One Plus 15R review: flagship-beating battery life in a stylish mid-range package | Tech Radar

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I spent two weeks with the One Plus 15R, and it's forever raised my expectations for smartphone battery life

One Plus has turned out a stylish mid-ranger with flagship-beating endurance

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The One Plus 15R is a fantastic addition to the long line of recent mid-range phones that really push the boat out and make flagships feel overpriced by comparison. Its 7,400m Ah battery can easily get you through two days of use, and the winning combination of a 165 Hz refresh rate and Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset makes this a great phone for all daily tasks. The lack of a telephoto lens is sure to irk some, but the 15R justifies the sacrifice with its phenomenal endurance.

Best One Plus phones: the top flagship, budget, and foldable models ranked

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Even though the competition among the latest mid-range phones has never been hotter, One Plus’ offerings have certainly held their own against those from Samsung, Apple, and Google. The One Plus 13R managed to hit a home run in practically every area, from battery life to performance, so constructing a successor was always going to be a tall order (to avoid confusion, there was no One Plus 14R).

For the One Plus 15R, the company has gone in a slightly different direction. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing phone, but it lacks the one big upgrade that was added in the 13R: a telephoto lens. While that fact alone is sure to turn some potential adopters towards triple-sensor phones like the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro and Xiaomi 15T Pro, know that there is a trade-off at play with the One Plus 15R.

By doing away with the telephoto lens, One Plus has given the 15R’s battery a boost. It boasts a larger 7,400m Ah cell than its predecessor, which can easily see most users through two days at a time, and it certainly means that you won’t have anything to worry about over a single day. As someone who uses their phone for a lot of things, including checking up on social media, hotspotting to other devices, and listening to audiobooks and podcasts, I prefer having the larger battery.

There are other welcome upgrades, too, including a move to the more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset — which rarely buckled in my time using it (even while running more demanding games) — and the faster 165 Hz refresh rate, which has been pinched straight from the excellent One Plus 15.

If it wasn’t for the fact that you’re only getting four years of software updates (with six years of security patches), then I’d be giving the One Plus 15R a higher score. But for anyone who’s happy to upgrade again in roughly four years’ time, you’ll have a blast with this good-looking, long-lasting mid-ranger.

Starts at $699.99 / £649 for 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage

Although cheaper than its predecessor in the UK, the phone is $100 more expensive in the US

The One Plus 15R is available in two storage configurations, 256GB and 512GB (both of which come with 12GB RAM), and is currently sold in the UK, US, and Europe.

It starts at

Oddly enough, depending on where you’re buying the One Plus 15R, it’s either slightly cheaper than its predecessor or significantly more expensive. The One Plus 13R had a starting price of £679 in the UK, making the 15R just a tad more cost-effective as an upgrade. But for buyers in the US, you’re looking at an extra $100, which feels utterly absurd. I fully understand that price increases are, unfortunately, becoming the norm in the current economic climate (just take a look at the Samsung Galaxy S26 range), but this is such a massive increase for a mid-range phone that the 15R risks pricing itself out of affordability entirely.

So, if you are in the US and you want a decent mid-range phone that doesn’t cost a fortune, you might be better suited with the i Phone 17e or Nothing Phone (4a) Pro.

Easily the most eye-catching of all the One Plus 15R's specs is its 7,400m Ah battery, which is one of the largest phone batteries you can get outside of China. The 15R's cell is even slightly bigger than the 7,300m Ah equivalent found within the flagship One Plus 15.

Same design language as the One Plus 15 and One Plus Nord 5

One of the best things I can say about the One Plus 15R is that, when you hold it in your hand for the first time, there’s nothing about it that suggests it costs anything less than the current crop of flagship smartphones. It packs an aluminum frame and a glass rear panel, which feels very premium — it reminds me a great deal of the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE, a phone that also punches above its weight on the design front.

From a visual standpoint, the One Plus 15R is a departure from the One Plus 13R, especially as the round camera bump has been ditched for a slightly more rectangular one. But this aesthetic aligns with One Plus' most recent phones.

Both the One Plus 15 and One Plus Nord 5 opted for a more professional look versus their respective predecessors. Their camera bumps and chassis adhere to a single color, making the marble-like aesthetic of the One Plus 12 feel like a lifetime away. If I'm being completely honest, I did find the overall look of the Nord 5 to be a tad mundane, but this approach feels far more at home on the 15R because of one thing: the Mint Breeze colorway.

This lighter green option, which I’ve had in for review, is just stunning. Although I do have a penchant for any tech that comes in green, I think the injection of color here makes the overall look of the One Plus 15R more exciting than the Charcoal Black option. It’s a similar story with the Ultra Violet One Plus 15, and I only hope that more companies follow suit.

All of the One Plus 15R’s good looks aren’t just for show, however, as the phone is now a great deal more durable than before, boasting IP66, IP68, IP69, and IP69K certifications. While that might sound like a lot of jargon, it basically means that the 15R can do a lot more to withstand the elements than its predecessor, which is great to see in the mid-range market.

I do, however, think that the slightly larger build of the 15R can make things a bit difficult when reaching for the top of the display. This won’t be an issue for everyone, but I did find myself having to rely on both hands fairly often to comfortably use the device, although it’s nowhere near as cumbersome as something like the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, with its 6.9-inch screen.

Screen brightness peaks at a slightly lesser 3600 nits

I’ll never fully understand the urge for phone manufacturers to go bigger when it comes to displays, but for whatever reason, One Plus has decided to ditch the 6.78-inch norm of the last two R-series phones and adopt a 6.83-inch panel instead. Like I said before, the slightly larger build now means that the One Plus 15R is just a bit too big to be comfortably used one-handed (something like the Honor Magic 8 Pro’s 6.71-inch panel hits the sweet spot for me), but there’s still a lot to like about this display.

The larger panel makes the phone great for a bit of entertainment, and I’ve really enjoyed using the One Plus 15R to catch up on the latest season of Invincible, as it depicts the show’s colorful visuals with eye-catching intensity. Plus, with more room for having multiple apps open side by side, One Plus’ Open Canvas multitasking software works like a charm here.

When it comes to screen brightness, there is a slight downgrade at play, but I don’t think it’s a dealbreaker for the phone. Instead of the 4,500 nits of peak brightness possible on the One Plus 13R for HDR content, the 15R now tops out at 3,600, but I never found myself squinting at the screen when trying to take a picture outdoors or check train times. Plus, it’s still a brighter display than you'll get on a lot of phones in this price range (the i Phone 17e, for instance, can only reach 1200 nits).

What is more impressive, and something I’m far happier to have as a trade-off on screen brightness, is the 165 Hz refresh rate pinched from the flagship One Plus 15. The faster speed here is perfect for gaming, and for a fast-paced title like Call of Duty: Mobile, it just goes that extra step in drawing you into the action. It also makes everything from social media scrolling to web browsing feel that much smoother.

As a final note, the One Plus 15R's screen itself is also very responsive, with a great feeling of cohesion between the fast refresh rate and the onboard chipset to the point where using the phone never really feels like a mid-range experience. I think that if you were to hand the 15R to someone without providing any background information, they would just assume that it’s a flagship device, which is a great compliment.

Four years of software updates, six for security patches

One thing I always love about reviewing One Plus products is that I get to step back into the Oxygen OS platform, which is a big step up compared to some other Android overlays that are filled to the brim with bloatware and unintuitive designs. From a software perspective, it’s like getting into a comforting warm bath — everything just works as you’d hope, and because the experience isn’t filled with pre-installed third-party apps, there’s very little friction from the jump.

As a new dad, I now have to rely on my phone a lot more than usual for getting work done during small pockets of time throughout the day, and to that end, the One Plus 15R has been very helpful via its Open Canvas software. If you haven’t used it, just know that Open Canvas is one of the best examples of multitasking done right on Android, and the whole thing shines particularly on the One Plus Pad 3, but it’s still just as good on a smartphone.

You can have one app on top of another in a 50/50 split or, as I prefer to have it, a 90/10 split that allows me to swap between two mostly full-screen apps in just a tap, which is very helpful for writing in Google Docs while checking my review notes in Google Keep. When in this mode, I’ve also been able to open a windowed version of Whats App to quickly respond to a message, all without ever closing the multitasking setup. It all works seamlessly, and it’s right up there with what Samsung provides through One UI.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, One Plus’ suite of AI features isn’t quite as robust as Samsung’s Galaxy AI platter, but I feel that it’s definitely a step up from Honor AI, which feels as if it’s constantly thrust at the user and just isn’t very good at what it attempts to do. By comparison, One Plus AI does a few things quite well, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

One Plus’ Mind Space, which isn’t too dissimilar to Essential Space found on the Nothing Phone (4a) and (4a) Pro, acts as a hub for notes, screenshots, and voice recordings, all of which can then be analysed by the onboard AI to provide more detailed information. For instance, a quick photo of my desk, which features a mouse mat with Stormtroopers on it, led the AI to tell me all about the Star Wars universe and what it entails.

I do think that there’s a lot of potential here, but I would like to use Mind Space as a means of collecting interesting articles I’ve come across online, and when I attempted to do just that with the dedicated Plus Key, which activates Mind Space, it could only collect a single screenshot and wouldn’t save the link to the article either. Thankfully, the AI tools available when browsing the web are a lot better.

For when I’m pushed for time, I find AI article summaries to be incredibly helpful for staying in the loop with the latest tech launches, and the style that One Plus employs is easily among the best out there. It works very quickly, and it does a great job of highlighting key points in either a detailed or concise format.

What I most appreciate, however, is that it never feels as if One Plus is pushing you to use these AI features. They’re readily available for when you need them, but they’re also easily ignored if you have no taste for the software, which is an approach that a few other manufacturers could definitely take note of.

In terms of support over time, One Plus promises a total of four years’ worth of software updates and six years of security patches to extend that lifecycle a bit further. Four years isn’t bad, but it pales in comparison to the six years of support that you'll get with the Samsung Galaxy A57 or Google Pixel 10a, so it’s worth having a think about how long you’re comfortable with waiting before your next upgrade.

50MP wide angle, 8MP ultra-wide, and 32MP front camera

Although the One Plus 15R comes out swinging in most other categories, the one area where there’s been an undeniable step backwards is in the camera department. One of the big additions to the One Plus 13R was the inclusion of a 50MP 2x telephoto lens, which was great for capturing subjects that were just out of reach for the main camera. Alas, that telephoto lens is nowhere to be seen on the 15R, which I can only assume is a trade-off for its much larger battery.

What’s left is a 50MP (f/1.8) wide-angle lens and an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide, both of which are identical to the ones found on the 13R. The only part of the camera set-up that’s had any kind of upgrade is the selfie camera, which has jumped from 16MP to 32MP. With that kind of reality facing potential adopters, the 15R is certainly not a must-buy for anyone who already owns the 13R, and if you’re interested in smartphone photography above all, then you may want to buy that older handset anyway, now that it can be found for less. For most people, however, I think they’ll get on just fine with what the One Plus 15R has to offer.

Not too dissimilar to the latest Google Pixel phones, I’ve always found One Plus’ eye for color to be very attractive, and here it’s backed up by the large megapixel count of the main camera to produce very sharp pictures that look great on the 15R’s display.

Taking the phone down to a nearby canal during a sunset, you can see just how well the camera handles the dynamic range across the sky, as well as in the reflections across the water. I’ve taken plenty of phones down to that same spot, and rarely has that location looked better than it does here.

Even though the 2x zoom within the camera app is a digital crop, the phone still captures enough data in these shots that they look great on the surface. I just don’t recommend zooming in any further beyond that, otherwise the composition starts to fall apart unless there’s a ton of natural light available.

On sunny days, even though it’s just an 8MP sensor, the ultra-wide camera can hold its own against the main lens with great-looking shots. It’s only when things get a bit cloudy that you notice the color is slightly muted by comparison.

Taking a few pictures during a night out around London Waterloo, I was impressed to see that the 15R did a great job of recreating the color palette around me in a fairly natural way, although I definitely recommend sticking to 1x in low light, as these shots can get a tad blurry under a microscope, but they look solid enough when viewed from a full perspective.

Something I definitely have to compliment One Plus on is its understanding of what makes a selfie camera great. I’ve seen this before in the One Plus Nord 5, as its 50MP front-camera is one of the best I’ve ever used, and it’s a similar experience with the 32MP alternative found on the 15R. Much like the main camera, the colors are so good that I can overlook my sleep-deprived expression and enjoy these photos for what they are.

Again, I completely understand why the removal of the telephoto lens might be enough for some to write off the One Plus 15R, but I have still enjoyed my time with its cameras.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset can handle almost any task

Before writing this review, I wrote a separate piece on how the One Plus 15R feels like another entry in the growing sector of all-rounder phones that, despite costing less than the latest flagships, manage to hit a certain bar of quality across the board, and won't leave the majority of users wanting for anything. One of the main reasons why I felt that to be the case here was because of the performance offered by the phone's Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset.

Skipping two generations of Snapdragon chipset ahead of its immediate predecessor, the One Plus 15R feels every bit like a flagship phone in everyday use. Scrolling through apps is as smooth as you’d want it to be, and when running multiple apps at one time through Open Canvas, the phone never buckled under the pressure.

Gaming is a similarly fluid experience, and it’s only further emboldened by the phone's 165 Hz refresh rate. Running through a few rounds of Call of Duty: Mobile, the game felt like it was meant for this type of handset, as the large screen gives you a good view of the battlefield while the chipset keeps everything running without any signs of tearing or stuttering.

The only instance where I could see a noticeable gap between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and the even more powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 was when loading in larger areas in Honkai: Star Rail. This is quite a demanding game for those who haven’t played it, but I was impressed to see that, outside of those moments, the combat and exploitation ran to a high standard on the One Plus 15R.

Saving the best for last, the One Plus 15R boasts something of an anomaly when it comes to batteries in the mid-range category. Although the proliferation of silicon-carbon tech has paved the way for larger batteries, it’s typically been flagship phones that have benefited from this innovation, with the Oppo Find X9 Pro and the One Plus 15, for example, packing 7,500m Ah and 7,300m Ah batteries, respectively. Following in their footsteps, the One Plus 15R has a gigantic 7,400m Ah cell to draw on, something that you simply won’t find on any other mid-range phone right now.

I mentioned earlier that it appears as though One Plus made the decision to do away with the telephoto lens on this phone so it could go all in on battery, and as someone who would prefer not to have to deal with any battery anxiety during a day out, even if I am in the minority here, it’s a trade-off I’m happy to accept. After all, if you’re dead set on having a triple camera set-up, there are plenty of alternatives out there, including the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE, Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, and the Xiaomi 15T Pro.

With this kind of longevity in the tank, I had no issues with getting the One Plus 15R to last at least two days between charges. On a more relaxed day, when working from home and only accruing an hour and a half of screen time, plus several hours of Spotify playback, the phone only dropped to 74%. As an i Phone user who is constantly having to keep one eye on how much battery is left, I can’t tell you how freeing it felt to not have to worry about endurance at all, and it allowed me to use the One Plus 15R unencumbered.

The phone's 80W charging speed remains unchanged from the One Plus 13R, but that’s fine by me given that it’s still much further ahead than most phones (the 45W speed of the S25 FE seems glacial by comparison). From my testing, you can get from 0% to a full battery in 1 hour and 25 minutes. If you’re really pressed for time, then you’ll be glad to know that I clawed back 67% after just 50 minutes, which is more than enough to get you safely through an entire day.

It would have been nice to see One Plus add wireless charging into the mix, as it would have paired well with the idea of the 15R being a battery beast, but it’s not the worst omission, given how fast the wired charging is here.

The One Plus 15R is great-value for UK buyers, but its price is harder to justify in the States.

The One Plus 15R is great-value for UK buyers, but its price is harder to justify in the States.

The larger display looks great but the peak brightness is lower than before.

The larger display looks great but the peak brightness is lower than before.

A sophisticated and very well built phone that looks exceptional in green.

A sophisticated and very well built phone that looks exceptional in green.

Oxygen OS works brilliantly, but you're only getting four years of software updates.

Oxygen OS works brilliantly, but you're only getting four years of software updates.

The main sensor does a great job in all settings, but the telephoto lens is missed.

The main sensor does a great job in all settings, but the telephoto lens is missed.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is a beast for mid-range value, making short work of 3D games.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is a beast for mid-range value, making short work of 3D games.

The 7,400m Ah cell is unmatched on the mid-range market. No wireless charging is a letdown though.

The 7,400m Ah cell is unmatched on the mid-range market. No wireless charging is a letdown though.

You want a phone that lasts two days With the One Plus 15R in tow, you won’t have to worry about racing back to a power outlet for a battery top-up.

You want a 165 Hz screen for gaming While it’s not a necessity, a 165 Hz refresh rate is a wonderful luxury that really takes mobile gaming to the next level.

You need a smooth operating system One Plus’ Oxygen OS is right up there with One UI and Google’s stock Android, as it’s thankfully free of bloatware and clunky design choices.

You need a telephoto lens The removal of the telephoto lens definitely makes the One Plus 15R less appealing to photographers.

You need wireless charging Although you do get 80W wired charging, the lack of wireless charging on a phone at this price feels odd.

You want a phone for the long haul The limited amount of software updates compared to what Samsung and Google provide is a letdown.

Still on the fence about the One Plus 15R? Here are some contemporaries worth checking out:

50MP wide, 8MP ultra-wide, 50MP telephoto, 12MP front

50MP wide, 8MP ultra-wide, 50MP telephoto, 12MP front

Nothing Phone (4a) Pro The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is another solid all-rounder that leaves you wanting for very little, but it packs a more eye-catching look than the One Plus 15R, can be bought for less, and even has a telephoto lens for zoom photography. The chipset isn’t quite as speedy as the 15R’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, but it’s powerful enough for most users.

Apple i Phone 17e Even though it’s only got one rear-facing camera, there’s a lot to like about the i Phone 17e. Apple’s mid-range phone now packs Mag Safe charging, the super-fast A19 chipset, and 256GB storage as standard. There’s also the far more scratch-resistant Ceramic Shield 2 glass on the front, which, alongside Apple’s lengthy update cycles, should allow the 17e to last you for quite some time.

I used the One Plus 15R over a period of two weeks for this review. This involved using the phone during a trip to London and a trip to Cambridge, alongside visits to local cafes to have the phone operate as a hotspot for my laptop.

To test the screen, I streamed Avengers: Infinity War and Invincible over Disney Plus and Prime Video, respectively, and for gaming performance, I tapped into Call of Duty Mobile and Honkai: Star Rail.

After cutting his teeth covering the film and TV industries, Tom spent almost seven years testing the latest tech over at Trusted Reviews before heading out into the world of freelance writing. From vacuum cleaners to video games, there isn't much that Tom hasn't written about, but being something of a gym fanatic, he tends to harbour an obsession where smartwatches are concerned.

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• I spent two weeks with the One Plus 15R, and it's forever raised my expectations for smartphone battery life

• One Plus has turned out a stylish mid-ranger with flagship-beating endurance