I love your phones OnePlus, but I’m not on team XL

OnePlus is currently in the process of unleashing its latest and greatest flagship smartphone, the OnePlus 13, onto the world stage. The handset is already available within the company’s domestic market of China, with a global roll-out confirmed for January. In other words, North American OnePlus fans need only wait a few more weeks for the product to land on store shelves.

By all accounts, the OnePlus 13 is shaping up to be a compelling piece of kit jammed packed with high-tech hardware. The company is talking a big game with this year’s OxygenOS 15, as well, which is the Android 15-based software skin that the product will ship within Western markets. Smoother animations, new AI tools, and a unique Open Canvas take on multitasking are top billing when it comes to OnePlus’ latest take on the mobile software experience.

So far, I like just about everything I’m seeing, save for one gripe in particular: the phone is only available in a single, unwieldy 6.82-inch size class. For fans of large-screen smartphones, this is perhaps an ideal form factor. Unfortunately for compact phone aficionados like myself, OnePlus doesn’t offer a non-XL sized model to fall back on. This is hardly a OnePlus-specific issue within the industry, of course. But in the wake of the more compact-sized Google Pixel 9 Pro, I can’t help but wish for a similarly shrunken-down OnePlus 13 to call my own.

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The OnePlus 13 is officially set to makes its global debut in January

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Smartphones are getting bigger, but my hands certainly aren’t

Something feels ‘just right’ when I’m using a compact handset

OnePlus

Over the past several years, smartphones have grown in size at a staggering rate. At launch, the original 3.5-inch iPhone was considered a large-screen device, and the original 5.2-inch Galaxy Note was dismissed as too large to achieve mainstream appeal. In hindsight, we can see a clear consumer preference for spacious display panels. However, I firmly believe that once we surpassed the 6-inch threshold, we well and truly entered into unwieldy territory.

In my personal experience, I find the 6-to-6.2-inch size class to strike the best balance between comfortability and a display large enough to consume content on regularly. I struggle with the perennial issue of falling in love with any number of new high-end 6.8-inch phones, only to succumb to frustration when I inevitably start performing finger gymnastics.

With the recent release of the Pixel 9 lineup of handsets, Google went out of its way to offer the full-blown Pro experience in both standard and XL form factors. Similarly, Apple provides a non-Max iPhone Pro model, which satisfies my itch for high-end technology in a more compact class. These devices are still relatively large when compared to flagship phones from a few years ago, but I’ll take what I can get. I bring these competing handsets up as they provide OnePlus with a template to draw inspiration for a theoretical next-generation handset.

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Unsurprisingly, the OnePlus 13 is an absolute unit

The phone’s 6.82-inch display is expansive, and its 6,000mAh battery cell is downright gargantuan

Of course, there are merits to shipping a smartphone the size of the OnePlus 13. Aside from providing a much larger canvas for enjoying content, there’s no denying the physics of the situation. Flagship smartphones have ballooned in footprint to accommodate more advanced optics, larger battery packs, and more thermally demanding chipsets.

There’s a reason why Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra, Google’s Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro Max are all similarly gargantuan handsets. Additionally, as larger mobile displays become more common, it becomes more expensive to source smaller panels of equal flagship quality.

With the OnePlus 13, the company is leveraging the internal real estate provided by an XL-sized chassis. The phone’s 6,000 mAh battery is downright massive, and it runs the powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite processor from Qualcomm. The 6.82-inch OLED display is top-of-the-line as well, with a sharp 3168 x 1440 pixel resolution and a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate.

The phone’s battery size would have to be reduced in order to squeeze into a smaller frame, and its high-end SOC would thermally throttle due to having less room to breathe. Competing hardware manufacturers offer non-XL flagships with this trade-off in mind, and they do so to provide an option that satisfies small-phone enthusiasts like myself.

Overall, I’m incredibly impressed with the OnePlus 13 thus far. With regard to hardware specifications, OnePlus has left no stone unturned. I’m also particularly fond of the company’s decision to prioritize user interface fluidity in this year’s accompanying software package.

I’ll once again (begrudgingly) accept the trade-off of a phone I can barely fit into my pocket, but it’s a shame that I have to do so. Both Google and Apple have proven that a full-fledged flagship handset can be fit into a more compact package, and so I anxiously await the day OnePlus decides to once again never settle.

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