OnePlus prices latest flagship phone for the US alongside more affordable 12R

A little over a month and a half after its Chinese launch, OnePlus has officially announced pricing and a release date for its latest flagship in global markets. The OnePlus 12 will ship in the US on February 6th, starting at $799.99 (€949 / £849) for its most affordable model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It’s one of a trio of devices OnePlus is launching today, with the other two being the lower-end OnePlus 12R and the OnePlus Buds 3 true wireless earbuds.

You can check out my colleague Allison Johnson’s full review of the OnePlus 12 right here, but the TL;DR is that this is a phone with flagship specs that does a good job of nailing the basics. It offers great battery life, a big screen with an impressively high claimed peak brightness of 4,500 nits, and a good camera. There’s also wireless charging support, which was missing on the OnePlus 11, and a better IP rating for dust and water resistance.

Otherwise, the OnePlus 12 has many of the specs you’d expect from a flagship smartphone in 2024. It’s built around a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, with OnePlus’ proprietary Trinity Engine software and a large vapor chamber-based cooling system that’s designed to extract the maximum amount of performance from the chip. Inside, you’ll find a 5,400mAh battery that can be charged at up to 80W in North America and 100W in Europe. It’ll also do 50W wireless charging with the company’s proprietary AirVOOC standard, though regular Qi chargers max out at 15W, and there’s no sign of Qi2 here.

The OnePlus 12’s 6.82-inch display has a 1440p resolution display with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz, and around the back of the phone, there’s a triple-camera setup consisting of a main 50-megapixel sensor, a 48-megapixel ultrawide, and a 64-megapixel telephoto with a 3x optical zoom. Available colors include black and green, and either way, you get four years of Android updates and five years of security patches.

Unfortunately, there’s no sign of the 24GB RAM and 1TB storage variant of the OnePlus 12 that the company announced for the Chinese market; in the US and EU, its RAM tops out at 16GB, and storage tops out at 512GB. 

Alongside the flagship 12 comes the step-down OnePlus 12R, the first time one of these R-series devices has been released outside of China and India. The phone has slightly lower specs than the OnePlus 12 across the board, which is reflected in its more affordable $499.99 starting price. It’s still powered by a flagship Qualcomm processor, although it’s last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 rather than this year’s Gen 3; it’s still got an IP rating for dust and water resistance, but it’s IP64 rather than IP65; it’s still got 80W wired fast charging (100W in Europe), but there’s no 50W wireless charging; and you only get three years of Android updates and four years of patches. You do get a 5,500mAh battery in the 12R, however, which is a slightly higher capacity than the OnePlus 12’s.

Naturally, its screen and cameras are also lower-specced. It has a lower resolution 6.78-inch 1264p 120Hz display, and the rear camera configuration includes a two-megapixel macro camera instead of a 3x telephoto, alongside a 50-megapixel main and eight-megapixel ultrawide. The OnePlus 12R comes in blue and gray.

Finally, OnePlus is also releasing a third-generation pair of true wireless earbuds: the OnePlus Buds 3. The earbuds come equipped with active noise cancellation and OnePlus says they’ll also analyze the shape of the wearer’s ear canal and use this to tweak their ANC. Battery life is rated at up to 6.5 hours from the earbuds with ANC on or 10 hours with it turned off, rising to 28 and 44 hours, respectively, when combined with the case.

Other OnePlus Buds 3 features include support for the LHDC 5.0 codec for higher-quality Bluetooth streaming if your phone supports it, an IP55 rating for sweat resistance, and multipoint support for connecting to multiple devices simultaneously. The earbuds go on open sale on February 5th in the US, when they’ll cost $99.99. In Europe, they’ll cost €99 / £99 and will go on sale February 13th.

Meanwhile, the OnePlus 12 will ship on February 6th in the US and Europe. The entry-level 12GB / 256GB model will retail for $799.99 (€949 / £849), while 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage costs $899.99 (€1099 / £999). Finally, the OnePlus 12R starts at $499.99 for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage (this model isn’t releasing in Europe), rising to $599.99 (€699 / £649) for 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It’ll ship on February 13th in the US and Europe.