After hitting a home run with the OnePlus 13 and OnePlus 13R earlier this year, OnePlus has now expanded its flagship lineup with a compact addition—the OnePlus 13s. This is almost the same phone that launched as the OnePlus 13T in China wit a couple of changes. As for the new India specific ‘s’ branding, OnePlus says it stands for a Stronger, Smarter and Smaller form factor.
I have been using the OnePlus 13s as my primary device for nearly a month now, and here is my take on how it performs in the real world.
Unboxing and Design:
There are a lot of things you can fault OnePlus for but one thing that you have to admit about the company is that they continue to provide one of the most wholesome Unboxing experiences in the market and the OnePlus 13s is no different.
The 13s comes in the same red coloured box as its siblings and the setup inside is also similar to them. After opening the box, one is greeted with a device first wrapped inside a paper sheet, followed by some paperwork, SIM ejector tool, an 80W white coloured adapter, a traditional red coloured OnePlus cable and a colour matched case.
The in-hand feel of the OnePlus 13s is very premium thanks to the full metal finish, curved edges and obviously the smaller form factor. While the phone comes with a 6.32 inch display, OnePlus says they have also worked on narrowing down the bezels to make sure the ultimate size comparable to a 6.1 inch device from other brands.
The smaller form factor means that despite the 13s boasting almost the same thickness as the OnePlus 13, it’s much easier to hold and at 186grams it’s way too light on the pocket. However, I would still like to see OnePlus reduce the size a little bit in order to make way for better one-handed usage.
Camera:
OnePlus 13s features a dual camera setup with a 50MP Sony LYT-700 primar sensor with OIS and a 50MP 2x telephoto lens. The front shooter is a 32MPP Galaxycore GC32E sensor with autofocus. While the rear camera can shoot at a maximum of 4k 60fps, the front shooter is limited to 4k at 30fps.
The primary shooter is exactly the same from the OnePlus 13R just like that device there isn’t much to complaint about for the price point with the phone taking pictures with plenty of details, true to life colour tones and reliable HDR performance.
The telephoto shooter also does the job well in most daylight scenarios with even images up to 6x being usable but anything beyond that kind of loses its sheen. In low light, the telephoto sensor can capture good pictures but they can turn out to be shaky if one is not very careful, owing to a lack of OIS.
The 32MP autofocus sensor, however, is very good addition to this setup and the results were pretty impressive in my testing with the output from this sensor even rivalling that of the OnePlus 13. The selfie shooter captures sharp images that retain facial detail and maintain contrast well without making the final image look overly processed.
Software:
OnePlus 13s runs on OxygenOS 15 based on Android 15 and the company has promised 4 years of OS updates and 6 years of security patches. While ,in my opinion, OxygenOS is already the best user experience that one can get on Android with some essential and other unnecessary AI features, OnePlus has actually went on to improve this further with a new suite of features on OnePlus 13s.
For one, the dialler app has been completely revamped to make it in tune with the rest of the UI while also adding an AI call assistant that can seamless translate calls between different languages and even summarize the conversations. Another point worth noting is that since its a system dialler, there is no alerts while recording phone calls.
An AI VoiceScribe feature is also present during WhatsApp calls now that allows users to start recording (with a sound alert), get AI summary of a conversation or even turn on captions.
There are also a number of new AI features that OnePlus is bringing with the 13s which includes AI translation, AI Search (for natural language search), AI Reframe and AI Best Frame.
Battery:
OnePlus has made only one change from the OnePlus 13T to the 13s by reducing the battery size from 6,200mAh to 5,850mAh and replacing the front 16MP shooter with a 32MP shooter (more on this later). While some people may grudge the company for this change, I am actually perfectly fine with this arrangement given that this battery is powering only a 6.32 inch display and OnePlus has also improved the battery optimization a lot compared to the OnePlus 13.
Despite using the phone as my regular driver with 5G turned on, I could easily stretch for it for over a day and into to the 1.5 dayish category. Do keep in mind, though, that this figure could be different for other users and my use case included no to very low gaming, mostly browsing the web, running social media apps, watching occasional YouTube videos and listening to songs.
With good part out of the way, I am actually extremely disappointed with the new strategy that OnePlus is employing of increasing the battery size while keeping the charging speeds low (by their standards). The 13s only supports 80W of fast charging and no support for wireless charging – which is a definite disparity compared to the OnePlus’ actual ‘flagship’ of the year.
Thoughts on Plus Key:
The OnePlus 13s is the first phone from the company to drop its iconic alert slider in favour of a new iPhone style Plus Key. But instead of offering a like for like swap with just ring profile controls, OnePlus has built in additional functionalities such as launching the voice recorder, taking a screenshot or photo, and most notably, activating AI Plus Mind.
Unfortunately, the Plus Key is not customisable yet. You can only assign one task at a time. So if you have set it to change ring profiles, you will not be able to access Plus Mind without reassigning the key.
As for Plus Mind, it is a good first step from OnePlus toward building an artificial memory system of sorts. But its current functionality is limited, and its true potential will likely only emerge with future updates.
Right now, you can only store items in AI Plus Mind by tapping the designated Plus Key. There is no option to share content directly into it, like a web article you want to revisit later. At this stage, the feature feels more like an extension of the screenshot tool, with the AI offering a brief description of what you have captured. However, there is no way to interact with the underlying model.
For instance, when I pointed the camera at my bedsheet and used the Plus Key to capture it, the AI correctly identified the colour and even recognised the design as a Mandala print. But that is where the interaction ends. You cannot ask follow up questions or explore more about Mandala prints.
Performance:
The OnePlus 13s runs on the same Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset as its elder sibling and indeed most other flagship phones launched this year. Just like its elder sibling, the 13s also comes with support for LPDDR5x RAM and UFS 4.0 storage.
As one would expect, the top of the line specifications also translate into real-world performance and the OnePlus 13s faces no issues while handling day to day tasks, multi-tasking (thanks to OnePlus’ Open Canvas) and switching between multiple apps.
I did face a lot of heating issues with the phone during the initial period but since then the problem has been more or less tapered down with a software update. That being said, the 13s does have a tendency to stay on the warmer side while running the benchmarks or during prolonged gaming sessions, not so much in day to day usage.
And finally for the benchmarks:
Antutu: OnePlus 13s garnered a score of 24,01,817 which is higher than the score I received for the OnePlus 13 but lower than the results of iQOO 13
GeekBench 6 CPU: Single core score of 2,722 and a multi-core score of 7,266
3D Mark’s Extreme Wild Life Stress Test: Best loop score of 6,086 and a lowest loop score of 4,825 with stability at an impressive 79.3%
Should you buy the OnePlus 13s?
At an effective starting price of ₹49,999, the OnePlus 13s isn’t the most perfect phone out there. It misses out on an ultra-wide-angle lens, IP68 rating, Hasselblad tuning, and OIS for the telephoto camera. It also faces stiff competition from other OnePlus offerings like the 13R and even last year’s OnePlus 12.
But where OnePlus has truly succeeded is in delivering a compact flagship that doesn’t feel like a compromise. If you’re looking for a smaller phone that’s genuinely usable with one hand, the OnePlus 13s stands out thanks to its top-tier processor, vibrant LTPO AMOLED display, feature-rich software experience, and solid battery life. The cherry on top is that OnePlus has nailed the ergonomics here with the 13s offering a lightweight form factor and perhaps the most premium in-hand feel you’ll get on any phone right now.
