OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite announced with the same processor from last year’s CE 2 Lite

OnePlus has officially announced the new Nord CE 3 Lite 5, a mid-range model that should offer a core experience in the brand’s ecosystem of devices. While most of the components have been upgraded from last year’s CE 2 Lite, OnePlus also failed to make improvements in the category it needed most: the processor. So the new phone has a new design, and many upgrades, but it’s just as slow as the previous model.

OnePlus’ North CE 3 Lite gets more upgrades, but not where it was most needed

The Snapdragon 695 processor is a pretty old model already in Qualcomm’s portfolio, but many companies still turn to it in their mid-range devices, thanks to it being equipped with a 5G modem. Thus, this is one of the most affordable ways to integrate 5G connectivity into budget phones. Unfortunately, however, the power of this processor isn’t quite enough to ensure a fast and smooth user experience.

And that’s kind of at odds with the fact that the Nord CE 3 Lite 5G comes with a 6.72″ display with Full HD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. It uses an LCD panel, but that’s to be expected in the budget price range this model falls into.

The Nord CE 3 Lite also comes with 8GB of RAM, a major upgrade, and its Oxygen OS allows for up to 16GB of total memory growth via virtual memory on the device’s 128GB internal storage. There’s also a microSD slot, which supports cards up to 1TB.

With a 5,000 mAh battery and SuperVOOC charging at 67W, this could be a very good battery life phone, especially when you consider the processor which has a low power consumption.

Camera makes the switch to a 108-megapixel sensor

Another upgrade that the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G gets is to the camera head, where it gets a 108-megapixel f/1.8 main sensor, which allows good quality zoom by cropping the sensor up to 3x. The phone also gets an improved portrait mode and two auxiliary cameras, both 2 megapixels: a macro and a depth sensor.

Another advantage in the market that the Nord CE 3 Lite has is software support. Being released with Oxygen 13.1, it will receive two years of system updates, up to Android 15, and three years of security updates.

OnePlus says the phone will be available in Europe from April 20, priced at €329, in Pastel Lime and Chromatic Gray colour variants.