An awesome telephone, if pictures is not a precedence

In case you’re studying this overview, there’s an opportunity you’ve come to it with some confusion. Didn’t OnePlus already launch a brand new flagship telephone this yr, and wasn’t it referred to as the OnePlus 13? The reply is sure to each these questions. So, what provides? Nicely, over the previous couple of years, OnePlus has been working to shorten the hole between when its telephones debut in China and once they’re accessible in the remainder of the world. This yr, the OnePlus 15 arrives in North America just some quick weeks after its preliminary October 27 launch. And prefer it did with the leap between the OP3 and OP5, OnePlus is skipping the OP14 due to the quantity 4 and its unfortunate affiliation in Chinese language tradition.

With that cleared up, you would possibly assume the OnePlus 15 suffers from following too quickly after its predecessor. I’m joyful to report it provides some clear upgrades over the OP13, together with a sooner processor and an absurdly large battery. What it doesn’t do, nonetheless, is change the OnePlus formulation — for higher and worse.

Pricing and availability

Because of the federal authorities shutdown, the OnePlus 15 doesn’t have a US launch date but. The corporate had hoped to start promoting the telephone beginning at present, November 13, however the telephone has but to acquire the required clearance.

“As is the case with each smartphone producer, the US’ Federal Communications Fee certifies OnePlus gadgets earlier than they’re offered within the US. Because of the federal government shutdown, machine certifications have been delayed,” Spenser Clean, OnePlus North America’s head of promoting and communications, advised Engadget.

“Subsequently, US gross sales for the OnePlus 15 will probably be postponed till they’ve been secured. The OnePlus 15 has already completed all of the required checks from the FCC’s acknowledged labs and the certification utility has been formally submitted. We’re hopeful that approvals may be generated shortly and consequently, we are able to deliver the OnePlus 15 to our clients within the U.S. expeditiously.”

There’s additionally some uncertainty round pricing. On launch, OnePlus plans to supply two variations of the OnePlus 15. The bottom mannequin, with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, will value $900. The corporate can even promote a 16GB/512GB variant that can value $1,000. Nevertheless, OnePlus warns the worth of each fashions is “topic to alter on account of present market circumstances.”

{Hardware} and show

The OnePlus 15 is a good telephone with a boring, spinoff design. It borrows its visible id from the OnePlus 13s and 13T, a pair of smaller, 6.32-inch telephones OnePlus launched in India and China this previous spring. There’s no two methods about it, in making its new flagship look extra like these gadgets, OnePlus has on the identical time made it look extra like final yr’s iPhone 16 Professional.

It’s a disgrace. The design of the OnePlus 13 was one of many issues my co-worker Sam Rutherford praised that phone for, and it’s one thing I appreciated about it too. The 15 simply seems to be generic, even when there are just a few good touches. For instance, the sand storm shade has a pleasant, ceramic-like really feel to it. One different spectacular facet of the design is how skinny OnePlus has managed to maintain the 15 whereas including an enormous 7,300mAh battery. At 0.31 inches thick, the sand storm variant is barely barely fatter than the 0.29-inch thick Galaxy S25 FE I lately reviewed, which has a extra modest 4,900mAh battery (the 2 different OP15 colorways, infinite black and extremely violet, are listed as barely thicker at 0.32 inches).

Now, should you’re a longtime OnePlus fan, I want to say the 15 doesn’t have the signature Alert Slider discovered on the corporate’s earlier telephones. I do know what you’re considering, did OnePlus get rid of a fan favourite function so as to add an AI button? The reply is each sure and no. The primary time you faucet the Plus Key, OxygenOS will immediate you to make it a shortcut for one in every of eight features. Naturally, the default possibility is to make use of the button together with the corporate’s newish Thoughts Area AI hub, however you can also bind different features to the Plus Key, together with the outdated Alert Slider performance. Even when it’s one other factor that’s spinoff of the iPhone, I like the pliability the Plus Key provides.

Individually, OnePlus has gone with a unique display screen this time round. The OP15 provides a 6.78-inch AMOLED show with a 1,272 x 2,772 decision. The brand new display screen is each smaller and fewer dense than the one discovered on the OnePlus 13, which was 6.82 inches large and had a 1,440 x 3,168 decision. It’s additionally sooner, providing a 165Hz refresh charge in choose video games, up from 120Hz on the sooner mannequin. OnePlus advised me it went with the decrease decision show as a result of there’s no OLED producer making QHD panels that quick but. I’ll have extra to say in regards to the show within the efficiency part, however for now I’ll say the OP15’s display screen is without doubt one of the greatest elements of utilizing the telephone. It’s dense sufficient to make textual content and pictures look sharp, and with as much as 1,800 nits of brightness accessible, it’s straightforward to see and use even in harsh daylight.

Cameras

OnePlus and Hasselblad ended their partnership in September, and the OP15 marks the debut of the corporate’s new DetailMax imaging engine. I’ll get to the software program in a second. First, OnePlus has as soon as once more gone with a major digicam system constructed round three 50-megapixel sensors. What’s totally different this time round are the lenses. Two of them are barely slower than their counterparts on the OnePlus 13. The principle digicam now has an f/1.8 aperture lens, down from the f/1.6 glass discovered on final yr’s mannequin. On the identical time, OnePlus has gone with an f/2.8 lens for the telephoto digicam. For comparability, the OP13 had an f/2.6 lens for distant photographs. The excellent news is each cameras nonetheless include optical picture stabilization (OIS).

Broadly, the OP15 suffers from the identical downside its predecessor did. Most pictures look good — generally nice even — however they don’t come out as good as what you would possibly snap with the most recent telephones from Apple, Google or Samsung. The distinction is most noticeable in nighttime and low-light pictures the place the OP15 can generally battle to eke out shadow element. It would additionally fully miss a shot as a result of it used too gradual of a shutter pace. I generally noticed comparable leads to daytime pictures in conditions the place the corporate’s excessive dynamic vary algorithm would get tripped up by harsh lighting. Particularly, the photographs had overly lifted shadows and unnatural highlights, leading to pictures that look flat with poor distinction.

I additionally want the OP15 had a greater telephoto digicam. It’s not dangerous by any means, however after seeing what the Pixel 10 Pro can do with its 5x zoom, any telephone with a 3x telephoto doesn’t really feel particular. The restrictions of the OP15’s {hardware} is particularly noticeable whenever you attempt to push the digicam past its most optical zoom. OnePlus says the digicam provides 7x lossless zoom, however in my testing, I discovered there was a delicate drop in image high quality above 6x. At 10x and past, there’s very noticeable pixel smearing.

There are two areas the place the OP15’s cameras impress. Throughout each stills and video, it does an important job of measuring shade temperature and guaranteeing photographs come out true to life. Much more spectacular is the telephone’s capability to seize a burst of pictures at 10 fps, up from 6 fps on the OP13. In case you’ve learn one in every of my critiques earlier than, you’ve most likely seen I take pleasure in photographing the cats in my neighborhood, and no telephone has made that job as straightforward because the OP15.

Because it’s already wintery in Toronto, I wasn’t capable of take a look at the OP15 new underwater digicam mode. However should you stay in a hotter local weather, the function is designed to make it simpler to snap pictures within the water by briefly turning the OP15’s bodily buttons into digicam controls. That is additionally pretty much as good as any time to say that OnePlus has shored up the OP15’s waterproofing. The telephone is now rated IP68 towards water and mud, and carries IP69 and IP69K safety towards pressurized water at as much as 176 levels Fahrenheit.

Efficiency and battery life

The OP15 is the primary telephone in North America to ship with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and as you may most likely guess, it’s a efficiency powerhouse. In Geekbench’s processor suite, the OP15 put up a single-core rating of three,696 and a multi-core mark of 11,187. That places it in choose firm with the iPhone Air and its A19 Professional chipset, which in our testing had a slight edge in single-core efficiency however didn’t carry out almost as properly within the multi-core suite (seemingly on account of thermal limitations). In real-world use, I attempted my greatest to discover a recreation or utility that might journey up the OP15, however between its new Snapdragon chipset and the 16GB of RAM that got here in my unit, the telephone dealt with every little thing with ease.

It’s laborious to explain how clean the OnePlus 15 feels relative to different telephones I’ve used lately. Each swipe and scroll feels almost instantaneous. I believe that’s a byproduct of the OP15’s devoted contact response chip, which samples the display screen at 3,200Hz. Talking of the show, that 165Hz refresh charge I discussed on the high is extra of a forward-looking function proper now. As issues stand, there are solely seven video games that may render at 165 fps. A type of, PUBG, does so via body interpolation. So except you’re an avid Name of Obligation Cell or Conflict of Clans participant, you received’t discover that good thing about the OP15’s display screen, but. Issues might change in time, particularly as extra OEMs deliver 165Hz shows to their telephones. For now, the OP15 continues to be an important gaming telephone, nevertheless it has but to stay as much as its true potential.

As a lot efficiency because the OnePlus 15 provides, what’s extra spectacular is its 7,300mAh battery. It’s the results of a brand new expertise the corporate calls Silicon NanoStack. It allowed OnePlus to make a denser battery and one it claims will age extra gracefully over time, due to a design that retains greater than 80 p.c of its well being after 4 years. Clearly, I haven’t had the OP15 lengthy sufficient to check that declare, however what I can say is that it provides large battery life out of the field. On our native video rundown take a look at, it posted a time of 38 hours and half-hour, which is eight hours longer than the OnePlus 13, the earlier document holder.

Simply as spectacular is how shortly the OP15 can cost. With the included 80W SUPERVOOC adapter, the battery can go from lifeless to full in about 40 minutes. The one draw back of how OnePlus has approached charging is that the telephone does not assist the Qi2 commonplace. It might wirelessly cost at 50W, however you will want to purchase the corporate’s proprietary AIRVOOC magnetic puck.

Software program

When he reviewed the OnePlus 13 in February, Engadget’s Sam Rutherford praised OnePlus for its restrained AI strategy. Sadly, no firm seems proof against the expertise’s pull at this level, and within the months since, OnePlus has begun integrating extra AI options into OxygenOS. Fortunately, a lot of these are both straightforward to disregard or situationally helpful.

First, there’s Thoughts Area, which is functionally much like Nothing’s Essential Space. You possibly can both faucet the Plus Key (if it’s configured to be used with Thoughts Area) or swipe up on the touchscreen with three fingers to save lots of a screenshot to the hub. From there, the OP15’s built-in LLM will summarize the picture, and you may ask the mannequin questions on it. It’s additionally potential to save lots of voice memos to the hub, and OnePlus provides just a few different AI instruments there, together with one for scanning paperwork. All of those work properly, and like I mentioned, in the event that they’re not your factor, they’re straightforward to disregard.

It’s been just a few years since I’ve used OxygenOS, so it was a pleasing shock to be taught it stays one of many extra enticing and tasteful Android skins available on the market. A standout is among the customized animations OnePlus has baked into the OS to intensify the pace of the telephone. I additionally discover OnePlus has top-of-the-line organized fast settings menus. There are simply sufficient customization choices there to make it really feel highly effective, however not sufficient to overwhelm.

One space the place OnePlus might do higher is software program assist. The corporate has pledged to supply the OP15 with 4 years of software program updates and 6 years of safety patches. That’s worse than each Google and Samsung, which have dedicated to supporting their newest telephones for seven years.

Wrap-up

In utilizing the OnePlus 15, I used to be ceaselessly reminded of the final OnePlus telephone I reviewed, the OnePlus 7 Pro. On the time, it was the corporate’s most costly machine ever, coming in on the identical $750 value because the iPhone XR and Galaxy S10e. The attraction of that telephone was its speedy Snapdragon 855 processor and the very fact it was one of many first smartphones with a 90Hz AMOLED display screen. It was additionally the primary OnePlus telephone with a digicam that was extra than simply serviceable.

All these years later, the attraction of the OP15 feels comparable. It’s a telephone for many who worth pace over every little thing else. The difficult factor about this telephone is judging its worth when its value might change tomorrow. As I discussed earlier, within the US the OP15 will begin at $900, with OnePlus warning pricing for each fashions might “change on account of present market circumstances.” At $1,000, the 16GB mannequin is a compelling different to the Pixel 10 Professional XL, providing a more recent processor, extra storage and a considerably larger battery.

Right here’s the factor: Google has already aggressively discounted the whole Pixel 10 lineup, and until Black Friday, you will get the Professional XL for $899 — $100 lower than the 16GB OnePlus 15. For most individuals, I feel that’s the play, given each the Professional and Professional XL have the higher telephoto digicam and Google has promised to assist all of its newest telephones for seven years. That mentioned, should you’re okay with a worse digicam total, the OP15 has loads going for it, and supplied OnePlus can efficiently navigate an unsure tariff regime, it would find yourself not simply top-of-the-line telephones of 2025 however a lot of 2026 too.