With the newly announced OnePlus Nord CE 5G, OnePlus has given one of the best budget phones around a mild refresh and a significant discount, at least if you live outside the US

Today (June 10), the company unveiled this phone in a short, but meta In the course of the humorous presentation, we learned that the best parts of the Nord experience remain or have even been improved. That includes the price of the Nord CE 5G, which will be just 299 pounds (about $425) when it goes on sale within two weeks.

"CE" stands for "Core Edition," as OnePlus explained in its presentation. This means that even though this is a lower-priced phone, it remains true to OnePlus' oft-repeated mission of being "fast and smooth."

OnePlus, following feedback from its own loyal users, has taken some of the original OnePlus Nord components were removed, but the upgrades left behind are worth more than the entry price.

Here is what we know about the OnePlus Nord CE 5G since its announcement by OnePlus.

OnePlus is offering forum users the chance to pre-order the OnePlus Nord CE 5G. Pre-orders for this model will open on June 14. If you miss the pre-order window at the forum, you will have to wait until June 11 to pre-order normally at OnePlus, Amazon U.K., Three, and John Lewis, and it will go on sale on June 21.

The U.S. has been left out of the OnePlus Nord CE 5G launch, just as it missed the launch of the original OnePlus Nord last year. Eventually, OnePlus launched another phone in the U.S. (the OnePlus Nord N10 5G), and that appears to be the plan this time as well; OnePlus has already confirmed that the OnePlus Nord N200, priced under $250, will be announced soon for U.S. customers, but no official date is not known.

As noted above, the OnePlus Nord CE 5G is priced at £299. This is £80 less than the OnePlus Nord's debut price last year. Incidentally, the Google Pixel 4a 5G, another inexpensive 5G phone, sells for £499 in the UK.

The AMOLED display on the OnePlus Nord CE 5G is unchanged from the original Nord, with a size of 6.4 inches, a resolution of FHD, and a refresh rate of 90 Hz. It also offers an always-on display as before. A less positive inheritance from the original Nord is that the body is again not IP-rated, but merely "splashproof"; OnePlus typically omits the official IP rating as a way to keep down the cost of the phone.

Frighteningly, there is no alert slider on the side of the Nord CE. This distinctive OnePlus feature was present on the original, but seems to have gone elsewhere. Perhaps as an apology, however, the OnePlus added a headphone jack. This was not present on the original Nord and will be well received by users who do not yet want to pay for wireless headphones.

OnePlus has managed to reduce the thickness of the Nord CE body from 8.2 mm to 7.9 mm. While not by much, the OnePlus CE 5G is the slimmest OnePlus phone since the OnePlus 6T.

The OnePlus Nord CE 5G's main camera has been upgraded from a 48MP sensor to a 64MP sensor for more detailed photos. While it gets a better main camera sensor, it actually has two less sensors overall.

The original Nord depth and macro cameras are gone in the Nord CE, replaced by a 2MP monochrome camera to add texture to monochrome photos. Meanwhile, on the front, the ultra-wide-angle selfie camera that the original Nord boasted is gone, and the one remaining camera is a standard 16MP model.

OnePlus uses a new chipset, the Snapdragon 750G. Although a lower-class chip than the Snapdragon 765G, the silicon is 5G-compatible, and OnePlus promises a 20% increase in CPU and 10% increase in GPU, with actual performance improvements.

The chipset is new, but the memory variants remain the same, and you can choose between 8GB RAM and 128GB storage at the base price, or 12GB RAM and 256GB storage in the top model for £369 ($520). Either option has enough memory capacity for a phone of this price.

OnePlus has increased the battery capacity a bit on the Nord CE, bringing it to 4,500mAh.

The new CE phone uses the same 30W wired charging (Warp Charge 30T in OnePlus' own words), but with a slight tweak to the charging brick, it can charge 70% after 30 minutes of connection.

The Nord CE comes with Android 11, rather than the Android 10 of the original Nord, and OnePlus promises two years of OS updates and three years of security updates, a pretty generous deal for a low-cost Android phone.

We can't wait to try the Nord CE. In a way, it's a shame that some of the original OnePlus Nord's most unique features have been stripped away to make it a more orthodox smartphone. At this price, however, OnePlus threatens to upend the mid-range smartphone market.

As much as we love the Google Pixel 4a, the best budget smartphone we currently have to choose from, it offers much less hardware while being considerably more expensive (£349 in the UK) than the price OnePlus is asking for the Nord CE.

Stay tuned for our review of the OnePlus Nord CE as soon as we get our hands on it.

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