OnePlus 15R vs OnePlus 15: What's changed [Detailed Comparison]

OnePlus has drawn a clearer line between its flagship and "performance flagship" strategy this year. While OnePlus 15R packs serious hardware and aggressive specs, OnePlus 15 goes all-in on premium differentiation—particularly in performance headroom, camera versatility, display tech, and charging speeds. Here's how the two phones stack up across key areas.

Design and Build

At first glance, both phones look and feel premium, with similar footprint and weight distribution. OnePlus 15 is slightly more compact and lighter, especially in the Sand Storm finish, while the 15R leans marginally heavier across variants. Thickness differences are negligible in real-world use.

Where the OnePlus 15 edges ahead is refinement. It offers a more polished in-hand feel, while sharing the usual sensors like an in-display ultrasonic fingerprint reader, but the 15 gets the faster USB 3.2 Gen 1 connectivity compared to the 15R's USB 2.0 port. The 15R still feels solid, but the flagship shows its class in the details.

Display

This is one of the biggest upgrade areas.

OnePlus 15 features a 6.78-inch QHD+ LTPO panel with a 1–120Hz adaptive refresh rate, peaking at 165Hz in supported games, and reaching up to 1800 nits brightness. It also supports ultra-low 1-nit brightness for night usage.

OnePlus 15R, while impressive, uses an FHD+ panel with adaptive refresh scaling up to 165Hz primarily in gaming scenarios. It retains excellent colour reproduction and Gorilla Glass 7i protection, but lacks LTPO efficiency and extreme brightness tuning.

Performance and Software

Performance is where the generational gap becomes clear. OnePlus 15 runs on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen5 platform with Oryon cores clocked up to 4.6GHz, paired with faster GPU tuning and up to 16GB LPDDR5X Ultra+ RAM. It's built for sustained gaming, AI workloads, and long-term performance stability.

OnePlus 15R uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen5 chipset with a slightly lower CPU clock ceiling and a toned-down GPU configuration. It's still extremely fast for everyday use, gaming, and multitasking, but doesn't match the raw headroom of the flagship.

Both phones ship with OxygenOS 16 based on Android 16, ensuring feature parity on the software front.

Cameras: The Biggest Divider

Camera hardware clearly separates the two devices.

OnePlus 15 features a triple 50MP setup with a dedicated 3.5x telephoto lens offering up to 120x digital zoom, optical image stabilisation, and advanced autofocus systems. It also supports 8K video recording and underwater photography modes, making it a true flagship imaging device.

OnePlus 15R sticks to a dual-camera system—50MP main and 8MP ultra-wide. While the primary sensor is capable and supports 4K 120fps video, the lack of a telephoto lens limits zoom and portrait versatility.

Front cameras differ slightly, too, with the OnePlus 15 supporting higher frame rate 4K video.

Battery and Charging

Interestingly, battery sizes are close.

OnePlus 15R packs a larger 7400mAh battery, while the OnePlus 15 houses a 7300mAh dual-cell unit. However, charging speeds tell a different story.

OnePlus 15 supports 120W wired SUPERVOOC charging and 50W AIRVOOC wireless charging. The 15R tops out at 80W wired charging and skips wireless charging entirely.

In daily use, the OnePlus 15 charges dramatically faster and offers more flexibility, but the 15R has an edge with slightly longer battery life.

Connectivity and add-ons

Both phones are future-ready with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, NFC, and extensive 5G band support. However, OnePlus 15 again pushes ahead with more advanced positioning systems, enhanced sensors, and better audio hardware, including three-mic noise cancellation.

Final Take: Which One Should You Buy?

Choose the OnePlus 15R if you want flagship-grade performance, a high-refresh-rate display, a massive battery, and excellent everyday usability without paying top-tier prices.

Choose the OnePlus 15 if you care about camera versatility, display quality, ultra-fast charging, wireless charging, and long-term performance headroom. It's clearly designed as the no-compromise OnePlus phone of this generation.

In short, the OnePlus 15R is the value performance king, while the OnePlus 15 is the true flagship experience.

OnePlus 15 starts at Rs 72,999.

OnePlus 15R starts at Rs 47,999.