If you hate charging your phone, the OnePlus 15 is the phone to buy

Have you ever laid down for the night, only to realize that your phone charger is in the room? And then thought to yourself, “No, I’m not going to get up and plug it in”?

And then know without a shadow of a doubt that you won’t regret that decision tomorrow – that your phone will stay comfortable the next evening without sinking into low power mode? No? Well, that’s because you haven’t used the OnePlus 15.

Like its close relative from OPPO, the 99,899 OnePlus 15 comes with a battery capacity so it will challenge any power user to make it through a day. That’s thanks to its silicon-carbon battery, a tech quickly adopted outside the U.S. that allows for thinner, higher-capacity batteries than lithium-ion.

The OnePlus 15 has other things going for it: a great screen and top-notch performance, for starters. And there are things I like less, like Oxygenos’s creeping tendency toward bloatware. It’s not quite the Samsung Bud yet, but it’s a far cry from the OnePlus of five or six years ago. As I see it, it’s a battery-hungry phone. And given the recent trend toward “a lighter, thinner phone but with a worse battery,” this “huge battery capacity, but a regular-sized phone” feels like a winning proposition.

When I first set up the OnePlus 15, I took its 7,300mah battery capacity as a challenge. Display resolution, always-on display, screen timeout, performance—I set everything to their most battery-efficient settings. Over two days with an overnight charge and nine total hours of screen-on time, the battery was down to just 32 percent. If I had tried this with any other flagship phone sold in the US, I would have found a dead battery halfway through the second morning, if not sooner. This is surprising.

There’s some bad news: Silicon-carbon batteries degrade faster than their lithium-ion counterparts, which is why U.S. manufacturers are reluctant to adopt them. OnePlus claims that the battery will retain more than 80 percent of its overall health over the first four years. Similarly, the company guarantees OS upgrades for four years and security updates for an additional two years beyond that.

This feels like a perfectly reasonable commitment on OnePlus’ part, but also, I wish the technology was moving towards batteries with better long-term longevity, not better. Most people who buy these phones will probably choose to move on within four years anyway, and I know plenty of people with phones with lithium-ion batteries that don’t last in that time frame. I hope a phone like this can be given to a family member or donated and used by someone else when the first owner is done with it. OnePlus offers repair service in the U.S., but there’s no specific battery replacement option, and the turnaround is slow — 12 to 15 business days, according to the website. Don’t expect the same-day battery exchange you get with an Apple or Samsung phone.

I’m sorry to say that this phone’s “industry first 1.5K 165Hz display” is largely lost on me. It’s a nice screen, for sure! It’s pretty fast, though I wish it had one touch Bright in direct sunlight, if I’m picking. But I’m not sure I could tell you the difference between a 120Hz screen and this 165Hz display in a blind comparison. I tried with it Real Racing 3one of a handful of games that support higher refresh rates, and yes, it looks good. During a 20-minute session, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 got a bit warm, but I didn’t notice that much of a fuss.

OnePlus was one of the last to ditch the curved edges and adopt the flat sides that the rest of the industry has embraced. I, for one, welcome the change. The flat edges feel a little more secure in my hand. OnePlus fans are less concerned about another update: the conversion of the beloved alert slider into an action button called “Plus Key.” It’s a move that’s ripped right out of Apple’s playbook, right down to the menu screen where you can assign different functions to buttons.

By default, it works as a shortcut to “mind space,” where you can throw screenshots and voice memos so the AI ​​can catalog and tag them for later reference. It’s giving pixel screenshots or anything not necessary place. Interestingly, the Gemini Assistant on the OnePlus 15 can access information stored in your mindspace. It only works consistently when you specifically prompt Gemini to find the mind space, though, which makes it a little less compelling. And I love the idea of ​​places to put things that would otherwise be in endless Chrome tabs, but my dozen or so open Chrome tabs are proof of how hard it is to break old habits and create new ones.

Speaking of software features, I’m not crazy about the way OxygenOS has evolved over the past few generations. I think it’s starting to show as a pattern from years past and the company continues to chase new ideas. There’s the shelf, a place for widgets I never remember using, two rows of recommended apps at the top of the app drawer, and a handful of first-party apps crowding Google’s stuff that require OnePlus to preload.

On top of that, there’s now a bunch of AI that craves attention, like the AI ​​writer that often pops up as the first option when tapping selected text, where my finger immediately moves to hit “copy.” You can opt out, uninstall, and opt out of a lot of these things, but it’s a lot to do — especially if you’re looking for a less cluttered experience than you’ll find with Samsung.

Elsewhere, OnePlus is still hanging on to some of its traditions. You get 80W fast charging with a wired charger (still!) and red cable (still!). OnePlus also sells one that goes up to 100W. Over standard USB-PD, you get a fast but low-spilling 36W. Plugging the phone into the supplied charger for 20 minutes with the supplied charger brought that pesky 17 percent back to 60 percent—easily a day’s worth of power.

Wireless charging is also fast, though you’ll need OnePlus’ proprietary $50 charger to get its top 50W speeds. But there’s one thing you won’t find here: integrated magnets, an LAQ2 wireless charging standard. Instead, OnePlus outsources the magnet in 15 cases. With one of these cases you’ll get up to 11W on the Q2 charger. The ability to charge quickly with specific chargers isn’t as appealing as being able to throw this phone on any old MagSafe charger, but maybe I’m just not enjoying it.

The OnePlus 15 is the company’s first flagship since parting ways with the Hasselblad camera companion. It is now using a detailed Max engine of its own making. I think OnePlus is fixing itself. White balance is well-judged and leans into warmer tones at all the right times. Colors are perfect without looking unrealistic. Surprisingly, OnePlus has opted for smaller sensors in the three rear cameras used in the OnePlus 13. And while it can handle a lot in good light, you run up against its limits pretty quickly in low light. Trying to capture a moving subject in intense blue light proved beyond his abilities.

Overall, the OnePlus 15 feels a little inconsistent. There are a lot of borrowed ideas here – Apple’s action button and maybe even a hint of frosted glass in the UI. There are a few things that OnePlus is moving forward from last time, such as its commitment to offering fast charging. And here are the AI ​​features. Some of which seem well thought out, though others feel a bit over the top. But put it all together and it’s a confusing picture. Thankfully, the OnePlus 15 has a great idea that overshadows the rest of them: a phone that answers the question “What if you didn’t have to worry about battery life?”

I suspect OnePlus thinks of this as a phone for gamers, even if it doesn’t look like a phone for gamers on the surface. The emphasis on performance and screen refresh rate, combined with long battery life, appeals a lot to someone who runs a lot of power-hungry games. But you don’t have to be a gamer to appreciate the battery life this phone delivers. Most anyone will be happy with a device you charge less often. I would have appreciated more emphasis on the camera hardware than the industry-leading screen, and if you want that, you’ll be happier with the Pixel or Galaxy. But for the battery-hungry — gamers or otherwise — there’s nothing quite like the OnePlus 15. Not in America, anyway.

Photography by Alison Johnson/The Verge