OnePlus 15 Review: The Power and Speed are Back, But at a Cost

Flagship season always feels a bit like the tech world’s festival rush, where everyone shows up with fireworks but only a few manage to light up the sky. This year, the first cracker out of the box is the OnePlus 15, and I have been living with it long enough to know which way the sparks fly.

OnePlus has always treated the number series as its annual thesis on “what a flagship should be,” and the 15 does not shy away from it. The design has seen a shift. The Hasselblad partnership is no more, making way for OnePlus’ in-house DetailMax Engine. Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 comes in with the confidence of a gym bro who wants you to notice its gains. There is also a faster 165Hz refresh rate panel, because apparently, 144Hz no longer carries enough bragging rights.

But specs never tell the whole story. And, to see what personality the OnePlus 15 carries, I’ve been using it for the past 2 weeks. Here’s my review.

PROS

• Excellent, reliable and consistent performance
• Outstanding battery life, fast 120W charging
• Consistent gaming stability
• Smooth, crisp and fast display
• Playful colour variants
• IP66,IP68,IP69, and IP69K rated
• Clean software experience, smooth animations
• Improved video capabilities, LOG support

CONS

• Costlier than before
• Camera hardware is a downgrade
• 165Hz refresh rate has very limited usage for now
• Wireless charger requires a magnetic case

OnePlus 15 Price in India and Availability

The OnePlus 15 will be available on Amazon India in two RAM and storage variants. OnePlus is also running an HDFC Bank offer that brings the price down by ₹4,000. For a limited time, the company is bundling the OnePlus Nord Buds 3 as well.

On the after-sales front, there’s a 180-day replacement guarantee, and to address any potential green-line issues, OnePlus is also offering a lifetime display warranty.

Design and Build Quality

The OnePlus 15 takes a fresh swing at design, stepping away from the circular camera module that started with the OnePlus 11. You could argue this is OnePlus signalling a new chapter for its flagship line, especially now that the Hasselblad partnership is officially in the rear-view mirror. Along with that identity shift comes a move away from the curved body. The 15 opts for a flat back and a more traditional silhouette that looks clean and feels comfortable, with no real ergonomic drawbacks.

That said, I can’t shake the feeling that some of the old OnePlus charm has gone missing. Earlier number-series flagships had a distinct visual identity. You could spot a OnePlus 13 instantly in a sea of Android phones. With the 15, that uniqueness takes a hit, particularly because the camera design now looks very similar to the Oppo Find X9 and its younger sibling, the OnePlus 13s, but of course, with an elongated module.

My review unit is the Infinite Black variant, and it is easily one of the most striking executions of a black shade I have seen on a smartphone. The matte texture keeps fingerprints at bay, although you will occasionally spot white marks. These are very likely your nail brushing up against the back. It’s easily noticeable, but also just as easy to wipe off.

Everything else stays familiar except for the Plus Key, which is the same as the OnePlus 13s. The button placements are unchanged. And for connectivity, you still get a USB-C 3.2 port, which is exactly what a flagship at this level should be offering. As for IP rating, the OnePlus 15 comes with IP66 + IP68 + IP69 + IP69K; the latter is the new addition for this year.

Display

The display is one of the highlights of the OnePlus 15. It uses a 6.78-inch AMOLED panel with a 2772×1272 resolution. So, this is essentially a 1.5K panel, down from the 2K panel on the OnePlus 13. OnePlus says, as of now, it’s impossible to add a 2K panel and 165Hz refresh rate in tandem. Speaking of which, the 165Hz refresh rate comes with an asterisk mark.

Honestly, it is almost impossible to tell apart a panel running at 120Hz or even 144Hz, so you are not going to magically notice anything new at 165Hz either. Most apps are still capped at 120Hz, which means the only places where a higher refresh rate might show up outside gaming are the home screen and the settings menu. So, the faster refresh rate numbers right now are a big pull for marketing and less for practicality.

That little asterisk I mentioned earlier applies here. The OnePlus 15’s 165Hz refresh rate exists purely for gaming, and nowhere else. It kicks in only with titles that actually support 165Hz, like Call of Duty: Mobile (there’s an asterisk here as well, will get to that in the gaming section), Real Racing 3, Clash of Clans, and a handful of others. And if you know someone who genuinely plays Clash of Clans at 165Hz, please introduce me, so we can both friend them and then politely question their life choices.

However, what’s noticeable is the touch response. OnePlus says they’ve used a dedicated chip for the same. The touch-sampling rate is set at 3200Hz, and the quick response can be noted in games like Call of Duty: Mobile.

The display supports HDR10+ and Dolby Vision content on Netflix right out of the box. I’ve set the colour mode to Natural in the settings, and shows like Better Call Saul look great on the phone with deep blacks during darker scenes. It is rated for 1800 nits in High Brightness Mode, and in our testing, the display peaked at around 1185 nits during HDR playback. Outdoor visibility was solid during real-world use. Even under harsh sunlight, using Maps, browsing, or checking notifications never felt like a struggle.

Performance and Software

The OnePlus 15 is the first phone in India to launch with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and the performance uplift is noticeable in the benchmarks. The phone comes in 12GB and 16GB RAM variants paired with 256GB or 512GB of storage. OnePlus is using LPDDR5X for the 12GB model and LPDDR5X Ultra for the 16GB option, while storage stays at UFS 4.1 across the board.

It is also worth mentioning the larger industry context here. Over the past few months, memory modules have seen a price spike due to increased demand from data centres focused on AI workloads, among other reasons. That trend is expected to continue, and you will likely see similar cost hikes in the next wave of premium smartphones.

Coming back to the OnePlus 15, we ran a detailed two-hour gaming and performance stress test comparing the OnePlus 15 with the Realme GT 8 Pro. In AnTuTu, the OnePlus 15 scored around 3.7 million. That puts it ahead of last year’s iQOO 13, but still a step behind the numbers returned by the GT 8 Pro. Geekbench 6 paints a slightly better picture, with the multi-core score crossing the 11,000 mark and showing a healthy generational leap in CPU performance.

While the performance gains show up clearly in benchmarks and stability tests, there is very little real-world translation during normal use and, to an extent, even in gaming. The gaming part is not the chip’s fault. Android simply does not have enough titles that can genuinely push the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to its limits.

The OnePlus 15 runs on OxygenOS 16 based on Android 16 and comes with a 4+6-year software commitment. It’s solid, but still not quite flagship-grade in today’s landscape. Samsung and Google offer longer upgrade cycles, and even iQOO is promising an extra year of OS updates for the upcoming iQOO 15.

Gaming and Video Editing

By now, you can probably guess that multitasking is effortless on the OnePlus 15. Switching between heavy apps, background processes, and multiple browser tabs barely makes it flinch. Even video editing on the Edits app was surprisingly quick. The phone took under a minute to render a 1-minute and 10-second 4K clip with music, text overlays, and captions.

In BGMI, the OnePlus 15 supports up to 120FPS using the Smooth and Ultra Extreme preset. During our test sessions, the phone held steady at around 118FPS even in chaotic squad fights, while the Realme GT 8 Pro showed noticeable dips under the same conditions. Now for the second asterisk in this story. OnePlus promised 165FPS support in Call of Duty: Mobile, but it is currently limited to Team Deathmatch. Battle Royale does not allow 165FPS yet. When you do play at 165FPS, the experience is genuinely smooth, and the faster touch response is immediately noticeable.

Genshin Impact, as usual, tops out at 60FPS. OnePlus also claims the phone can use frame interpolation to boost the output to 120FPS. I could not test this feature before press time, but I will update the article once I have tried it. In the standard 60FPS mode, the OnePlus 15 maintained a very steady 59FPS throughout our run. Under the same conditions, the Realme GT 8 Pro dipped to around 51FPS, which clearly shows the OnePlus 15’s advantage in sustained performance.

Cameras

The OnePlus 15 parts ways with the Hasselblad partnership, and to add insult to injury, the camera hardware itself has taken a step back compared to the OnePlus 13. The downgrade is most obvious in low-light photography. That said, it is not all hope lost. In this case, OnePlus has added some focus to videography as well this time.

It’s still a triple camera setup with 50-megapixel across the board on the rear. The primary camera uses a Sony IMX906 sensor, the telephoto camera uses the Samsung JN5 sensor, and the Ultra-wide camera uses an OmniVision 50D sensor. As for selfies, it’s handled by a 32-megapixel Sony IMX709 shooter. Besides that, the OnePlus 15 also uses the DetailMax Engine, which suggests the 15 will rely more on computational photography.

In daylight, the OnePlus 15 captures genuinely good images. Photos have plenty of detail, and the phone handles dynamic range well. This becomes especially clear in scenes where the outdoors are brightly lit while the indoors are mildly dimmer. I tested this during my visit to Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, and the phone consistently returned the same balanced output. The post-processing can occasionally get overenthusiastic with vibrant colours like red, but it happens inconsistently and never crosses into dealbreaker territory.

Shutter speed is quick, so you are not likely to miss fast movements. To help further, there’s a Clear Burst mode, which you can trigger by holding the shutter button. It fires up to 50 photos in one go and groups them neatly in the gallery. The ultrawide camera also holds up well in daylight and maintains similar colour science. Barrel distortion is visible at the edges, but not severe enough to affect the overall shot. Low light is where the limitations of the all the smaller sensors begin to show. The camera still does a decent job, but in challenging scenes, it can struggle, and noise may creep in once you start pixel-peeping. It tries its best to keep things clean, but physics is physics.

The 50-megapixel periscope telephoto camera offers 3.5x optical zoom and 7x hybrid zoom, with digital zoom stretching all the way to 120x. At those extreme levels, images rely heavily on AI to “restore” detail. Results are best kept for structures, signage, or skylines, because it does not magically resurrect fine detail but does enough. At 3.5x, though, the camera is great for human portraits. Skin tones remain natural, details stay intact, and edge detection is remarkably consistent. Low light is once again where it trips up. There’s clear focus hunting, and in more demanding situations, noise becomes noticeable. The 32-megapixel selfie camera performs well in daylight. Low-light selfies are passable, though nothing worth writing home about.

Video, however, is where OnePlus is trying new things. The OnePlus 15 can shoot 4K at 120fps, with Dolby Vision enabled, which is a big jump for a mainstream flagship. It also supports LOG recording for creators, and the phone can even show a live preview of LUTs in the viewfinder.

Battery and Charging

This is where the OnePlus 15 stages its strongest comeback. The 7,300mAh silicon-carbide battery inside this thing is a monster, and calling it that might actually be an understatement. The phone comfortably lasts a day and a half, even with a physical SIM, an eSIM, constant notifications, WhatsApp, Instagram, and regular Google Maps usage.

I pushed it further during our two-hour gaming stress test. After multiple benchmarks and heavy games, the battery still sat at around 68 per cent. If you are someone who deals with battery anxiety, this is one of the very few phones that can genuinely silence it.

The OnePlus 15 supports 50W AirVOOC wireless charging, but there is a catch. There is no built-in magnet, so you will need a magnetic case just like with the OnePlus 13, which is honestly a bummer. Wired charging, on the other hand, has been bumped up to 120W, and it is blazing fast. It can fully charge the phone in roughly 30 to 35 minutes.

Verdict

The OnePlus 15 starts at ₹72,999 for the base variant, and yes, the price hike stings especially with the current upgrades on offer. But with the way component costs are rising, this was inevitable.

What matters more is whether the phone still behaves like a flagship, and the answer is a confident yes. The battery life is class-leading, performance is rock solid, gaming stability is excellent, and the overall user experience is unmistakably fast. And, the 165Hz on the OnePlus 15 is great in theory and marketing banners, but outside the few supported games, it mostly sits there like a gym membership you swear you’ll use someday.

There are trade-offs, no doubt. The camera hardware is a downgrade from the OnePlus 13, low-light performance takes a hit, and the whole Hasselblad exit means OnePlus is no longer chasing the “camera-first” crown.

And maybe that is intentional. The OnePlus 15 feels like the brand is sliding back into its speed-driven heritage rather than fighting for the camera wars. It is almost as if OnePlus looked at iQOO and said, “That seat looks comfortable,” and then sat down with a smirk. But, how long will that last? Stay tuned to Gizbot for all the upcoming reviews.