The next OnePlus Nord phone could be a Snapdragon powerhouse

The OnePlus Nord series is among the better cheap phones around, usually offering good specs and a competitive price. We’ve already seen the OnePlus Nord CE 4 launch earlier this year, but it looks like chipset details for two other phones have appeared online.

Tipster Yogesh Brar has claimed that the OnePlus Nord 4 will be powered by the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 chipset, while the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite will purportedly pack a Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 SoC.

The Nord 4’s apparent choice of chipset isn’t a surprise, as we expected the phone to be a rebranded version of the China-only OnePlus Ace 3V. That phone indeed packs a Snapdragon 7 Plus chip, which is a major upgrade for the Snapdragon 7 series, featuring a flagship-grade CPU and generative AI support (including Gemini Nano). The chipset does lack some premium features like hardware-enabled ray tracing, AV1 decoding, and 8K recording. But any phone with this processor should still deliver impressive performance.

The Ace 3V also brings a 5,500mAh battery, 100W wired charging, and a 1.5K OLED screen. So we expect these features on the Nord 4 too. There’s no word on a launch timeline for the Nord 4, but its predecessor launched in July, giving us a possible release window.

Otherwise, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 is a fairly standard lower mid-range processor that should still be a significant upgrade over the aging Snapdragon 695 seen in the Nord CE 3 Lite. Expect a more powerful CPU (4x Cortex-A78, 4x Cortex-A55),  a 4nm design for greater efficiency, and 35% better GPU performance than the Snapdragon 695. So performance-conscious consumers on a strict budget should keep an eye on this phone.