The OnePlus 13 is one of my favorite smartphones of the year, in part because of a surprisingly excellent camera that — while perhaps not as reliable as the best from Google — can really impress in its best moments. Much of that performance comes from the company’s partnership with Hasselblad, employing the camera company’s color science to help make something that stood out from the typical ultra-processed, contrast-less landscape. Unfortunately, that relationship is coming to an end.
OnePlus CEO Pete Lau published a letter to the company’s forums late last night following rumors from earlier this year that the brand’s next flagship would indeed leave its Hasselblad-branded photo processing behind. After five generations — having begun with the OnePlus 9 series in 2021 — OnePlus is looking to move to its own imaging system. Lau doesn’t describe it as a dissolution of the partnership as much as a mission accomplished, even referring to the company’s time spent with Hasselblad as a “planned chapter complete.”
If we are in for a new era of OnePlus cameras, it does sound like the brand is, at the very least, keeping its signature contrast-y look for a new generation. The “OnePlus DetailMax Engine,” as its calling its new imaging system, is being built from the ground up to focus on clarity and detail, with Lau saying the push comes from discussions with the company’s customer base. It’s also coming with part of a new focus on computational imaging, which — alongside a pot shot at Samsung over its relatively-forgotten moon controversy — Lau says can deliver “unmatched depth and realism.”
Obviously, it’s impossible to tell how this new imaging system will stand up to the last couple of generations of Hasselblad-branded cameras; while devices like the OnePlus 13R can take decent-enough photos, the differences really do shine through during post-processing. We shouldn’t have to wait too much longer for an official announcement of the OnePlus 15, though; typically, the brand announces its devices for China late in the year before a CES-timed arrival everywhere else.
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Meanwhile, Oppo — the parent company of OnePlus — recently re-upped its own partnership with Hasselblad, striking yet another difference between the two Android OEMs.
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