OnePlus 11 comes to the US with killer $699 price tag

After the OnePlus 11’s debut in China last month, the phone is finally making it to US shores. Preorders open today, and it ships on February 16. The phone’s US price is $100 lower than last year’s release, which may help it out in the currently terrible smartphone economy. The OnePlus 11 starts at $699, or $100 less than the base model Galaxy S23 that was announced just last week and $200 less than the OnePlus 10.

OnePlus is wiping the floor with Samsung on pricing this year. Besides its lower price, the OnePlus 11 is a higher-tier device than the base model Galaxy S23, with better specs and more features. Compared to the S23, the OnePlus 11 has a way bigger screen (6.7-inches versus 6.1 inches), a much bigger battery (5000 mAh versus 3900 mAh), Wi-Fi 7 support (which Samsung doesn’t offer at any price), and dramatically faster charging (80 W versus 25 W). Samsung’s similarly specced Galaxy S23 Ultra costs $1,200 and still would not cleanly win a spec sheet battle against OnePlus’ $700 device.

OnePlus did make some cuts to get the price down. The device is only rated “IP64” for dust and water resistance. That’s the usual amount of dust resistance, but while something like IP68 would be good for total submersion in water, IP64 is only good for “splashes of water,” and it would certainly be nice to have better water resistance.

The other cut is wireless charging—there is none. OnePlus hopes you won’t mind, given its industry-leading wired quick-charging system, which on this phone in the US is 80 W. The company manages 100 W internationally, but 80 W will still charge the phone in around half an hour.

Other specs include a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage, 8GB of RAM, and a 50 MP main camera. There’s also an $800 version with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of much faster UFS 4.0 storage. It gets OnePlus’ new flagship update plan of four years of major OS updates, but you’ll only get security updates every other month.

Listing image by OnePlus