OnePlus 15 Launches for Gamers and AI

OnePlus today launched its new flagship, the OnePlus 15. Previously revealed in China, there are few surprises but the powerful CPU, large battery and fast screen will appeal to mobile gamers. As it’s 2025, there’s the inevitable AI features as well and in a welcome change, there’s a small reduction in price.

Let’s take a quick look round the hardware specs for the headline features. The 15 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform which was officially released as recently as September of this year. Of course, it’s optimised for AI and OnePlus look to be taking advantage of that with some of the on-device tools – more on this later. For memory and storage, there are both 12 GB / 256 GB and 16 GB / 512 GB memory variants based on colourway, and it’s all powered by a whopping 7300 mAh battery engineered for long-term capacity and low-temperature performance. The battery supports an improved 120 W SuperVOOC wired charging which will fill the battery in around 39 minutes with 50 W wireless AirVOOC as well.

Looking at the display, the OnePlus 15 comes with a super fast 6″ 165Hz LTPO display with a 1.5K resolution. Whilst the high refresh rate is an industry-first, the resolution is a technical downgrade from the 13’s 3168×1440 resolution but at 450 ppi the new screen still shows fine detail and should be of little real-world concern. On the plus side, the screen is brighter than previous models, with a high brightness mode (HBM) of 1800 nits for excellent outdoor visibility. The new display takes up more of the space with a screen-to-body ratio of over 95%.

The phone’s 360 Cryo-Velocity Cooling System keeps the OnePlus 15 cool while performing at its peak. Using high-tech materials such as aerogel and white graphite, heat is pulled away from the chips and dissipated through the phone’s body, ensuring stable and sustained performance during heavy gameplay.

For the cameras, while the partnership with Hasselblad is no more, OnePlus’ new DetailMax photography engine ought to deliver high quality photographs from the three 50MP cameras on the rear. As is often the norm, there’s a main lens with OIS, an ultra-wide and a periscope telephoto, offering 3.5x optical zoom. Round the front, it’s a 32MP selfie cam. There’s been much chatter on line about the move away from the circular camera array to a new square one, but c’est la vie…

Turning to the colourways, the latest phone will come in three fashionable looks – Sand Storm, Ultra Violet and Infinite Black – and each comes with a different finish or treatment on the back. Infinite Black is glass, Sand Storm uses Micro-Arc Oxidation for extra hardness but I like the look of Ultra Violet’s dual-texture coating (whatever that is!)

In other protection, the One Plus 15 has a plethora of dust and water ingress standards – IP66, IP68, IP69 and IP69K – which means the phone is water-resistant to 2 m for 30 minutes. That’ll be handy for some underwater photography of your children in the pool.

As mentioned previously, the OnePlus 15 majors heavily with AI. Sadly the introduction of an AI Plus Key means the alert slider is no more, but the benefit is easy access to AI features including saving screenshots to OnePlus’ AI storage, Mind Space. Google’s Gemini hooks into Mind Space allowing the AI to generate information and suggestions from the stored data. Other AI tools provide writing assistance, meeting transcriptions and photo enhancement.

Turning to price and there’s a welcome change. For the equivalent top-end model at full price (16GB/512GB) there’s £20 dip from the OnePlus 13’s £999 to the 15’s £979. As ever with OnePlus, there are some early bird discounts with £100 off for purchases before 12th December ’25. The Infinite Black’s smaller capacity (12GB/256GB) version comes in at £849, which is a larger £50 drop over the previous generation’s price of £899.

Here’s the full list of colourways and prices with all devices available from OnePlus.com.

Colourway	Storage Variant	Price
Sand Storm	16 / 512 GB	£979 (£879 until 12th Dec)
Ultra Violet	16  / 512 GB	£979 (£879 until 12th Dec)
Infinite Black	16 / 512 GB	£979 (£879 until 12th Dec)
Infinite Black	12 / 256 GB	£849

Early birds also receive one from a choice of free products such as the Watch 3, the Pad Lite and the Buds Pro 3.