OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite vs OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite: What’s new?

OnePlus has officially announced the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite, but how does the affordable phone compare to last year’s Nord CE 3 Lite? 

Keep reading to discover all the updates coming to the Nord line with the Nord CE 4 Lite. 

The OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite includes a water resistance rating 

One specification that was missing from the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite was an IP rating, leaving us hesitant to take the phone too close to water. 

Thankfully, OnePlus has included an IP rating of IP54 this time around. The rating is lower than many flagship phones, but it’s still reassuring to have. 

Otherwise, the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite is a similar size and shape to the Nord CE 3 Lite, with the biggest design difference being the new blue and silver colourways replacing the green and grey ones on the Nord CE 3 Lite. 

The OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite has a much brighter display 

The display has seen a significant upgrade on the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite, with OnePlus introducing an AMOLED panel with a peak brightness of 2100 nits that uses the same illumination technology as the OnePlus 11. 

The new screen also supports OnePlus’ Aqua Touch feature which is designed to improve touch accuracy when the display is wet. 

The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite, on the other hand, featured an LCD display with a peak brightness of 680 nits, which we found to be fine in sunlight but not particularly competitive. 

The OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite has twice the storage 

It might surprise you to hear that OnePlus hasn’t bothered to update the processor in the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite. Instead, the phone is powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G processor and Adreno 619 GPU as its predecessor with the same 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM. 

The newer model does, however, pack double the amount of storage. The phone now comes with 256GB of storage as standard instead of 128GB. This storage is also expandable with a MicroSD card. 

The OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite features a new camera 

One feature that seems less cut and dry is the new 50-megapixel camera and 2-megapixel depth sensor. 

The sensor packs fewer megapixels than the 108-megapixel sensor in the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite and the camera array is missing the 2-megapixel macro lens. While this sounds like a downgrade on paper, megapixels aren’t everything. 

We found the 108-megapixel camera on the Nord CE 3 Lite to be decent when shooting in daylight with okay detail and no overly saturated colours, though the colour balance could be off at times. However, low-light photography was a different story, with the camera struggling to capture much detail at night. We also found the tiny macro lens to be essentially useless so we’re not sad to see that go. 

It’s tough to say whether the 50-megapixel sensor on the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite will be any better without testing it, but we’re hopeful it might be an improvement. 

The OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite supports faster charging 

Finally, the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite has a slightly bigger battery than its predecessor. 

While we can’t say how that’ll translate to real-world use without having tested it ourselves, we can say that the Nord CE 4 Lite supports faster charging with 80W SuperVOOC support compared to the 67W SuperVOOC charging on the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite. This means you should be able to charge the phone quicker before heading out the door. 

The Nord CE 4 Lite also supports 5W reverse charging via USB Type-C cable. Sadly, neither phone includes support for wireless charging or reverse wireless charging, though it isn’t a huge shock that some features are absent at this price.