OnePlus 15R: More Expensive, But Better Than Ever?

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The $700 OnePlus 15R features a straightforward design, impressive flagship performance, a large battery that lasts multiple days, and excellent software. However, some may find it difficult to justify the cost.

Another year of a OnePlus flagship also brings another OnePlus R-series phone. Since the number 4 is considered unlucky in China, we get the OnePlus 15R instead of the 14R. The new model brings similar specs and features as the OnePlus 15—save for a mildly larger battery. It also got a $100 price increase from last year’s model and now costs $700.

But we try to answer several important questions before choosing. For example, does the larger battery make that much of a difference? Does the new DetailMax image processing outperform Hasselblad? Especially since camera quality and software updates have always been the Achilles’ heel for OnePlus. The company sent over the Charcoal Black color option, and after spending just over a week with it, we’ll let you know its positives and negatives within our OnePlus 15R review.

Hardware

OnePlus went for the subtle and simple approach to its 2025 phone design, and I, for one, am here for it. As with years past, the design on the R-series mirrors that of the current OnePlus flagship, and it’s no different this year. The OnePlus 15R offers a square-off design with flat edges, mild curves on the edges, and a matching rounded camera module. OnePlus equipped the rear with an interesting matte finish that scratches easily but can be easily wiped off. The sum of these parts makes for a 214g weight due to its massive battery, while feeling premium when in hand, but not too heavy.

It offers a slightly larger and brighter 6.8-inch 2800 x 1272 165 Hz screen with 1,800 nits of peak brightness over its predecessor’s 6.7-inch 2780 x 1264 120 Hz panel. All while retaining its super-thin bezels, offering maximum screen real estate. The 15R’s OLED panel delivers punchy, vivid colors, which I only experience when testing a OnePlus or a Samsung flagship, profound black levels, excellent contrast, and outstanding viewing angles. Despite my thoughts on the Supergirl teaser trailer, everything about it looked amazing on the 15R.

The OnePlus 15R comes with an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor for authentication, which is as lightning-fast as you would expect from a OnePlus device. It also matches the 15’s durable body with the usual suspects, up to an IP68 rating, protecting the device from dust and water, while the latter, IP69 & IP69K, adds a safeguard against high-pressure and high-temperature water jets. Thus, making the 15R tougher than just about every phone currently on the market against the elements, save for the OnePlus 15.

And lastly, like the OP15, the 15R replaces the popular alert slider with a customizable shortcut button called the Plus Key on the 15R. This button offers several options to trigger shortcuts, such as OnePlus’ Mind Space, which acts as a digital memory bank (more on that later); Sound & Vibration; Do Not Disturb; Camera; Flashlight; Recorder; Translate; Screenshot; or no action at all.

Performance/Battery Life

The OnePlus 15R is the first smartphone equipped with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and comes with 12GB of RAM. Together, they deliver 15R flagship-level power to handle everything from daily tasks and multitasking to console-quality gaming. They process 50% of their AI tasks on-device, with the remaining 50% processed in the cloud.

OnePlus added a new cooling system to prevent the screen and rear panel from getting painfully hot, all while maintaining optimal performance. The internal hardware also allows the chip to run Call of Duty: Mobile, one of the few titles supporting its 165 Hz refresh rate, at max settings for graphics and frame rate, effortlessly.

Your favorite flagship’s battery isn't putting up these kinds of numbers.

Now onto the biggest star of the show for the 15R: its 7,400 mAh battery. Yup, this is actually larger than the cell inside its flagship OnePlus 15 device. OnePlus uses its newest Silicon Nanostack technology, as with the 15, which combines two smaller 3,700 mAh cells to a combined 7,400 mAh capacity. Just to compare the numbers: the Galaxy S25 Ultra has a 5,000 mAh battery, the Pixel 9A has a 5,100 mAh battery, and the Pixel 10 Pro XL has a 5,200 mAh cell inside. This gives OnePlus a 2,200 mAh larger cell advantage against the top flagships and direct competition. These aren’t just numbers, as they translate into their execution as well.

With lighter usage, I stretched it out to around 3 days on a single charge. With heavier usage, I was able to pull off up to two days on a single charge. I’m talking over 8 hours of on-screen time, which consists of hours of Call of Duty: Mobile, an hour of TikTok scrolling, scanning emails, messaging via Telegram and WhatsApp, and listening to an hour’s worth of interviews on YouTube.

The 15R also lives up to OnePlus’ claim of charging from 0 to 100% within an hour when using its included 55W charging brick. It is worth noting that it doesn’t support wireless charging or Qi2 magnets natively. But the company provided us with its own 1st-party Qi2-compatible case, and I’m sure other companies on Amazon sell Qi2 cases to fulfill the need for magnetic wireless charging.

Cameras

The OnePlus 15R gets a slight downgrade with one less camera than its predecessor. The 15R is equipped with a rear dual-camera setup, which consists of a 50MP main sensor with 2x optical zoom and an 8MP ultrawide, compared to the 13R’s rear triple-camera system, comprised of a 50MP main, a 50MP telephoto with 2x optical zoom, and an 8MP ultrawide.

However, the 15R’s front-facing camera gets an upgrade from the 13R’s 16MP to a 32MP selfie shooter with autofocus. With Hasselblad no longer handling image processing, OnePlus went in-house to develop its own DetailMax imaging engine, just like on the OnePlus 15.

I found the camera quality to be good in the adequate lighting, but not $700 good.

The 50MP main sensor can pull off some favorable shots in both well-lit and low-light situations, with reasonably crisp details and good color accuracy. I captured several shots while out holiday shopping at my local mall and in NYC for an unrelated event one evening, and I was impressed with the results. I also found the 15R’s cameras to be fast enough to capture moving subjects, such as small animals or small children.

However, if there isn’t enough light, you’ll get mildly over-processed results with flat colors and noticeable noise with the main sensor. Unfortunately, the quality doesn’t improve when using the 8MP ultrawide sensor, as more noise enters in nearly all situations. The same applies to its video quality if not enough light is present, despite being able to capture 4K 120 fps slow-motion video.

Software

The OnePlus 15R brings the same version of Oxygen 16 on top of Android 16 from the OnePlus 15. The newer software continues to bring its clean, Pixel-like approach to the 15R, and adds a few new features and additional refinement, along with its supreme level of customization, to the company’s latest mid-ranger.

OnePlus, like every other phone maker, is diving into AI integration to make day-to-day tasks more helpful. New features include AI Writer, a tool that composes text and summarizes long articles. AI Recorder transcribes voices for interviews/meetings and can configure between multiple speakers. AI Scan lets you scan photos or documents into PDFs. AI Portrait Glow enhances lighting and shadows within portrait photos. There’s also the new Mind Space with Google Gemini integration, which is a digital memory bank for content like screenshots, articles, event details, etc. All of 15R’s AI features work relatively well, and I don’t mean that as a slight because outside of Google, most phones’ AI features are chalked up as fine.

The usual software suspects are still present and accounted for. Such as quick search, deeper customization of changing icon shapes and sizes, vibration settings, Shelf, which is the company’s widget-based information panel, and Smart Sidebar, which is a floating panel for quick access to tools, recent files, etc., live on and thrive.

It’s also worth noting that the OnePlus 15R only gets 4 years of Android updates and 6 years of security updates. Compared to recent mid-range offerings from Google (Pixel 9A) and Samsung (Galaxy A16), which both offer seven years of security, software, and OS updates, which is three years short on software and one year short on security updates.

The $700 OnePlus 15R offers a simplistic design, blazing-fast flagship performance, a large multi-day battery, excellent software, and improved cameras. It represents a prime example of the company’s flagship-killer phone—save for the price. When the 15R goes on sale, this will be an easy upgrade for those with the 12R or older models. Until that happens, the 15R is up against some stiff competition.

Google’s $500 Pixel 9A is the more practical Android option in both price and features, and the $800 iPhone 17 is a more complete Apple experience with superior video capabilities; both outshine the 15R in camera quality, useful AI features, and longer software updates and support. The key question is which feature set matters more: longer-lasting battery and power from OnePlus, or better cameras and longer software support from Apple or Google?