The OnePlus 15 is the next premium handset from the Chinese phone-maker, and I just got my hands on it. To give its cameras a whirl, I took it out for a quick spin through a hip corner of Los Angeles.

The OnePlus 15’s big advantage is that it’s one of the first to run the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, Qualcomm’s next-generation chip for high-end phones, which was launched in September. The system-on-a-chip has a big influence on how photos come out, processing every image captured through the rear cameras. 

The OnePlus 15 has three 50-megapixel rear cameras, along with a selfie shooter on the front, and I took photos of my neighborhood flora and fauna using them all. While there’s a certain level of polish expected of premium phone cameras, this phone has something new: it’s the first major OnePlus handset released since the company’s partnership with Hasselblad ended. For years, OnePlus incorporated the iconic Swedish camera maker’s color science and image calibration in its cameras.

With Hasselblad gone, the OnePlus 15 features the debut of the DetailMax Engine, a loftily-titled computational processing system that aims to «present scenes as they truly are, without over-beautification or distortion,» as the company’s official blog post explained. 

That means a new page for shooting photos on a OnePlus phone, which made me want to know what the OnePlus 15 is capable of. Join me through a casual tour of a vibrant Los Angeles neighborhood, taking the kinds of snapshots that make up the majority of everybody’s camera roll. I’ll need to spend a lot more time with the device to give it a comprehensive review. 

Our first shot is of the outside of The Silver Lake House, a neighborhood Thai restaurant. While I clearly can’t resist a slight Dutch angle here, the blend of colors look distinct and not oversaturated — a win for true-to-life processing. I like the way the OnePlus 15 captured the light and shadows filtering through the trees, and the camera has handled the lens flare well without over-exposing that area. Also, notice the reflection on the chrome on the heat lamp.

Here’s a close-up of knick-knack plant vases on a windowsill overlooking the restaurant’s indoor tables. The light is really balanced, bright on the foreground outside the eatery and dimmer within — but colors and details are still visible inside. You can also pick out some detail in the reflections on the window of the street behind me.

I couldn’t resist this 1960s Ford Thunderbird sitting idly on the street, a cruising car from yesteryear resting in a hipper corner of LA. Note the texture of the dirt streaks over the paint contrasted against the shiny chromed metal surrounding the taillights. More importantly, despite the camera’s focus on the foreground, the OnePlus 15  still manages to capture the blue sky in the background, complete with details in the clouds.

I took this photo of a nearby dog park with the ultrawide lens, which preserves humdrum details in the brown dirt amid sprouted grass along the bottom.

Here’s an image of the same dog park that I took while zoomed in at 7x magnification. It has a lot of detail and color. But we can go further!

Here’s the dog park photographed at 120x magnification, the farthest this phone can zoom in. The image looked grainy as heck on the phone’s screen when I shot it, but that DetailMax Engine’s post-processing has done relative wonders, making this semi-recognizable despite a lot of smudging at the edges caused by noise reduction — look between the chain links. To be sure, this is not a great image — it’s nearly painterly — but the fact that it can zoom in this far and still serve up a photo with something recognizable is amazing.

Here’s a selfie featuring yours truly. I think this photo has good detail and shadow, but what most impresses me are the mountains in the distance, which can be seen to some degree through the classic Los Angeles haze (marine layer, not smog) occluding the air, not the OnePlus selfie camera.

For comparison, here’s a selfie I took at night. The color is fine, with decent details in the foreground, though they start to blur behind me — notice the bricks on the bottom right, the posters on the light pole on the mid-left, and especially the building over my shoulder.

Here’s the obligatory night shot of a Los Angeles street. While the city will never be dark enough to test the phone’s ability to capture constellations of stars in the night sky, this does show the contrast between warm streetlights and the bright neon. The details of the stucco pockmarked the walls of the bowling alley are clear, even from across the street. Look closely at the texture of the street’s pavement. It’s a granular mix of grays flecked with white spots. All the grime of the city, preserved by the OnePlus 15’s new shiny cameras.

That’s it for the first look at the OnePlus’ camera capabilities. Happy Halloween! And keep an eye out for my full OnePlus 15 review.