OnePlus 15R review

Android 16 with OxygenOS 16

If you are familiar with RealmeUI, ColorOS or previous versions of OxygenOS, you will likely feel right at home. The new OxygenOS 16 is based on Android 16 and hasn't changed much visually, but it does have improved animations. They feel faster and less obtrusive.

For starters, OnePlus 15R owners can expect 4 major timely updates to the OS and 6 years of security patches just like the OnePlus 15.

Home screen • Recent apps • Notification shade

Before we dive into some of the more notable features, take a quick read of the Oppo Find X9 Pro's review software section. ColorOS 16 is nearly identical to OxygenOS 16. The only difference we found was the icon style (at least the default one) and the iconographies for the quick toggles and the Settings menu.

Settings menu

Like every OEM these days, OnePlus is focusing on the AI smarts in for. The Mind Space feature, which is a collection of your notes, screenshots, videos, photos, files, etc., analyzed by AI to answer your questions, is getting deep integration with Google's Gemini AI. The feature hasn't rolled out yet, but Gemini AI will give you more personalized responses by taking your Mind Space data into account.

AI features and Mind Space

One unique feature, which is actually a hardware one, is the Plus Key. By default, it adds stuff to your Mind Space, but you can assign all sorts of actions to it, like screenshot, launch the Camera app, use the flashlight, activate DnD or put the phone to vibrate only, etc.

Plus Key

Another notable addition with this year's OxygenOS 16 is the seamless connectivity with Windows and Mac computers, as well as iPhones. Just bring your OnePlus close to an iPhone, and you can send files instantly. Just like you would do with another Android phone. Pretty neat!

Connectivity features

Apple's like Dynamic Island-styled animations are available as part of Oxygen OS.

Cutout animations

The software experience, as always, is smooth, polished and even slicker than before. We liked the new animations and interactive UI elements.

Performance and benchmarks

The OnePlus 15R is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 (3nm) chip, the second best Qualcomm SoC after the OnePlus 15's Snapdragon Elite Gen 5. The 15R is the first device we see using this new chip.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 makes some downgrades from the 8 Elite Gen 5. For starters, while the CPU cores have the same 2+6 structure, the Prime cores are clocked 17%+ lower, and the performance cores are clocked over 8%+ lower.

The Adreno 829 GPU is a slightly higher clocked version of the Adreno 825 found on the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 (Poco F7 and Nothing Phone 3) and nowhere close to the Adreno 840 on the 8 Elite Gen 5 in terms of compute units or graphics memory.

Finally, this chip also gets slower 4800MHz memory compared to 5300MHz for the Elite, and the cellular modem is downgraded a bit too.

OnePlus has paired the SD8G5 chip inside the 15R with 12GB of LPDDR5X, and it's the only memory configuration available, as there is no 16GB model this year (the 13R had one). You only get a choice of two storage options: 256GB or 512GB of UFS 4.1 memory.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 inside the OnePlus 15R is not a chart-topper as the Elite version, but it still provides flagship-grade speed. The CPU scores are in the Elite ballpark.

The GPU scores are on par with the SD8G3 GPU (13R) and Dimensity 9400 (Xiaomi 15T Pro). While these aren't considered exactly as bleeding-edge, they are still offering top performance.

Finally, the AnTuTu scores paint the same picture - not the best scores, but plenty adequate for a flagship.

Okay, it's clear that the OnePlus 15R can handle everything 2026 can throw at it in terms of apps and do it well. OxygenOS runs with amazing smoothness and it's easy to fall in love with its fast and buttery animations.

The sustained performance turned out pretty solid for a phone with passive cooling and a top-of-the-line chip. The 15R scored 70% on the CPU stress test and 66% on the GPU one.

CPU test • GPU test

The OnePlus 15R did not get hot during our prolonged benchmarking and stress testing. It did become noticeably warm, yes, but never unbearably.

Overall, the 15R has the power to impress in both day-to-day tasks and intense gaming sessions.