Whichever way you slice it, OnePlus is enjoying a fruitful 2025. Just a few months after the OnePlus 13 sailed onto our list of the best phones money can buy, the OnePlus Watch 3 became one of the best Android smartwatches around, and the newly announced OnePlus Pad 3 looks set to feature prominently in our guide to the best Android tablets.
All three of those products are flagships in their respective categories, but OnePlus is now gearing up for its annual swipe at the mid-range tech market.
In an exclusive interview with TechRadar, Celina Shi, Chief Marketing Officer at OnePlus Europe, revealed the names and details of five new mid-range OnePlus products heading to stores in July – specifically the OnePlus Nord 5, OnePlus Nord CE5, OnePlus Buds 4, OnePlus Pad Lite, and OnePlus Watch 3 43mm.
TechRadar: What do you see as the key USP of the OnePlus Nord series in 2025, in terms of both its place in the OnePlus portfolio and the wider mid-range smartphone market?
Celina Shi: The OnePlus Nord Series is our mid-range smartphone series designed to offer a balance of flagship features at an affordable price. It’s become much-loved by a significant number of our community who enjoy its fun and more playful tone. The OnePlus Nord Series is bolder in color and style than our flagship Series and offers a real opportunity for people to demonstrate their personal identity through the devices and its brand.
In July this year, I’m pleased to announce that OnePlus will launch two new devices in the OnePlus Nord series: the OnePlus Nord 5 and the OnePlus Nord CE5. The latest series is a performance powerhouse that offers endless endurance, allowing you to play and create all day and night.
TR: What, specifically, makes the OnePlus Nord 5 a “performance powerhouse”?
CS: The new OnePlus Nord 5 is what we’re calling a double-punch – it has an exceptional camera and an exceptional chipset.
While you’ll have to wait to find out about the camera, I can confirm that the OnePlus Nord 5 will include the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 Mobile Platform, an unfairly high-spec chipset for the mid-range market.
The OnePlus Nord 5 is equipped with LPDDR5X RAM and an advanced 7,300mm² CryoFlex Liquid Cooling System, ensuring consistently smooth performance even under pressure.
The new OnePlus Nord 5 is what we’re calling a double-punch – it has an exceptional camera and an exceptional chipset.
Celina Shi, OnePlus
For the gamers, OnePlus Nord 5 will also support Battlegrounds Mobile India at native 90 frames per second to 144fps with frame rate interpolation, meaning smooth gaming and less lag.
We’ve included all of these features as our core OnePlus Nord audience wants a fast and smooth experience, since they use their smartphones for creating, gaming, and multitasking. As these types of activities get more complex with more processing load, we’ve doubled down on our chipset to ensure we deliver the signature fast and smooth experience that we’ve become famous for.
TR: Both new Nord models feature a vertical camera array. Why the move back to this orientation on the flagship model this year?
CS: With any smartphone, there is always negotiation between aesthetic design and what’s physically possible within those parameters. As tech components evolve, so too will our design to make the best-looking products that function optimally.
The camera module is vertical in the latest OnePlus Nord Series as this layout optimizes space within the device, allowing us to include a best-in-class chipset, battery, and screen within.
TR: And similarly, what can you tell us about the rear panel design?
CS: While I can’t reveal specifics about the OnePlus Nord 5 Series materials just yet, I can say that it won’t be in a metal frame this year.
Our design concept for all of our devices is grounded in consumer insight. Following a global survey conducted across Europe, North America, India, and China, we found that our target audience places strong emphasis on practicality in design.
The camera module is vertical in the latest OnePlus Nord Series as this layout optimizes space within the device.
Celina Shi, OnePlus
They consistently prefer styles that are brief, simple, and elegant. In response to this, in the OnePlus Nord Series this year, we are offering a Nordic-inspired design that reflects these values and resonates with our consumers globally.
With that in mind, I’ll exclusively reveal to you one color each for the OnePlus Nord 5 and the OnePlus Nord CE, which will launch in Europe on July 8: the OnePlus Nord 5 will launch in Dry Ice, and the OnePlus Nord CE 5 in Marble Mist.
TR: Are you confident that users will embrace the new Plus Key and Plus Mind interface on the Nord 5 series?
CS: We’re really excited about the new Plus Key, the extension of OnePlus’ personalized AI experience. The Plus Key is not a removal of our Alert Slider, it’s a natural evolution to allow it to be more capable, more intuitive to use, and now highly customizable. The Plus Key is a customizable button programmable for various actions like switching sound profiles, launching the camera, initiating translation, or starting recordings.
The Plus Mind interface sits perfectly alongside our Plus Key and is the first step to building a truly personalized smartphone experience with AI. Users can simply press the Plus Key to recognize screen content and add it as a ‘memory’. This includes actions like saving on-screen content, suggesting schedules to be added into a calendar, storing on-screen content into Mind Space, and searching with a conversational prompt via AI Search.
Beyond simple screen capture, AI Plus Mind leverages AI to analyze content contextually. For instance, it can extract schedule details from an image or text and add them directly to the user’s calendar. AI Search, integrated with AI Plus Mind, supports natural language queries for easy retrieval of saved content.
TR: With mid-range smartphones improving in quality every year, how does OnePlus distinguish between mid-range and flagship in 2025?
CS: At OnePlus, our vision is to empower the world through better technology. We launched the OnePlus Nord series to make cutting-edge technology, including the OnePlus Fast & Smooth experience, accessible to more people. Therefore, when we look at the OnePlus Nord Series offering, we try to balance flagship technology with an affordable price.
But the identity of the OnePlus Nord Series is quite different to that of our flagship series. It’s more playful, colourful, and bolder in style.
People who buy our OnePlus Nord Series are different to those buying flagships. For our flagship products, like the OnePlus 13 series, we target power users. These are tech enthusiasts that place high demands on their devices, and expect bleeding-edge hardware and frictionless, performance-focused software.
Our OnePlus Nord products are a way for us to take our flagship technology and make it more accessible to a wider range of users. These are value-aware consumers that expect a Fast & Smooth experience at a price point that allows more people to join our community.
At OnePlus, the flagship line and Nord line play equally important roles in our product and brand strategy. On one hand, we will continue building flagship devices that integrate the most advanced technologies to deliver cutting-edge experiences in the premium and ultra-premium tiers. In parallel, we are also committed to making the OnePlus experience and quality more accessible to more users with the Nord product line.
TR: Moving away from smartphones for a moment, what else is OnePlus planning on launching next month?
CS: This summer, on July 8, we are focusing on building our product portfolio across different categories and price segments. Alongside our OnePlus Nord Series devices, I’m pleased to announce that we will be launching three new products: a new wearable, the OnePlus Watch 3 43mm, our latest flagship headphones, the OnePlus Buds 4, and a new tablet, the OnePlus Pad Lite.
In February this year, we launched our latest flagship wearable, the OnePlus Watch 3. It was highly popular due to its huge battery life, accurate GPS, and health and wellbeing metrics.
We’re bringing a smaller iteration of this device that’s perfect for those with smaller wrists – but don’t underestimate it! It’s packed with specs that rival the full-sized version, as well as exclusive monitoring features not found on any other device – and will be available in sleek Silver Steel!
We are deepening our roots into broader consumer electronics sectors to become a premium ‘Android Builder’.
Celina Shi, OnePlus
Hot off the heels of the OnePlus Pad 3 launch in June, we’ve found that a strong section of our Community is looking to OnePlus for an affordable tablet that works seamlessly with their other OnePlus devices. We’re delighted to bring this to them this summer. The OnePlus Pad Lite will be available in Europe in Aero Blue.
For OnePlus Buds 4, you can expect a flagship sound experience, with Dual Drivers, Dual DACs, Hi-Res LHDC 5.0, and 3D Audio. For gamers, the OnePlus Buds 4 also offer 47ms ultra-low latency in Game Mode, ensuring audio syncs perfectly with on-screen action for a competitive edge.
As with all OnePlus products, style has been front and centre of the design process [for our new earbuds]. This year, the OnePlus Buds 4 are available in two colour options: Zen Green and Storm Gray.
TR: And lastly, looking ahead, what’s the overarching product strategy for OnePlus in 2025?
CS: Our journey started in 2014 with the release of our first smartphone, the OnePlus One, which shared great technology with the world and challenged the industry status quo. While our ambition remains to deliver exceptional value to our smartphone users, we are deepening our roots into broader consumer electronics sectors to become a premium ‘Android Builder’. Today, we offer a broad portfolio of devices across four main categories: smartphone, tablet, audio, and wearables.
Through our ecosystem of devices, we want to elevate the digital life of our community with products that seamlessly connect and improve their lifestyle through better technology. We host Open Ears Forums for our community, where we get invaluable feedback from our users. In 2025, we have doubled down on that effort through regular community catch-ups through one-on-one sessions where we carefully listen and understand their needs.
On the product side, we will continue to enhance our hardware and software offering with features we’ve become famous for, like long battery life, [unique] design and [powerful] performance; but also integrate newer technologies, like upgraded OxygenOS, OpenCanvas, and AI, to ensure the OnePlus product experience across all categories and all devices is faster and smoother than ever.
So there you have it, folks – the OnePlus Nord 5 and OnePlus Nord CE5 will launch in the UK and Europe on July 8, along with the OnePlus Watch 3 43mm, OnePlus Buds 4, and OnePlus Pad Lite. We’ll be getting all five new products in for testing over the coming weeks, so stay tuned to TechRadar for our full verdicts on OnePlus’ latest mid-range devices.
Which of the newly announced OnePlus products is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below.
