OnePlus
OnePlus has just launched the OnePlus 15 in China, and it looks like an impressive Android flagship phone at first glance. There’s a powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a 7,300mAh battery with blazing-fast charging options, and a 165Hz refresh rate.
It’s all very impressive, but I’ve come to a conclusion about the phone following its unveiling. No matter how OnePlus dressed up the OnePlus 15, I’m not buying the company’s excuses for some notable downgrades.
OnePlus 15: Hot or not? 20 votes Hot! 45 % Not! 55 %
How to market the downgraded OnePlus 15?
OnePlus
OnePlus has positioned the OnePlus 15 as a performance-first flagship phone. This is evident on the official product page (see the screenshot above), which features the tagline of “Ultra flagship performance.”
The company then published an interesting post on its Weibo page during the OnePlus 15 launch event. It said users who value gaming struggled to find an “Ultra” flagship that delivered top-tier gaming performance “while excelling in other areas.” It added that the OnePlus 15 offered an “industry-leading gaming experience” while still offering flagship-tier display, design, cameras, battery life, and more. It even went so far as to call this phone a new Ultra option.
It’s all well and good that the OnePlus 15 apparently delivers a top-notch gaming experience. After all, we’ve come across quite a few overheating flagship phones in 2025. But a closer inspection of the OnePlus 15 suggests that this focus came at the expense of a few cutbacks compared to the OnePlus 13. And nowhere is this more apparent than when you look at the phone’s cameras.
OnePlus claimed that this would be the best OnePlus camera to date, but signs suggest that the camera hardware is a big step back. The OnePlus 13 product page specifically mentioned the LYT-808 main camera as well as sensor size details for both the main and periscope cameras. By contrast, this info was missing from the OnePlus 15 launch event and the actual product page (check out the gallery below).
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