The OnePlus 15’s battery life has given me a | Tech News

The OnePlus 15 is a good telephone made great by its stupendously good battery life. Its show, construct and cameras are all above average, however it’s the longevity afforded by the 7,300mAh silicon-carbon cell that elevates this telephone.

Using a gadget whose battery can final three days utterly modified how I approached charging it, whereas additionally ruining different telephones for me.

As a reviewer, I’m fortunate enough to have a few handsets to change between at any given time. After a couple of weeks of utilizing the OnePlus 15, I discovered its battery life so good that transferring back to a different telephone feels pointless. Why would I wish to use a smartphone I’ve to charge on daily basis?

As I write this, it’s 11:35am on Wednesday. The OnePlus 15 has 43 p.c battery. I took it off the charger with 100% at 8am on Monday. That means it lasted 51 and a half hours and solely used 57 p.c of its charge.

That is astounding. Granted, I’m not the heaviest telephone person, however after a regular day of use, my iPhone 16 is begging to be plugged in, usually hitting 20-30 p.c after simply 12 hours of use by 8pm.

Even the 5,000mAh battery within the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is nothing to write down home about in comparison with the OnePlus 15’s. It would possibly simply stretch to 2 days, however Samsung’s telephone additionally depletes significantly in a single day.

Not so with the OnePlus 15, which seemingly sips slowly at energy when not in use, barely going down two p.c in a single day. I now have such confidence in my telephone’s battery that reaching a share as low as 20 is no longer trigger for concern. I might most likely go away the home for a evening out with that a lot charge left and nonetheless get home OK. I might by no means go away the home with 20 p.c charge on my iPhone.

It means I now have a dilemma. Why would I put up with considerably worse battery life on every other telephone once I know the OnePlus 15 exists?

All this habit-changing elation over the battery life within the OnePlus 15 serves to masks that I discover the telephone itself a little uninteresting. The firm overhauled its flagship’s design, going with flat edges and a flat screen and a utilitarian, plain look. Gone are the curved corners and edges and round digicam bump of the OnePlus 13, 12 and 11.

That means the OnePlus appears to be like and feels fairly like an iPhone 16 Pro or Google Pixel 10 Pro – no dangerous factor per se, however a loss of character for sure, as all telephones transfer in the direction of trying an identical.

In the UK, the telephone’s charger shouldn’t be included within the box, which could be very annoying. OnePlus additionally declined to ship me the appropriate charger to check that may supposedly refill the telephone from zero to 100% in 40 minutes. On OnePlus’s web site it prices £69.99.

Most telephones don’t include a charger within the box these days, however it irks more when the battery life and charging speeds are the primary perks of the telephone.

I reviewed the Sand Storm model of the OnePlus, which has an fascinating, distinctive end. It picks up zero fingerprints because of a fibre-glass end on the back that feels very silky, with specifically handled aluminium on the edges feeling grippy. I wouldn’t have picked a sand colored telephone, however it has grown on me.

The different choices, with completely different supplies and textures, are black and violet. It’s a giant telephone at 6.78-inches, with just one measurement accessible. Apple, Samsung and Google offer completely different sizes of their flagship telephones, however there’s just one OnePlus 15 option.

On the digicam aspect, OnePlus’s partnership with famed model Hasselblad is over, however the digicam high quality right here is superb. The backside line is that the standard of nonetheless pictures shouldn’t be fairly nearly as good because the Oppo Find X9 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL or Vivo X300 Pro that I’ve examined.

Granted, at £899 the OnePlus 15 is cheaper than these units, however the digicam right here shouldn’t be improved over the OnePlus 13’s.

Don’t get me improper – the digicam could be very, superb. For all however probably the most choosy cellular photographers, this digicam will do exactly nice, it’s simply not the best on the market. This is noticeable in low gentle, the place the primary sensor struggles to seize element and issues can look washed out. In daylight, colors are a tad oversaturated however the whole lot is sharp and in focus.

I’ve loved OnePlus’s OxygenOS 16, which is predicated on Android 16. I additionally simply reviewed the Oppo Find X9 Pro, whose ColorOS 16 is what OxygenOS is predicated on, and have discovered I favor OnePlus’s software program. It feels much less cluttered, and regardless of some quirks I’ve settled into the telephone properly. One annoyance is that swiping down on a notification on the lockscreen dismisses it, whereas on most different Android telephones it expands it to learn hidden textual content.

Otherwise, it’s pleasingly customisable and feels snappier than high-end Samsung or Google telephones, although these corporations offer seven years of software program updates. OnePlus says the OnePlus 15 will get 4 years of Android updates and 6 years of security updates. I really feel the firm might do higher than this for its top-of-the-line telephone.

The OnePlus 15 runs the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and, on my RRP £999 review pattern, 16GB RAM (the £899 model has 12GB). It’s properly optimised, although one very annoying bug means the New York Times Games app crashes each time I open it. When a telephone retains a man from his Wordle streak, it’s a black mark in opposition to the telephone (I’ve by no means had this concern on different units).

Call high quality is superb, and the screen has a refresh fee of 165Hz with appropriate cellular video games. That shouldn’t be one thing I take advantage of my telephone for, however it’s a great perk in case you’re a gamer. The new chip means these video games carry out at prime stage although. My go-to testing sport Call of Duty Mobile ran flawlessly.

There’s actually nothing a lot to complain about with the OnePlus 15, a telephone that prices much less than its rivals and has a lot, a lot better battery life. If that equation is smart to you, it’s a telephone you’ll love.

The OnePlus 15 is offered from £899 straight from OnePlus