Recently, I got the phone as a gift from my wife. Before this I was using Realme Narzo 30 Pro 5G in the past 2 years. And I must say I was completely satisfied with that phone. It has reliable performance, a good screen and produces great sound. That Realme phone I bought in Rs. 15000 after discount during sale the selling price was Rs. 17500 at that time.
So, the first impression of the new Oneplus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G was it looks great in design. I always wanted a Oneplus phone but never got a chance to buy one, due to one or another reason. The flat sides and a flat back side gave me a completely different feel compared to the old phone. The screen is larger and better. It felt good to hold in hand.
It comes preloaded with Android 13, and the Oxygen OS is a good escape from Realme interface. The display is smooth and responsive. The touch is overly sensitive.
But I did not like the sound of my Apple Music player from it. The sound was not soothing at first. As I had Dolby Atmos in my Realme Narzo 30 Pro 5G. I was used to listening to soothing voices and music. but in Oneplus phone there is no Dolby integration. It uses some proprietary tech named Dirac Audio tuner. Now I am a serious music listener and cannot accept even a tiny variation in my sound. So, I hated it in the first few days.
Then after keeping it using for 4-5 days and after some tuning and adjustments, I found a satisfactory sound output. But still it is not as good as it was on the old phone. I am getting used to it as days pass, but sometimes for old music, which is not HiFi, it produces very sharp notes on high frequency and starts irritating me. I would suggest if you are serious about the sound of music then this phone is not for you. The music quality is good, but it is different from Dolby setup.
The battery backup is particularly good, I need to charge it only once in 2 days.
Another issue I faced is with Bluetooth usage. May be the Realme one was much better than usual. Haha.
My old phone used to get connected to my car system automatically and starts playing the last stopped song in Apple Music. And it also has great signal strength. My home theater on the second floor flat used to get connected automatically as soon as my car reached below my building.
The Oneplus Bluetooth is giving lot of issues. It does not connect or start playing songs automatically. If for any reason you disconnect a Bluetooth device, and then try to reconnect later then it will never connect unless the target Bluetooth device is restarted. This I have checked with my home theater and the car system, Also the signal strength is very weak. Even if you put some cover over phone which blocks the line of sight of the Bluetooth device, the sound starts breaking. I tried it multiple times with my car system, and home theater.
Other than that, I am happy with the device. I am now used to the sound output of it, for a few songs it is bad, but for new HD/HiFi songs it is good. Bluetooth is the only thing that I am worried about. I switch between Bluetooth devices frequently and it is lazy.
