Tushar Mehta / Android Authority
But my colleagues’ initial reactions to the phone shook that conviction. In their initial testing, my colleague Robert Triggs found the new phone running at nearly scorching temperatures. That’s a good thing if you’re near the North Pole, helping Santa pack gifts for kids. But for the rest of us mere mortals, those temperatures — I’m talking about nearly 53°C (127°F) on the surface, were bothersome, and especially harrowing for mobile gamers who intend to use it for several dozen minutes, if not hours, holding the phone in their hands while fragging foes in leading FPS games.
Thankfully, OnePlus acknowledged the issue and delivered a couple of updates to address it. So, I’m taking the opportunity to test its claims about gaming and see if the OnePlus 15 actually scores a high K/D spread compared to its competitors.
Would you consider buying the OnePlus 15? 1045 votes Yes, looking forward to buying it. 27 % Interested but not fully convinced. 35 % No, I'll wait for a better option. 38 %
Testing OnePlus 15’s competence
Tushar Mehta / Android Authority
Since my colleagues have already evaluated the OnePlus 15 on its core performance metrics, I am sprinting straight to test its gaming performance. For this, I’m relying on two Android games that are brutal on the hardware — Call of Duty: Mobile and Genshin Impact. Then, I would follow it up by running a couple of emulators to test the 15’s ability to survive and thrive in alien territories.
To quantify performance, I’m using Gamebench, a professional benchmarking tool. Gamebench has been kind enough to offer me a free journalist’s license for several years now. However, it does not have any input on the findings in this (or any other) gaming test.
I’ve allocated 30 minutes of continuous gameplay for each game. This should be sufficient, since the OnePlus 15 had already started sizzling after 20 minutes of a continuous 3DMark stress test during our previous evaluation. After each of the tests, the external temperature is recorded with an infrared thermometer.
Each test is performed at a room temperature of 22ºC (~72ºF), and the phone is at around 25ºC (~77ºF) before starting. Meanwhile, the phone is tested with Normal Mode and not the High Performance Mode to ensure realistic results. Lastly, the results were recorded after updating the phone to version 16.0.1.305 of OxygenOS.
... continue reading