OnePlus 11
⬤ From £729 ⬤ Oneplus.com
The cheapest smartphone in our group, OnePlus prides itself on providing flagship specifications for mid-range pricing. Here we have a triple-lens array, which interestingly has been created in collaboration with Hasselblad.
You get a 50MP main sensor, a 48MP ultrawide, and a 32MP 2x (48mm equivalent) lens, which has been specifically designed with portraits in mind – the relatively short focal length is designed to better photograph people, compared to distant subjects, something which OnePlus believes most consumers will find more important.
There is also a specific ‘Hasselblad Portrait Mode’, which is designed to recreate the look of Hasselblad XCD 30mm and 65mm lenses (1x and 2x, respectively). These are big words which are fairly hyperbolic, but they do produce reasonably pleasing results nevertheless, if sometimes struggling a little with slightly fussy outlines, particularly for non-human subjects.
We’ve got a very-well featured native camera app available here, which includes a Pro mode if you want to take greater control. While you can shoot in raw format here, you lose the ability to create shallow-depth-of-field effects. Again, shooting with the 2x lens is a way around this somewhat. Although there is a Night mode, it’s not something which can be combined with the Portrait mode.
The OnePlus 11 offers fantastic value for money, but again, you might want to skip back a generation to the OnePlus 10 Pro (the company ditched the Pro moniker for the 11 range), where you’ll find another good portrait performer – if not quite as comprehensive as the 11 offers.