A flagship killer that provides a great experience with corners cut!!
OnePlus smartphones have been synonymous with delivering a flagship experience ever since the launch of its first product, i.e. OnePlus One. Over the years, the brand established a strong reputation with its flagship Number series before introducing the R series, which provides an almost flagship experience at an affordable price.
Last year's OnePlus 13R (Review) was a very solid offering out there in the market as it was a no-compromise OnePlus flagship killer out there which had the powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, a 50MP triple camera setup, a larger 6000mAh battery and much more at a solid price. With the OnePlus 13R being a successful product, there are a lot of expectations for its successor, i.e., the OnePlus 15R.
Building on the success of its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus 13, there have been a lot of expectations for the OnePlus 15R. The OnePlus 15R brings a lot of flagship-level specifications, which include a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset, a larger 7400mAh battery, and much more, but OnePlus seems to cut a few corners that could have made the device a compelling package.
This time, the OnePlus 15R comes with a higher price tag, largely due to the ongoing chip shortage, which has affected the global smartphone industry. So is the OnePlus 15R worth buying?
Let's find out in the full review.
OnePlus 15R Design:
At the back, the OnePlus 15R boasts a similar design to that of the OnePlus 13s (Review), which is the most compact flagship from OnePlus launched last year, where both share almost a similar camera module, except that the OnePlus 15R camera module is slightly narrower, and it houses the dual cameras, and alongside it, there is an LED flashlight in the module.
The frame and camera housing are made of aluminium with a matte finish. This is a big departure from the circular camera module present on the OnePlus 13R, which makes it more versatile like other OnePlus and Oppo smartphones out there. The back has flat edges and rounded corners, which makes it easy to hold in the hands. The OnePlus 15R is available in three different colours - Charcoal Black, Mint Green, and Electric Violet.
The Electric Violet variant has a fibreglass-reinforced plastic back, whereas the Mint Green and Charcoal Black variants have a glass build. All these colour variants have a smooth matte finish at the back, which does not catch fingerprints or smudges easily. Around the sides, the smartphone is slimmer at 8.1mm, thus housing an aluminium frame which looks premium.
It houses the volume buttons along with a power button, whereas the left side houses the Plus Key, which provides a lot of functionalities. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a speaker grille which provides stereo output, and a dual SIM card tray that houses two nano SIM cards. On top, there are two microphones with a secondary speaker outlet.
The OnePlus 15R weighs around 213 grams, which is slightly heavier than its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus 13, but now there is also a larger-capacity battery. In terms of ingress protection, there is now an IP66+IP68+IP69+IP69K rating, which is the highest level of dust and water resistance on a OnePlus R series. On the front, the display has slimmer bezels with a single punch-hole that houses the selfie camera.
OnePlus 15R Display:
The OnePlus 15R sports a slightly larger 6.83-inches 1.5K AMOLED (1272x2800 pixels) display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9 compared to the 6.78-inches display on the OnePlus 13R. Since it has a 10-bit display, the colours look punchier with deep blacks and blues, with great viewing angles. The display here is an LTPS panel, which is a slight downgrade over the LTPO panel on the OnePlus 13R.
As we know, the LTPS panel provides fixed refresh rates instead of variable refresh rates on the LTPO panel, but OnePlus has made an upgrade by providing a 165Hz refresh rate on the OnePlus 15R. Talking about the refresh rate, there are three different options to choose from: Automatic, Standard, and High. If you set the display to Automatic or High, the display usually refreshes at 120Hz.
Choosing the High Mode forces certain applications to refresh at 120Hz, and here you can set application-specific refresh rates. In Auto mode, the refresh rate scales to different refresh rates like 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz depending on the content on the display. For example, while watching a 60fps video on YouTube, the display refreshes at 90Hz, whereas if the display is idle, the refresh rate scales down to 60Hz.
The same is true when the refresh rate is set to High. In Standard mode, the refresh rate remains constant at 60Hz. So, as we know, the display supports 165Hz, but this only works in a few games like Genshin Impact and Call of Duty: Mobile. However, the display does not maintain continuous 165Hz, but you still get the benefit of this higher refresh rate in certain games.
Combined with the 165Hz refresh rate, you get a 240Hz touch sampling rate, which increases to 3200Hz instantaneously during gaming. In terms of brightness, the display can reach a peak brightness of 3600 nits, which is good and under High Brightness Mode, the display could achieve a peak brightness of 1800nits. Under direct sunlight, the brightness hovered somewhere between 1000 and 1200 nits and provided good visibility.
The OnePlus 15R display offers three colour settings to choose from: Standard (default), Natural, and Vivid. If you set the display to Standard or Natural mode, the colours look close to natural and cover the DCI-P3 gamut, whereas if you set the display to Vivid mode, the colours look punchier with deeper blues and blacks, which also cover the DCI-P3 gamut. You can also set the display to a warmer or a cooler tone.
In terms of multimedia consumption, the display of the OnePlus 15R has support for HDR on YouTube and Widevine L1 ensures that streaming HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. is a breeze. A small upgrade has to be the new ultrasonic fingerprint scanner on the OnePlus 15R over the in-display fingerprint scanner of the OnePlus 13R. The fingerprint scanner is very fast and accurate.
The OnePlus 15R display has Corning Gorilla Glass 7i for protection, which is slightly disappointing considering other smartphones have Corning Gorilla Glass Victus for protection on their displays. Overall, the display is great for multimedia consumption, but the lack of an LTPO panel is a slight concern since the OnePlus 13R had it.
OnePlus 15R Performance:
The OnePlus 15R is powered by the newly launched Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset, which is based on an octa-core configuration that includes: 2x3.8 GHz Oryon V3 Phoenix L cores along with 6x3.32 GHz Oryon V3 Phoenix M cores, which is coupled with an Adreno 829 GPU and is based on an efficient 3nm process. This chipset sits somewhere between the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset and the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset.
In terms of raw performance, the smartphone handles all the tasks easily without breaking a sweat, whether it is scrolling through webpages, playing games, video editing, etc. Paired with the 165Hz display and the smooth animations and transitions with OxygenOS 16, all things are smooth to use. All heavy games like BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile, Genshin Impact, etc. ran smoothly without breaking a sweat.
The presence of a new Touch Response Chip aids in smooth gaming where the display switches to a 3200Hz instantaneous touch sampling rate. In BGMI, the smartphone could easily run at Smooth graphics along with HDR+Extreme frame rates without any lags or stutters. Usually, BGMI runs at 120fps by default, but using frame interpolation, the gameplay runs at 165fps, which feels very smooth.
In other games like Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact, which are highly graphics-intensive games, the gameplay was smoother with almost zero stutter lag. Usually, the frame rates hover around 145-155fps for most of the games when played for 30 minutes to 1 hour, and after longer hours of gaming, i.e. 3-4 hours, the back of the smartphone did feel slightly warmer.
The OnePlus 15R features a larger 5704 sq mm Cryo Velocity 3D Vapour Cooling system, which keeps the smartphone cooler even during extreme gaming sessions. In terms of the CPU throttling test, the OnePlus 15R could maintain a sustained performance of around 75-80 per cent with almost minimal throttling, which is very good with the Performance Mode turned on.
In terms of benchmarks, the scores came out really well, as the scores are on par with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and slightly lower than the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset on the OnePlus 15. The OnePlus 15R is available in three variants: 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, 12GB RAM with 512GB storage, and 16GB RAM with 512GB storage, with LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage.
OnePlus 15R Software:
The OnePlus 15R runs on the latest OxygenOS 16 based on Android 16 out of the box. As seen on the OnePlus 15, here you also get almost all the features of OxygenOS 16, which include newer transitions and animations throughout the user interface. You can customise icon shape, size, colour and fonts. There are different styles for the Always-On display, which also works well with the lock screen.
The presence of Flux Theme 2.0 lets you add texts, motion picture widgets, and much more in the lockscreen, which looks quite interesting. There are scalable icons present in the homescreen that let you customise icons and add other shortcuts for convenience. As usual, the Live Alerts feature is present, which provides real-time updates along with ongoing activities in a small capsule around the front-facing camera.
There are a host of AI features which are part of OxygenOS 16, of which MindSpace is quite interesting as it lets you save on-screen information, documents, take screenshots and is now well integrated with Google Gemini, which checks the content in the MindSpace app and creates an itinerary of it. The Plus Key present on the left side of the smartphone triggers the MindSpace.
Other than that, the Plus Key provides other functionalities where you can set the different sound profiles - Ring, Vibrate, and Silent, long-press the button to record audio and save it in OnePlus Notes. Some of the AI features include AI Unblur, AI Enhance, AI Writer, and DocScanner, which work in the gallery application. AI Portrait Glow, AI Perfect Shot, and Circle To Search are other interesting ones that come in handy.
There is the Device Connect using which you can share content with any OnePlus smartphone and even iPhones by bringing both closer. It also allows you to sync information with your laptop or PC. All of these AI features have been discussed in the OnePlus 15 review. The software experience remains cleaner with almost no bloatware except for five to six applications, which can be uninstalled easily.
In terms of software updates, OnePlus has a good track record, and just like the flagship OnePlus 15, here you will also be getting four major Android OS updates and six years of security patches.
OnePlus 15R Cameras:
The OnePlus 15R sports a dual camera setup, which includes a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX906 sensor for the primary camera and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. There is no dedicated telephoto camera, which is slightly disappointing since its predecessor, i.e., the OnePlus 13R, had one. On the front, there is a new 32MP f/2.0 selfie camera compared to the 16MP selfie camera of the OnePlus 13R.
The images from the primary camera come out with sharper details and excellent dynamic range, and by default, these images are captured in 26MP resolution compared to 12MP on the OnePlus 13R. There is the new DetailMax Engine as seen on the OnePlus 15, which improves the colour temperature, reduces noise to a larger extent in the background and also the dynamic range is wider.
In terms of HDR images, colours look punchier and have a great dynamic range. The human skin tones look natural and have good contrast, but in sunlight, there is some oversharpening present at times. The images shot at 12MP by default come out with sharper details and have a good dynamic range with less noise in the background. Similarly, during the night, the images taken in 26MP resolution look great.
The Auto Night Mode turns on automatically whenever the camera captures images at night. The images come out with sharper details, with excellent dynamic range and have less noise in the background. The details in the shadows look good with almost no oversharpening in the background. Since there is no dedicated telephoto camera, the main camera provides 2x digital zoom capabilities.
The 2x zoomed images taken during the day come out with sharper details, with decent dynamic range and less noise in the background. During the night, the 2x zoomed images have sharper details with a wider dynamic range and less noise in the background. The primary camera performance is almost on par with the flagship OnePlus 15, but nonetheless, the latter is better.
The 8MP ultrawide camera does a decent job in terms of details, which have softer details with decent dynamic range, with noise present on the higher side. There is a lot of distortion around the edges, but still, with the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processing, the results are better than those of the OnePlus 13R. The images from the ultrawide camera taken during the night come out with a decent level of detail, with higher noise in the background.
The colours look dull, and contrast is not so good. In terms of portraits, the primary camera takes some very good portraits with excellent dynamic range and proper edge detection. The human skin tones look natural with no oversharpening in the background. The background blur is well implemented with almost no noise in the background. You can take portraits at both 1x and 2x zoom levels.
There is no dedicated macro camera, but the ultrawide camera also doubles up as a macro camera, where details look good with decent dynamic range and slightly higher noise in the background. The colours look muted, though. In terms of selfies, the front camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.
The primary camera can record 4K videos at 120fps, whereas the ultrawide camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps. On the front, the 32MP camera does a great job in terms of videos, which can record 4K videos at 30fps. The videos from the primary camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The contrast is on the higher side with proper white balance.
The 2x zoomed videos have sharper details with good dynamic range, and colours look saturated but with slightly higher noise. The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with softer details, limited dynamic range and more noise in the background. The videos from the front camera come out with sharper details and have a wider dynamic range with less noise in the background.
OnePlus 15R Battery Life:
The OnePlus 15R sports a larger 7400mAh battery, which is massive in size and almost 1400mAh more in capacity when compared to the OnePlus 13R and 100mAh more in capacity than the OnePlus 15. With the effcient Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset being built on a 3nm process on board along with OxygenOS 16, we do expect healthy battery life.
In terms of heavy usage, which includes playing games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc., rendering videos, taking photos and videos using the camera, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for one to two days with the display set to High or Auto refresh rate. With heavy usage, the standard screen-on time came around 5-6 hours which is very good considering the huge battery underneath.
In terms of normal usage which includes scrolling through webpages, streaming social media, and other lighter multi-tasking activities, etc., the smartphone easily lasted for two and half days with some charge left. With normal usage, the standard screen-on time came around 9-10 hours of screen-on time, which is excellent by today's standards. In terms of charging, OnePlus eqipped the smartphone with a 80W SuperVOOC fast charger inside the box.
In terms of charging speeds, the smartphones reaches a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent within an hour which is quite fast considering the huge size of the battery. There is no support for wireless charging which may not be a concern considering none of the OnePlus R series do not have support for wireless charging. Other features include reverse wired charging and bypass charging capabilities.
OnePlus 15R Audio Quality:
The OnePlus 15R has a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds louder and the sound clarity is very good. It is a slight improvement over the sound quality of the OnePlus 13R. There is support for LHDC and LDAC support for earphones. There is no Dolby Atmos present here also.
Verdict:
The OnePlus 15R is a solid flagship smartphone from OnePlus as of now in the market. It brings a great build and design, an excellent 165Hz AMOLED display along with stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, flagship grade performance with great gaming capabilities, good camera exeprience and excllent battery life. OxygenOS 16 provides a cleaner and richer experience with a good track record of software updates.
Though the OnePlus 15R proves to be a solid smartphone, OnePlus has made a few compromises which seems awkward when comapred to its predecessor i.e. OnePlus 13R. The latter had a telephoto camera and an LTPO display both of which are missing on the OnePlus 15R. Even the ultrawide camera performance is not so good as it struggles in low-light scenarios. The primary camera performance could have also been better.
So to sum it up, the OnePlus 15R is a great smartphone to be considered as ticks almost all the boxes whether it is build and design, display, performance, battery life, etc. except for the cameras which could have been better. With the sudden increase in prices, the OnePlus 15R could have been a good value for money option but still it is worth the upgrade over the OnePlus 13R and a sensible offering amongst other flagships at this price point.
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