If you have been following OnePlus’ journey as I have, it’s hard to miss that the R-series has always carried an unusual responsibility within the brand’s lineup. This is the space where the brand has always tried to balance performance, usability and long-term reliability without drifting afar in any one direction. The OnePlus 15R continues in that vein.
At a starting price of Rs 47,999 for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage model, rising all the way up to Rs 52,999 for the 512GB storage option, the OnePlus 15R finds itself in a segment with strong performers and where potential buyers are no longer forgiving of half-baked measures.
Design and Build
If you’ve seen or used a recent OnePlus R-series phone, the 15R will feel familiar the moment you pick it up. It’s got flat sides, a clean glass back, a camera module that sits quietly in the corner and symmetry that OnePlus has been refining for a few generations now.
The build quality is solid. You get an aluminium frame that feels rigid and the buttons have a crisp, confident click. This is the kind of phone you stop thinking about after a day or two because it doesn’t have a learning curve attached. It feels secure in hand even if you despise slapping a case on your phone as the flat edges help the ergonomics and the back panel resists fingerprints instead of turning it into a smudge magnet.
I’ve been using the Mint Breeze colourway which is soft, light and more conservative than say the Electric Violet variant which has a subtle texture running through the middle. The green colour has an almost hazy and muted texture that doesn’t catch your eye but it also doesn’t disappear visually when it’s lying face down on a desk.
The camera module is neatly integrated, raised just enough to house the two cameras and because of that, the phone doesn’t rock annoyingly on a table. At 218 grams, the weight distribution stays even, be it extended gaming sessions or camera use and it never feels top-heavy or tiring in the hand.
The 15R covers everything from splashes to harsher conditions with IP68 and IP69K water and dust protection and that makes the phone easier to live with.
Size-wise, the 15R plays to the middle of the market but if you’ve grown attached to compact phones like the OnePlus 13s, this won’t convert you. For everyone else, it settles into daily use easily.
Display
The OnePlus 15R has a large 6.83-inch AMOLED panel running at a FHD+ resolution (2800 × 1272 pixels). It’s a 10-bit panel with full DCI-P3 colour coverage, protected by Gorilla Glass 7i. It doesn’t get LTPO but supports adaptive refresh rates that scale from 60Hz all the way up to 165Hz in supported games such as Call of Duty Mobile, Clash of Clans and Real Racing 3. HDR formats are supported, including HDR10+ and HDR Vivid which translate into a premium viewing and gaming experience. The layer of Gorilla Glass 7i on top holds up well and resists minor scuffs in daily use.
In our display tests, the 15R’s display reaches around 1320 nits (manual) and peak brightness climbs to around 3100 nits which is closer to the claimed numbers. This means that outdoor visibility is not going to be an issue and HDR content doesn’t collapse into flat blacks in dark scenes.
Colour tuning in the professional mode is accurate with an average DeltaE of 1.1, so skin tones look natural, whites stay neutral and saturation remains consistent even when viewing the screen at an angle. If you prefer a more punchy look, OxygenOS gives you room to adjust colour profiles, but the default calibration is comfortable for reading, browsing and casual viewing. Colours are consistent with 100% colour gamut coverage whether you’re gaming, watching content, or just spending hours moving between apps.
In games that support higher refresh rates, motion is noticeably smoother, especially during fast camera movement or touch-heavy sequences, where input is closer to what’s happening on screen.
Performance
The OnePlus 15R is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 SoC paired with 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and upto 512GB UFS 4.1 storage options. That combination alone is the most consequential upgrade over the 13R and it does more than inflate benchmark scores. In my extended use, it became clear that this is a phone tuned for sustained performance rather than short power bursts.
In synthetic benchmarks, it performs as you’d expect from a performance-focused flagship. The 15R scores 2,892,035 in AnTuTu, 2,886 in Geekbench single-core, and 9,535 in the multi-core test. The PCMark Work test returns a score of 14,315, indicating strong productivity performance, while 3DMark Wild Life Extreme lands at 5,320.
Now, these are solid results, but a more telling figure comes from the CPU throttling test, where the 15R sustains around 92% of its peak performance on average in multiple runs which explains a lot about how the phone feels during longer sessions.
In daily use, the 15R offers extremely zen-like stability. Apps open instantly, switching between heavy workloads is effortless and OxygenOS 16 doesn’t pull back on performance to maintain thermal threshold.
Gaming performance is quite exceptional due to this tuning. In BGMI, the phone averaged around 159 FPS over a 30-minute session, with peak temperatures hovering at approximately 40.9 degrees Celsius, which is a bit warm but not uncomfortably so. Genshin Impact maintained a steady 120 FPS average while staying under 40 degrees. More importantly, there were no sudden drops in frame rates even during longer combat-heavy sections or touch response and the experience remained smooth. In long gaming sessions, the 15R feels less fatiguing and for most gamers, this stability will matter more than theoretical performance ceilings.
Battery and Charging
The 15R packs a large 7400 mAh battery and supports 80W fast wired charging and while the charging speed isn’t the headline grabber it once was for OnePlus, this combination ensures the phone keeps running efficiently.
In our battery drain test that lasts six hours and includes tasks like YouTube video playback, video recording, benchmark suite, gaming and social media doomscrolling, the 15R managed to retain 44% capacity which is a testament to its efficiency.
The 15R will comfortably get through a full day of use in mixed use that includes gaming, navigation, camera use and long stretches of screen time, with room to spare.
Charging from zero to full took around one hour and sixteen minutes which places the 15R firmly in the competitive zone rather than the leading edge. OnePlus no longer dominates this space, but the experience remains dependable and easy to live with.
Cameras
The OnePlus 15R doesn’t try to compete with camera-centric flagships with multiple cameras and extreme zoom ranges. Instead, it focuses on delivering a reliable main camera experience that’s tuned for those everyday casual photography needs. However, I feel the absence of a dedicated telephoto lens looks a bit questionable especially since the last generation had one.
The rear cameras consists of a 50MP Sony IMX906 main sensor with optical image stabilisation paired with an 8MP ultra-wide camera. On the front, there’s a 32MP selfie camera with autofocus. It can record up to 4K at 120fps videos from the rear camera with both OIS and EIS and support for high-frame-rate slow motion and time-lapse modes.
In daylight, the main camera produces clean, sharp and well-balanced images without pushing colours too hard. Dynamic range is handled sensibly, highlights stay under control, skies retain gradient instead of flattening out and shadow detail is preserved without looking artificial.
The DetailMax processing does its work quietly in the background, enhancing textures in foliage, pets or busy scenes without making the image look over-processed. There’s sharpening, but it’s controlled.
Portraits are particularly well executed. Subject separation feels natural, edge detection is clean, and the blur does not appear artificially layered.
Faces retain natural brightness even against strong backlighting, while skies and highlights avoid blowing out.
Zoom is the one area where hardware limitations surface. Cropped 2x shots hold up well thanks to the 50MP sensor but the phone does not extend convincingly beyond that.
Low-light performance is another strength. Neon signage retains colour integrity, highlights stay controlled, and individual light points remain distinct instead of merging into highlights.
The ultra-wide camera is serviceable and in good light, it works well enough for landscapes and group shots, with acceptable edge sharpness and limited distortion. As light drops, detail softens and noise becomes more visible.
The 32MP autofocus front camera delivers sharp images with consistent exposure and natural skin tones.
Verdict
The OnePlus 15R focuses on getting the fundamentals right and then stays consistent at that baseline once you start using it daily.
There are compromises such as the absence of a telephoto camera that feel harder to justify at this price, especially when last year’s model offered one. Charging speeds are competitive but no longer class-leading. And while the design is polished, it plays it safe in a market where some buyers may want more personality from their devices.
But the strengths of the 15R more than make up for those shortcomings. The performance is solid and holds up under sustained use, battery life is dependable with enough headroom, display brightness and colour consistency have improved and the main camera is reliable without overprocessing.
At Rs 47,999, the 15R succeeds because it doesn’t ask you to make excuses for it. Rather, it moulds to your expectations and remains calm when pushed hard. This is not a phone that will impress you in the five minutes at the store counter but it earns that over time and that’s what the R-series continues to matter in OnePlus’ lineup.
Also Read: Motorola Signature review: A flagship that focuses on what matters
OnePlus 15R Key Specs, Price and Launch Date
| Release Date: | 17 Dec, 2025 |
| Market Status: | Launched |
Key Specifications
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Siddharth Chauhan
Siddharth reports on gadgets, technology and you will occasionally find him testing the latest smartphones at Digit. However, his love affair with tech and futurism extends way beyond, at the intersection of technology and culture. View Full Profile
