Technologies

The OnePlus 15 Is One of the Best Mainstream Phones for Gamers

How does a phone with a battery nearly 50% larger than other high-end phones work for gaming? We do the gamer science.

If you’re a mobile gamer, you know the bliss of playing anywhere you want to go — and the anxious downside of draining your phone’s battery as you do. That’s why the OnePlus 15‘s massive 7,300-mAh battery makes this a promising handset for the discerning gamer on the go. Presumably, you’ll be able to play for longer without draining your phone down to low capacity.

The reality is a little more complicated, partially because the OnePlus 15’s advantages can be diminished if graphics and the frame rate are cranked up to the max. It’s a good problem to have, as the phone’s premium specs give it a higher ceiling for performance. However, gamers who aren’t careful can drain their batteries nearly as quickly as other top-tier phones.

Still, if you don’t want a gaming-specific phone like the RedMagic 11 Pro or Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro, which aren’t easily available in the US, the OnePlus 15 is a mainstream handset that offers premium specs and features, making it a good choice.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

The OnePlus 15’s gaming experience

Good specs, good display, decent speakers

Battery life while gaming is important, but we’ll set that aside for a moment to focus on the experience of playing games themselves. While both versions of the phone pack the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, I used the pricier $1,000 version with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, which presumably performs better than the cheaper $900 model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. I tested a handful of popular games that are demanding enough to gauge the OnePlus 15’s capabilities.

The effect: high graphics and smooth gameplay. Aside from its high-end hardware, the OnePlus 15 also has a 6.78-inch OLED display with HD Plus (2,722 x1,272-pixel resolution) and 165Hz maximum refresh rate. The latter is a big deal for gaming, but most games won’t hit that cap, as they’re typically set to 120 frames per second (fps) at most.

One of the few big games that supports such a high refresh rate is Dead Cells, whose roguelike gameplay is dependent on reaction time. In theory, it supports an unlimited frame rate, but I couldn’t tell much difference between 120Hz and 165Hz — with more frames per second (roughly one per hertz, so 165fps at the phone’s maximum), it should enable players to respond faster, in the matter of microseconds.

But I’ll be the first one to admit that my clumsy fingers can’t hit the touch controls accurately enough to get that level of quick response. That’s where using a third-party controller comes in handy, and the Backbone I had in my desk drawer worked amazingly well. I plugged the OnePlus 15 in, and Dead Cells immediately switched over to external controls, already mapping my assortment of weapons and items to different buttons. In seconds, I was slipping in attacks between frantic sequences of dodge rolls and double jumps to evade enemy attacks.

When I switched to Destiny Rising, the mobile version of the venerable online shooter, the Backbone was a welcome experience, giving me a lot more button controls at my fingertips. There’s less of a performance gap when using the physical controller with Destiny Rising, as the touch controls work quite nicely, all things considered, compared to Dead Cells. Ditto with Diablo Immortal.

The mobile edition of the hack-and-slash dark fantasy game also has respectable touch controls; while there are a lot of buttons on the screen that block some of the action, they’re placed in a way that I don’t hit them accidentally and generally tap the one I mean to hit most of the time.

Destiny Rising and Diablo Immortal look good with the graphics cranked up to their maximum allowed, but curiously enough, they can’t quite reach the highest possible settings. That makes me wonder whether there’s even a phone out there that can, because the OnePlus 15’s specs are nearly the best you can get on a phone today. Regardless, with features like reflections and high graphics turned on, Destiny Rising and Diablo Immortal have good visuals, somewhere between a PS3/Xbox 360 and a PS4/Xbox One. Powerful as it is, the OnePlus 15 can’t improve the visuals on old games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, but those with a distinct style, like Genshin Impact, look good with the phone’s smooth frame rate.

This matches the OnePlus 15’s performance benchmark test results from Geekbench 6 (which tests the CPU) and 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme (which tests the graphics). The OnePlus 15 achieved higher scores and frame rates than any other phone, except for the RedMagic 11 Pro. While handsets in the iPhone 17 series were not far behind, older phones are left in the dust — my two-year-old iPhone 15 Pro Max got half the scores and frame rates that the OnePlus 15 did.

3DMark Wild Life Extreme

OnePlus 15 7,227RedMagic 11 Pro 8,074iPhone 17 4,885OnePlus 13 6,762

Note: Longer bars indicate better performance

Geekbench 6.0

OnePlus 15 3,670 11,061RedMagic 11 Pro 3,683 11,664iPhone 17 3,612 9.18OnePlus 13 3,091 9,362

Geekbench 6.0, single-core
Geekbench 6.0, multi-core

Note: Longer bars indicate better performance

The big battery helps

But fast charging is much more useful

Aside from its powerful specs, the OnePlus 15’s biggest flex is its 7,300-mAh battery, which is half again as much capacity as the 5,000-mAh batteries found on most premium phones, like the iPhone 17 Pro Max. This should lead to longer playtime, and from anecdotal experience, it does: the phone was at 2% when I started playing Dead Cells to speed up the battery drain, and I managed to play for 45 minutes before it automatically shut down to preserve the remaining 1%. It’s possible that OnePlus deliberately undercounts the bottom sliver of the battery to give people more time (similar to feeling like you’re getting more miles in your car than expected when the gas tank’s empty light is on), but it still gives the feeling of longevity.

But outside of a handful of those examples, the capacity advantage is more muted than I expected. The OnePlus 15’s battery doesn’t noticeably drain more slowly during gameplay than rival phones with smaller capacity batteries. Some of this can be attributed to the phone’s higher graphics and frame rate capability, which somewhat counteract this capacity advantage. Crank them up too high and they’ll drain battery life faster.

I tested this out by playing Destiny Rising for 20 minutes with all graphics and frame rate settings cranked up to maximum, which drained 6% of the OnePlus 15’s battery. When I dropped the performance to the minimum settings for a similarly timed session, it drained 5% of the battery — a small change, but it adds up.

The OnePlus 15’s greater advantage, especially for gamers with access to power outlets, is its recharging speed. The phone packs an 80-watt charger in the box. In my testing, it refilled from nearly empty (1%) to 73% in 30 minutes and reached 100% in 45 minutes. That’s faster than everything but the iPhone 17 series and Samsung Galaxy S25 FE in our tests, all of which have smaller battery capacities. The phone also supports up to 50-watt wireless charging, and because most wireless chargers top out at 15 or 30 watts, good luck finding one that’ll juice back up the OnePlus 15 at its maximum supported rate. The phone supports bypass charging, too, letting you play without draining the battery while it’s plugged in (as long as you can game with a cord sticking out of the bottom of the handset).

While I was disappointed that the large capacity didn’t lead to slower battery drain while playing games, I was delighted by how quickly I could top up the phone between sessions. Heck, you can recharge it even faster with the phone’s maximum 100-watt charging speed, if you pick up a separate OnePlus proprietary charger. It’s worth noting that the larger battery will still prolong casual phone use that doesn’t strain the hardware, such as browsing and using apps.

Final confrontation

What the OnePlus 15 has for mobile gamers over other phones

I found the OnePlus 15 to be a solid phone all around, and there’s something to be said about a high-performance handset that appeals to mainstream tastes. There are certainly fans of the “gamer chic” black, angled lines and RGB lights that characterize products sold to the gaming demographic — things that look like accessories for Decepticons, including the Asus ROG series of phones. Personally, I like the stylized artfulness of the OnePlus 15’s rounded corners, flat sides and smooth matte back cover.

Another advantage the OnePlus 15 has over gaming-specific phones is a normal software interface. CNET senior writer Mike Sorrentino was frustrated by numerous annoyances in the RedMagic 11 Pro’s software, from bloatware to brand watermarks on photos toggled on by default. The OnePlus 15 has a normal interface with its OxygenOS 16 skin on Android 16 — no extreme gamer aesthetic. The Game Assistant app is simple and I find it automatically collecting games within its folder to be handy.

And crucially, the OnePlus 15 has far and away better photo capabilities than other gaming phones. Its suite of three 50-megapixel rear cameras captured impressive color and detail in a series of images showcasing the streets of Lisbon, Portugal, that were shot by CNET’s talented principal editor (and professional photographer in his own right) Andrew Lanxon. While they don’t quite reach the quality of a Samsung Galaxy S25 series or a Google Pixel 10, they’re respectably close, and have the utility of main, ultrawide and telephoto cameras.

The OnePlus 15 does have some drawbacks. Other gaming phones have neat features, like the Asus ROG 9 Pro’s external cooling fan and, crucially, its side port for charging while you’re gaming. Worse, the OnePlus continues to lag competitors in offering only four years of Android updates and six years of security patches, which is notably less than the seven years that Samsung and Google offer (Apple doesn’t promise iOS updates, but generally manages six or more years depending on the device). Other gaming phones are worse, with the RedMagic 11 Pro receiving only three years of Android updates, while the Asus ROG 9 Pro receives an abysmally low two years of operating system updates. Even if the OnePlus 15 is better compared to gaming phones, it’s not great to spend about a grand on a phone only to see it stop receiving new, fun software features after half a decade.

There’s another caveat to the OnePlus 15, which I wouldn’t consider a dealbreaker for gamers. The phone’s 1,800-nit maximum display brightness is fine outdoors, but pales in comparison to its competitors; the iPhone 17 series, for instance, boasts a 3,000-nit peak brightness outdoors. But I wouldn’t expect many mobile gamers to be playing outside anyway — I sure haven’t been while I’ve done all this gamer science.

Technologies

Anthropic warns investors of AI’s ‘existential risk to humanity’ in IPO prospectus, reports say

Anthropic’s IPO filing dedicates 80 pages to the risks of AI, nearly double the 48 pages it spends discussing its business plans, according to Reuters.

Your Privacy

On this service, we and our vendors use cookies and other tools (“Cookies”) to store and access information on your device, such as device identifiers, IP address, and your browser type. Your data may be used to save and communicate your privacy choices; ensure security, prevent fraud, and debug our products and services; personalize advertising and content; for advertising and content measurement; to conduct audience research and services development; so we can improve our services and develop new ones; to match and combine offline data with your online activity; and for social features. We may share this data with select vendors with your consent. You can adjust your choices any time through the “Cookie Preferences” link in the footer of relevant Versant sites or in-app settings.

We will also use other Cookies that are essential or related to our services, including for security and fraud prevention. To learn more about some of our vendors, see the IAB and Google Vendors under each purpose. Visit our Cookie Notice and Privacy Policy to learn more.

These Cookies and SDKs are required for Service functionality, including security and fraud prevention, and to enable any purchasing capabilities. You can set your browser to block these tracking technologies, but some parts of the site may not function properly.

The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.

Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them.

Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.

Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.

– Use limited data to select advertising 791 partners can use this purpose Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times an ad is presented to you).

– Create profiles for personalised advertising 637 partners can use this purpose Information about your activity on this service (such as forms you submit, content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (for example, information from your previous activity on this service and other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (that might include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present advertising that appears more relevant based on your possible interests by this and other entities.

– Use profiles to select personalised advertising 640 partners can use this purpose Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on your advertising profiles, which can reflect your activity on this service or other websites or apps (like the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects.

– Create profiles to personalise content 261 partners can use this purpose Information about your activity on this service (for instance, forms you submit, non-advertising content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (such as your previous activity on this service or other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (which might for example include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present content that appears more relevant based on your possible interests, such as by adapting the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find content that matches your interests.

– Use profiles to select personalised content 234 partners can use this purpose Content presented to you on this service can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your activity on this or other services (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.

– Measure advertising performance 916 partners can use this purpose Information regarding which advertising is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine how well an advert has worked for you or other users and whether the goals of the advertising were reached. For instance, whether you saw an ad, whether you clicked on it, whether it led you to buy a product or visit a website, etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of advertising campaigns.

– Measure content performance 405 partners can use this purpose Information regarding which content is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine whether the (non-advertising) content e.g. reached its intended audience and matched your interests. For instance, whether you read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast or look at a product description, how long you spent on this service and the web pages you visit etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of (non-advertising) content that is shown to you.

– Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different sources 579 partners can use this purpose Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).

– Develop and improve services 688 partners can use this purpose Information about your activity on this service, such as your interaction with ads or content, can be very helpful to improve products and services and to build new products and services based on user interactions, the type of audience, etc. This specific purpose does not include the development or improvement of user profiles and identifiers.

– Use limited data to select content 180 partners can use this purpose Content presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).

These Cookies and SDKs are used to collect data about your browsing habits, use of the Services, your preferences, and your interaction with advertisements across platforms and devices for the purpose of delivering targeted advertising content, both on our Services and on third party sites. Third-party sites and services also use Targeting Cookies to deliver content, including advertisements relevant to your interests on the Services. If you reject these Cookies or SDKs, you will see less relevant advertising.

Data collected under this category through Cookies and SDKs can also be used to select and deliver personalized content, such as news articles and videos.

Technologies

U.S., Iran hold separate mediator talks as Mideast oil exports hit war-time high

Iranian and U.S. officials reportedly met separately with mediators Monday to push for a ceasefire, as Middle Eastern crude exports rebounded to war-time high.

Iranian and U.S. officials reportedly met separately with mediators Monday to push for a ceasefire.

Middle Eastern crude exports rebounded this month to around their highest level since the war began in February.

An outright export ban by Washington on diesel would keep roughly 1.2 million barrels a day at home, and risks overwhelming Gulf Coast storage, according to Kpler.

The building of the destroyed Shajareh Tayebeh primary school is pictured surrounded by rubble in Minab in Iran’s Hormozgan province on August 10, 2026. Six months on, a team of AFP journalists obtained rare access to the school which has remained largely in ruins, its collapsed walls and twisted steel now surrounded by portraits of the children killed as Iranian flags flutter above the rubble. Iran says the attack on the school involved two separate US Tomahawk missiles but neither the United States nor Israel has officially claimed responsibility for the strike. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP via Getty Images) /

Atta Kenare | Afp | Getty Images

U.S. and Iranian officials have reportedly held separate indirect talks with mediators on Monday, reviving efforts to end seven months of war as Tehran presses for a response to a revised ceasefire framework and Middle East crude exports climb to their highest level since the conflict began.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Qatari mediators in New York, where he remained after the United Nations General Assembly, and reportedly said he expects Washington’s reply by Tuesday. “We talked about ideas and how to find solutions to fulfil Iran’s conditions,” Araghchi said, adding that he planned to return to Tehran once a response arrives. “Whenever the Qataris have a response, they know how to get it to us.”

Iran’s proposal, first presented on the sidelines of last week’s General Assembly, calls for a four- to five-day U.S. timeline to release frozen Iranian funds, lift sanctions on Iranian oil and end the naval blockade of Iranian ports, with nuclear talks beginning within seven days. Tehran has tied any reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to those steps.

President Donald Trump had on Sunday called the plan “unacceptable” and rejected it, telling reporters Iran wants a swift deal because of the economic pressure it is under. Speaking at the White House Monday, Trump said U.S. officials had spoken separately with mediators but gave no further details, adding: “We’re going to win. It’s going to go pretty quickly.”

The diplomatic push comes as physical supply data shows the war’s toll on the oil market easing. Middle Eastern crude exports rebounded this month to around their highest level since the war began in February, Kpler data showed. “Middle East crude exports at just under 80% of pre-conflict levels,” the tracking firm said in a note on Monday.

The Strait of Hormuz itself remains far from normal. Kpler’s real-time tracking showed total clearance through the strait at 10,591 kilobarrels a day on Saturday, against a pre-war baseline of 17,133.

Technologies

Oil prices fall as crude exports recover at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea ports

Saudi Arabia has restored flows through the pipeline to around 3.5 million barrels per day, according to media reports.

Your Privacy

Data collected under this category through Cookies and SDKs can also be used to select and deliver personalized content, such as news articles and videos.