OnePlus 15 review: A competitively priced powerhouse

Almost a year ago OnePlus released OnePlus 13A quality flagship smartphone with high-end specs and a lower starting price than its US competitors. He did the same thing the year before and the year before. In other words, it's completely normal.

What's surprising about the new OnePlus 15 (not counting the fact that the 14 was skipped, presumably for cultural reasons) is that it will be released in November, not January. OnePlus may have accelerated its release schedule for this year's flagship, but nothing else has changed. The OnePlus 15 is a very solid Android phone with brilliant specs including an ultra-fast refresh rate and the largest battery you'll currently find in a smartphone of its caliber.

And with a starting price of $899, it's at least $100 cheaper than flagship models from Google, AppleAnd Samsung.

OnePlus 15: price and specifications

I already explained that the OnePlus 15 can be purchased for $899 (compared to $1,099 for iPhone 17 pro). Here's what you get for this price:

• 6.8-inch display with a resolution of 2772×1272 and a refresh rate of up to 165 Hz.

• Mobile chip Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

• 12 GB RAM

• 256 GB memory

• 7300 mAh battery

• Three rear cameras: 50 MP wide, 50 MP ultra-wide, 50 MP telephoto.

• Front camera 32 MP

There is only one variant of the OnePlus 15. For an extra $100, you can get it with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage. Personally, I don't like the fact that someone who chooses a slightly cheaper phone gets less RAM, but it's also unlikely to impact most people's daily lives in any meaningful way. The lack of 1TB storage option also stands out among other recent flagship smartphones such as Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

However, compared to its competitors, OnePlus looks like the winner here. No other flagship in the Apple-Google-Samsung triumvirate has a 165Hz display, and the OnePlus 15 is the first smartphone to hit the US with the cutting-edge technology. Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset. The 7,300 mAh battery is larger than the S25 Ultra. Google Pixel 10 Proor iPhone 17 pro. And while the higher-end OnePlus 15 costs the same as the base Pixel 10 Pro, none of those other devices can be had for $899.

It's a pretty good deal, that's what I'm saying.

OnePlus 15: Design

However, there are a few areas where OnePlus hasn't made a splash this year, and the phone's design is one of them.

This is not badbut it's boring. Three available colors: Infinite Black, Sandstorm and Ultra Violet. In other words, two of the most uninteresting colors imaginable, and a third, more attractive one that OnePlus says will only be available in limited quantities. Blah.

My other issue with the OnePlus 15 is that the rear camera bump is now a fairly safe-looking square (with rounded corners), rather than the more visually distinctive round bump like on the OnePlus 13. At first glance (at least to the eyes of people who don't look at phones every day for work), it just looks like a different brand of iPhone. It's perfectly functional and innocuous, but I wish it looked more unique.

Otherwise, the phone is at least comfortable to hold, and the bezels around the display are very thin. Either way, it's not a waste of time; it's just a little boring.

OnePlus 15: Performance

One area where OnePlus hasn't dropped the ball is performance.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is probably one of the best chips you can put in a phone in the US right now, or at least that's what the marketing says. However, I'm inclined to believe it because the OnePlus 15 performs like a dream. Everything is smooth as silk and even during benchmarks or intense gaming it doesn't get too hot.

Speaking of gaming, that's what benefits the most from the maximum refresh rate of 165Hz. PUBG Mobile versionin particular, copes with this task amazingly smoothly. I'm not a big fan of mobile games in general, but if I were and I needed a new phone, I'd take a closer look at this.

And if you need numerical proof of this phone's power, I put it through the Geekbench 6 benchmark test. Its multi-core score of 10,560 is about 500 points higher than the S25 Ultra and about 700 points higher than the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Again, this phone is cheaper than both. Geekbench numbers aren't necessarily an accurate indicator of a phone's performance, but I can more or less promise that you won't find any performance issues here.

OnePlus 15: artificial intelligence capabilities

Like every other high-end smartphone these days, the OnePlus 15 has some artificial intelligence features. For the most part, this is pretty normal stuff, including integration with Google's Gemini chatbot. It has automatic voice transcription in the audio recording app, as well as the ability to scan images and turn them into PDFs, both of which are nice and convenient, if not particularly new.

Mind Space is perhaps the most unique AI feature on the OnePlus 15. It's a pre-installed app that saves everything you ask the phone to analyze using Plus Mind. Plus Mind is something you activate by pressing the Plus button on your phone or swiping up with three fingers on the screen. Essentially, this will take a screenshot and use AI to analyze everything on it. For example, I took a screenshot of some films on the website of a theater near me. I can then go to Mind Space and view a text analysis of what's in the screenshot, including movie titles and showtimes, and make calendar entries for them.

This in itself is not bad, but its usefulness is a bit muted in my opinion. I suppose it's nice that I can take a screenshot and automatically turn it into a calendar entry, but an app that tells me what's going on on my screen seems a little redundant when I can just look at the screen myself. I just don't know if it does anything that I can't easily do with my brain already.

OnePlus 15: battery life

Battery life is without a doubt the standout feature of the OnePlus 15.

As noted earlier, the 7,300mAh battery is larger than some other flagships. But this in itself does not guarantee anything. However, I can confirm that this thing lasts for a while. I estimate that the OnePlus 15 can last around 30 hours on a single charge, depending on what I use it for. My testing included playing 3D games at high frame rates and streaming basketball on YouTube TV, so I might have been able to squeeze out even more juice without doing that.

In other words, guys, the battery is really good.

OnePlus 15: Camera

As I said earlier in the specifications section, you get three 50MP lenses on the back of the OnePlus 15. I like even numbers. They make my job easier.

Either way, photos taken with the new OnePlus 15 look beautiful. The colors are really vibrant and the images are sharp and clear.

When it comes to night shots, I don't have many complaints. You can brighten up your images without making them look ugly. too much false.

For what it's worth, you only get 3.5x optical zoom here, as opposed to slightly more than some other flagship phones from major companies. You also get 7x “optical quality” zoom, which is slightly lower than the 8x on the iPhone 17 Pro. If you stick to these settings, your zoomed-in photos will look nice and clear.

Macro photography is always useful for photographers who love to photograph tiny things.

And finally, portrait mode also works as you'd expect.

OnePlus 15: Final thoughts

OnePlus phones are honestly a bit boring to talk about because they are, by and large, very good, no-frills devices that you can get for a slightly more reasonable price than an iPhone. The OnePlus 15 is no different.

The quality display, powerful processor, and huge battery make this phone a viable option for anyone looking to upgrade from Android. I'd definitely prefer the Galaxy S25 Ultra and maybe even the Pixel 10 Pro. I wish it looked a little more interesting, but it's so far down the list of smartphone problems that I can't compare it to the OnePlus too much here.