OnePlus 11R Solar Red: Never Settle for Anything But Red

It might be perhaps the most famous color in the world in terms of sheer dramatic effect, but red can be a tricky color for smartphones. Get the shade wrong, and the phone carrying it could end up taking the step that, according to Napoleon, separates the sublime from the ridiculous. Red phones have been with us for years, but for some reason, they have not had the sort of impact the color has had on our lives on other products. Apple is the only brand that seems to have cracked the mystique around red phones, with its Product Red range of iPhones having a very good following, although interestingly, the new iPhone 15 series comes without a Product Red variant.

OnePlus has been a brand that has been very closely associated with the color red. Many of its phones come in red packages, and its charging cable has always been red (often the way in which most people figure out that you are using a OnePlus phone). The brand has come out with red variants of its phones before, but these have generally been just limited to a change of color, with general design, hardware, and materials not being affected too much.

With the OnePlus 11R Solar Red, however, the Never Settling brand has taken its Red-dest step ever. And the results are certainly striking. Yes, this is basically a OnePlus 11R in most spec terms (more on that later), but the brand has gone well beyond just adding a different coat of paint to the device’s back.

OnePlus 11R Solar Red: Red in colour, different in texture

Unlike the red variants of previous OnePlus devices, which were essentially the same device in red, the OnePlus 11R Solar Red is cut from a very different cloth. Quite literally. The back of the OnePlus 11R Solar Red is very different from the original OnePlus 11R, which had a glass back. The red OnePlus has a textured vegan leather back, giving it a different and, we think, a more premium feel than the OnePlus 11R. You can feel the difference when you grip the phone, and when you look closely at it, you will see the granular texture that is so typically leather. Adding to the leather-y feel of the back are two rows of stitches on the right and left sides of the back. The parts of the back adjacent to the sides have got fine, diagonal lines on them.

A shiny OnePlus logo is in the middle of the back, and a bit above it is the large spherical camera unit seen in the OnePlus 11 and 11R. OnePlus has opted to keep the camera unit jet black, which makes it stand out from the red back.

This brings us to the most important aspect of the phone – the color of the back, from which the phone gets its name. OnePlus’ Solar Red is a shade of red that is not bright red or even a deep scarlet but something that is closer to brick. It is not flashy but has a pastel note, although not overwhelmingly so. And that fits right in with the OnePlus aesthetic of being classy without being loud. The use of vegan leather also means that one can use the phone without a cover, as it will not pick up smudges and scratches easily. The textured sides make it easy to grip the phone as well, and that texture also makes this the first OnePlus device we can recognize with just a glance since those sandstone-finished back days. The front and the sides are exactly the same as the original OnePlus 11R.

OnePlus 11R Solar Red: Same hardware, but with a lot more memory!

Let us get one thing straight: the OnePlus 11R Solar Red edition is basically a OnePlus 11R but with one rather significant difference. The phone has the same 6.74-inch Fluid AMOLED display with a rather odd 2772 x 1240 px resolution that is a little below quad HD but well above full HD, is powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, has the same 50-megapixel main sensor with OIS, an 8-megapixel ultrawide and a 2-megapixel macro camera arrangement on the back, and the same 5000 mAh battery with support for 100W charging and a 100W SuperVOOC charger in the box. Of course, this is a OnePlus, so it runs on OxygenOS, which remains one of the least cluttered Android skins around and comes with assurances of four years of software updates and five years of security updates. You can read our OnePlus 11R review here to get a better idea of its performance.

What is new is that the OnePlus 11R Solar Edition comes with a staggering 18 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. That makes it comfortably the most RAM-rich mainstream flagship out there (only gaming phones have as much or more). OnePlus claims that this allows you to run as many as 50 apps simultaneously on the phone as compared to 44 on its 16 GB avatar, which was already a very impressive number. Those with stopwatches might also notice that apps open 6 percent faster and that resource-hungry games like Genshin Impact also play very well. We were very impressed with the performance of the OnePlus 11R in its original avatar, and any improvement on it would be quite something! So this is clearly not just a Red OnePlus 11R but also has some added spec muscle. It is a little disheartening to see it come with OxygenOS 13 and Android 13 out of the box, though, especially as OnePlus had recently showed OxygenOS 14. This would have been a great vehicle for the OS.

OnePlus 11R Solar Red: Could have been red-der, but a terrific deal nevertheless

There are a few missed opportunities, though. The frame seems to be the same plastic one as in the OnePlus 11R, which is odd for a device with such a premium feel. It is also odd that OnePlus missed a chance to add a dash of red to the interface of the phone itself. Perhaps it could have gone for a red case in the box as well instead of the transparent one, although having a red charger would have led to ‘CMF clone’ allegations, we suspect. This is just us nitpicking, though. All said and done, OnePlus has delivered one of the best-looking phones of the year with the OnePlus 11R Solar Red. Coming after the equally impressive Marble Odyssey edition of the OnePlus 11 a few months ago, it does seem to hint at OnePlus rediscovering some of its rad design mojo, which had seemingly gone off on a vacation in recent times.

OnePlus also seems to have continued its ‘surprising price’ trend with the OnePlus 11R Solar Red. At Rs 45,999, it is priced just Rs 1,000 above the 16 GB/ 256 GB variant of the original OnePlus 11R, even though it sports different materials, more RAM, and double the storage. That makes it exceptional value for money, not just in terms of design but also in terms of specs – you cannot get a mainstream close to flagship phone with 18GB RAM at that price. It is the kind of nightmare that the likes of the Nothing Phone (2) do not need. This is hands down perhaps the best phone you can get for around Rs 45,000, and perhaps even below Rs 50,000. If you are looking for a great OnePlus device in that budget, simply say: “Gimme Red!”

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