So my S22+ was on its last legs, and boy was it draining about a quarter into the day. I've been mostly a Samsung user, but I have used a Pixel 5 and iPhone XS before.

Let me start off by saying that this is perhaps the best phone I've ever used, but I have one important piece of feedback for the OnePlus team that I'll get to at the end of the review.

If I had to sum up what this phone is in one word: refined, it's hella refined, from the design of the body, the quality of the screen, and overall software / OS experience, ease of use, and of course the battery.

• The software/OS: so smooth, so intuitive and clean, simple yet not without scope. The floating window feature is one that I was first weary about, but combined with the gesture system, ya get the hang of it very quickly and then it just works, when using the smart side bar (edge for Samsung users), I'd tap on an app and it'll open up in a small yet tastefully sized window and I can quickly enter a calculation or write a note and get back to what I was doing on Instagram, and if I need it to go full screen, one quick swipe down gesture, and bam, it's very seamless. There's a whole lot more to talk about this and how it's integrated to everything else (heck everything is integrated into something quite intuitively). There's an ample amount of customizability present, browsing this subreddit I was under the impression that the software experience may be a bit lacking in customizability compared to others, but I'm not so sure about that now. The OS itself is pretty close to stock Android, somehow way more stable and less buggy than the pixel phones I've tried... Kinda feels like if iOS and Android had a baby... The notes app it comes with is very awesome, gives Samsung Notes a run for it's money. I wish I could go into more detail about every app, but I'll just say it's all refined.

• Battery: what am I supposed to say? I end every day with at least 77% remaining. Yes the battery capacity in this phone is massive, but the way power management is tuned is very very good. This is a major reason to consider this phone cuz you get both best in class hardware performance/speed along side best in class battery life. I'm not sure if I can ever go back to using any other phone ever again because of this... Even if you're a person that doesn't care about battery life, believe me once you get a taste of this in combination with just being a good phone, you're kinda locked in now... Oh and it charges FAST, it comes with its own special charger!

• Camera: the reviews had me convinced that this was an area where the phone is lagging behind current and older flagships, now idk if there's been updates on the software side of things, but in reality the camera is in fact pretty great! It's not bad at all. What are we doing here man?? Sure it won't beat the iPhone 17 Pro Max or the S26 Ultra, but those phones cost ~$400-$500 more (and more if you want 512GB storage), and if you take into consideration that the S26+ isn't too differently priced, still a flagship (and more pricy in my area), the specs match with the OnePlus 15's camera hardware... Why aren't reviewers comparing it to that?

With that rant out of the way, the camera is a big upgrade over my S22+, I was already "satisfied" with the S22+'s camera, I was able to zoom in and capture photos during lectures before, I can still do that now and better. The color science is better than that on my S22+, closer to what I see irl, some highlights may be a touch more oversaturated, but it's not too out of line with what I've experienced with the processing on Pixel phones. There's better handling of highlight detail, HDR information gets tonemapped to SDR without overexposure or clipping of highlights, the S22+ doesn't tame highlights that well and there's clipping, even when lowering the aperture, whereas the OnePlus 15 tames it. Low light performance is also decent, especially when using the 3.5x zoom, it demolishes the S22+'s low light zoom (closer to what I see irl). My S22+ also aggressively oversharpens the images and I dislike that. I've attached some example shots, refer to em. While filters are common in all phones, I like that it comes with film simulation filters like 800T & NC Film presets, they look wonderful! Now if you want less processing, Master Mode also works well, and yes you can use the filters in it too, it does go down to 12mp vs 26. Now, the most important upgrade for me here is that it takes HDR photos. Many ppl are quick to write it off as useless as it can only be viewed on the device's native photos app (the proXDR toggle), however I've found that it syncs to Google Photos and can be viewed as such on PC with HDR enabled, and even in iOS on the Google Photos app. To test this further, I took some photos, downloaded em to my old iPhone XS via the Google Photos app and uploaded em to Instagram via my iPhone XS and wala... The HDR data is retained in Instagram. Now if Android can improve it's HDR export pipeline in apps such as Instagram to the point it is on iOS, I doubt I'll ever touch an iPhone ever again and the whole workflow would be way more streamlined. I understand that I'm in a niche use case here, but I really think this matters for the future of photography on Android.(TLDR: Better white balance, dynamic range, and low light performance compared to prior Galaxy plus models, less oversharpened too)

• Display: it's far easier on my eyes, it is also well calibrated with ample adjustment options. Gamma tracking is better than on my S22+, for example, natural mode on S22+ vs standard on the OnePlus 15, the S22+ looked more washed out as it's gamma tracking was more in line with sRGB, whereas the OnePlus 15 seemed to be more in line with 2.2 gamma, so contrast looks better, this important to me as I always prefer to target 2.2 gamma on all my screens, it looks closer to my iPhone, iPad, and calibrated TV/monitor. My biggest fear was that it might be tracking sRGB gamma/elevating shadow detail, thankfully it's fine. (Ik Samsung has rectified this in their newer phones as I've tested my sister's S24+). Oh and brightness control is great, I can use this out doors during harsh Canadian summer sunlight 👍, Dolby Vision HDR is present if you watch movies on Netflix etc, far more widely adopted than Samsung's HDR10+ standard. My only complaint here is that always on display isn't as consistent? Maybe there's a setting I'm missing, it doesn't always kick in and there's more of a delay. Fingerprint scanner is more fast and reliable than my S22+'s, but sometimes on standby I can't tell if it's kicking in. Very minor, maybe it's just me. Oh and I must mention, it comes with a pre-installed screen protector, they don't ever have to do that and they did. All phone companies should at least do this😭🙏.

• Speakers: volume control is good as it's at the flagship phone standard. Not much to say👍

• Body: beautiful looking phone, and it can be comfortable to hold without using a case. I love the material being used on the back.👍

• Gaming: my s22+ would get hotter by just browsing Instagram and Twitter lol, meanwhile the OnePlus 15 was feeling about 20% cooler to the touch while I was running Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, yes I was running that game, PC gaming on Android is apparently now a thing... The Game Assistant is also good, gives the stats I need and has power mode options. However I'm personally not much of a phone gamer, but I'm sure now I'll get a disgusting amount of more hours in Balatro when sitting on the toilet :p

• My one major issue (please listen OnePlus team): BT audio volume in earbuds doesn't get as loud as on either my iPhone XS or S22+, it's about 15-20% less loud than it can be, I listen to music a lot, and this is something I tried to fix myself, but it to no avail. The phone isn't lacking in the hardware side of things so clearly it's a software side thing OnePlus needs to look into. It's not unusable, audio quality is totally fine, but I want my earbuds to remain as loud as they were. This phone is sooooo close to perfection as a whole, I just need em to fix this one lil issue. FYI I use a pair of Sony xm4 buds.

Sorry if I've talked too much, anyways, I hope OnePlus sticks around forever and keeps growing in the market cuz now I'm hooked, I wanna stick with em moving forward.

So my S22+ was on its last legs, and boy was it draining about a quarter into the day. I've been mostly a Samsung user, but I have used a Pixel 5 and iPhone XS before.

Let me start off by saying that this is perhaps the best phone I've ever used, but I have one important piece of feedback for the OnePlus team that I'll get to at the end of the review.

If I had to sum up what this phone is in one word: refined, it's hella refined, from the design of the body, the quality of the screen, and overall software / OS experience, ease of use, and of course the battery.

• The software/OS: so smooth, so intuitive and clean, simple yet not without scope. The floating window feature is one that I was first weary about, but combined with the gesture system, ya get the hang of it very quickly and then it just works, when using the smart side bar (edge for Samsung users), I'd tap on an app and it'll open up in a small yet tastefully sized window and I can quickly enter a calculation or write a note and get back to what I was doing on Instagram, and if I need it to go full screen, one quick swipe down gesture, and bam, it's very seamless. There's a whole lot more to talk about this and how it's integrated to everything else (heck everything is integrated into something quite intuitively). There's an ample amount of customizability present, browsing this subreddit I was under the impression that the software experience may be a bit lacking in customizability compared to others, but I'm not so sure about that now. The OS itself is pretty close to stock Android, somehow way more stable and less buggy than the pixel phones I've tried... Kinda feels like if iOS and Android had a baby... The notes app it comes with is very awesome, gives Samsung Notes a run for it's money. I wish I could go into more detail about every app, but I'll just say it's all refined.

• Battery: what am I supposed to say? I end every day with at least 77% remaining. Yes the battery capacity in this phone is massive, but the way power management is tuned is very very good. This is a major reason to consider this phone cuz you get both best in class hardware performance/speed along side best in class battery life. I'm not sure if I can ever go back to using any other phone ever again because of this... Even if you're a person that doesn't care about battery life, believe me once you get a taste of this in combination with just being a good phone, you're kinda locked in now... Oh and it charges FAST, it comes with its own special charger!

• Camera: the reviews had me convinced that this was an area where the phone is lagging behind current and older flagships, now idk if there's been updates on the software side of things, but in reality the camera is in fact pretty great! It's not bad at all. What are we doing here man?? Sure it won't beat the iPhone 17 Pro Max or the S26 Ultra, but those phones cost ~$400-$500 more (and more if you want 512GB storage), and if you take into consideration that the S26+ isn't too differently priced, still a flagship (and more pricy in my area), the specs match with the OnePlus 15's camera hardware... Why aren't reviewers comparing it to that?

With that rant out of the way, the camera is a big upgrade over my S22+, I was already "satisfied" with the S22+'s camera, I was able to zoom in and capture photos during lectures before, I can still do that now and better. The color science is better than that on my S22+, closer to what I see irl, some highlights may be a touch more oversaturated, but it's not too out of line with what I've experienced with the processing on Pixel phones. There's better handling of highlight detail, HDR information gets tonemapped to SDR without overexposure or clipping of highlights, the S22+ doesn't tame highlights that well and there's clipping, even when lowering the aperture, whereas the OnePlus 15 tames it. Low light performance is also decent, especially when using the 3.5x zoom, it demolishes the S22+'s low light zoom (closer to what I see irl). My S22+ also aggressively overshapens the images and I dislike that. I've attached some example shots, refer to em. While filters are common in all phones, I like that it comes with film simulation filters like 800T & NC Film presets, they look wonderful! Now if you want less processing, Master Mode also works well, and yes you can use the filters in it too, it does go down to 12mp vs 26. Now, the most important upgrade for me here is that it takes HDR photos. Many ppl are quick to write it off as useless as it can only be viewed on the device's native photos app (the proXDR toggle), however I've found that it syncs to Google Photos and can be viewed as such on PC with HDR enabled, and even in iOS on the Google Photos app. To test this further, I took some photos, downloaded em to my old iPhone XS via the Google Photos app and uploaded em to Instagram via my iPhone XS and wala... The HDR data is retained in Instagram. Now if Android can improve it's HDR export pipeline in apps such as Instagram to the point it is on iOS, I doubt I'll ever touch an iPhone ever again and the whole workflow would be way more streamlined. I understand that I'm in a niche use case here, but I really think this matters for the future of photography on Android.(TLDR: Better white balance, dynamic range, and low light performance compared to prior Galaxy plus models, less oversharpened too)

• Display: it's far easier on my eyes, it is also well calibrated with ample adjustment options. Gamma tracking is better than on my S22+, for example, natural mode on S22+ vs standard on the OnePlus 15, the S22+ looked more washed out as it's gamma tracking was more in line with sRGB, whereas the OnePlus 15 seemed to be more in line with 2.2 gamma, so contrast looks better, this important to me as I always prefer to target 2.2 gamma on all my screens, it looks closer to my iPhone, iPad, and calibrated TV/monitor. My biggest fear was that it might be tracking sRGB gamma/elevating shadow detail, thankfully it's fine. (Ik Samsung has rectified this in their newer phones as I've tested my sister's S24+). Oh and brightness control is great, I can use this out doors during harsh Canadian summer sunlight 👍, Dolby Vision HDR is present if you watch movies on Netflix etc, far more widely adopted than Samsung's HDR10+ standard. My only complaint here is that always on display isn't as consistent? Maybe there's a setting I'm missing, it doesn't always kick in and there's more of a delay. Fingerprint scanner is more fast and reliable than my S22+'s, but sometimes on standby I can't tell if it's kicking in. Very minor, maybe it's just me. Oh and I must mention, it comes with a pre-installed screen protector, they don't ever have to do that and they did. All phone companies should at least do this😭🙏.

• Speakers: volume control is good as it's at the flagship phone standard. Not much to say👍

• Body: beautiful looking phone, and it can be comfortable to hold without using a case. I love the material being used on the back.👍

• Gaming: my s22+ would get hotter by just browsing Instagram and Twitter lol, meanwhile the OnePlus 15 was feeling about 20% cooler to the touch while I was running Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, yes I was running that game, PC gaming on Android is apparently now a thing... The Game Assistant is also good, gives the stats I need and has power mode options. However I'm personally not much of a phone gamer, but I'm sure now I'll get a disgusting amount of more hours in Balatro when sitting on the toilet :p

• My one major issue (please listen OnePlus team): BT audio volume in earbuds doesn't get as loud as on either my iPhone XS or S22+, it's about 15-20% less loud than it can be, I listen to music a lot, and this is something I tried to fix myself, but it to no avail. The phone isn't lacking in the hardware side of things so clearly it's a software side thing OnePlus needs to look into. It's not unusable, audio quality is totally fine, but I want my earbuds to remain as loud as they were. This phone is sooooo close to perfection as a whole, I just need em to fix this one lil issue. FYI I use a pair of Sony xm4 buds.

Sorry if I've talked too much, anyways, I hope OnePlus sticks around forever and keeps growing in the market cuz now I'm hooked, I wanna stick with em moving forward.

I have an RTX 5080 GPU, I've tried swapping HDMI cables as well as clean Nvidia driver reinstall. I just can't seem to tame this issue. If I hard reboot my TV, PC audio plays fine for about 10 minutes, and then it starts eventually doing this. I'm not using any sound bar, just trying to use my TV's built in speakers. I can't reproduce this issue on my PS5 though. (Ignore my Pebble V2 on my desk)

​

Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙏