OnePlus 15 Review | Big Step Backwards?

So, I've been suffering from a strong sense of deja vu while reviewing the OnePlus 15. And that's not just because for the past 15 years or so, I've been doing very little besides reviewing smartphones. Well, reviewing smartphones and sucking whiskey bottles dry like there's some kind of miracle cure for baldness lurking at the bottom. No, the reason it feels so familiar is because it shares a shagload of tech with the Oppo Find X9 Pro, which I shot a video on just 2 weeks back.

However, the OnePlus 15 does serve up a very different camera experience as well as that big burly Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 for the ultimate gaming performance. Now, the OnePlus 15 is available from today, so no hanging about if you're absolutely dripping for one. But is it worth it? Well, I've been using it as my full-time smartphone this past week. So, here's my OnePlus 15 review.

Design and Build Quality

Now, like most smartphones in 2025, the OnePlus 15 kind of resembles the bastard offspring of a couple of randy iPhones. All those typical design tropes, including flat edges and sharp corners. There's not really much in the way of distinctive personality here, especially as it very closely resembles its sibling, the Oppo Find X9 Pro. Thankfully, the bezels surrounding that 6.78-inch screen are rather wee, so at least it's not a ridiculous handful. Although at 215g, the OnePlus 15 is almost as hefty as some recent foldables.

Colors and Materials

Now, where the OnePlus does at least slightly distinguish itself from the likes of the Oppo smartphone is in the color options. You've got three choices here, beginning with Infinite Black, which is a pretty straightforward matte finish with AG glass. The Sandstorm version is probably the most interesting model of OnePlus 15. And this sports a fiberglass back, which is apparently tougher than titanium. Now, this is crafted using a micro-arc oxidation technique, which basically just sounds like they blast the living [ __ ] out of it with electricity. And I was expecting quite a textured finish to add a bit of grip, but it's actually quite smooth, surprisingly. So, it's almost like you're stroking porcelain.

And me, I have the Ultraviolet model of the OnePlus 15, which features a soft blue sort of halo surrounding the circumference when the light strikes it just so. This looks almost white in softer, more ambient light, but then in daylight, it is quite clearly purple. Perhaps a little too purple. Depends on your feelings towards the color purple, I guess.

Durability

And unlike the old OnePlus 13, you no longer have a whopping great circular camera bump. It's now more of an iPhone-style squareish effort, or at least old-school iPhone. This new square design does at least mean the OnePlus 15 sports a satisfying bit of finger shelf action, pretty handy for those one-handed shenanigans. And the OnePlus 15 certainly seems to be hardy enough after being generally banged around and mistreated in Mexico this past week, including a couple of drops which certainly were not in any way mezcal related.

And as for water and dust resistance, well, the OnePlus 15 is not just happy enough to be IP68 and IP69 rated, it's also IP69K rated, which I'd never even heard of before I reviewed the OnePlus 15. But apparently, that means it's perfectly happy with powerful hot jets of liquid spurting all over it for ages. So just like your mom then.

Biometrics and Storage

Now to unlock the OnePlus 15, you have an in-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor which is an absolute banger. Doesn't seem to matter if your fingers are moist or oily or anything or even super dry as mine are right now after all the travel and everything. Absolutely fine as you can see there. No hanging about and full support for face unlock as usual. But to be honest, I don't think I've even had to use that a single time this past week. The fingerprint sensor has just done its job perfectly.

You've got up to 512 gigs of UFS 4.1 storage slapped on here as well. As you can see, even after shooting literally hours of 4K footage on this thing and downloading massive great whopping games like Wuthering Waves, I still got shag loads of storage left over. And you got full support for a physical SIM as well as an eSIM, although apparently dual eSIM support will be coming from early 2026.

Software: Oxygen OS 16

And on the software side, it's Oxygen OS 16, which is basically the same as Color OS 16. It's yet another thing it has in common with the Oppo Find X9 Pro. So the customization options are very similar. You got the same themes, etc., the same lovely silky smooth seamless animations and loads of decent features including a pretty dense in-depth gaming mode with all kinds of different features that you can play about with. Including some new bits like quick startup which actually keeps your game running in the background so you aren't hanging about waiting for it to load the next time you want to play, though of course that will impact battery life.

You've also got that same motion cues feature which can help to prevent motion sickness if you are just staring at your smartphone while you're on a bus or in a car or whatever. It's by chucking a bunch of moving blue dots on the screen. Although I have found this has been quite buggy unfortunately. Those blue dots usually stay static for me if I switch on the feature when I'm already in a fast-moving car or train or whatever. So hopefully just an early bug that will be rectified imminently.

AI Features

And of course, you've got the usual trove of AI goodies, including a nifty bit of AI photo editing. And sadly, it can't completely rescue blurry, shaky, drunken shots like this. Just make them ever so slightly less cack. You got all kinds of different tools in here which can help you to reframe a shot, remove any background stragglers, etc. Sometimes works better than other times, but always worth a go.

Now, if you jump into the AI Pal app, the Yum feature is actually pretty good. The idea is you take a picture of a menu, even if it's in a foreign language, does not matter. And then it will basically explain to you what each of the items is and even generate a wee AI picture. So you got an idea of what to expect. So for instance, I ended up ordering the Mezcal wars, which explained to me exactly what I was going to get. And the photo it generated wasn't actually too far off the real thing.

And just like the OPPO, you've once again got that sci-fi sounding Mind Space, which you can access with a double push of the plus key over here on the left edge. And the idea is that basically anytime you come across some useful information that you want to store away, just push that plus key and everything on your screen will be grabbed and stored away. As you can see there, it's then transcribed all of the information. You can then search for any information that you've stored away using Gemini.

So, this is especially handy if you're planning a trip, storing loads of information about places you want to visit, booze you want to drink while you're there, etc. I mean, if you're feeling particularly lazy, you can even get Gemini to draft you a full itinerary based on all the information you've saved to Mind Space, which is a bit of a cracker.

Display and Audio

Now, no complaints when it comes to the 6.78-inch QHD Plus AMOLED display with its 1.5K resolution. Nice and crispy, punchy, and bright as well. Certainly in daytime in Mexico, I had no issues seeing what was going on on that screen, but it can scale all the way down to just 0.5 nits for when you're doing that bit of doom scrolling at 3:00 a.m. or whatever. Got extensive HDR streaming support in services like Netflix. You got HDR10, HDR10 Plus, and Dolby Vision streaming support. And also good news for you gamers because the refresh rate hits a mighty 165 hertz which is rarely seen outside of dedicated gaming smartphones.

Now the OnePlus 15 also boasts a pretty powerful stereo speaker setup with reasonable bass, certainly for smartphone blasters absolutely fine there. And the Bluetooth streaming over Bluetooth 6 absolutely flawless as well.

Performance and Gaming

As for the performance, well again zero complaints from myself. You've got Qualcomm's fresh out of the oven Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 running the show here. The fastest processor around. And that's backed by up to 16 gigs of Ultra Plus RAM, which is apparently the fastest RAM in the mobile industry. And you know who really likes a quick RAM? Your mom.

Now, the everyday Oxygen OS experience has been gloriously smooth, helped, of course, by the nippy animations built into Oxygen OS. And the only proper bit of jankiness that I've experienced, in fact, this past week is occasionally a little bit of juddery behavior when watching back videos that I've shot using the OnePlus 15's camera. Only happens a couple of times, usually still fairly soon after I've shot the video. So, I might still be doing some processing shenanigans in the background, but apart from that, perfectly good. And I think it's probably just some early bug at best.

Anyway, as for the gaming experience, well, immense open-world titles like Wuthering Waves play with a ridiculously smooth and consistent frame rate, even when you absolutely blitz the graphics settings and max everything out and you're gaming for well over an hour. Oh, and remember that 165 Hz refresh rate. Well, native 165 fps gameplay is supported in titles like Call of Duty Mobile to really make the most of that. And between that silky smoothness and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5's performance and the upgraded 3,200 Hz touch response rate, well, gaming on Call of Duty is just stupidly fast. It's just a shame that I have the reactions of an alcoholic middle-aged self-abuser with creaky wrists and knackered eyes cuz I'm not really built to get the most out of this thing.

You've also got a cryo velocity coolant system built into the OnePlus 15 which includes a whopping great vapor chamber. And OnePlus has also slathered the insides of the display with an aerogel cooler to prevent the screen from heating up and making your thumbs all sweaty during those intense bouts of gaming. You got a 360° antenna wrapped around this thing. And you've also got yourself a dedicated Wi-Fi chip to make sure you're connected with as low ping as possible when you are gaming and doing other intensive online tasks. I've certainly had no problem with my ping, so to speak.

Battery Life and Charging

And battery life is another area where the OnePlus 15 absolutely friggin nails it. You've got a 7,300 mAh capacity silicon nano stack battery stuffed in here. So, one of the biggest smartphone battery capacities out there, if not quite as big as the Oppo Find X9 Pro. And OnePlus is guaranteeing that after 4 years of regular use, you should still have at least 80% battery health remaining. Again, that's not quite as good as the Find X9 Pro where OPPO was promising after 5 years you should have at least 80% battery health remaining, but still pretty bloody good.

And the battery life is frankly absolutely superb. So with a full charge of this thing, you can expect a screen on time well into double digits. So for instance, the day I traveled to Mexico, I clocked in at over 10 hours of screen on time, including plenty of Netflix action, plenty of Spotify and audible streaming when the phone was hibernating and still managed to finish a near 30-hour day. It was in the end with about a quarter of the battery life remaining. And while I was in Mexico every single day, I was clocking in at least 8 or 9 hours of screen on time, plenty of camera action. I was shooting a lot of 4K video on this thing, as well as again the usual Spotify stream and message checking, etc., and still just about getting into power saver mode at the end of a very long day.

And if you're playing Wuthering Waves in championship mode, you can expect approximately 6 and 1/2 hours of action from a full charge. And that's with all those visual settings maxed out. And if you do finally manage to pretty much drain the bugger, well, no worries. It'll power up again in a jiffy because you got 120 watt Super VOOC charging support in this thing. Basically, bung a cable in it for about half an hour, you'll be most of the way there. I think it takes basically 40 minutes to get a full charge. As long as you've got the appropriate equipment, you also got yourself a bit of 50 W AirVOOC wireless charging support.

Camera System

And so, my lovelies, we're almost finished with this delightful wee OnePlus 15 review, but let's just round things off with a bit of a squint at the old optics. And for its main shooter, OnePlus has slapped in a 50-megapixel IMX 906 sensor. It's a 1/1.56-inch sensor. It's not quite as big as you might hope for a flagship smartphone. That is backed by another 50-meg sensor. This time, an Omni Vision 1/2.88-inch OV50D sensor for that ultrawide. And you've also got yourself a 50-megapixel telephoto shooter using a dinky 1/2.75-inch Samsung GN5 sensor. This comes with 3.5 times optical zoom.

Now that Hasselblad partnership has sadly ended, so it's OnePlus's own Detail Max engine processing your snaps with an emphasis on realistic-looking results. And on that count, I got to say it mostly succeeds. Certainly when the lighting is not complete cack, bright, vibrant colors like these here really shine and usually look pretty much as they did in real life. And likewise, you can expect natural skin tones. Again, as long as your subject is well lit.

In HDR mode, the OnePlus 15 combines a 50-meg high-res image with several 12-meg images captured across a wide dynamic range, morphs them all into a single 26-meg photo. And I can't really argue with the results most of the time as again usually on point with only the occasional bit of saturation if the light is particularly strong.

Low Light and Action

Now unfortunately where the OnePlus 15 can't keep up with rivals is softer light conditions. So photos taken in darker environments or in the evenings do usually look rather flat. Detail capture certainly isn't as strong. So the clarity can be a bit fuzzy. While the tonal accuracy also takes a dip, too. You'll certainly want to switch on the action mode if you're snapping kids, pets, etc., which won't stay still, so you can hopefully avoid any blur. It's not always entirely successful, but it certainly helps. And yes, it is a minor bit of a ball-ache that you do have to remember to manually activate that for an action snap rather than the OnePlus 15 simply switching to it itself if it detects faces in motion, for instance.

Now, you can also capture up to 10 photos per second in the clear burst mode, but without sacrificing clarity or those HDR smarts, although once again, you might get a bit of blur if there's any kind of activity going on. Zoom pics usually look pretty crispy up to around the sort of 7 to 10 times zoom level, at which point it's quite clear that AI sharpening has taken over. Everything looks rather smooth and unnatural, especially any people. But that telephoto shooter is great for capturing portraits, which usually turn out absolutely smashing. Of course, both the zoom lens and that ultra-wide snapper are once again limited in low light conditions as they use even smaller sensors than the main shooter and the exact same image processing.

Video Recording

Now, for your video type shenanigans, you can capture footage at 8K resolution if you fancy at 30 frames per second. I prefer to just leave it at 4K ultra HD, which is more than crispy enough. And as you can see there, you've got up to 120 frames per second capture. And that includes Dolby Vision support, but only if you're shooting using the main sensor. You can drop it to 4K 60 frames per second with Dolby Vision and use the main and telephoto shooter, or if you want to bring the ultra-wide sensor into play, you are topped off at 4K 60 frames per second. That's without the Dolby Vision support.

And yeah, I've found that this past week, the OnePlus 15 is perfectly fine for capturing your everyday home movies and vlogging type stuff. Though, of course, you got similar limitations to the photography shenanigans. In softer light, everything does tend to look a bit flat or grainy. But audio capture perfectly clear and stabilization is pretty good, too. You can zoom up to a ceiling of 18 times, although once you hit the seven times-ish zoom level, everything starts to look a bit fuzzy, so wouldn't bother punching in above that. I also noticed some occasional judder and brief focal issues when I was zooming. And once again, of course, that low light performance rather flat. But anyway, I shot a huge chunk of my Mexican Day of the Dead vlog over on the Spurt channel using the OnePlus 15. So definitely go check that out if you want to see what this thing is really capable of.

Selfie Camera

And then around front, you've got yourself a 32-megapixel selfie shooter using a custom Sony IMX 709 sensor. And this apparently boosts the light sensitivity a significant amount compared with the OnePlus 13. And you got full autofocus smarts. And fair enough, a lot of my selfies turned out nicely. Although in lower light, darker conditions, again, things can be a bit murky. So not entirely convinced.

Verdict

And there you have it, my lovelies. That's what your uncle Spurt reckons of the OnePlus 15 after using it as my full-time smartphone this past week. And I got to say, certainly got a lot of appeal for gamers and more demanding users with its excellent performance and banging battery life. However, if you're after a proper flagship style camera experience, I would highly recommend checking out the likes of the Oppo Find X9 Pro instead. Otherwise, you might be a wee bit disappointed. It's certainly a shame because it feels like the camera experience is a big step back for the OnePlus 15 compared with the previous flagship.

And also, if you are a gamer, you're looking for something with hardcore dedicated gaming performance, well definitely check out the Red Magic 11 Pro, which I just reviewed here on Tech Spurt. Again, sports that Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and a whole bunch of camera tools and features that you'll really get a kick out of. Anyway, that's what this knackered northern nin reckons. Apologies if I've been a bit more slurry and stuff than usual. I've literally just got off a flight from Mexico. So, been traveling for about 24 hours now. And speaking of which, only just hitting that low battery mode now after, yeah, at least 24 hours of having this thing pretty much on full time.

But anyway, it'd be great to hear your thoughts on the OnePlus 15. I'm going to be doing a full side-by-side comparison with the Oppo Find X9 Pro as well. So, if you're still torn between the two, I'll give you an idea of what to expect. And please do poke subscribe, ding that notifications bell, and have yourselves a rosy, wonderful rest of the week. Cheers everybody. Love you.