There have been lots of hype around OnePlus new affordable phone - OnePlus Nord. A phone that promises a lot with a relatively smaller price. The new OnePlus Nord was rumored to offer a similar Android experience as any premium phone probably would provide, but at a lower price. The OnePlus Nord hasn't skipped an essential ingredient of a successful phone - a bright AMOLED display, a bigger battery, and multiple cameras. With its other series elevated to the flagship-tier, consumers were asking for a budget-friendly phone for many years, and now, we finally have it.

The phone falls into the sub Rs. 30,000 category and needed something to compete with the same category phones like Vivo's X50 series and Realme's X3. OnePlus Nord is the start of more budget-oriented series, and the company had established this even from the design and feel of its new phone's box. Instead of its typical red long boxes, the phone comes in a relatively compact black box with a large branding name on top of it.

Inside the box, you will find a new silicone case, red Type-c cable, 30T charger, and a SIM eject pin. The OnePlus Nord is much lighter than it looks like, and this is something you might notice even when holding it for the first time. The phone has a glossy finish look with a marble blue color. The camera cutout in the display and the positioning of the rear camera to the left is similar to how Realme X50 5G has placed their camera system.

OnePlus Nord has an AMOLED display with a 6.44-inch display and a Full HD+ resolution and 90Hz refresh rate. You also get an in-display fingerprint sensor, which works well. The OnePlus Nord features a Snapdragon 765G octa-core SoC. The phone is available in three variants - with 8GBRAM/128GB storage, the 12GBRAM/256GB storage, and an India exclusive variant with 6GBRAM/64GB storage.

The phone has a 4,115mAh battery which supports Warp charge 30T fast charging. Other features include NFC, dual-SIM support, and dual-band Wi-Fi. The rear camera is of 48-megapixel with optical image stabilization. The other cameras on the rear side are an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 5-megapixel depth camera lens.

Would you believe it? The unlocked version of the S7 Edge is finally getting its first taste of Nougat! Although it has been more than four months since all carrier versions of the two devices first started to receive Android N, the unlocked version was kept out of the loop for some unknown reason. Theoretically, the update should have actually arrived faster on the unlocked version like it does everywhere else, but that doesn't happen to Samsung phones in America quite clearly.

The good news is that it's finally out there, heading towards your unfortunate and outdated S7 Edge as you read this, in the form of a massive OTA update. The bad news is that it's late enough to be too early for an update to Android O! Considering these are 2016 flagships from Samsung that we are talking about, it would be safe to say that if you plan to buy the Galaxy S8 in the US and get updates too, you better pledge your allegiance to one of the networks. By the way, if you are wondering why the S7 isn't mentioned on this list, then that's because Samsung hasn't released the Nougat 7.0 update for the flat screen variant yet...

Head over to our firmware section to find all the latest available updates for your Samsung smartphones and tablets.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)