steal some of the headlines away.
