Forget Samsung S25 Ultra: This Android alternative has battery life that left me speechless

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.

nov / 2025

Update (12/5/2025): The OnePlus 15 has been approved by the FCC for sale in the US and is now available for preorder, with OnePlus offering free accessories with the purchase.

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.)

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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.)

Also: OnePlus 15 vs. Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: I compared the two best Android flagships

The OnePlus 15 has been the easiest phone for me to take that calculated risk on. With this iteration, the company ditched the faux-leather backing that was on the OnePlus 13 in favor of a satin-textured fiberglass panel. In particular, the Sand Storm variant, which shimmers in tan and beige hues, features a grippy side railing that has given me reassurance whenever I respond to text messages or check navigation while on the street.

In the process, the OnePlus 15 loses its traditionally slim and contoured form factor. At this point, it looks and feels more like an iPhone Pro Max or Google Pixel XL model, as several friends and family in Korea expressed to me. Fans of originality will be disappointed.

For what it’s worth, OnePlus is making a big deal about its display engineering, though perhaps not in the area that users demand attention to. With the OnePlus 15, the bezels measure just 1.15mm, allowing you to see less of the black bordering around the four corners and more screen. At the same time, the display resolution has dropped from the previous version’s 2K panel to a new 1.5K panel.

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I’d like to think that the dip in resolution is what enables the phone to operate at a consistently smooth 165Hz refresh rate without consuming as much power — much like how traditional monitors tend to have the same give-and-take behavior. That was the case when I spent hours doomscrolling through blogs about APEC during the week I was traveling, and playing graphics-intensive mobile games on the flights to and back. 

For the latter, the OnePlus 15 didn’t exhibit signs of throttling until the 30-minute mark. That’s a far cry compared to the Samsung and Google flagships, which dropped frames and felt uncomfortably warm to hold within the first five minutes of gameplay. This is both a testament to Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset (which we’ll likely see on more upcoming Android phones) and OnePlus’ CPU Scheduler, which allocates computing bandwidth specifically for gaming.

Now I’m not a gaming enthusiast by any means, but it’s pretty clear to me that the OnePlus 15 is tailored to that ever-growing market of consumers. From the software optimizations designed to stabilize frame rates and temperatures to the dedicated Wi-Fi chip that supports the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard, this is the clear choice for gamers at heart, and no other mainstream phone comes close right now.

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In other things I did not expect to say: OnePlus is somehow leading the way in mobile AI features. The new phone has replaced the classic three-level alert slider with a programmable action button (my wording is intentional there). Sure, you can map the side key to turn on the flashlight or quick-launch the camera, but I’ve found it most useful to activate Mind Space.

Like Nothing’s Essential Space, Mind Space is a local database where you can save screenshots and voice recordings, which Gemini can then use to pull context and answer questions. For example, I made it a habit in Korea to file images of important travel emails and notices. That way, I could simply ask Gemini to reference them when looking for flight schedules, weather, required documents, and more.

What about camera performance? As I’ve learned time and time again, one phone simply can’t have it all. After various camera shootouts in Seoul, my verdict is two-fold. First, it’s hard to ignore the fact that every single camera sensor on the OnePlus 15 is inferior to the OnePlus 13. I’m talking smaller sensor sizes and less capable camera tech. 

In lieu of hardware upgrades, the company is hoping that its improved AI software processing and Qualcomm’s ISP will serve your captured subjects justice.

This works, but only to a certain capacity — and if you’re a fan of oversharpening. For general wide and ultrawide shots, I found that images taken with the OnePlus 15 appear well-saturated and have higher contrast than those from previous models. Fortunately, HDR capturing isn’t as aggressive as what I get from Samsung and Google; there’s a good balance of detail and color between subjects and luminating backdrops.

The OnePlus 15 performs better in terms of far-distance and telephoto capturing. In most cases, the 120x optical zoom can reproduce signage and text from far away much better than even Samsung’s 200MP camera. There’s a sprinkle of generative AI in OnePlus’ processing (I hate to break it, but almost every phone has a bit of this nowadays), but it’s executed in a tasteful way that most people will likely appreciate.

Also: You can preorder the OnePlus 15 now – but don’t forget to claim the $180 freebie

Where the cookie crumbles is in low-light capturing, as the smaller sensors struggle to pull in enough light (and, therefore, detail) to keep faces sharp, objects distinct, and colors natural. For clarity, no flagship phone champions nightography, but on a relative scale, the OnePlus 15 falls behind its premium competitors. You can check out my colleague Adam Doud’s camera shootout at Six Flags for more photo samples and comparisons.

I’ll leave you on a high note. That 7,300mAh battery on the OnePlus 15 is the real deal; after spending my days in Korea taking countless photos and videos, running the GPS in the background, and searching for places to explore, the OnePlus always had enough battery to last into the next morning. And when I did need to top up, the 80W wired charging took it from 0 to 50% by the time I brushed and washed my face in the morning. Imagine every phone was like this?

ZDNET’s buying advice

Despite what the specs suggest, the OnePlus 15 is not a drastic departure from the OnePlus 13. That’s a good thing, as the latter only launched in January of this year, and it was already a fantastic Android handset. With the successor, OnePlus is doubling down on its biggest strengths, including battery life, fast charging, and performance. 

At the same starting price of $899, the OnePlus 15 is the definitive option for mobile gamers, power users, and tech enthusiasts to close out the year. You’ll just have to settle for silver when it comes to camera optics.