OnePlus 15 review: The iPhone clone you should buy, but probably won’t

OnePlus is skipping a number (yet again) and adjusting the release schedule slightly with the OnePlus 15. Debuting a full two months earlier than the traditional annual release schedule, the OnePlus 15 introduces a radical new design, a faster-than-ever processor, and a promise to deliver the need for speed in every regard.

However, I can’t help but feel that OnePlus lost its way a bit this year. The design mirrors the OnePlus 13S, a phone we called “The compact iPhone clone you never wanted.” OxygenOS looks and feels more like iOS than ever out of the box — though you can change all of it, thankfully — and a handful of annoying bugs make the phone feel at least somewhat unfinished.

Additionally, the trademark Alert Slider is no longer available, replaced by a generic button that can be somewhat customized, although its usage is far more limited than it should be.

At least OnePlus is still owning the company’s well-known smoothness and speed mantras, featuring the best battery life I’ve seen on any flagship phone to date, a gorgeous 165Hz OLED that beats everything I’ve tested so far, and a camera with surprisingly fantastic performance despite a hardware downgrade.

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OnePlus 15: Price, availability, and specs

The OnePlus 15’s preorder campaign begins November 13 globally, with a release date to follow on November 18. U.S. availability is TBA at the time of this writing, as the government shutdown has affected OnePlus’s ability to secure standard FCC certifications.

Pricing starts at $899 USD/$1,299 CAD for the 12GB RAM/256GB storage model, while the 16GB RAM/512GB storage model retails for $999 USD/$1,399 CAD. Preorder customers will receive a free bonus item and can choose from a OnePlus Watch 3 43mm, OnePlus Buds Pro 3, OnePlus AIRVOOC 50W Magnetic Charger, or a OnePlus 15 Phone Case, while supplies last, when ordering from OnePlus.com.

OnePlus is stepping up its preorder game this time, with deals like cashback bonuses and offers for any phone in any condition. Once U.S. availability is announced, the OnePlus 15 will be available at OnePlus.com, Amazon, and Best Buy. The OnePlus 15 ships with a charger and cable in the box, while some regions also get a case for free.

OnePlus 15: Design and display

• The new boxier design is less comfortable, but the flatter display is better for tempered glass protectors.
• The Alert Slider has been replaced with a Plus Key that can be used for one of eight total functions, but isn’t fully customizable.
• The display is best in class, with excellent brightness and image quality, 165Hz refresh rate, and a chart-topping eye care score.

I don’t like the OnePlus 15’s new design. While it’s certainly got a starkly “clean” look to it, OnePlus lost too much of its identity by following iPhone design language. The alert slider is gone, replaced with a semi-customizable button called the Plus Key, which can be used for eight different functions or disabled altogether.

The default function is to interact with the Plus Mind AI-based memory storage and note-taking system, but I found that I simply never used that functionality, no matter how hard I tried. In the end, I reverted it to a way to toggle between ring/vibrate/silent modes with a long press, but I wish OnePlus had left the Alert Slider alone. Clearly, the company learned nothing from the backlash over the OnePlus 10T.

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The rest of the design is similarly annoying. The flat sides are almost as uncomfortable as a Galaxy S25 Ultra, but thankfully, OnePlus rounded out the top portion of the bezel just a tiny bit, so you don’t end up cutting yourself on the frame. That frame is made of an amazing new ceramic-like aluminum that would feel great to hold if it weren’t completely flat.

The OnePlus 13 struck a perfect balance between flat sides and curved edges, but the OnePlus 15 simply does not. It’s just uncomfortable to hold. I can’t wait to get a case for this phone, and that’s something I never say.

There are also no magnets inside the phone, so you’ll need a case to add that functionality, a disappointment that OnePlus says was necessary to fit such a massive battery inside and still keep the weight down.

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On the bright side, the haptics are still the industry’s best, it still includes an IR blaster, and OnePlus even hardened the build further, giving the phone IP66, IP68, IP69, and IP69K ingress protection certifications.

Speaking of certifications, the TÜV Rheinland Intelligent Eye Care certified display is a thing of beauty to behold. This time around, it’s completely flat, so it should be easy to find a great tempered glass screen protector if the pre-installed film protector isn’t enough (or gets damaged). The fingerprint sensor is the fastest I’ve ever used, too, which is a huge deal considering how big an issue I had with them just a year ago.

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As I covered in my OnePlus 15 display review, this is the new gold standard for flagship smartphone displays. It’s nice and bright, can get as dim as 0.5 nits without nasty low-frequency PWM dimming like the Galaxy S25 and Pixel 10 families use, and has excellent built-in eye care features that’ll make most people feel good about using their phone for hours a day.

The one downside to the display is that it doesn’t feature an anti-glare layer on top; however, the only phones with this feature built in are the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Galaxy S25 Ultra, so it’s not a common feature to miss out on. Again, a good tempered glass protector should solve this.

OnePlus 15: Battery life and performance

• The massive battery is 50% larger than other flagships, leading to nearly 3-day battery life.
• Performance eclipses even the iPhone 17 Pro Max but some thermal issues in benchmarks could signal problems for hardcore gamers.

The OnePlus 15 has the best battery life I’ve ever seen in a flagship phone. Hands down. Given the massive 7,300mAh battery inside, it should come as no surprise that 2-day battery life is a normal part of living with this phone, and some people will find usage into a third day before needing to charge.

To give you an understanding of how good the battery life is, I obtained some data from Future Labs, our parent company’s testing department, for comparison. Note that Samsung and Apple’s charging speeds are achieved by a separately sold fast charger, while the OnePlus phones use the free charger included in the box.

OnePlus still includes the best charger in the box, offering U.S. users 80W and global users 120W, depending on the voltage your power supply operates at. That means a full charge in under 45 minutes, even with a battery that’s 50% larger than most other phones, a feat that shouldn’t go unnoticed. You will never have battery anxiety with this phone, and that’s good considering it doesn’t ship with Qi2 magnets built in.

The 165Hz display ships with some impressive tricks to keep the gaming framerate high and steady, including frame generation and a new touch response chip that keeps things feeling super snappy. See how much more closely the aiming tracks my thumb’s touch in the slow-mo GIF above to see the difference this chip makes when enabled in gaming options.

Overall performance is incredible, too, as evidenced by the table above. OnePlus included a new temperature-controlling gel underneath the screen to prevent it from getting too hot, and I found it to be very effective during normal gaming sessions. This is an epic beast of a chip, and it chews through anything you throw at it like it’s nothing.

The phone still cooked as high as 52 degrees Celsius during extreme benchmark testing, and I saw 3DMark crash more than once when the ambient room temperature was above 20 degrees Celsius (~72F). However, I never experienced this behavior while playing Call of Duty Mobile, Fortnite, or doing anything else on the phone. Benchmarks push hardware to its limits, though, so it’s clear OnePlus needs to tweak the thermal profile on this phone a bit to prevent even niche case crashes.

OnePlus 15: Software

• Ships with Android 16-based Oxygen OS 16, including new AI features that work impressively well.
• Several UI default have an iOS-inspired design but can be swapped out with traditional OnePlus designs.
• OnePlus promises 4 OS updates (to Android 20) and 6 years of security updates.

The OnePlus 16 ships with Android 16-based Oxygen OS 16, an update that recently went out to OnePlus 13 and OnePlus 12 owners worldwide. There are no exclusive features to the new phone, which is great news for owners of older OnePlus phones. If anything, the only “exclusive” feature is that the Plus Key can be used to invoke Plus Mind instead of using a three-finger gesture on screen, as you have to do on other OnePlus devices.

Oxygen OS 16 is a mostly wonderful update, bringing a ton of new features, sleeker design language, and high degrees of OS customization. It’s still too confusing to find the theme engine, though, and the release is somewhat buggy; however, OnePlus states that it’s working on fixes in the next update.

Out of the box, the OnePlus 15 defaults to a very iOS-inspired quick toggle UI and an unnecessarily iOS-like multitasking UI. OnePlus’s other UI is the best multitasking UI around, so I have no idea why the company would want to make it the non-default option. Thankfully, you can change all of these silly decisions and give the phone a more distinct Android flair with a few taps.

OnePlus’s AI features are all quite impressive, with a range of capabilities including text editing and generation, as well as image editing, all available on the phone. It doesn’t have some of the AI generation models from a Pixel, and the built-in call screening isn’t as advanced as Google’s model, but I didn’t have an issue with spam calls while using the phone, so I think it does a good job once enabled in dialer options.

OnePlus 15: Cameras

• Despite hardware downgrades on several sensors, the OnePlus 15 delivers better image quality than the OnePlus 13.
• New features like 4k120 video recording are notable, but telephoto performance is worse than the competition beyond 30x.

There were some genuine concerns when the OnePlus 15’s camera specs came out, including the removal of the Hasselblad branding. OnePlus is launching its own DetailMax Engine with this phone, signaling that the company is confident enough in its own abilities that it no longer needs a big name to keep things interesting.

What we end up with is one of the best smartphone cameras around, taking excellent photos and videos at any time of day. That even includes things like 4K120 video with full LOG support, excellent manual photo and video modes, smooth transitions between lenses while recording and zooming, and more.

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Despite using a smaller sensor, the telephoto performance is quite admirable, delivering image quality that rivals iPhone, Galaxy, and Pixel phones at most zoom levels. It’s really only beyond 30x or in some rare conditions that I saw the OnePplus 15 falter, and phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra or Honor Magic 8 Pro deliver better results.

And while the new DetailMax engine does a better job of delivering even wider dynamic range, better colors, and sharper details than the OnePlus 13’s more advanced sensors, the older sensors in the OnePlus 15 take longer to capture photos when lighting conditions are tough. We’re talking 1-2 seconds longer for darker scenes, which isn’t the end of the world, but it’s certainly a worse experience.

OnePlus 15: The competition

The OnePlus 15 features the fastest processor, the fastest charging, the best battery life, the best OLED, and the best ingress protection rating of any flagship phone you’ll find today. However, there are still compelling reasons to consider other phones.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra’s display features a lovely anti-glare filter that makes it the most ideal outdoor OLED phone to date. Samsung’s long-term support is only matched by Google Pixel phones, and there’s no arguing with One UI’s customizability or the wider Samsung ecosystem of products that work impressively well together.

For the right price, I would actually rather buy a OnePlus 13 instead of the 15 because that phone continues to stand out for all the right reasons. It still has 5 years of support left, and what I think is a far nicer design, especially the vegan leather variant. The Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset inside will still feel top-notch for years to come.

OnePlus 15: Should you buy it?

You should buy if…

• You want a phone with top-tier speed and durability
• You need 2-3 day battery life and ultrafast charging speed
• You want the best display that doesn’t hurt your eyes

You should not buy if…

• You don’t like flat phones
• You’re knee-deep in Apple or Samsung’s ecosystems
• You want a phone with Qi2 magnets built in

The OnePlus 15 is another winner, even if it’s not the knock-down, drag-out success the OnePlus 13 was earlier this year. Some annoying bugs, problematic thermal performance in some situations, slightly slower camera capture speed, and a design I personally dislike are the main downsides here.

But if those things don’t bother you — or maybe you really like the new design — it’s hard to go wrong with what OnePlus put together here. Speed and longevity are the name of the game, and this is a phone that’ll last you years without a sweat.

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