Oneplus 15r Ultimate Review: The Budget Flagship That Outlasts Them All

The OnePlus 15R is sitting in a pretty interesting place, especially in the US market. It is the OnePlus “cheaper” flagship phone. Think of it as OnePlus’ own Pixel 10 or Galaxy S25 or iPhone 17. But still a bit different, since it does have a different processor and a lower price.

After seeing a lot of downgrades – specifically in the camera – for the OnePlus 15, we were expecting to see the same for the 15R, and we are seeing that here unfortunately. But those buying the OnePlus 15R are unlikely to be interested in buying it for the camera. So what about the rest of the phone? Let’s find out in our full review.

The OnePlus 15R delivers the battery life you’ve always wanted, flagship-level performance that stays cool under pressure, and a premium design—all without breaking the bank.

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

OnePlus 15R Specs

OnePlus 15R Specs

OnePlus 15R Review: Design and Build Quality

The OnePlus 15R also got a makeover this year, much like the OnePlus 15. Essentially bringing in the design that OnePlus debuted on the 13S/13T last year. That means it’s flat all around. And it now has a square camera bump.

Much like the OnePlus 15, I really like the design of the OnePlus 15R. It looks very nice in this Mint Breeze color that we have here. It still has an aluminum build with a glass back, but it is matte so it won’t pick up many fingerprints.

The camera module is a bit different from the OnePlus 15, since it does not have a third camera this year. Yes, that was one of the cuts that OnePlus made, versus the OnePlus 13R, and eliminated the telephoto camera. The other change is the Alert Slider, that is gone, as it is on every other OnePlus and OPPO device that has launched since the OnePlus 13 earlier this year. Instead, we have the Plus Key on the left side of the phone. This is basically the Action Button from the iPhone, which can be mapped to do different things, including sliencing your phone.

On the right side is the volume rocker and power button as expected, and there is an under-display fingerprint sensor as well. OnePlus did keep the SIM card tray here, it’s still at the bottom, to the left of the USB-C port.

And some will be happy to hear this, the IR Blaster continues to live on, at the top of the phone.

Overall, the OnePlus 15R is a great looking phone, perhaps the best-looking phone in its price range. And it is built very solidly, which is what we expect from OPPO and OnePlus.

OnePlus 15R Review: Display

The OnePlus 15R does have a larger display this year, it’s even larger than the OnePlus 15 at 6.83-inches. But it does bring over the OnePlus 15’s big display feature – 165Hz. Similar to the OnePlus 15, the 165Hz (and even 144Hz) refresh rates are only used in some games. So it’s not really that big of a selling point right now. It is LTPO, so the display automatically adjust from 60 up to 165Hz.

This is also FHD+ resolution at 2800×1272, and has a pretty decent brightness at 1,800nits in high brightness mode. OnePlus has stopped offering a peak brightness number, in favor of HBM, which is much more achievable. In our testing, we were able to get it up to 1,600nits. But what this means is that, you’ll have no problems seeing this display outdoors. In fact, 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 issues seeing it outdoors.

As for the colors of the display, they look as you’d expect from OnePlus. It’s one of the better displays out there, of course, the Galaxy S25 Ultra will still win that battle because of the anti-reflective display. But definitely not a bad display for the price point.

OnePlus 15R Review: Performance

The OnePlus 15R is the first device with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset. We’ve heard other phones will be launching with it, but OnePlus has made it sound like it’s a chip that they co-developed with Qualcomm. We’ll know if its OnePlus-exclusive in the coming months, but as for now, how well does it run?

It’s a pretty good chip. It does stay noticeably cooler than the OnePlus 15 does. Which we’ll talk thermals a bit later, but temperature was never an issue with this phone.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is paired with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, as you’d expect, it is a very capable smartphone. And one that, I might even say, performs better than the OnePlus 15.

I played MLBB on this phone for about 2 hours at max brightness, and barely noticed it warming up. Something that I could not say about the OnePlus 15: and both phones were in the performance mode too. So performance is not an issue with the OnePlus 15R.

Benchmarks

So, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is a slightly slower processor versus the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and even the MediaTek Dimensity 9500. So how does the OnePlus 15R stack up to the competition? Let’s find out with some good old fashioned benchmarking.

So what we can see from Geekbench 6 here, which is a benchmark that tests the raw performance of the processor and the GPU, is that the OnePlus 15R is even slower than last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. But that is mostly in the single-core, which is about a 12% difference, whereas multi-core and the GPU is about a 6% difference. Pretty neglible. It is definitely a bit slower than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and the MediaTek Dimensity 9500, wich is expected. But not bad scores here overall.

Moving onto AnTuTu. This is a benchmark that tests virtually everything on your device, from the processor to RAM, to the battery and everything in between.

What we can see here with AnTuTu is that the OnePlus 15R looks to be pretty well optimized. As it did beat out the Galaxy S25 Ultra. A score of nearly 3 million is not too shabby, especially since Samsung is still charging $1299 for a phone with a lower score right now.

Thermals

Now let’s move onto thermals. This is more important than I’d like it to be. But with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 overheating so much – especially in the OnePlus 15 – this has become pretty important. Of course, the OnePlus 15R does have a pretty good cooling system inside, but let’s see how it stacks up.

For thermal testing, we have three different tests. The first one is 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. This pushes your device to the absolute image and is typically what makes it overheat and shut down. Then we play Genshin Impact for an hour on performance mode, with max graphics and max brightness. And the third test is video recording at 4K60. We record the temperatures at 5 minutes in and 10 minutes in. Of course, we don’t do these all back-to-back-to-back; that wouldn’t be fair to the device. But here’s how it stacks up.

So what we see here is that the OnePlus 15R does stay incredibly cool. I was actually shocked at how low the temperatures were in the camera test, that I ran it again on a separate day. Now it did have a higher temperature in the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, it also has a higher stability percentage in that test at 75.5%, versus the other phones here being unfer 60%. So that’s important to point out.

I do not think that heat will be an issue with the OnePlus 15R and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, which is really good to see, after the issues that the OnePlus 15 had.

OnePlus 15R Review: Battery Life and Charging

The OnePlus 15R has the largest battery in a smartphone, in North America. It is a 7,400mAh cell, which makes it a tad larger than the OnePlus 15. When you pair that with a more efficient and cooler processor like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, you’re going to get incredible battery life. And, that’s exactly what I’ve been getting with the OnePlus 15R.

I have never been able to kill this phone in a single day. In fact, even killing half of the battery in a single day has been a struggle. Typically, this phone lasts for over a day of standby plus 13 hours of screen on time. That is incredible, and it does put it at the top of my list for the best battery life, right now. It also does well in our battery life benchmark.

Now when we talk about charging, there is a sad part here. As OnePlus has downgraded charging this time around to 55W here in the US (apparently its 80W outside the US). The OnePlus 13R was 80W earlier this year, so a bit surprising to see the downgrade. But it’s not that big of a deal, it rarely hit that 80W anyways. Charging is still not an issue here. It takes a little over an hour to fully charge. But keep in mind that this is a 7,400mAh capacity battery, so that’s not bad at all.

Benchmarks

When it comes to the battery life benchmarks, we basically run a video benchmark. This does show us how well optimized the phone is for video playback – spoiler alert: the OnePlus 15R is very well optimized for video playback.

In this test, we charge the phone up to 100%, and let it sit for another hour to ensure it is fully charged – some phones will say 100% when its not actually fully charged. We then calibrate the display to about 150nits, and load up a YouTube video, before unplugging the phone. Let the video play, until the phone is down to about 1-2% and record the time. Here’s how the OnePlus 15R stacked up:

As we can see here, the OnePlus 15R did phenomenal. It’s also one of the few phones to surpass 24 hours, that’s not a gaming phone (the only other phone to do this in our testing, was the OPPO Find X8 Pro). It’s also about 2.5 hours longer than the OnePlus 15. Which shows that the much more optimized Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 does make a difference here.

Now after we finish the battery test, we then start the charging test. Charging the phone from 1% to 100%. We use the charger that comes in the box, or one that can push the charging speed to its max for the phone. So here’s how the OnePlus 15R stacked up:

OnePlus 15R Review: Software

The OnePlus 15R, like the OnePlus 15, launches with OxygenOS 16 based on Android 16. This is the latest version of OnePlus’ software, and we’ve received a couple of updates over the month or so that we’ve had the device. Which means things are changing, being better optimized, bugs getting squashed etc.

I will say, during my time with the OnePlus 15R, I haven’t had any real issues or bugs. The software experience has been great, very similar to the OnePlus 15 and even the OPPO Find X9 Pro. It’s very smooth, snappy and no hints of lag whatsoever, even with this slower processor.

Plus Mind is a feature that OnePlus has added within the past year, and it’s kind of grown on me. Now, with OxygenOS 16, it does have Google Gemini integrated, so it works really well. I often times use it to save screenshots, and export data from those screenshots. Say you see a poster and you want to add that event to your calendar. Just take a screenshot, Plus Mind can extract the date, time, location and more, and add it to your calendar with just a couple of taps. I feel like Plus Mind is way better than Google’s own Pixel Screenshots.

OnePlus hasn’t yet mentioned how many years of updates the 15R will receive. But we do know that the OnePlus 15 will get 4 years of major Android OS updates and 6 years of security updates. So we’d expect something similar for the OnePlus 15R.

OnePlus 15R Review: Camera

Similar to the OnePlus 15, the OnePlus 15R camera also took a step back this year. It does use the new DetailMax Engine, and to be honest, the pictures are good. They’re not going to win “Camera Phone of the Year”, but the images I’ve gotten with this phone has been quite good. I might even say the best in its price point – with only really the Pixel 9a coming close.

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

So the big thing you’ll notice here is that the primary and ultrawide cameras are virtually the same. The ultrawide is a tad smaller this year, but not really noticeable. The big omission is the elimination of the telephoto lens. Now it was only a 2x optical telephoto last year, so it didn’t make that much of a difference, since OnePlus can sensor-crop the main 50-megapixel sensor to get 2x.

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

So how do the photos look? Well, see for yourself. Below, I’ve included a number of photos taken with the OnePlus 15R. There have been no edits made to these; all taken in Auto mode as well.

Should you buy the OnePlus 15R?

The OnePlus 15R represents a compelling value proposition in the increasingly competitive mid-range flagship space. While OnePlus made some unfortunate cuts—most notably the removal of the telephoto lens and the slower charging speeds in the US—the phone excels where it matters most for its target audience. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 proves to be a smart choice, delivering excellent thermal management and efficiency without sacrificing meaningful real-world performance. Paired with that massive 7,400mAh battery, you’re looking at a phone that can genuinely last well beyond a full day of heavy use, which is something few competitors at any price can claim.

The design and build quality punch well above the phone’s weight class, and the 6.83-inch display with 165Hz refresh rate offers a premium viewing experience. Software-wise, OxygenOS 16 continues to impress with its smooth performance and thoughtful features like Plus Mind. The camera, while not class-leading, produces perfectly good photos for everyday use—just don’t expect to be blown away by zoom capabilities anymore.

At its price point, the OnePlus 15R makes a strong case for itself against competitors like the Pixel 10 and Galaxy S25. If you prioritize battery life, cool and consistent performance, and solid build quality over camera versatility, the 15R is easy to recommend. It’s not trying to be everything to everyone, but for what it sets out to accomplish, OnePlus has delivered a phone that should satisfy the vast majority of users looking for flagship-adjacent performance without the flagship 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.