I'm not angry at the OnePlus 15, I'm just disappointed

I never thought I’d be here. Well, I did, just maybe not this quickly. Just over 10 months after the Western launch of the brilliant, well-rounded OnePlus 13, the flagship-killing, never-settling brand is back with… another flagship. Yes, really, a second one in 2025. This time, though, instead of creating a jack of all trades (which, to be fair, was a master of most of them), OnePlus is after power users — or at least, I think it is.

The reason I say I think rather than I know is that despite testing this phone for a few weeks, I’m not quite sure how we got to this point. I know the OnePlus 15 is powerful on paper — it boasts the latest chipset, a large battery, ample RAM, and sufficient storage to prove it. But for everything that has improved, it feels like just as much has taken a step backward from a predecessor that is still one of the best Android phones you can buy. Here’s why OnePlus’s most powerful flagship ever might also be its toughest sell.

It’s a mature design, but it’s less fun than usual

Unfortunately, the OnePlus 15’s tough sell for me starts with its design. It’s not the phone’s fault, though — it has the unenviable position of trying to follow a phone that I loved. When OnePlus first showed off the OnePlus 13 nearly a year ago, I found myself absolutely enamored with the satin, stone, and faux leather finishes, as well as fine touches like the flat display and textured alert slider, which kept me coming back for more even after I finished my review. So, I think the cards were stacked against the OnePlus 15 even before I took it out of its signature red box.

When I did, though, I wasn’t quite sure what to think of the phone I was holding. On one hand, yes, it feels as durable as any OnePlus phone I’ve ever used. I was sent the Sand Storm finish, which slots in as this year’s version of white (it’s beige-ish), and it’s treated with a micro-arc oxidation technique that shields the otherwise aluminum frame in what OnePlus boasts is a ceramic-grade coating. It surrounds a fiberglass back panel that’s slightly smoother to the touch than the frame, but is finished with a hint of sparkle if you catch the sun just right.

So far, so good, right? I mean, to this point, you might be thinking that I absolutely love the look of the OnePlus 15. Well, honestly, I love the way that it feels, no doubt, but the actual look leaves me feeling just a bit flat — pun intended, because there’s not much of a curve anywhere on this device. Yes, OnePlus has kept its nicely rounded corners all around the display, but the camera bump now sits a bit industrially on the flat back panel, the display meets the frame at a crisp right angle, and it all just feels a little nondescript.

However, if you’ve seen our video review, you’ll know that my colleague, C. Scott Brown, absolutely loves that about the OnePlus 15. To each their own, I suppose. Personally, I miss the soft touch of the faux leather, the rounded refinement of the camera bump (even if it was pretty big), and, oh yeah, the alert slider. In a move that hasn’t been seen since the OnePlus 10T — far from the only T-series vibe I get from the OnePlus 15 — this phone comes without its iconic volume control. In its place sits a small, pill-shaped Plus Key that feels… a little too familiar.

Yes, I’m very much getting at the fact that OnePlus has essentially cloned Apple’s Action Button. In pretty much every way, from size to shape to position to software animation, it feels like the OnePlus 15 is taking a page right out of the iPhone’s book. And, in true Action Button fashion, I’m treating it the same way. I’ve switched my Plus Key from its default function as a trigger for Plus Mind (more on that later) to a volume toggle, and I plan to keep it that way. Thankfully, though, OnePlus hasn’t gone full Apple — there’s still a SIM slot, making it easy to switch my phone number once I’m done with this phone.

If there’s one thing that might — just might — keep me from bailing on the OnePlus 15 as soon as I’m done with this review, though, it’s the display. Is it an all-out upgrade? No, in fact, OnePlus has lowered the resolution of its flagship from 2K on the OnePlus 13 to 1.5K this time around. I can’t pick out the difference in resolution with my naked eye, but it’s certainly an odd downgrade to make. Weighing in OnePlus’s favor, at least, is the fact that its 6.78-inch AMOLED panel comes with an impressive 165Hz refresh rate while gaming. The rest of the time, it’s fully variable between 1 and 120Hz, which is perfectly respectable for my day-to-day usage.

Also impressive are the OnePlus 15’s bezels, or lack thereof. Apparently, OnePlus used a Low Injection Pressure Over-molding technique (LIPO) to protect the delicate circuitry with resin rather than leaving open space behind the display, thus allowing it to shrink the bezels to a mere 1.15mm on all four sides. Honestly, if not for the beige frame of the Sand Storm finish, I might not notice the contrast of the bezels at all.

And, before you worry about what that technical change might mean for the OnePlus 15’s durability, fear not. This phone has more IP ratings than you can shake a stick at — or realistically memorize the differences between. It has IP68 protection, as you’d expect, but it also has IP66, IP69, and IP69K to cover submersion, high-pressure jets, temperatures of up to 80 degrees Celsius (roughly 176 degrees Fahrenheit, and, of course, dust. I’ve yet to put any of those ratings to the test; however, it has handled the first real snap of cold Baltimore weather for the season without an issue.

I, of course, realize that my opinions on the design of the OnePlus 15 aren’t gospel. Heck, there’s a good chance you’ll like the new look, and that’s great. It feels solid, the limited-edition Ultra Violet color pops, and the protection around the camera lenses is a bit more reliable. I’m just saying that I don’t think it feels quite as unique as the last few OnePlus flagships — I could have done without one more square camera bump in my life.

With great power comes great thermal stress

Honestly, you can certainly disagree with everything I just said about the OnePlus 15’s design. As I mentioned, there’s even a bit of debate within the Android Authority team over whether we like it or not. However, it’s much tougher to disagree with the fact that the OnePlus 15 is a beast under the hood. It has a little bit — okay, more than a little bit — of everything to keep the lights on, featuring a brand-new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, up to 16GB of LPDDR5X Ultra Plus RAM (a mouthful in itself), and up to 1TB of storage.

That powerful combination is, of course, the very reason that OnePlus was so motivated to get this flagship into our hands so quickly. It rushed to bring Qualcomm’s latest chipset to market faster than anyone else, moving up its usual launch timeline in the West to match its China release schedule — that’s why we’ve got two phones in one year this time. Everything suggests that OnePlus wanted to put on a good show, which is exactly what we’ve come to expect from the brand since the earliest days of the OnePlus One. To see just how impressive the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is, I loaded our comprehensive slate of benchmarks and set it in motion, and the results are… interesting.

Across both legs of the CPU-intensive Geekbench 6 test, the OnePlus 15 did exactly what I expected: It set the tone. Alright, it got edged out ever so slightly by Apple’s A19 Pro in the single-core part of the test, but it came right back for multi-core performance, beating the iPhone 17 Pro and staying ahead of Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra. Interestingly, this is almost the same result as the OnePlus 13 delivered just a year ago when it, too, was the first to market with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.

On the PCMark side, where the CPU test is a bit more comprehensive and indicative of real-world performance, the OnePlus 15 comes up just a little short. Yes, it surpasses its predecessor, but it doesn’t match the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, which is likely its closest performance-based rival at the moment — at least until the Galaxy S26 series arrives. Samsung flagships typically overperform on PCMark, but I can’t say with absolute certainty why the OnePlus 15’s performance falls quite as short as it does on this part of the benchmark, though I do have a guess I could make.

Unfortunately, that guess comes from the benchmarks that I can’t show you. Usually, I’d follow up our round of CPU stress with an equally taxing gauntlet of GPU stress in the form of several 3DMark Wild Life and Solar Bay stress tests, but I can’t do that this time. I started those tests, no doubt about it, but I was just never able to finish any of them. The OnePlus 15 would hammer its way through about 15 out of 20 runs of the respective stress tests before abruptly exiting and declaring that it was too hot to continue. And, like a moth drawn to flame, you can believe I tried to pick up the phone to see just how hot it was. When I did, I found I could only hold on for a second or two before dropping the OnePlus 15 back to my desk.

We’ve encountered heat issues with the 8 Elite Gen 5 before, but this is the first time we’ve seen a phone with this chipset outright give up on completing what is an industry-standard stress test. The OnePlus 15 just can’t shake the heat that its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset is generating. It’s trying to — OnePlus’s 360 Cryo-Velocity Cooling System has all the right pieces in place — but it can’t quite keep up with the rising temperatures.