This new smartphone wants to make flagship photos on a smaller budget possible

OnePlus has amply demonstrated over the past 14 years that it can make good camera phones. 

But in recent years, the parent company has ended OnePlus's partnership with camera manufacturer Hasselblad and wants to market the phones primarily as top-tier performance and gaming devices anyway. 

Our review of the OnePlus 15 last year showed that image quality suffers as a result.

New OnePlus phone aims to catch up on camera quality

But now the OnePlus 16 has arrived, although in Western countries it is only available as an import, for example from our review unit provider TradingShenzhen starting at US$ 877.

It also aims to impress more with its camera system again: There is a 200-megapixel main camera with an acceptable aperture of f/1.6, supported by a 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera.

There is also a telephoto camera, likewise with 50 megapixels, which boasts optical image stabilization and enables up to 120x zoom - although anything above 3x is only hybrid zoom.

Decent selfies, less-than-ideal exposure

The selfie camera also offers 50 megapixels, and selfies look well lit and capture even finer details well, but bright areas can sometimes be blown out.

Overall, the main camera takes detailed photos, and in this respect the phone is hardly inferior to more expensive handsets. However, some images show odd blurring in places when enlarged. In very low light, the subjects are still clearly recognizable, but there are better camera systems in this regard too.

Zooming up to 120x

A series of zoom shots shows us how well the phone takes photos at greater distances. 

Up to 10x zoom, the images still look quite natural, but beyond that, AI processing becomes quite heavy-handed, which is also apparent from the image brightness. 

The images are then just about usable on a smartphone, but anyone viewing them on a larger display will be disappointed by the poor quality.

The OnePlus 16's camera system can't quite keep up with today's top phones, but it delivers very respectable image quality for everyday use at a significantly lower price.

You can find out more about the latest OnePlus phone in our in-depth review of the OnePlus 16.