An all-rounder flagship from OnePlus, which is a good deal out there!!
OnePlus has been a strong contender in the smartphone space ever since it came on the market in 2011. The flagship series has had a huge success in the market, and this year, we have the OnePlus 15 series, which aims to hold the same value in this highly competitive space. Last year, we had the OnePlus 13 (Review) series, which was successful, and this time, OnePlus has not left anything behind with the OnePlus 15, which brings flagship specifications to the table.
With the OnePlus 15, there are a lot of changes, especially the design philosophy, which has seen a drastic change from the OnePlus 13s (Review). The OnePlus 15 brings flagship specifications, including the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a 165Hz AMOLED display, a 50MP triple-camera setup, and more. So, does it have enough grunt to continue the premium flagship's journey out there?
Let's find out in the full review.
OnePlus 15 Design:
The OnePlus 15 brings a newer design philosophy, which is similar to the OnePlus 13s, which was indeed a very successful product from OnePlus, with its compact form factor. Unlike the OnePlus 13, which had curves all along, i.e. both at the front as well as on the back, the OnePlus 15 has a flat panel all around. This clearly indicates that getting tempered glass for a flat display is much easier.
The edges are curved around, which makes it easier to hold in the hands. At the back, there is a square-shaped camera module which houses the triple cameras along with an LED flashlight. The camera module is slightly protruding, which may not be a major concern. The OnePlus 15 is available in three different colour variants - Infinite Black, Sand Storm, and Ultra Violet.
The Infinite Black, as the name suggests, has a black coloured back with a smooth matte finish that looks premium and provides a solid grip while holding in the hands, whereas if you consider the Sand Storm variant, you will get a premium feel, especially due to the textured material that feels like ceramic and this same finish has been carried forward on the frame as well as the camera module.
The Ultra Violet variant has a lavender colour finish that shows a slight shift in colour while viewed from different angles. Around the sides, for the Infinite Black and Ultra Violet, there is an aluminium frame that houses the Plus key on the left side, whereas the right side houses the power button along with volume keys. There is no longer the signature alert slider, which was the forte of OnePlus smartphones.
With the Plus key, you can assign different actions or shortcuts depending on the usage. On top, there is a speaker along with a secondary noise-cancelling microphone. The IR Blaster control is present on the camera module at the back between the cameras. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone, and a dual-SIM card tray.
There is no support for a 3.5mm headphone jack or a microSD card slot for storage expansion. In terms of weight distribution, the OnePlus 15 weighs around 211 grams, which is almost identical to its predecessor, the OnePlus 13, so it does not feel much heavier in the hand. In terms of thickness, the OnePlus 15 is thinner at 8.1mm, which is quite thinner compared to the 8.9mm thickness on the OnePlus 13.
The OnePlus 15 has an IP69 rating, which makes it dust and water resistant also. OnePlus claims to have put all IP ratings, which include IP66/68/69/69K rating. On the front, there is Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 for protection for all colour variants. The back is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i for the Infinite Black and Ultra Violet, whereas the Sand Storm variant has a fibreglass finish.
On the front, the display is flatter with minimal bezels to the sides, and the single punch-hole camera is located at the top.
Overall, the build and design feel premium.
OnePlus 15 Display:
The OnePlus 15 sports a 6.78-inch display, which is slightly smaller compared to its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus 13, which sports a 6.82-inch display. The display has a 1.5K resolution (1272x2772 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9, which is a slight downgrade compared to the Quad HD+ resolution on its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus 13.
This display is a 10-bit display, which means you get excellent colour reproduction and great viewing angles. The display of the OnePlus 15 supports a 165Hz refresh rate, which OnePlus claims will work very well in almost all graphics-intensive games. This being an LTPO display, the display can go as low as 1Hz and can reach a higher refresh rate of 165Hz (mostly the refresh rate goes up to 120Hz).
There are three different options under the screen refresh rate to choose from - Auto Select, Standard, and High. Choosing Auto-Select lets the display switch between different refresh rates depending on the content on the display, whereas selecting High mode lets the display refresh at 120Hz for most of the applications except for games, where the display easily achieves 165Hz refresh rate.
The Standard mode limits the display to 60Hz only, and this leads to extended battery life. The display of the OnePlus 15 has support for 2160Hz PWM frequency dimming, ensuring that eyes are not affected in the dark while viewing the smartphone display. In terms of display brightness, the OnePlus 15 can reach a peak brightness of 3600 nits, whereas with the High Brightness Mode turned on, the display reaches a brightness of 1800 nits.
In manual mode, the display reached a good brightness of 790nits. The display has good visibility under direct sunlight, too. You can set the colour temperature of the display as you get three options - Vivid, Natural, and Standard. Selecting the Natural or the Standard mode provides softer colours which look close to natural, whereas the Vivid mode provides punchier colours on the display and covers the DCI-P3 gamut.
The display of the OnePlus 15 has support for HDR10+, so you can easily view HDR content on YouTube, and the presence of Widevine L1 ensures that you can view HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Hotstar, etc. There is also support for Dolby Vision. The display of the OnePlus 15 has support for an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner that works fast and is accurate.
OnePlus 15 Performance:
The OnePlus 15 sports this year's flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, which is based on a 3nm process. It is the first smartphone to have this chipset, and this will be the mainline chipset for all 2026 flagships. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset has an octa-core chipset, which includes: 2x4.6 GHz Oryon V3 Phoenix L cores and 6x3.62 GHz Oryon V3 Phoenix M cores, which is based on an Adreno 840 GPU.
When compared to last year's Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, there is a 23% improvement in performance and 30% in power efficiency. In terms of daily tasks, which include scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, playing games, running benchmarks, etc., the smartphone easily handled all of the tasks without breaking a sweat. With OxygenOS 16, multitasking is also a breeze.
This time around, OnePlus has taken the gaming experience seriously as it brings a new OnePlus Performance Tri-chip, which provides an enhanced gaming experience with faster touch response and manages heat during gaming. All heavy games like BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile, Genshin Impact, etc., ran smoothly at the highest graphics settings without any stutters or frame drops.
In BGMI, the smartphone could easily run with Smooth graphics with Ultra Extreme frame rates, and there was a consistent 165Hz refresh rate throughout the gameplay. Similar results were achieved with Genshin Impact, where the smartphone consistently maintained 120fps during gameplay. Even Call of Duty Mobile gameplay was smooth without any frame drops, and 165Hz was maintained consistently.
In terms of heat dissipation, there is a larger vapour chamber cooling system called the 360 Cryo-Velocity Cooling System of size 5731mm2 with graphite coating, which ensures heat is dissipated easily. In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone achieved a sustained performance of 80-85 per cent, which is very good, and there is minimal throttling present. The benchmark scores came out best in class.
In terms of network connectivity, you get support for good carrier aggregation and have support for almost all bands of 5G. The OnePlus 15 is available in two different variants - 12/16GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256/512GB storage of UFS 4.0 speeds.
OnePlus 15 Software:
The OnePlus 15 runs on the latest OxygenOS 16, which is based on Android 16 out of the box. With OxygenOS 16, there are very few changes compared to OxygenOS 15 out there. There are some newer animations and customisation options. As usual, you can change icon shape, size, and colour along with different styles for Always-On Display. Speaking of the Always-On Display, it can now go full screen.
The transition from AOD to the lockscreen looks good. There is the Flux Theme 2.0, which lets you add texts, motion pictures, widgets, and a full-screen Always-On Display and much more to the lockscreen. The home screen customisations are now limited to four settings, where OnePlus has consolidated icon, transition, etc., into the consolidated wallpaper and style settings.
There are now scalable icons that let you customise the icons and add other shortcuts for convenience. The quick settings have seen a small change where you can add a few more toggles and now follow the system colour theme. As with Live Alerts, there are no such changes, as you get multiple, like 2-3 of them and now supports other applications like Google Maps, YouTube Play Music, etc.
There is an iOS-like theme in the app drawer, which categorises different applications, and once you hover over the alphabet, it shows the applications starting with the respective alphabet. With the OxygenOS 16, the motion smoothness is even better and faster compared to the OxygenOS 15, which means faster animations while opening and closing applications or switching between different applications.
There are a lot of AI features, of which MindSpace is one interesting one to be considered, where if you take a screenshot, AI will summarise the screenshot, and now it supports multiple languages also. The biggest upgrade to the MindSpace is the Google Gemini integration, where you can ask Gemini to look up the content in MindSpace and create an itinerary regarding the information that is captured.
You can long-press the Plus Key to attach audio notes, and MindSpace creates an AI collection that groups related content. AI Writer is systemwide present now, where it will rewrite, summarise, and analyse the contents. The DocScanner inside the gallery application works well, as there are other features like AI Unblur, AI Enhance, and remove shadows, resulting in the document looking cleaner and clearer.
Inside the gallery, there is an AI Portrait Glow, which adjusts the background lighting and removes shadows for better portraits. There is a live transcription in the sound recorder application, AI Summary, and a clear voice for noise-free recordings. OnePlus Connect works seamlessly with different devices, where you can sync the contents of your OnePlus smartphone over a third-party desktop or laptop.
AI Perfect Shot in the gallery application removes the blinked eyes and alters the undesired facial expression in the photos. Other AI features remain unchanged from the OxygenOS 15. The Circle to Search works well in almost all of the applications. In terms of third-party applications, there are very few that can be uninstalled easily, considering the cleaner software experience of OxygenOS.
In terms of software updates, the OnePlus 15 will receive another four years of Android OS updates and six years of security patches, which is good.
OnePlus 15 Cameras:
The OnePlus 15 sports a triple-camera setup that includes a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX906 sensor for the primary camera with OIS, a 50MP f/2.0 OmniVision OV50D sensor for the ultrawide camera, and a 50MP f/2.8 ISOCELL JN5 sensor for the telephoto camera, which supports 3.5x optical zoom. On the front, there is a 32MP Sony IMX709 sensor for selfies.
This time around, there is no longer a Hasselblad partnership; instead, OnePlus has gone with the DetailMax Engine computational algorithm, which works mainly for the primary and the telephoto cameras. The camera sensors are a slight downgrade compared to its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus 13.
During daylight, the images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. The contrast and white balance come out well. There is some overprocessing in the images. All these results are captured in the 26MP mode.
Using the 12MP mode, the images come out with sharper details, with wider dynamic range and almost minimal noise in the background. These images look much sharper compared to the images taken using the 26MP mode. The contrast is slightly on the higher side. At night, the Night Mode gets triggered automatically, which results in images having sharper details and a wider dynamic range.
The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. There is a good amount of detail in the shadows, which do not look overprocessed. Without the Night Mode, the details look a tad softer, and noise is slightly on the higher side, also. The images captured at night lack some contrast, and there is a slight shift in colour temperature when using them without the Night Mode.
The 50MP ultrawide camera seems to be a downgrade in terms of sensor size when compared to that of its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus 13. The images from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range. The noise is also less in the background, but when you compare the ultrawide images shot with the OnePlus 13, there are a few shortcomings.
The images from the OnePlus 15's ultrawide have slightly softer details, and they do look overprocessed. The field of view is quite wide, but there is some distortion present around the edges. At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details, but the dynamic range comes out to be average as it is not so wide, and even the noise is slightly higher.
However, the colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening, but still, when compared to both the primary and the telephoto cameras, they look muted. The telephoto camera takes images in 26MP by default, and these images have sharper details with wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening, and the contrast is well handled.
There is a 7x toggle viewfinder, which results in great zoomed images, resulting in sharper details, but still the details look softer when compared to the 3.5x zoom ones, and noise is on the higher side. During the night, the dedicated Night Mode gets triggered automatically, so the telephoto camera does a good job in terms of images which have sharper details and good dynamic range with almost no noise in the background.
The details in shadows look good, but there is some overprocessing in the images which needs some improvement. At 7x zoom, the images have softer details with average dynamic range and more noise in the background. The macro mode works well on the telephoto camera, resulting in sharper details, wider dynamic range, and almost no noise in the background. The close-up images come out really well.
In terms of portraits, with the telephoto camera, you get good edge detection, and there is proper separation of the subject from the background. The background blur is well maintained, and the dynamic range is wider in portraits. The human skin tones look natural with no oversharpening and have good contrast. The main camera also takes some very good portraits, but the telephoto camera is still better in terms of portraits.
The selfie camera does a great job in terms of selfies, which come out with sharper details and good dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The skin tones look natural, but sometimes they do look overprocessed. The selfie camera now has support for autofocus, which means the selfies come out with sharper details, wider dynamic range, and less noise in the background, even during the night.
In terms of videos, the primary camera can record 8K videos at 30fps as well as 4K videos at 120fps, whereas the remaining three cameras have support for 4K video recording at 60fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details, with a wider dynamic range, and almost no noise in the background as EIS works really well. Even the colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening.
The 1080p videos at 60fps come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise, as when you switch to 1080p resolution, the OIS works here. The colours look natural, and contrast is on the higher side. Similarly, during the night, the videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.
The 4K videos from the ultrawide camera come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range, but there is a slight distortion around the edges. The colours were slightly muted. At night, the ultrawide camera does an average job in terms of videos, as the output has higher noise in the background, and the dynamic range is not so good. Even the details look softer.
The 4K videos from the telephoto camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background when taken at 3.5x zoom. Once you switch to the 7x zoom, the videos do have more noise, and the details look softer. At night, the videos came out with sharper details with less noise in the background. The videos from the selfie camera come out with sharper details and a wider dynamic range, with almost no noise present.
OnePlus 15 Battery Life:
The OnePlus 15 sports a 7300mAh battery, which is by far the largest battery capacity on any OnePlus smartphone to date, which looks to be a good upgrade over the 6000mAh battery on its predecessor, i.e. OnePlus 13. Since the chipset is a newer one, with a larger battery, and based on a 3nm process, we do expect better battery life.
With heavy usage that includes playing games like BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile, etc., for 3-4 hours continuously, rendering videos, running benchmarks, taking images and videos using the cameras, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days with some charge left. The standard screen-on time came around 5-6 hours, which is really good.
With normal usage that includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, and other casual activities, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for two and a half days with some charge left, which is excellent in this flagship segment. The standard screen-on time came around 10-11 hours, which is a good improvement over the OnePlus 13 and even compared to other flagships out there.
The OnePlus 15 is bundled with a 120W fast charger inside the box, which is a good upgrade over the 100W fast charger bundled with earlier OnePlus smartphones. The dedicated 120W fast charger takes the OnePlus 15 from 0 to 100 per cent within 40-45 minutes, which is very fast considering the huge battery capacity. Other than that, there is support for 50W wireless charging, which can be achieved with OnePlus's AirVOOC charger.
The OnePlus AirVOOC charger takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent under 90 minutes, which is quite fast according to wireless charging standards. There is support for 5W reverse wired charging and 10W reverse wireless charging, which means any wireless charging device can be charged at 10W when it is placed on the back of the OnePlus 15. There is the bypass charging, which ensures good battery health during gaming.
OnePlus 15 Audio Quality:
The OnePlus 15 features a dual stereo speaker setup that delivers sound equally from both the earpiece and the bottom-firing speakers. The audio quality does not feel muffled, even at the highest volume settings, and, compared to the OnePlus 13, it has been slightly improved. There is no Dolby Atmos present, but still, the content consumption experience remains top-notch.
Verdict:
Overall, the OnePlus 15 is a solid flagship out there in the market, which brings one of the best hardware and software experiences, which has been true in many OnePlus smartphones in the past. The build and design remain top-notch with the new look inspired by the popular OnePlus 13s. Other than that, the display, along with stereo speakers, is great for multi-media consumption and that 165Hz refresh rate is a great addition to it.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset is a true beast on the OnePlus 15, which provides flagship-level performance as the smartphone handles all day-to-day tasks easily, and the gaming experience is also flagship-level when compared to other OnePlus flagships in the past. The cameras are not the best, but still, the camera performance is good for a smartphone out there.
In terms of software experience, the OxygenOS 15 on the OnePlus 15 provides a smooth and cleaner software experience with no bloatware, and the additional AI features make the experience wholesome. The main attractive point is the solid battery life, which we are seeing for the first time in a flagship, and this is where OnePlus have nailed it. Along with the solid battery, there are fast charging options, which are an added boon.
However, though being a premium flagship, the one area where OnePlus have cut corners is in the camera experience, as there is no Hasselblad collaboration, the camera performance is not so good considering that this is a premium flagship. The ultrawide camera and the telephoto cameras need attention in terms of videography, and the rest of both the front and primary cameras do a good job, but could have been improved.
The 165Hz refresh rate does seem to be good on paper, but you sacrifice on the screen resolution, which may not be a concern to many out there, but still, a higher resolution means a better content-watching experience. When you compare it with the OnePlus 13, the OnePlus 15 definitely feels like a good upgrade except for the cameras.
So if you are a performance enthusiast and want an overall flagship experience, thus sacrificing on the cameras, then the OnePlus 15 is a solid buy out there in the market.
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