00:00 – Mishaal Rahman: Is the OnePlus 15 a worthwhile upgrade or should you just hold on to your money?
00:04 – C. Scott Brown: And will Android 17 finally keep your contacts safe?
00:08 – Mishaal Rahman: I’m Mishaal Rahman.
00:10 – C. Scott Brown: And I’m C. Scott Brown and this is the Authority Insights Podcast where we break down the latest leaks and news surrounding the Android operating system.
00:19 – Mishaal Rahman: So, our OnePlus 15 review is finally out and pretty much everyone on our team, Scott included, pretty much came to the same conclusion. It has absolutely incredible battery life, probably the best of any smartphone out there right now, but it’s unfortunately held back by downgraded hardware compared to its predecessor, as well as an exceptionally spicy processor.
00:39 – C. Scott Brown: Meanwhile, we’ve spotted clues that Google is finally working to fix a major privacy issue in Android. They’re developing a new tool that’ll let you selectively give access to contacts instead of your entire address book. And lastly, Samsung may be cooking up some unique new gesture controls for its upcoming Android XR glasses, but to use them, you may need to shell out for some cash to get a Galaxy Ring to combine the two together.
01:10 – Mishaal Rahman: But before we get into the XR stuff, let’s circle back to the OnePlus 15 reviews because they’re a bit of a doozy. You know, this is the second OnePlus flagship phone we’ve gotten this year. You know, at the very beginning of the year, we had OnePlus announce the OnePlus 13, although technically that phone came out last year, but that was a China launch, but in the US, it came out the very beginning of this year. And now, just like 11 months later, we have its successor, the OnePlus 15. And no, you didn’t miss a thing. They did indeed skip the 14 because, you know, the association with the word four in China, the death connotations, but whatever. We’re now on the OnePlus 15. And you expect there, you know, you go from 13 to 15, it’s a generational jump. You expect there to be generational improvements across the board, but that’s not the case. In our own testing, our own reviews, we found that yeah, there are quite a bit of downgrades in the hardware department. We have a downgraded camera system, downgraded haptics, a couple of other downgrades in the area, downgraded display, lower resolution display, upgraded refresh rate, but you know, there’s not many applications that actually take advantage of that increased refresh rate, and some unfortunate issues with thermals in our testing.
02:31 – Mishaal Rahman: So Scott, you did a review yourself of the OnePlus 15. You published a video on YouTube actually earlier today. Sorry, I’m speaking from the future two days ago about the OnePlus 15. So why don’t you tell me what are your overall thoughts of the device?
02:48 – C. Scott Brown: So, the thing is that it would be a great device if the OnePlus 13 didn’t exist. The OnePlus 13 as an entire package is far superior to the OnePlus 15 by nearly every metric. So, what we have here is a situation where OnePlus might have made a mistake with the OnePlus 13. It may have made the OnePlus 13 too good.
03:21 – Mishaal Rahman: Oh, yeah.
... continue reading