OnePlus 15 ZDNET's key takeaways The latest Android flagship starts at $899 for the 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage variant.
It's highlighted by a 7,300mAh battery, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and 80W wired charging.
The camera system is inferior to last year's model, and you can't actually buy the phone yet. View now at OnePlus
Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.
When I first learned about the OnePlus 15, I wondered if the quest to make the best smartphone had gone too far. Could a phone ever have too high of specs? Or were those tanky Android 13 handsets -- with their edgy names and 10,000mAh batteries -- actually showing us the future all along?
After all, the OnePlus 15 boasts a rather luscious feature set, even by my guess of 2026's standards, with a 6.7-inch AMOLED display that refreshes at 165Hz, Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a 7,300mAh battery with 80W wired charging, and an IP69 rating to fend off high-pressure water jets (or accidental tumbles in the washing machine.)
Also: Best early Black Friday phone deals 2025: 12 offers I found on Sam's Club, Amazon, more
Fortunately, the latest flagship phone looks nothing like the Doogees and Unihertz of the world, as I exhaled with relief when first unboxing the handset. Instead, we're still working with polished slabs of metal and glass, with just enough thickness and heft to make you feel reassured that your $900 investment didn't just go toward "innovation."
To truly test the OnePlus 15, I brought it with me on a recent trip to South Korea, along with several competing Android devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and Google Pixel 10 Pro XL. Here's how it fared, including the unexpected discoveries throughout the process.
For starters, I use every phone I review, regardless of price point, without a case during the testing period. This practice gives me the best sense of the industrial designer's intent. (Does it matter what tier of Corning Gorilla Glass a manufacturer uses, or why they curved the edges to a certain degree of radius, if I just throw the phone into an Otterbox? No.)
... continue reading