OnePlus announces new 5G mid-range smartphone with Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset

OnePlus has shared initial details for its next mid-range smartphone. Surprisingly, the company has elected to release the device on April Fools' Day, albeit initially only in India. As the screenshots below show, OnePlus has already confirmed that the Nord CE 4 will debut at 18:30 IST, which converts to 13:00 UTC.

Seemingly, the Nord CE 4 will succeed the Nord CE 3 Lite, which arrived last April and still sells for approximately $255 on Amazon. Nonetheless, the inclusion of a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 SoC promises considerable performance uplifts. While we have not tested the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 yet, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 is 37% faster than the Snapdragon 695 inside the Nord CE 3 Lite.

For reference, Qualcomm bases the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 on a 4 nm node and combines four ARM Cortex-A715 CPU cores with four more Cortex-A510 CPU cores that are clocked at 2.63 GHz and 1.8 GHz, respectively. Officially, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 has a 15% faster CPU than the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, as well as a 50% more potent GPU.  However, we would recommend reserving judgment until independent Nord CE 4 reviews are published. Unfortunately, other details remain unknown for now, including when the smartphone will be available outside India.