OnePlus 15 Review: This is Not Normal!

All right, I'm not going to bury the

lead. This phone is so good.

There's a new chip and then a bunch of

extra stuff on top. There's a new design

and a bunch more extra stuff with that.

A new display with a bunch of extra

stuff and new silicon, [music]

extra battery.

There's just so much extra stuff.

This is OnePlus 15. So, I already really

liked the OnePlus 13 earlier this year.

I made a whole video about it, enjoyed

it, and they of course did skip 14

because four is super unlucky. So, now

here comes the OnePlus 15. And all I

really expected from it is just a little

spec bump refresh cuz that would have

been normal. OnePlus has done it before.

Back when they did the T version of

phones, they'd basically refresh a phone

6 months later and, you know, just be

the first ones to ship with the new chip

for those sweet bragging rights. And

honestly, that would have been pretty

solid. The new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5,

as you've probably seen, is really good.

It's 20 to 40% faster than the 8 Elite.

Record setting multi-core performance,

4.6 GHz clock speeds. It's already

goated. I could have just packed that up

in the same phone and just said, "All

right, ready to go." But instead, they

just decided to sprinkle in a whole

bunch of extra overkill. a bunch of

little tiny stuff that honestly even the

most insane enthusiasts would barely

even notice or care about. Type of stuff

that like people who watch an MKBHD

video of a new phone that they're not

even going to buy might appreciate. So,

on top of this new chip and a huge vapor

chamber, they also dropped in super fast

UFS 4.1 storage. And the base version of

this phone has 12 gigs of LPDDR5X

Ultra RAM, which is really fast, but it

might not even be enough for you. So,

the upgraded version has 16 gigs of LP

DDR5X

Ultra Plus RAM. That's as fast as it

gets. This is not normal. They also, of

course, updated the design of this

phone, so it's simpler, cleaner, it's

more squared off. I like it. the sides

of the phone and the camera bump and and

basically everything is is flattened and

more squared off. Now, I kind of like

how the cameras right in the middle are

perfectly aligned with the center of the

phone through the logo. It's clean and

it's also all matte all the way around.

So, the back and the sides, no gloss

needed. And there's three colors: matte

black, matte sand, and matte violet,

which is pretty unique. Okay, so even if

they did just that, the new chip and

this new design, that would have already

been about what I expect from a spec

bump refresh a couple months later. Uh,

but this is not that. This is the

OnePlus 15 we're talking about. So,

bring on the overkill. So, all of the

colors of this phone have this newly

developed super tough finish from a

process called microarchc oxidation.

Essentially, it creates a ceramic

coating on the metal. And normally I

wouldn't notice stuff like that too

specifically, but this matte black phone

has turned out to be one of the most

impressive matte blacks I've ever seen

on a phone. Not only is this nice micro

texture kind of soft to the touch, but

also matte blacks are actually typically

pretty fingerprinty and a little harder

to keep clean, I admit, but somehow this

one does not fingerprint at all. And

then normally when I pull something

matte black out of my bag and it has

scratches on it, that hurts a little bit

inside like and that happened with this

one and I pulled it out and it has

scratches and that was devastating.

And then then

I realized these scratches wiped off

every single time because it turns out

those scratches are actually just the

material from the other things in my bag

scratching off onto the ceramic. Since

ceramics are like an eight or nine on

the MO scale, anything that's not

literally diamond is going to be softer

than it. This phone isn't taking the

damage, it's doing the damage. That's

not normal. It's like call an ambulance,

but not for me. Now, I don't know

exactly how thick this coating is or

exactly how well it'll hold up to a

Jerry rig everything knife event or even

a big drop, but I do feel pretty good

about normal wear and tear here. And on

top of all of that, they've also

certified it for IP66, IP68, IP69, and

now IP69K

dust and water resistance. So, not only

can it be dunked in water for minutes at

a time, but it can also be blasted from

close range with high pressure, high

temperature water jets up to 80° C.

Pretty sure it could literally survive a

laundry cycle and be fine. That is also

not normal. And it's also hilarious

because of OnePlus's history of not

wanting to pay for official IP

certification for years to save a few

bucks. Now they're just doing all the

things. Oh, and by the way, it does all

this while being slightly thinner than

the OnePlus 13 and while getting a

massive battery upgrade to a 7,300

mAh silicon carbon battery. So, the

OnePlus 13 this year already set the

tone with an awesome 6,000 mAh silicon

carbon battery, which I praised because

it dwarfed the S25 Ultra and the other

flagship phones, but now it's just

getting ridiculous. It's literally twice

as much battery as some other phones

from just a few years ago, thanks to

more silicon content in the anode and

higher energy density than ever before.

So, yeah, this thing just lasts forever.

Now, I recently talked on the Waveform

podcast about why I don't do battery

benchmarks because so few of them

actually represent real world usage. You

can optimize for different things. But

just know that not only is there no way

a phone with 7,300 mAh doesn't do well

on benchmarks, but also OnePlus is one

of those companies that notoriously

aggressively kills background tasks and

manages standby time really well. So,

the fact that I'm getting 7 to 8 hours

of screen on time easily on one charge

and can basically never kill it in a day

is no surprise. Sometimes I'd end a day

with like 50%, go to sleep, wake up, and

it would have 49% ready for a whole

another day. Also, the fast charging

brick comes in the box, which is sadly

also not normal. Uh, but it also fast

charged to the tune of 80 watts here in

the US, but it'll do 100 watts in other

countries with more powerful outlets.

And there's 50 watt wireless charging as

a cherry on top. It's still super vuk,

so it's still USBA on the brick, but I

don't mind this because it comes with

the cable anyway. Uh, you can also turn

on battery management features, limit

your charge capacity. There's bypass

charging. Actually, this phone's battery

is so big that you could turn on charge

limits to 85% every time, which you

don't need to, by the way, but if you

just wanted to guarantee the long-term

battery health of the phone and limit it

to 85% charge, it would still have more

battery than the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Now,

one of the biggest stories in

smartphones and computers over the past

couple years has been custom silicon,

and this phone also does that. So, I

mentioned already it has a Snapdragon 8

Gen 5, but what I didn't mention is

there's also two other custom chips on

this phone that help OnePlus continue to

chase that fast and smooth dream.

There's a new Wi-Fi chip and a new touch

response chip. So, the Wi-Fi chip you

can think of as their equivalent to

Apple's new C1 and C1X modems in the

iPhones. instead of using a built-in

Qualcomm modem, they've developed their

own, calling it G2. And I don't know

much about it other than the fact that

it occasionally pulls higher speeds than

other devices on the same network

sometimes. But then the touch response

chip is even more impressive actually

because they're pairing it with this new

display which can refresh now up to 165

Hz, but it only refreshes at 165 Hz

sometimes. It's funny when you go to

display settings under refresh rate, you

can turn it up to high, which says up to

165 Hz. But when you flip through and

actually use the phone, you can see it's

mostly going between 1 herz and 120 Hz.

It's 120 when scrolling, 120 when in

apps, 120 when multitasking. So when is

it 165 Hz? Well, it's just for gaming.

So, if you open a supported game like

Call of Duty or Clash of Clans or Real

Racing 3, there's a list of them. That

is when it kicks up to 165 hertz. So,

the list of supported games is is pretty

short right now. But in these specific

games, it basically pins the frame rate

at 165 and keeps it there. So, for the

specific mobile gamer whose eye is so

well tuned that they can see the

difference between 120 and 165 and

actually care about that in the game of

their choice, well then this phone is

clearly for you. I'm more the type of

person that's just happy to have a

higher refresh rate and high resolution

on at the same time because so many

phones make you pick one or the other.

And the dedicated touch response chip

enables a ridiculous 3200 Hz touch

sample rate. For reference, most normal

flagships are typically 1440 hertz to

about 2400 htz. So that is also clearly

not normal. But there are some downsides

to this phone though. And that brings me

to one of them. So I mean there's a

couple small ones and then one really

big one. The display is technically a

higher refresh rate sometimes and a

little bit brighter sometimes, but it's

also a slightly lower resolution than

before. Cuz see, OnePlus 13 was 1440p

and OnePlus 15 is 1272 across. You

probably won't notice. They're both very

sharp, but hey, there's been lots of

little overkill stuff in other parts of

the phone that you won't notice either.

So, I had to mention that. And OnePlus

also continues to abandon the alert

slider, which I personally loved. Uh,

but they are replacing it with just this

one customizable button. Most people end

up being fine with this. I know there's

a lot of vocal people like me that miss

the thing, but you can customize it to

make it a long press silent switch, but

I just really like being able to know

the state without turning on the screen

or taking it out of my pocket. But of

course, people will map this to other

things that they find useful. So, that's

fine, I guess. The haptic motor also got

a downgrade from the 13 on paper, but I

can confirm that you absolutely will not

notice that it's still really good

haptics in the OnePlus 15. But the

really big one is the cameras. And I

feel like this has been this has been a

story of OnePlus phones for forever now.

Every time they have a great phone with

great specs, great performance, and they

always botch the cameras. And with this

one, it's not like just a, oh, you know,

the phone's really great, it's just not

the best cameras. No, this is actually a

a pretty substantial downgrade. Like the

sensors are smaller, the apertures are

smaller, and the photos and videos are

just worse and disappointing across the

board. So, it's a triple 50 megapixel

camera system back here, which sounds

promising, but this primary sensor has

been a surprisingly weak performer. This

is actually the same one that's in the

$400 Honor 200, and it kind of acts like

it. There's more noise than you'd want

to see in some medium lighting shots

where other flagships do just fine.

There's also a decent three and a halfx

telephoto zoom and a 116 degree ultra

wide that's a little soft around the

edges. They get the job done, but in

general, I found colors pretty dull and

just too much noise and not enough

detail in most shots from any of these

cameras. And then you've probably also

noticed there's no Hasselblad logo on

the back of this phone anymore. And it

kind of looks like they're done with

that camera partnership. The orange

shutter button is gone. The XPAN mode is

gone. They still do call their pro mode

master mode though and they still use

this incredibly loud leaf shutter sound.

So I guess they're not totally done

wiping out any trace of it. But yeah, in

a world where they have done so much and

even done overkill with the performance

and the usability of this phone, once

again on a OnePlus phone, the cameras

are an area where you'll have to be okay

with being disappointed again. So look,

I've really enjoyed using this OnePlus

phone for the same reasons I've enjoyed

using a lot of previous OnePlus phones.

They make these things so fast and

smooth. So even as their software has

changed and Oxygen OS has kind of

devolved into a Color OS clone, which is

also kind of an iOS clone, at least it

stayed buttery and packed with features,

and there's still plenty of

customization to set it up the way I

want. Uh, you can choose to use any of

the AI features or not, like always. I

didn't. You can also choose to adjust

some of the default behaviors or not,

like always. I did. It's just a a really

confidence inspiring phone. No matter

how hard you push the phone, no matter

how much you try to get it to do crazy

stuff, it always loads things

ridiculously fast and lasts all day. So,

that's great. But, yeah, it's it's not

normal. This phone is so not normal. And

I appreciate that so much for all the

little performance stuff, but they do

now have a longer way to go to get me to

daily a phone like this if the camera is

going to be lagging so hard. But

thankfully, it is very competitively

priced. So, this phone is $8.99 US uh or

$9.99 if you want that sweet sweet 16

gigs of LP DDR5X

Ultra Plus RAM.

Um, but yeah, can you guys can you guys

make like an ultra version with a really

nice camera, please? That'd be nice.

Okay, thanks. Bye. Peace.

>> [music]