OnePlus 15 Review: better value than an iPhone, better pics too!

Traditionally, OnePlus has been known for producing high-end smartphones at a more affordable price point compared to some of those found on our list of the best smartphones for photographers.

While the OnePlus 15 certainly isn’t cheap, it’ll set you back less than the equivalent flagships from Apple (iPhone 17 Pro) and Samsung (Galaxy S25 Ultra), while still giving you triple lenses, an excellent screen and some other useful features such as advanced waterproofing and pleasing aesthetics. It is in fact more line, price wise, with the phones found on the next rung down – the iPhone 17 and the Samsung Galaxy S25 – so does the OnePlus make much more sense, from a value perspective?

OnePlus 15 at a glance:

• 50MP 1/1.56” sensor, 24mm f/1.8 equivalent lens
• 50MP 1/2.76” sensor, 80mm f/2.8 equivalent lens
• 50MP 1/2.88” sensor, 16mm f/2.0 equivalent lens
• 32MP f/2.4 21mm equivalent selfie camera
• 8K 30fps video
• 4K 120fps video
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

An interesting thing to note about the OnePlus 15 is that there’s no longer a collaboration with Hasselblad to boast about. Instead, OnePlus is relying heavily on its own credentials, including a new “DetailMax” engine to deliver the goods.

Features

In terms of hardware, the OnePlus 15 offers three 50 megapixel cameras comprising of a standard, telephoto and ultrawide.

The main sensor is 24mm f/1.8 equivalent, and also includes optical image stabilisation. For the telephoto lens, it’s a 80mm (3.3x) f/2.8 equivalent, using a periscope design, and the ultrawide is a 16mm f/2.0 equivalent. OnePlus says that “high-quality lossless zoom” boosts the 3.3x lens to 7x, while further digital zooming is also available. The main sensor is slightly smaller (physically) than that found on the OnePlus 13, while the telephoto sensor has seen an even bigger drop in physical size.

The new DetailMax Engine promises to “enhance” this setup, including a new Ultra Clear 26MP mode for “capturing intricate details”. There’s also other settings made possible by the DetailMax Engine, including Clear Burst and Clear Night Engine.

For video, there’s 8K available, but most will probably shoot at 4K, where up to 120fps in Dolby Vision is included. There’s also some pro-level video features including LOG support and LUT previews – so it could be an interesting option for advanced content creators.

Other useful features include a 7300mAh battery life, a 160Hz screen and an OxygenOS 16 operating system, based on Android 16.

Build and Handling

The design of the OnePlus 15 is fairly understated, but stylish. I’ve been using the Infinite Black colourway, and although it’s a simple design it’s quite attractive – if a little iPhone like – particularly in the rounded corners.

A square-ish module houses the three camera units and the flash at the back of the camera, again, it’s a bit iPhone esque, but also unsurprisingly is almost identical to those found on OnePlus sister brands, such as the Oppo Find X9 Pro. It is however somewhat of a departure from the previous OnePlus models, which housed the cameras in a circular design. Which you prefer is down to personal preference.

With ultra slim 1.15mm bezels, the screen really makes the most of the available space at the front, which is a big plus point. Additionally, the 1.5k, 165Hz display is detailed and clear, showing off plenty of sharp details, with that super-fast refresh rate making for a nice smooth experience. At 1800 nits max brightness it’s not the brightest on the market, but it still displays well in a variety of lighting conditions. It marks a reduction in resolution when compared with the OnePlus 13, but the faster refresh rate more than makes up for that.

Toughness is provided by an IP69 rating – an industry leader – with excellent resistance against dust and water, including the ability to withstand high-temperature jets bursting at it – so if you want to put it in your dishwasher, knock yourself out. Further enhancing those tough credentials, there’s also Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2.

As with pretty much every smartphone on the market, there’s very little in the way of physical buttons. On the left hand side is a “Plus Key”, which is definitely not the same as the “Action Button” found on an iPhone. With this you can activate various functions, including Do Not Disturb, but also the Camera. But yeah, it’s definitely not the same as an iPhone.

Despite the fact that the OnePlus 15 has an impressively large 7,300mAh battery, it still manages to be impressively slim – it’s no bigger than the average smartphone, yet can last up to three days between charges – nice.

Native camera app

As we’ve seen on previous OnePlus phones, and indeed most other Androids, the native camera app is very well-featured, offering a wide range of different shooting modes.

The default mode is “Photo”, where you’ll likely spend most of your time. Here you can acess the three lenses, with some quick taps for options in between, or beyond the 3.5x lens. You can also do things like adjust exposure compensation or switch on Action mode.

Some further options include switching on Macro shooting, HDR or Interval shooting. The selectable “Macro Shot” will switch to using the 3.5x lens, but macro focusing will also activate if you bring the phone very close to a subject – this time it’ll switch to the ultrawide lens for focusing, cropping to keep the same angle of view as if you were shooting with the 1x camera.

If you head to “Settings”, you can switch on or off the High Resolution option, whereby your photos will be output at 26MP. You can also choose to shoot in different image formats, including High Efficiency (HEIF) to save space on your device. This is what I recommend for most now, since if you need a JPEG you can easily convert, while most apps, email and sharing works well with HEIF.

Other shooting modes include a Portrait mode (for creating shallow depth of field effects – principally people, but it will work with other subjects too), a Night mode (for low light shooting), and a Master mode where you can take control of certain shooting parameters – as well as record in raw format if you feel so inclined. Night mode will also automatically activate if the phone detects low light.

In the Video mode, you can access a variety of frame rates and resolutions, and there’s also some options available for recording things like concerts and fireworks (though I implore you, please don’t block everyone’s view recording concerts, just enjoy the damn thing).

AI editing is becoming very commonplace across the smartphone market, and there are some excellent options here. You can remove passers-by, get rid of reflections in windows, and more besides. Thanks to the fast processor, it does it all very quickly, and the results are pretty good too – certainly if you’re not scrutinising your images super closely, too.

Image Quality and Performance

OnePlus may have ended its partnership with imaging experts Hasselblad, but the OnePlus 15 is still very capable of taking excellent pictures, across a range of different scenarios.

The colours are great, being bright and vibrant, but without displaying a concerning over saturation that can sometimes plague more affordable models. It’s also pleasing considering that’s what the Hasselblad partnership was supposed to be for.

Detail looks good, too, with images even appearing well rendered on larger screens, as well as on the screen of the phone itself.

As usual, the main 1x camera is the best performer, with the sharpest and cleanest results.

That said, the 0.5x camera also works well, with minimal distortion and detail kept well into the corners of the image.

The telephoto camera is a good performer too, with 3.5x being a good focal length for getting closer to the action. For the digital options, 7x works pretty well if you need to get even closer, maintaining a decent level of detail and not turning too smudgy. Beyond that, 10x is also reasonably good if you’re shooting in good light. After that, things start to get a little too smudged for my liking, but if you do desperately want to get closer you might find you can make do with smaller images.

As I’d expect, shooting in low light works best when using the 1x lens. With this, you can get some very good results which show plenty of detail. The telephoto camera is reasonable, so long as you don’t examine the image too closely, while the 0.5x lens is also not too bad if you’re happy to keep images on the small side. I’d likely avoid the digital zoom options if at all possible, as over-enthusiastic image sharpening can cause images to look unrealistic.

The portrait mode is a useful tool for photographing people, and on the whole it produces nice images. The backgrounds are well blurred, and outlines are reasonably good – so long as there isn’t too much fine or fussy hair it needs to go around. If you examine very closely, you can see that it’s “fake”, but the same is true of pretty much every smartphone.

Macro mode uses the ultrawide camera. Here the results are acceptable, but not as good as those we’ve seen from other manufacturers who use the telephoto camera for macro mode. Again, this very much depends on what you intend to do with the final result – if you’re just looking at it on your phone screen, it’s likely to be perfectly fine.

The selfie camera works well, and produces nicely detailed shots and it even has AF – somewhat of a rarity. I’ve found that it gets a little bit confused by hair if you engage portrait mode, but the overall effect is pretty good.

Value for Money

Considering what you get for the money, the OnePlus 15 is arguably one of the best value models out there right now.

For the same price as a “standard” iPhone 17, for example, or a Samsung Galaxy S25, you get a flagship OnePlus, with an excellent screen, great battery life, and three well-performing cameras.

At the moment, you can even pick up a 512GB model for barely more than the base level 256GB model, so I’d probably go for that if I was buying – giving you lots of extra space for your photos and videos, without having to necessarily invest in cloud storage.

You do need to think about resale value however. Yes, a OnePlus 15 is significantly cheaper than an iPhone or Samsung right now, but you’ll also likely lose more money on it in a year or two’s time when you come to upgrade – but if you’re on a budget right now, it’s certainly worth thinking about.

Verdict

There’s a lot to like about the OnePlus 15.

With its triple high-resolution cameras, excellent screen and fantastic battery life, it offers a lot for the (relatively) affordable price.

Its comparable in price to an iPhone 17, which is also an excellent phone, but which only provides two lenses, a lesser screen, and a lesser battery.

Overall, photos from the OnePlus 15 are pretty impressive. Great colours, plenty of detail, good low light shooting, a useful portrait mode and a usable macro option. The lack of a Hasselblad partnership doesn’t seem to have had too negative an impact on image quality, which is great news.

The only downside here is that there hasn’t been a huge improvement from the previous model – so if you’ve already got one of those, it’s probably worth sticking to what you have rather than rushing to upgrade.

It’s also worth caveating the value proposition of this model with the fact that OnePlus tends not to hold its value quite so well as some of the bigger-known brands (particularly Samsung or Apple). If you’re keen to get a flagship at a decent price that you intend to keep for several years though, it’s a solid and reliable option.

It may not be the most exciting release of the last few years, but for overall value, performance and other useful features, I’d put the OnePlus 15 as one of the best smartphones for photographers.