OnePlus 15 review – A stellar flagship with the best battery life ever seen on a phone

This is the OnePlus 15.

It’s a fascinating device from a company that condensed its brand to the hubris and ego of a single slogan: Never Settle. At the time, it meant to never settle paying for more and receiving less.

Today, OnePlus is less of a flagship killer than it is a flagship designer. Their latest phone costs a thousand euros here in the Nordics, and that’s for the base model. The hardware is still the best you’ll find on any phone out there, but when you reach the top, what can you do when your mission statement demands to go ever upwards?

On paper, the OnePlus 15 is as impressive as anything else on the market. It has the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, a 1.5K 165Hz display, a massive 7300mAh battery with ultra fast charging, and a triple 50MP camera setup with a new proprietary processing engine.

It’s fast, powerful, and in my use the battery lasts for almost three days of use.

But specs have never been an issue when it comes to OnePlus devices. Instead, it’s always been a story of how these fit together. In the past, a OnePlus phone was for those who were looking for raw power at a specific price point, even if it meant agreeing to some caveats. Usually with the cameras.

With the OnePlus 15, I think the company has finally reached a point where there are no caveats or asterisks or quibbles. Instead, this is a phone that is great, full stop.

OnePlus 15

• Superb and reliable performance
• Best battery life on a phone
• Great camera and video performance
• Finally, a mature ecosystem

Battery life and daily use

The battery life on the OnePlus 15 is incredible, there’s no other way to express it. In my use, which varies drastically every day from super heavy use to almost nothing, I managed a full three days without charging. This was after a mix of Wi-Fi, mobile data, and with a ton of streaming music and video from YouTube, taking photos, gaming, and your average doomscrolling.

As for specs, the OnePlus 15 sports a 7300mAh Silicon NanoStack Battery, which OnePlus claims to retain 80% of its health after 4 years of use. For Finns and others living way up north, the battery is rated to function at temperatures as low as -20 degree celsius. As of testing we haven't gotten to that miserable weather yet, but I can confirm that it operates like a champ in pouring rain and other equally soggy conditions.

The standby time is excellent. In my two weeks with the phone, I found that I could leave the device unattended at night and only see maybe a percent or two drain at most. It is truly the first time in a long while, on either Android or iPhone, where I could charge once and never think about it for days. Every other phone from here on out will have to compare itself to the OnePlus 15.

When you do have to charge, the 120W SUPERVOOC charger gets you from 10% to full in just around 40 minutes. At home, you can just plug the phone in for 15 minutes and you’re good for an entire day. That naturally requires the brick charger, which no longer comes in the box here in the EU, which is a major bummer for a device that costs this much money.

For gamers, the OnePlus 15 allows for Bypass Charging, where you can just plug the phone in for longer gaming sessions and not have to worry about damaging the battery. In my testing, this did wonders for heat generation, and the phone barely felt warm to the touch even as I threw Wuthering Waves and Call of Duty at it. On longer trips, like flights or train journeys, I can imagine this will be a massive draw for those who love to game on their phones.

Helping that is the excellent new dedicated Wi-Fi chip, which OnePlus claims leads to 50% faster performance. Testing it at home and in public, I did notice a considerable increase in speeds at least, with the OnePlus 15 downloading content way faster and with less drops than ever before.

Other basics are just as reliable as ever. Phone calls sound crisp and clear and callers reported no issues on my end, either. The speakers, while pointed downward instead towards the user, are fine as well. They're not industry leading, but entirely acceptable for gaming sessions, though most reasonably humans will still use headphones.

Bluetooth connections are equally rock solid. I've had my Amiron 300 wireless earbuds and the Sony XM4's paired with the OnePlus 15 and I've noticed no issues in latency or drops at any point.

As an all-rounder device, something that does everything well to the point that you just don't think about it, OnePlus has hit a stride here that is finally in contention with every major manufacturer out there.

[In battery life] every other phone from here on out will have to compare itself to the OnePlus 15.

Build and display

The OnePlus 15 isn’t the prettiest or most daring looking phone on the market. It doesn’t look as exciting as the iPhone 17 Pro Max with its divisive two-tone color and camera aesthetic. It isn’t stunningly slim like the Fold 7, nor is it a trifolding miracle like what Huawei has put out.

It is, by all accounts, function over form. The sides are slightly rounded, but also tighter than before. The front is a solid piece of glass with slim bezels and the tiniest pin camera for selfies and facial recognition. The back is made from a matte-finished glass with an aluminium frame. It's robust without feeling chunky; hefty without feeling heavy.

In short, it's a phone that means business. It shines in its durability. This is a phone designed to be taken outside. During my two weeks with it, I carried it everywhere, and not once was I concerned about how it handled even the roughest of days.

I have three curious, destructive cats. They knock over everything they can get their grubby paws on. Within hours of unboxing and setting up, the OnePlus 15 faced their wrath and took a tumble off the kitchen table. It fell on a hardwood floor face down, and I swear you could hear a pin drop. The cats scattered and I took deep breaths before turning the phone over.

There wasn't a scratch to be found. The durable screen took the impact like a champ, and over the next two weeks I didn't worry about setting the phone down wherever necessary. In an ideal world, the back would be plastic or something akin to that, but this is close enough.

The screen is a flat 1.5K 6.78-inch LTPO display that's native to a 165fps. One of the things I noticed during the initial spec reveal was how the enthusiast crowd bemoaned the "downgrade" of the screen resolution, claiming it was an antithesis to the Never Settle mentality that had made OnePlus what it is.

But I would argue that Never Settling doesn't necesarily mean always getting a hardware bump. In this case, OnePlus has moved to a slightly lower resolution (which, let's be honest, most won't notice) in favor of higher refresh rates.

Packed within is also UAV-level gyroscope, which OnePlus claims to have an accuracy of ±4000 DPS. It's a quality of life improvement that's vital for gamers with cognitive and physical impairments, as it allows for easier controlling of games with just motion controls. I tested this out with Call of Duty and found the experience precise, but so new that I still mostly kept things traditional with a Bluetooth controller paired to the device.

These are a welcome addition even to someone who doesn't actively game on their phone. I tested out the OnePlus 15 with my Razer Kishi V3 peripheral and it honestly felt like having a handheld console in my palm. Thanks to a silky smooth refresh rate, great gaming software, and superb battery life, the OnePlus 15 makes a stellar case for why mobile gaming is such a massive draw for folks.

Yet it's the everyday things that I really love with regards to the screen. First off, it's easy to read thanks to stellar clarity and brightness, which goes up to a whopping 1800 nits. When it's dark, the screen comfort allows the phone to drop all the way down to just 0.5 nits, which is fantastic for a country like mine that lives in perpetual night for half the year.

The Eye Comfort Mode, something also found in the Honor 400 which I reviewed earlier in the autumn, helps immensely with long-term viewing. I doomscroll way more than I should, especially on longer trips, and I read a lot of books and articles as well. I've noticed that with these accessibility settings, my eyes have felt far less strain than before, though arguably I should just use my phone less altogether.

Camera quality

The OnePlus 15 has a triple 50MP camera setup with an RGBW Selfie camera. The main camera is a Sony IMX906 sensor with a 1/1.56'' sensor, while the telephoto is a 50MP JN5 sensor with 3.5x optical zoom and a 7x high-quality lossless zoom.

The ultra-wide camera has a 116 degree field of view and the front camera has a 32MP sensor that lets in 60% more light for selfies in dimmer conditions.

Again, it's all very impressive sounding on paper, but that's been the case with OnePlus devices in the past. In practice, I've always found photography to be great in extremely controlled settings – less so on the fly, which is how most people use their devices.

After all, there's a reason why most compare their photo and video quality still to the iPhone. When it comes to spontaneous capture sessions, there hasn't been much competition.

At least not until now, because I think the OnePlus 15 finally can change all that. During my testing, I found that nine times out of ten, the OnePlus 15 delivered on the promise of capturing great photos and video even without any preparation whatsoever.

One of my favorite tests for this is pulling out the phone during my commute in Helsinki center, which is full of tight corners, cramped locations, and poor lighting. It's a struggle for any phone, especially during the winter, to deliver something nice here, yet you'd be surprised how often I see folks trying to nab selfies or quick shots of the iconic statues at the railway station or museums.

First, I tried out the ultrawide, regular, and zoom lenses at around 7PM, when the sun had well and truly set for the day. In the ultrawide shot, you can see how the OnePlus struggles a bit with keeping the extremities in focus, but it's still entirely acceptable considering the low light and fast moving subjects.

On the regular lens, details are crisp and clear, including how OnePlus captures the details in the windows surrounding the white clock just below the statues. Even the lamps are nicely balanced and the hands on the statues aren't over-exposed.

At 2x zoom, the results are even more impressive. The OnePlus captures incredible detail and light, bringing out the stonework and metallurgy around the base and the hands.

The 3x zoom, likewise, is hugely impressive, with only a minor amount of noise in the image despite poor conditions. The statues look impressive and there's fantastic detail in the arch, where you can spot the weathered portions of the metal.

And this was a photo I took just by whipping out the phone and hitting capture. No framing, no waiting for the perfect shot. Just point and shoot, and OnePlus 15 delivered.

In other conditions, the OnePlus 15 continued to impress. Selfie portraits are impossibly sharp, capturing details on my clothes and face without glossing over imperfections (which I have aplenty) and doing a fantastic job with separating the subject from the background.

I like to test out the portraits and selfies against difficult backgrounds, because if a phone can handle the clutter, it can handle most of anything else. Check out here how well the OnePlus 15 handles the distinction between my face and bookshelf behind me, or how it understands not to cut out the hair even as it passes by three different layers of book, shelf, and toys in the background.

Macro photography I found to be still a bit of a hit and miss effort. Some objects, like well-lit toys or statues, the OnePlus could photograph like nobody's business. But those all required optimal conditions, and I often ended up with blurry shots when trying to just quickly grab a photo at a store or expo.

In conditions with low light, the OnePlus 15 delivered incredibly impressive shots, like the one from the iSense theater in downtown Helsinki. This was taken with the lights dimmed and only the highlight color strips active. OnePlus does a fantastic job here of highlighting the important parts of the shot, including the iSense logo, without losing detail in the lettering. The colors are true to life and vibrant, and the way it catches every single seat with superb depth is truly a pleasure.

In daylight shots, the OnePlus 15 provided excellent detail and color reproduction, like in the 8-Bit mural below. The shot of the city on its own isn't particularly noteworthy until you realize that it's taken with the new rapid-fire photography at 80km an hour. I walked away hugely impressed by how I could throw almost any scenario at the phone and come away happy with the results. For the first time, the OnePlus 15 has a camera I could recommend for everyone without any hesitation.

The OnePlus 15 has a camera I could recommend for everyone without any hesitation.

For video, it's here that OnePlus 15 impressed me the most. The quality from the sensor is nothing short of fantastic regardless of the lighting conditions, and OnePlus has made some excellent progress in its color science.

For example, take a look at this clip I shot on a moving metro during the twilight hours. Watch how the OnePlus' autofocus moves from the edge of the frame to the outside without pumping between the glass and the subject. Look how sharp the railings outside are, especially as OnePlus keeps the depth clear without crushing detail or color. The cars, likewise, remain sharp even in fast motion.

But it's in the clouds that OnePlus really impresses. The image here separates four different cloud covers from one another without overexposing any of them. It captures the hazy vanilla hues and last gleaming of sunlight beautifully, while also keeping the colors intact without any sort of adjustment made to the image. This is directly from the camera from a single, spur-of-the-moment session.

If you're a content creator currently on an iPhone and have wondered about moving to Android, but stopped because of previous video quality issues. I think the OnePlus 15 is finally the phone that will help you make the switch.

AI and Mind Space

One of the more contentious changes to the OnePlus 15 is the removal of the trusted toggle switch from the left-hand side of the device. In its place is now a new Plus Key, which works the same way as the one found on the iPhone. While customizable to multiple functions, its main and default use case is to save screenshots and memos to the Mind Space.

This AI-laden storage is what OnePlus calls a unified repository of digital memories. In practice, it's more of a generalized version of the Notes app, only more fiddly and less reliable.

In testing, I found that while the Plus Key works just fine for capturing the page you're looking at, it doesn't actually do much more than grabbing a glimpse of the topic. Most of the time it would screencap only what was immediately in view, create an AI-powered recap that often missed the nuance of the topic, and then leave it at that without even a link to the original article itself.

When tested on something featuring dates in the image itself, the Mind Space did know how to suggest creating an event out of the topic, but that's something Google's own AI already does quite well – and already did way back when it wasn't a privacy nightmare.

OnePlus says the Mind Space is end-to-end encrypted and will only move to another server for quick processing with no trace of your activity otherwise. In theory, it sounds grand, but we'll have to wait and see how it actually works in practice.

Sometimes, Mind Space would actually grab a link if the address bar was in view, but even at those times the results were finicky. Here, the app captured only the first part of the link and confidently left things as is. When I asked the AI what was the link to the article itself, it just told me that it didn't know.

OnePlus says you can ask the AI questions regarding the content, but this too proved to be very hit or miss. Here, I asked it about the contents of a Reuters article, only for the AI to just repeat what was in the headline and claim the rest was a mystery.

You will get better results if you screencap entire pages at a time, but that just raises the question of why would you? There are better apps to save things for later reading. It all feels like a solution that needed first to invent a problem nobody had.

The idea itself is great and something that everyone in the phone market is currently chasing. Who wouldn't want to have a personal Jarvis at hand? In theory, Mind Space will cross-reference your personal library with references to things you've saved to create recommendations for future events, places, and things to shop.

But in its current state, where the AI struggles to reference details to simple news articles or even fully link back to them, I don't think the reality has caught up with the dream just yet.

AI tools

Where the AI tools do come in handy is in the practical side of things. The AI recorder, for example, is a fantastic tool that I've used now daily.

It's still the same recording software, only boosted to its limits with transcription and even better ability to distinguish between speakers. The summary generation is also far better, and I actually found that instead of having to constantly babysit the tool, it ended up being so reliable that it cut down on my transcription work by hours.

The same goes for the AI scanner, which is a familiar, but even more precise and effective tool than before. I use the photo-to-PDF tool at least once a day, and it's saved my skin more times than I can count when I've needed to do a quick scan of a document or important piece of writing without other tools at hand.

This is the kind of expansion of AI and LLM work that I'd love to see on devices. Especially if they can work locally, as they do here.

Verdict

The OnePlus 15 is a fantastic all-rounder phone, and that's not a dismissal or a downplay of its remarkable qualities. Today, most phones are fine or even great in some areas. Many deliver incredible photos or superb AI tools, but few work as such that I'd consider them extensions of my job.

For a personal carry device, something that I'd see myself using for years to come (my current daily driver is still the S23 Ultra), it needs to hit a number of things with such reliability that I don't think about them or feel anxious over their performance when I'm on the road.

The OnePlus 15 hits all of those demands. It is a stunning workhorse that is never left wanting for power. Its camera is one of the best we've seen all year, not just in specs, but in reliability as well. It is a durable piece of hardware that feels like a premium device. On top of that, OnePlus has matured into a stable, smartly designed ecosystem that understands the importance of getting things done.

By the time I have to return my review unit, I will go out and buy one as a daily driver for the foreseeable future. That is about the highest compliment I can give any device.