OnePlus 12 revealed; periscope camera, Alert Slider moved, global launch in late January

Ben Schoon | Nov 27 2023 - 7:18 am PT

Ahead of its debut in China next week, the OnePlus 12 has been officially revealed with three new colors options, a periscope camera, and an Alert Slider that has been relocated.

The OnePlus 12 is quickly shaping up to be one of the brand’s biggest flagship launches in a while, but you wouldn’t know that just looking at the design. In official images and teasers that OnePlus has released today, changed to the phone’s overall look are minimal, with a design aesthetic that’s remarkably similar to the OnePlus 11.

Among the changes on the surface are the colors, where OnePlus 12 will be available in three color options as confirmed by a teaser video and images shared by multiple leaks including @MysteryLupin. A black model, a white model, and also a green option that has a unique texture. The special variant is called “Flowy Emerald” and is inspired by “the untamed beauty found in nature, where unbounded paths and infinite possibilities reign supreme,” OnePlus says.

Beyond that, the device also adopts a new periscope zoom camera, the second ever in a OnePlus device. The new lens only enables a 3x optical zoom level, though, just like the OnePlus Open that launched in October. That’s down from the 5x-10x often found in periscope lenses used by other brands such as Google, Apple, and Samsung.

Meanwhile, one big change to the outside of the OnePlus 12 is that it will move the Alert Slider to the other side of the device. The Alert Slider, an iconic feature of the brand’s devices, was removed briefly in the OnePlus 10T for the sake of antennas, but with its latest push for better signal, OnePlus has found a way around removing the feature.

In an email, OnePlus explains that relocating the Alert Slider on OnePlus 12 enables the use of a new integrated antenna which will have better performance, especially when the phone is held in landscape orientation.

OnePlus says:

The repositioning of the Alert Slider presents a challenge in ensuring optimal antenna signal strength on the same side of the phone. To tackle this issue, OnePlus utilizes Ultra-compact Full-band Antenna technology and industry-first Alert Slider Antenna Integration technology to minimize the space occupied by the Alert Slider to the greatest extent possible. As a result, a balance between better antenna signal performance and the presence of the Alert Slider is achieved on the OnePlus 12. According to the lab test data by OnePlus, the gaming antenna signal can be improved by 3dB, with the game latency reduced by 15%.

For longtime OnePlus users, though, we suspect this change might not be very well-received as it breaks the muscle memory of using the Slider. In any case, we’re just glad to see it kept around.

The OnePlus 12 will launch in China on December 5, and should make its way to the global market in January. According to Engadget, we’ll get an official global launch date on December 15, but Android Authority, along with a well-known OnePlus tipster, uncovered evidence of a January 24 launch date for global markets.