The OnePlus 15R’s battery life is unbeatable

The battery life of the OnePlus 15R is exceptional. It’s a bit better than the very impressive OnePlus 15, and the 15R costs two hundred dollars less. So why do I have trouble recommending it?

Typically, OnePlus’ R-series phone is a streamlined, less expensive sequel to the main flagship – in this case, the OnePlus 15. And technically, yes, it meets that criteria. But the atmosphere is different; the 15R doesn’t feel like you’re getting away with flagship features at a great price. It costs $699 compared to $899 for the 15, it includes a less powerful but still beefy Qualcomm processor, and it lacks a telephoto lens. In terms of battery, it manages to surpass the 15’s astonishing performance with a slightly higher capacity of 7,400 mAh. You can go there for days – days – before you even have to do it think about charging your phone. I’ve been using it for two weeks and I can count the number of times I’ve needed to recharge it with one hand.

But here’s the “but”. The camera isn’t that great, there’s no wireless charging, and at $700 the 15R is kind of a no-man’s land: about $200 too much to feel like a good deal, and it’s missing a few features found on other phones at the same price. You might as well opt for the flagship 15 and just charge your phone every other day rather than every three or four, or buy the Pixel 9A for a more reliable camera and a much more reasonable price of $499.

The 15R uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset, a step down from the OnePlus 15’s “Elite” SOC. In everyday use, it’s just as powerful; my litmus test is still one of the build pages on Icy Veinswhich are full of media and interactive elements. As with the 15, there is very little stuttering when I scroll through one of these pages using the 15R.

And by the way, I don’t see much of OnePlus’ historical tendency to aggressively close background apps. I left Google Photos running in the background for a few days while I collected images for a photo book project; every time I opened the app, it ended up exactly where I left it in my timeline. If it had been completely closed, I would have had to return to where I left off. It’s the little things.

When it comes to the big things, it’s hard to overstate how good the 15R’s battery performance is. With a mix of light to moderate use in the phone’s highest performance mode, the battery typically dropped below 20% after three full days. It is with permanent display activated full time. Going back to balanced performance, which is the default, seems to help stretch it out a bit more. If you wanted to be Really Aggressive with the power-saving settings, I bet you could get most of a week’s use out of a single charge. It’s wild.

The downside: The silicon-carbon battery technology that allows the 15R to carry such massive battery capacity tends to degrade more quickly than standard lithium-ion batteries. OnePlus claims the battery will retain 80 percent of its original capacity for four years of use, which is reasonable, but I’d like to see battery technology trend toward longer lifespan with better prospects for reuse, not worse.

Normally, I would find the lack of wireless charging quite annoying on a $700 phone. And I guess that’s the principle, but when you only have to charge your phone every few days, it’s a little more forgivable. As it stands, you’ll get wired charging speeds of up to 55W with the brick and cable included in the box. Personally, I’d ditch super-fast wired charging if it meant even slower wireless charging, but many people would make the opposite argument.

The 15R’s camera system includes the same 50-megapixel main sensor with f/1.8 lens found in the flagship OnePlus 15. And like the 15, there’s no more Hasselblad branding here – it’s all OnePlus’ DetailMax engine for image processing. I got some very nice photos in good lighting, although the results were a little unpredictable in mixed or low indoor lighting. Images were sometimes too bright and unusually saturated, and low light remains a challenge for the 15R as it was for the 15.

There’s no dedicated telephoto lens on the 15R, which is forgivable since that’s often the case on phones under $800. The 8-megapixel ultra-wide, however, is a little harder to let slide. This is a major downgrade from the more advanced 50-megapixel ultra-wide found on the 15, and the difference is easy to spot in low-light photos – they’re a mess. Overall, it’s a camera system that will do the job for someone who isn’t picky about photo quality, but I’d take the Pixel 9A’s camera over this any day.

I’m not just talking about Google, but the Pixel line illustrates the 15R’s positioning conundrum. That’s $200 more than the mid-range Pixel 9A, which offers both wireless charging and a more reliable camera. Or, for just $100 more, there’s the Pixel 10, where you’ll find a telephoto lens and Qi2 wireless charging with magnets built into the back of the phone. What the 15R offers – huge battery capacity, but a lackluster camera and no wireless charging, at a mid-high price – seems a bit unbalanced.

Still, it’s hard to argue with the battery life. If the OnePlus 15 appealed to you on this basis but seems a little too expensive, then the 15R could be for you. Otherwise, I think you’d do well to keep your bedside phone charger handy for now.

Photography by Allison Johnson/The Verge