OnePlus 15 Review: A Battery Champion Held Back By One Thing

OnePlus is back with another so-called flagship killer. The OnePlus 15 has a sleek and stylish design, a huge battery, and, oh yeah, an IR blaster. It's been a while since I've seen one of those on a phone.

OnePlus phones are no longer priced to easily beat the competition though. At $899.99, the OnePlus 15 kind of sits in no man's land in terms of pricing. It's more expensive than the base models, like the Pixel 10 and Galaxy S25, but offers more features. It's cheaper than the top-end models, like the Pixel 10 Pro XL and the Galaxy S25 Ultra — but in some ways, isn't as good.

Us reviewers like to use superlatives that hail a device as the best for certain purposes. The iPhone 17, for example, is the best phone for most people. This makes sense. Not everyone has the same needs or desires from their phone. So what about the OnePlus 15? Well, right now, it's the best phone in its price range for people who don't care about photography. Only one problem — a whole lot of people care about photography.

The OnePlus 15 has a flat-edged build with slight curves to the edges, and it's generally a good look. The phone is comfortable to hold, with an aluminum frame and a ceramic-like back that feels premium in the hand. The front is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which should help keep most lighter damage at bay.

One thing I really like is that the camera module doesn't protrude too far from the back of the device. The square module sits on the top left, and while it can certainly move if you apply a lot of pressure on the top left of the screen when it's sitting on a table, in most usage, it won't wobble much.

The back of the device has a matte texture that's also an interesting choice. It's easily marked up when things touch it, but you'll soon realize that it's not actually the phone that's getting scratched — it's whatever touched the phone. If I run my fingernail across the back of the device, it will leave a mark, but you can easily wipe off these marks, leaving the phone looking good as new. The trade-off is that it does pick up these removable marks often, and they're very visible.

Christian de Looper/BGR

The OnePlus 15 has a comprehensive IP rating, including IP66, IP68, and IP69K. This means it is protected against dust, water submersion up to 2 meters for 30 minutes, and high-pressure, high-temperature water jets, which is the highest level of protection available. That's seriously impressive durability for a smartphone.

The "Plus Button" on the left edge of the phone replaces the physical alert slider that OnePlus has used for years, and you'll decide what it will be used for when you first set the phone up. It's basically OnePlus's take on Apple's Action Button, but in the absence of something like Shortcuts, it's nowhere near as powerful. You can't even select a custom app to open with it. It's a good start though, and it's probably time for the slider to retire anyway. Other buttons include the standard power and volume on the right edge, and there's a USB-C port on the bottom.

You'll also find stereo speakers and an IR blaster included, working through a window in the camera module — the latter being a fun blast from the past. The phone is available in black, purple, and sandstone. I have the black model, which looks relatively sleek. Overall, the build feels durable and premium.

The OnePlus 15 has a 6.78-inch LTPO display with a 165Hz refresh rate, which is higher than what you'll find on most flagships. The resolution comes in at 2772 x 1272, or 450 pixels per inch. That's slightly lower than the OnePlus 13, but it's not really noticeable in day-to-day use. It's fine.

Peak brightness hits 1800 nits or up to a hefty 6000 nits when viewing HDR content, with a minimum brightness of 0.5 nits for comfortable nighttime viewing, if you use the right settings, like Reduce White Point. The flat screen design features razor-thin bezels, giving the phone a modern, premium look. There's also an under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor that's quick and mostly accurate.

The screen looks excellent — crisp, bright, and very smooth. If you're one of those people who thinks an ultra-high refresh rate beyond 120Hz is going to impact your mobile gaming, you'll like the screen too. I'm not one of those people, but hey, maybe I'm just not a good enough mobile gamer.

The OnePlus 15 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, which is the best processor on an Android phone right now. You can get up to 16GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage, which should be plenty for most users.

There's a vapor chamber cooling system optimized for gaming. I'm not exactly sure how much this helps, especially given the information that's come out about how thin it is, but I still found that while the phone heated up a little during intensive tasks, it wasn't over the top. The phone performs excellently in day-to-day use — fast and responsive, and it never froze or stuttered during my testing.

The IR blaster is a cool idea. It takes a bit of setup to truly use it as a universal remote, but it's still a neat feature we don't see much anymore. If you have a bunch of different remotes lying around your living room, being able to consolidate them into your phone is genuinely useful. Of course, you'll still need those remotes unless you live alone or buy a OnePlus 15 for everyone in your family.

The OnePlus 15 has an extremely large battery — one of the largest in a flagship smartphone right now. OnePlus rates it for two days or more of battery life on a single charge, and in my usage, that held up. I could easily get two days of use, and some people might stretch beyond that with lighter usage. You'll never have to worry about running out in a single day, except in the most extreme of circumstances, like gaming for hours on end.

It's genuinely freeing to have this kind of battery life. I found myself not even thinking about charging during the day, which is a luxury that most flagship phones simply don't offer. If you're someone who travels frequently, spends long days away from chargers, or just hates the anxiety of watching your battery percentage drop, the OnePlus 15 delivers peace of mind.

When you do need to charge, you've got options. The phone supports 120W wired charging with the global model, which is very fast, though unfortunately you're limited to 80W with the U.S. model. It also supports 50W wireless charging with the right accessories. However, it's disappointing that there are no magnets for Qi2 accessories and chargers. That feels like an oversight on an otherwise well-equipped phone, especially considering the fact that it seemed like OnePlus was moving towards full Qi2 adoption with the magnet-equipped cases for last year's OnePlus 13. Alas, it's sticking with those this year too.

The OnePlus 15 features a triple 50-megapixel rear camera configuration. There's the main camera, a telephoto camera with 3.5x zoom (fine, but could be better), and an ultrawide camera with a 116-degree field-of-view. On the front, you'll find a 32MP camera with autofocus that supports 4K video at 120fps with Dolby Vision. Notably absent is the Hasselblad tuning that was featured on the previous generation.

The camera is good, but it's not great. Well-lit shots look good, with decent detail and color. Low-light shots are fine at best — they blur easily and aren't super bright, though they're not the worst I've seen either. Photos often look a bit flat and not especially exciting, but then sometimes they pop much more. As a whole, the camera experience is inconsistent.

It's pretty disappointing to see a camera system that doesn't quite match up against the competition in this price range — and the camera is by far the worst thing about the device. An excellent camera would have pushed the phone from "good for certain users" to "good for all users." Considering how important the camera has become, and how good smartphone cameras have been getting, I would have liked to see something with better tuning.

OnePlus's AI-based camera features are a bit of a mixed bag too. It's become common to use AI to enhance very zoomed photos, but I found the results of OnePlus's implementation to be subpar compared to Google's, for example. Some of these issues can be fixed with better software, and again, I should stress that the camera isn't terrible. It's just not a $900 smartphone camera.

OxygenOS 16 is clean and fast, and while I still prefer the Pixel approach, OxygenOS might be a close second for me. Everything is more or less where you expect it to be, and it looks modern. As you would expect in 2025, there's an extensive AI suite including writing, search, translation, recording, and transcription tools. You may not use them much, but they're there if you want them.

The headline AI feature is the Mind Space app. It's essentially designed as an AI-powered information organizer, and it's supposed to be what you use the new Plus Button for (though I only used the button for that for a day or so). It can also connect to Gemini to pull information that you've searched for. If you use Gemini a lot, however, you may find this to pointless — why not just use Gemini in the first place?

It could come in handy if you want to use AI to analyze a bunch of screenshots, as there are gestures like swiping up with three fingers to save a screenshot straight to Mind Space. This isn't really a use case that I find very helpful. The good news is that many of the AI features can be ignored if you want to ignore them. They're not always in your face, but if you get used to using them, you may find some of them useful in certain situations.

Overall, it's a clean Android experience. I still love OnePlus widgets too. OnePlus promises four years of OS updates and six years of security updates, which is fine — but could be better. Google offers seven years of Android updates, which is currently the best out there for Android phones.

At the start of this review, I noted that the OnePlus 15 is the best phone for those who don't care about photography. Honestly, however, it's a little more nuanced than that. You could care about photography, but not enough to really care about wanting the best smartphone camera if it means sacrificing the best smartphone battery. That's kind of the line you'll have to draw for yourself. The OnePlus 15 is an excellent phone. It's just not the best at every single thing. If battery life is a priority, you like OnePlus's software implementation, and you don't care as much about mobile photography as those other things, then the OnePlus 15 is probably the best phone for you.

The competition

The primary competitors here are the Google Pixel 10 Pro and Pro XL, as well as the Samsung Galaxy S25 series. OnePlus beats all of those devices in battery life, so if that's your top concern, go for the OnePlus 15. OnePlus also beats the Samsung phones when it comes to software — at least in my opinion. Other factors are a bit more nuanced. All of these phones perform fine, but the OnePlus 15 technically has the best Android phone processor right now. That said, all of the other devices in the Pixel and Galaxy lineup have better cameras than the OnePlus 15. You'll have to decide what's a top priority for you.

Should I buy the OnePlus 15?

Yes, if you care more about battery than camera.