OnePlus 15 Unveiled: Top 5 Upgrades I Love on the Latest Flagship

Although we’re still days away from the official release of OnePlus’ new flagship phone, I’ve been testing the phone for a few weeks.

And, although various embargoes mean I can’t yet reveal my complete thoughts on the OnePlus 15 experience, one thing I can do is run you through some of the highlights.

With last year’s OnePlus 13 (the number 4 is considered unlucky on OnePlus’ native China), the company’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach generally paid off, and while camera performance wasn’t quite up there with the best camera phones money can buy, it still went on to become one of the best value Android flagships of the last 12 months.

As such, expectations for the OnePlus 15 remain pretty high, and with the company teasing so much already, it looks to have the makings of one of the next best phones to hit the market.

Big design changes

While obviously a subjective quality, I personally didn’t fall in love with the look of the OnePlus 13; it lacked cohesion.

There was a mishmash of surface finishes, clashing colours, conflicting patterns and geometry that didn’t really flow. Whilst it was an undeniably well-made smartphone (not least because it features both IP68 and IP69-certified protection against dust and water), it didn’t offer up the same level of aesthetic refinement as the competition.

The OnePlus 15 looks and feels like a different beast entirely.

Although perhaps losing a touch of individuality in the process, the OnePlus 15 rings in a new aesthetic era for OnePlus’ flagships. It’s essentially a larger version of the design which debuted on the compact OnePlus 13s, which came to select markets like India earlier this year.

Straight sides, a flat front and back, more heavily-rounded corners, and a square camera deco feature in place of its predecessor’s timepiece-inspired circular one.

It’s closer, in style, to sister brand Oppo’s new top dogs: the Oppo Find X9 and Find X9 Pro. But it does one thing better than any other phone I can think of, right now: OnePlus has nailed this year’s colourways, with a trio of surface finishes that all bring something unique to the table.

The most conventional is also the most eye-catching. Ultra Violet offers the most vibrant look, with a base lavender across both the phone’s glass back and aluminium frame, punctuated by an iridescent treatment that creates an attractive colour shift as the angle of the back glass changes against the light. An almost neon blue “brilliant edge” – as OnePlus describes it – is also present, where the back glass meets the frame.

According to OnePlus, the Infinite Black option has proved the most popular in testing, and it’s easy to see why. The textured AG glass on the back of the phone is so diffused that it essentially looks like matt. OnePlus went so far as to speculate that it’s the “darkest black ever on a phone,” and the end result is a quiet sophistication.

This year’s lead colourway – and my personal favourite – is the new Sand Storm finish, which doubles down on the black model’s matt look, with a unique ceramic treatment over the phone’s mid-frame and camera surround.

It’s achieved using a process called micro-arc oxidation (or MAO – a first in the smartphone space), which not only carries the matt look across the phone’s entirety, but also makes it the most durable of the three OnePlus 15 colourways. OnePlus claims it’s 1.3 times tougher than titanium, and it also feels cooler to the touch than the more conventional metalwork on the other two finishes.

Plus Key, Plus Mind & Google

The three-stage alert slider has long been one of the defining hardware features on OnePlus’ phones, but a number of the company’s 2025 entries (again, most notably the OnePlus 13s) have marked a transition to the Plus Key: the programmable button that, by default, grants access to Plus Mind, a digital ‘second brain’ of sorts.

With the arrival of the OnePlus 15, this transition is essentially complete, being the first of the company’s flagship phones to swap out the slider for the Plus Key, and thus making the OnePlus 13 the last alert-slider toting OnePlus flagship.