Oneplus 15 Review: A Great Phone, If Photography Isn't A Priority

If you’re reference this review, there’s a chance you’ve travel to it pinch immoderate confusion. Didn’t OnePlus already merchandise a caller flagship telephone this year, and wasn’t it called nan OnePlus 13? The reply is yes to some those questions. So, what gives? Well, complete nan past fewer years, OnePlus has been moving to shorten nan spread betwixt erstwhile its phones debut successful China and erstwhile they’re disposable successful nan remainder of nan world. This year, nan OnePlus 15 arrives successful North America conscionable a fewer short weeks aft its first October 27 release. And for illustration it did pinch nan jump betwixt nan OP3 and OP5, OnePlus is skipping nan OP14 because of nan number 4 and its unlucky relation successful Chinese culture.

With that cleared up, you mightiness deliberation nan OnePlus 15 suffers from pursuing excessively soon aft its predecessor. I’m happy to study it offers immoderate clear upgrades complete nan OP13, including a faster processor and an absurdly large battery. What it doesn’t do, however, is alteration nan OnePlus look — for amended and worse.

Pricing and availability

Due to nan national authorities shutdown, nan OnePlus 15 does not person a US merchandise day yet. The institution had hoped to statesman trading nan telephone starting today, November 13, but nan telephone has yet to get nan basal clearance.

"As is nan lawsuit pinch each smartphone manufacturer, nan United States’ Federal Communications Commission certifies OnePlus devices earlier they are sold successful nan US. As a consequence of nan authorities shutdown, instrumentality certifications person been delayed," Spenser Blank, OnePlus North America’s caput of trading and communications, told Engadget.

"Subsequently, US income for nan OnePlus 15 will beryllium postponed until they person been secured. The OnePlus 15 has already vanished each nan required tests from nan FCC’s recognized labs and nan certification exertion has been formally submitted. We are hopeful that approvals tin beryllium generated quickly and arsenic a result, we tin bring nan OnePlus 15 to our customers successful nan U.S. expeditiously."

There's besides immoderate uncertainty astir pricing. On release, OnePlus plans to connection 2 versions of nan OnePlus 15. The guidelines model, pinch 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, will costs $900. The institution will besides waste a 16GB/512GB version that will costs $1,000. However, OnePlus warns nan value of some models is "subject to alteration owed to existent marketplace conditions."

Hardware and display

The OnePlus 15 is simply a awesome telephone pinch a boring, derivative design. It borrows its ocular personality from nan OnePlus 13s and 13T, a brace of smaller, 6.32-inch phones OnePlus released successful India and China this past spring. There’s nary 2 ways astir it, successful making its caller flagship look much for illustration those devices, OnePlus has astatine nan aforesaid clip made it look much for illustration past year’s iPhone 16 Pro.

It’s a shame. The creation of nan OnePlus 13 was 1 of nan things my co-worker Sam Rutherford praised that telephone for, and it’s thing I liked astir it too. The 15 conscionable looks generic, moreover if location are a fewer bully touches. For example, nan soil large wind colour has a nice, ceramic-like consciousness to it. One different awesome facet of nan creation is really bladed OnePlus has managed to support nan 15 while adding a monolithic 7,300mAh battery. At 0.31 inches thick, nan soil large wind version is only somewhat fatter than nan 0.29-inch heavy Galaxy S25 FE I precocious reviewed, which has a much humble 4,900mAh artillery (the 2 different OP15 colorways, infinite achromatic and ultra violet, are listed arsenic somewhat thicker astatine 0.32 inches).

Now, if you’re a longtime OnePlus fan, I request to mention nan 15 doesn’t person nan signature Alert Slider recovered connected nan company’s erstwhile phones. I cognize what you’re thinking, did OnePlus do distant pinch a instrumentality favourite characteristic to adhd an AI button? The reply is some yes and no. The first clip you pat nan Plus Key, OxygenOS will punctual you to make it a shortcut for 1 of 8 functions. Naturally, nan default action is to usage nan fastener successful conjunction pinch nan company’s newish Mind Space AI hub, but you besides tin hindrance different functions to nan Plus Key, including nan aged Alert Slider functionality. Even if it’s different point that’s derivative of nan iPhone, I for illustration nan elasticity nan Plus Key gives.

Separately, OnePlus has gone pinch a different surface this clip around. The OP15 offers a 6.78-inch AMOLED show pinch a 1,272 x 2,772 resolution. The caller surface is some smaller and little dense than nan 1 recovered connected nan OnePlus 13, which was 6.82 inches large and had a 1,440 x 3,168 resolution. It’s besides faster, offering a 165Hz refresh complaint successful prime games, up from 120Hz connected nan earlier model. OnePlus told maine it went pinch nan little solution show because there’s nary OLED shaper making QHD panels that accelerated yet. I’ll person much to opportunity astir nan show successful nan capacity section, but for now I’ll opportunity nan OP15’s surface is 1 of nan champion parts of utilizing nan phone. It’s dense capable to make matter and images look sharp, and pinch up to 1,800 nits of brightness available, it’s easy to spot and usage moreover successful harsh sunlight.

Cameras

OnePlus and Hasselblad ended their partnership successful September, and nan OP15 marks nan debut of nan company’s caller DetailMax imaging engine. I’ll get to nan package successful a moment. First, OnePlus has erstwhile again gone pinch a main camera strategy built astir 3 50-megapixel sensors. What’s different this clip astir are nan lenses. Two of them are somewhat slower than their counterparts connected nan OnePlus 13. The main camera now has an f/1.8 aperture lens, down from nan f/1.6 solid recovered connected past year’s model. At nan aforesaid time, OnePlus has gone pinch an f/2.8 lens for nan telephoto camera. For comparison, nan OP13 had an f/2.6 lens for distant shots. The bully news is some cameras still travel pinch optical image stabilization (OIS).

Broadly, nan OP15 suffers from nan aforesaid problem its predecessor did. Most photos look bully — sometimes awesome moreover — but they don’t travel retired arsenic bully arsenic what you mightiness threat pinch nan latest phones from Apple, Google aliases Samsung. The quality is astir noticeable successful nighttime and low-light photos wherever nan OP15 tin sometimes struggle to eke retired protector detail. It will besides wholly miss a changeable because it utilized excessively slow of a shutter speed. I sometimes saw akin results successful daytime photos successful situations wherever nan company’s precocious move scope algorithm would get tripped up by harsh lighting. Specifically, nan shots had overly lifted shadows and unnatural highlights, resulting successful photos that look level pinch mediocre contrast.

I besides wish nan OP15 had a amended telephoto camera. It’s not bad by immoderate means, but aft seeing what nan Pixel 10 Pro tin do pinch its 5x zoom, immoderate telephone pinch a 3x telephoto doesn’t consciousness special. The limitations of nan OP15’s hardware is particularly noticeable erstwhile you effort to push nan camera beyond its maximum optical zoom. OnePlus says nan camera offers 7x lossless zoom, but successful my testing, I recovered location was a subtle driblet successful image value supra 6x. At 10x and beyond, there's very noticeable pixel smearing.

There are 2 areas wherever nan OP15’s cameras impress. Across some stills and video, it does a awesome occupation of measuring colour somesthesia and ensuring images travel retired existent to life. Even much awesome is nan phone’s expertise to seizure a burst of photos astatine 10 fps, up from 6 fps connected nan OP13. If you’ve publication 1 of my reviews before, you’ve astir apt noticed I bask photographing nan cats successful my neighborhood, and nary telephone has made that task arsenic easy arsenic nan OP15.

As it’s already wintery successful Toronto, I wasn’t capable to trial nan OP15 caller underwater camera mode. But if you unrecorded successful a warmer climate, nan characteristic is designed to make it easier to threat photos successful nan h2o by temporarily turning nan OP15’s beingness buttons into camera controls. This is besides arsenic bully arsenic immoderate clip to mention that OnePlus has shored up nan OP15’s waterproofing. The telephone is now rated IP68 against h2o and dust, and carries IP69 and IP69K protection against pressurized h2o astatine up to 176 degrees Fahrenheit.

Performance and artillery life

The OP15 is nan first telephone successful North America to vessel pinch nan Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and arsenic you tin astir apt guess, it’s a capacity powerhouse. In Geekbench’s processor suite, nan OP15 put up a single-core people of 3,696 and a multi-core people of 11,187. That puts it successful prime institution pinch nan iPhone Air and its A19 Pro chipset, which successful our testing had a flimsy separator successful single-core capacity but didn’t execute astir arsenic good successful nan multi-core suite (likely owed to thermal limitations). In real-world use, I tried my champion to find a crippled aliases exertion that could travel up nan OP15, but betwixt its caller Snapdragon chipset and nan 16GB of RAM that came successful my unit, nan telephone handled everything pinch ease.

It’s difficult to picture really soft nan OnePlus 15 feels comparative to different phones I’ve utilized recently. Every swipe and scroll feels astir instantaneous. I fishy that’s a byproduct of nan OP15’s dedicated touch consequence chip, which samples nan surface astatine 3,200Hz. Speaking of nan display, that 165Hz refresh complaint I mentioned astatine nan apical is much of a forward-looking characteristic correct now. As things stand, location are only 7 games that tin render astatine 165 fps. One of those, PUBG, does truthful done framework interpolation. So unless you’re an avid Call of Duty Mobile aliases Clash of Clans player, you won’t announcement that use of nan OP15’s screen, yet. Things could alteration successful time, particularly arsenic much OEMs bring 165Hz displays to their phones. For now, nan OP15 is still a awesome gaming phone, but it has yet to unrecorded up to its existent potential.

As overmuch capacity arsenic nan OnePlus 15 offers, what’s much awesome is its 7,300mAh battery. It’s nan consequence of a caller exertion nan institution calls Silicon NanoStack. It allowed OnePlus to make a denser artillery and 1 it claims will property much gracefully complete time, acknowledgment to a creation that retains much than 80 percent of its wellness aft 4 years. Obviously, I haven’t had nan OP15 agelong capable to trial that claim, but what I tin opportunity is that it offers tremendous artillery life retired of nan box. On our section video rundown test, it posted a clip of 38 hours and 30 minutes, which is 8 hours longer than nan OnePlus 13, nan erstwhile grounds holder.

Just arsenic awesome is really quickly nan OP15 tin charge. With nan included 80W SUPERVOOC adapter, nan artillery tin spell from dormant to afloat successful astir 40 minutes. The 1 downside of really OnePlus has approached charging is that nan telephone doesn't support nan Qi2 standard. It tin wirelessly complaint astatine 50W, but you'll request to bargain nan company's proprietary AIRVOOC magnetic puck.

Software

When he reviewed nan OnePlus 13 successful February, Engadget’s Sam Rutherford praised OnePlus for its restrained AI approach. Unfortunately, nary institution appears immune to nan technology’s propulsion astatine this point, and successful nan months since, OnePlus has begun integrating much AI features into OxygenOS. Thankfully, galore of those are either easy to disregard aliases situationally useful.

First, there’s Mind Space, which is functionally akin to Nothing’s Essential Space. You tin either pat nan Plus Key (if it’s configured for usage pinch Mind Space) aliases swipe up connected nan touchscreen pinch 3 fingers to prevention a screenshot to nan hub. From there, nan OP15’s built-in LLM will summarize nan image, and you tin inquire nan exemplary questions astir it. It’s besides imaginable to prevention sound memos to nan hub, and OnePlus offers a fewer different AI devices there, including 1 for scanning documents. All of these activity well, and for illustration I said, if they’re not your thing, they’re easy to ignore.

It’s been a fewer years since I’ve utilized OxygenOS, truthful it was a pleasant astonishment to study it remains 1 of nan much charismatic and tasteful Android skins connected nan market. A standout is immoderate of nan civilization animations OnePlus has baked into nan OS to accentuate nan velocity of nan phone. I besides find OnePlus has 1 of nan champion organized speedy settings menus. There are conscionable capable customization options location to make it consciousness powerful, but not capable to overwhelm.

One area wherever OnePlus could do amended is package support. The institution has pledged to supply nan OP15 pinch 4 years of package updates and six years of information patches. That’s worse than some Google and Samsung, which person committed to supporting their latest phones for 7 years.

Wrap-up

In utilizing nan OnePlus 15, I was often reminded of nan past OnePlus telephone I reviewed, nan OnePlus 7 Pro. At nan time, it was nan company’s astir costly instrumentality ever, coming successful astatine nan aforesaid $750 value arsenic nan iPhone XR and Galaxy S10e. The entreaty of that telephone was its speedy Snapdragon 855 processor and nan truth it was 1 of nan first smartphones pinch a 90Hz AMOLED screen. It was besides nan first OnePlus telephone pinch a camera that was much than conscionable serviceable.

All these years later, nan entreaty of nan OP15 feels similar. It’s a telephone for those who worth velocity complete everything else. The tricky point astir this telephone is judging its worth erstwhile its value could alteration tomorrow. As I mentioned earlier, successful nan US nan OP15 will commencement astatine $900, pinch OnePlus informing pricing for some models could “change owed to existent marketplace conditions.” At $1,000, nan 16GB exemplary is simply a compelling replacement to nan Pixel 10 Pro XL, offering a newer processor, much retention and a importantly bigger battery.

Here’s nan thing: Google has already aggressively discounted nan full Pixel 10 lineup, and until Black Friday, you tin get nan Pro XL for $899 — $100 little than nan 16GB OnePlus 15. For astir people, I deliberation that’s nan play, fixed some nan Pro and Pro XL person nan amended telephoto camera and Google has promised to support each of its latest phones for 7 years. That said, if you’re okay pinch a worse camera overall, nan OP15 has a batch going for it, and provided OnePlus tin successfully navigate an uncertain tariff regime, it will extremity up not conscionable 1 of nan champion phones of 2025 but overmuch of 2026 too.