OnePlus 15R Ultimate Review: The Budget Flagship That Outlasts Them All

I think the place where OnePlus 15R is sitting, especially in the US market, is pretty interesting. OnePlus “cheaper” flagship phone is it’s the ‘officially-named’ . It may be OnePlus’s own Pixel 10 or Galaxy S25 or iPhone 17 or something else, . And yet, as it does have a different processor and cheaper than s, that is still slightly different.

We saw a lot of downgrades (especially in the camera – for the OnePlus 15) and we were expecting to see that for this 15R, but now we are seeing here unfortunately. For those who buy the OnePlus 15R, it’s unlikely that anyone would be interested in buying for the camera. Hence, so what about the rest of the phone? Let’s know in our full review.

OnePlus 15R

Rating

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OnePlus 15R is the best battery life you’ve ever been given, flagship-level performance that stays cool under pressure and premium design all without breaking the bank.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Exceptional battery life with the 7,400mAh cell, lasting over a day with 13+ hours of screen-on time
Excellent thermal management stays noticeably cooler than the OnePlus 15 and competitors
Premium design and build quality with matte glass back that resists fingerprints
Large 6.83-inch display with 165Hz refresh rate and strong outdoor visibility at 1,800 nits
Smooth and stable OxygenOS 16 software experience with useful features like Plus Mind

Cons

Telephoto lens removed entirely from the camera system
Charging speed downgraded to 55W in the US (was 80W on the OnePlus 13R)
Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 benchmarks lower than Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Dimensity 9500
165Hz refresh rate limited to select games, not widely utilized yet

Disclaimer

I’ve been using this review for 3 weeks and OnePlus gave AndroidHeadlines an Mint Breeze XP 15R to test. The review isn’t a sponsored one and this review was not reviewed in OnePlus before it was published, so that this does not appear to be referred to as pursuing .

OnePlus 15R Specs

View Device Specs

OnePlus 15R Review: Design and Build Quality

As with the OnePlus 15, this year, there was also a makeover for the new XP. 15. This is essentially the design that OnePlus introduced on the 13S/13T last year, which was basically in-house. It’s flat all around, that means . Now it’s square camera bumped like a and has an added addition to its list.

I like this design of the OnePlus 15R much as with the original version of its predecessor, the iPhone 15. So we have here in this Mint Breeze color, it looks very nice.” While it still has an aluminum alloy with a glass back, matte so it won’t absorb many fingerprints.

OnePlus 15 has no third camera this year, so the camera module is slightly different from its predecessor. This is a cut by one of the many cuts that was made byOnePlus, yes, against the iPhone 13R and removed the telephoto camera. This is the other change, as it is on every OnePlus and OPPO device that has been launched since the upcoming XP 13 earlier this year. Instead, we have the Plus Key on the left side of the phone. It’s basically the Action Button from the iPhone that can be mapped for various things, including believing your phone is on track.

A volume rocker, and power button are as expected on the right side of is a volume-rocker (and also an under-display fingerprint sensor) and there’s even an uninstalled fingerprint sensors. OnePlus did not remove the SIM card tray from its RAM, it’s still at the bottom, to the left of the USB-C port.

The IR Blaster still lives on, at the top of the phone and some will be happy to hear this.

In general, the OnePlus 15R is a good looking phone (maybe the best-looking phone in its price range). OPPO and OnePlus expect that it is built very solidly, which is what we expect from and its builder.

OnePlus 15R Review: Display

The OnePlus 15R does have a bigger display this year, even larger than the XP at 6 (i.e. 83-inches Paraphrasingr. Nevertheless it does overturn the big display of an OnePlus 15 with its large display option–165Hz – but this does not mean that s are missing. As with the OnePlus 15, refresh rates of 165Hz (and even 144Hz) are only used in some games, as is the case for its 155Hz equivalents. And if you’re not at all that big of a selling point right now, so isn’t it really that large? It is LTPO so the display automatically changes from 60 up to 165Hz.

FHD+ resolution 28001272, this is also an extremely good resolution, with a relatively decent brightness of 1,800nits in high brightness mode. A much more realistic peak brightness number, HBM (highly achievable) has been discontinued by OnePlus in favour of its newer counterpart, a peak luminosity number. We tested it up to 1,600nits. But what this means is that you’ll never have to see this show outside the house. But I’ve been using it for the past few weeks, after a snowstorm we had here in Michigan where its now even brighter than usual thanks to the sun reflecting off of the snow. And I still had no problem seeing it outside the sun, and that was a joke.

OnePlus says they look like you’d expect them to be as good as the colors of the display. And, of course, it’s one of the best displays out there.” The Galaxy S25 Ultra will still win that battle because its anti-reflective display is a key factor in winning that fight. Certainly not an indication of the price point, but certainly no bad display for .

OnePlus 15R Review: Performance

OnePlus 15R is the first device to have Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset. While we’ve heard other phones will be launching using it, the sound of OnePlus has been like ‘a chip that they co-developed with Qualcomm’. If we’ll be able to know whether it will have its OnePlus-exclusive in the next few months, but as of now how good is it?

A good chip, a bit of. But it is noticeably cooler than the OnePlus 15 does for its sub-parallels, and still remains much cooler. I’m thinking of talking to thermals a bit later, which we’ll talk with but temperature was never an issue with this phone.

A very capable smartphone The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 has 12GB of RAM and 256gb of storage, as you would imagine. And one that, I might say, is better than the OnePlus 15 and even more.

This phone I used MLBB at max brightness for about 2 hours, and barely noticed that the phone was warming up. I could not say something about the OnePlus 15 both phones were in performance mode too. But so does performance of the OnePlus 15R not suffer from s.

Benchmarks

As such, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is a little more powerful processor than the Qualcomm 8 Elite Gen 5, and even the MediaTek Dimensity 9500. How does the OnePlus 15R compare to the competition? Let’s get some old fashioned benchmarking.

| Device | Geekbench 6 – Single-Core | Geekbench 6 Multi-Core | Geekbench 6 GPU |
| — | — | — | — |
| OnePlus 15R | 2,792 | 9,183 | 17,119 |
| OnePlus 15 | 3,648 | 10,788 | 24,530 |
| vivo X300 Pro | 3,388 | 10,393 | 23,051 |
| Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra | 3,128 | 9,793 | 18,379 |

The benchmark that tests the performance of the processor and the GPU, Geekbench 6 here, is that OnePlus 15R is even slower than last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. That is largely the single-core (about 12% difference) of that, while multi- core and the GPU are about 6% differences. Pretty narcissistic. A bit slower than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and the MediaTek Dimensity 9500, wich is probably going to be. No good marks here in general – not bad scores but just for s.

Moving onto AnTuTU, . It’s a test that tests virtually everything on your device from the processor to RAM to battery and everything in between.

| Device | AnTuTu |
| — | — |
| OnePlus 15R | 2,814,075 |
| OnePlus 15 | 3,701,202 |
| vivo X300 Pro | 3,533,222 |
| Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra | 2,439,788 |

AnTuTech What we can see here with AntuTur is the OnePlus 15R looks pretty well-optimized. As it did beat out the Galaxy S25 Ultra, as a . The score is almost 3 million, but a close score of just shy of that would be too bad as Samsung still charges $1299 for the phone with fewer marks right now.

Thermals

Now let’s go on thermal. This is more important than I’d like it to be. But this is now pretty much the most important thing that has happened to me when I have overheated so much with my Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 – especially in the OnePlus 15 – particularly at least. Sadly, the inside of the OnePlus 15R is quite cool and does not have an impressive cooling system but let’s see how it compares up.

There are three test tests for thermal testing, . It starts with 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, the first one is. It makes you ‘to the absolute image’ and is usually what causes your device to overheat and shut down. A hour on performance mode, max graphics and max brightness), then we play Genshin Impact (max graphics & max light). A video recording at 4K60 is the third test, and a ‘s test is video. The temperatures are recorded by us at 5 minutes in and 10 minutes within. And we don’t do these all back-toback, of course; that wouldn’s not fair to the device. That’s what it looks like for a , but here’s how it compares up.

| Device | 3DMark | Genshin Impact | Camera – 5m | Camera – 10m |
| — | — | — | — | — |
| OnePlus 15R | 114.1°F | 94.5°F | 85.2°F | 92.6°F |
| OnePlus 15 | 119.6 | 97.6 | 98.7 | 100.7 |
| vivo X300 Pro | 112.8 | 93.5 | 93.9 | 98.2 |
| Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra | 104.1 | 95.1 | 94.4 | 97.8 |

The OnePlus 15R is so cool, as we know, that it’s very cool. Honestly I was shocked at how cold the temperatures were in the camera test and ran it again on another day. It has also a higher stability percentage in the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, which was tested at 75 for its temperature now than it did during that test. 5%, while the other phones here are unfer 60% of . It is so that’s important to mention the fact that .

But I don’t think that heat will be a problem with the OnePlus 15R and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, which is really good to see, after the problems of the iPhone 15 (the one who had an issue)?

OnePlus 15R Review: Battery Life and Charging

The OnePlus 15R is the most powerful battery-efficient smartphone, and has the highest battery in North America’s U.S. smartphone history. OnePlus 15 is a tad larger than it is because it has. So when you pair that with an efficient and cooler processor like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, you’re going to have a great battery life. OnePlus 15R And that’s what I’m getting with the .

During one day I have never killed this phone. In fact, it has been a struggle to kill half of the battery in one day. Typically, this phone is more than a day of standby plus 13 hours of screen on time. I think that’s amazing, and it puts me at the top of my list for best battery life right now. It also does well in our battery life test.

It’s a sad part here now that we talk about charging. As OnePlus has reduced charging this period to 55W here in the US (supposedly its 80w outside of the USA). A bit surprised to see the downgrade was that this year’s OnePlus 13R had been 80W earlier this season. But it’s not that big of a deal, and the fact is 80W was rarely hit anyways. There is still no problem with charging s here. Paraphrasingr’s full charge takes a little more than an hour. But remember this is a 7,400mAh capacity battery, so that’s not bad at all.

Benchmarks

For the battery life benchmarks, we essentially run a video test for that particular model. But this does indicate that the phone is well-suited to be played for video playback – spoiler alert The OnePlus 15R is very well designed for playing videos.

For example, in this test we charge the phone up to 100% and let it sit for another hour so that it is fully charged – some phones will say 100% when its not really fully loaded. We then adjust the display to around 150nits and load a YouTube video, unplugging phone. Until the video play, let’s just get on with the phone down to about 1-2% and record the time. OnePlus 15R How does the optu-r compare?

The OnePlus 15R was phenomenal as we can see here. That’s not a gaming phone (the only one that we tested was the OPO Find X8 Pro), and it’s also one of the few phones to go over 24 hours. About 2. OnePlus 15 5 hours longer than . But here is a difference, as it’s the much more optimized Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 that has been shown by .

If our test for the battery is completed, we start charging and then run it again. charging the phone from 1% to 100%, . The charger we use is the one that comes in the box, or a charger which can push the charging speed to its maximum for the phone. And so here’s how does the OnePlus 15R compare.

OnePlus 15R Review: Software

As with the OnePlus 15, OxygenOS 16 is an Android 16-based version of the launch for the newer, more recent smartphone 15R (i.e. It’s the latest version of OnePlus’ software, and we’ve been updated for a couple of times over the month or so that we have had it. Is there a way to change things, be better optimized, bugs getting squashed etc. as ?

In my OnePlus 15R, I will say that “I haven’t had any real problems or bugs” in my life. OnePlus 15 and even the OPPO Find X9 Pro, have been great software experiences. This processor is so slow it’s very smooth, snappy and no indication of lag whatsoever (even with this slower processor).

It’s kind of grown up on me, OnePlus has added Plus Mind in the last year and it’. Using OxygenOS 16, it does have Google Gemini integrated so is really good for now. Sometimes I use it to save screenshots, and export data from those screenshot. What is the best way to add that event to your calendar when you see a poster? If you take a screenshot and Plus Mind can extract the date, time, location and more to your calendar with just two taps. I think Plus Mind is better than Google’s own Pixel Screenshots.

However, OnePlus has not yet said how many years of updates will the 15R receive. But we know that the OnePlus 15 will receive 4 years of major Android OS updates and 6 years security updates. I think we’d like something similar to the OnePlus 15R so that is what we expect from .

OnePlus 15R Review: Camera

OnePlus 15R camera, like the XPast 15, also reversed this year. But it does use the new DetailMax Engine, and to be honest, the pictures are good. Then they’re going to win “Camera Phone of the Year” but I’ve got some really nice photos from this phone. The best price point for s is that I might say it – with only the Pixel 9a coming close to its true meaning.

But there were some downgrades, so here’s the camera specs of the OnePlus 13R compared to the OnePlus 15R:

| Camera | OnePlus 13R | OnePlus 15R |
| — | — | — |
| Primary | 50MP f/1.8 | 50MP f/1.8 |
| Ultrawide | 8MP f/2.2 | 8MP f/2.2 |
| Telephoto | 50MP f/2.0 | N/A |
| Front-Facing | 16MP f/2.4 | 32MP f/2.0 |

So the big thing you’ll notice here is that the main and ultrawide cameras are virtually the same. This year, the ultrawide is a smaller tad than this year’s ultra wide (though not really noticeable). Big omission The removal of the telephoto lens is the big shit. It was a 2x optical telephoto last year, so it wasn’t much of.

But the front-facing camera doubled in resolution and got a larger aperture. So selfies did get a nice upgrade.

Hence, how do the photos look? Well, see for yourself. I’ve added a number of photos taken with the OnePlus 15R below. None of these have had any edits to them; all taken in Auto mode and also were filmed.

Should you buy the OnePlus 15R?

In the increasingly competitive mid-range flagship space, OnePlus 15R is a strong value proposition. But while OnePlus has made some unfortunate exceptions mostly the removal of that much-defeated telephoto lens and slower charging speeds in the US the phone is where it matters most to its target audience. A smart choice The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is a thermally efficient, and well-designed device that provides excellent thermal control without losing meaningful real world performance. Given the battery of 7,400mAh, what is a phone that can truly last well beyond ‘full day of heavy use’ — something few competitors at any price could claim.

This style, and build quality punch well above the weight class of a phone; it is also known as the 6 inches high. 165Hz refresh rate, 83-inch display offers a premium viewing experience with. OxygenOS 16, software-wise, still impresses with its smooth performance and a thoughtful feature such as Plus Mind. Despite being class-leading, the camera produces perfect photos for everyday use just don’t expect to be blown away by zoom capabilities anymore.

The OnePlus 15R is an aggressive case against competitors such as the Pixel 10 and Galaxy S25 at its price point. If you value battery life, cool and consistent performance & solid build quality over camera versatility, the 15R is easy to recommend for those who are interested in battery lifetimes, or even better. It’s not aiming to be everything for everyone, but in what it is meant to achieve, OnePlus has delivered a phone that will satisfy the vast majority of users who are looking for flagship-adjacent performance without the high price tag.

You should buy the OnePlus 15R if:

You prioritize battery life in a smartphone.
You want flagship performance without the heat.
You appreciate premium design at a lower price.
You’re a mobile gamer.

You should not buy the OnePlus 15R if:

You want the fastest charging speeds.
You need the absolute best performance.
You’ll miss the Alert Slider.

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