Wanted to Buy iPhone 17, But Got This OnePlus 15 Instead — And Don’t Regret It

I’ll be honest: I was sure I was going to buy the iPhone 17. I saved up money, waited for the sales launch, read all the leaks. And then I accidentally stumbled upon the OnePlus 15 — and everything went off-script. After a month of use, I can say: this is the best money I’ve spent on a smartphone in recent years. Let me tell you why I chose the “Chinese” phone over the “Apple” and haven’t regretted it once.

Plus, the smartphone looks quite stylish

OnePlus 15 Screen vs iPhone 17: Which Display Is Better

Let’s get straight to the numbers, because that’s exactly what hooked me. iPhone 17 — it’s a 6.3-inch OLED with a 120 Hz refresh rate. Sounds decent, right? But the OnePlus 15 offers a 6.78-inch AMOLED with WQHD+ resolution and a refresh rate of up to 165 Hz. The difference is visible to the naked eye: the picture is brighter, smoother, and simply bigger.

OnePlus has a bigger screen and a higher refresh rate

The OnePlus 15 screen brightness reaches 1800 cd/m² with HDR10+ support. The display is also covered with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and displays over a billion shades thanks to a 10-bit matrix. When you watch videos on YouTube or scroll through your feed — it feels like the content literally jumps off the screen.

The iPhone 17, of course, also has an excellent screen with brightness up to 3000 nits. But 120 Hz after 165 Hz turns out to be noticeable. Especially in games and during fast scrolling. A minor thing? Perhaps. But once you get used to 165 Hz, you don’t want to go back.

OnePlus 15 Battery Life in Real Life

Even the always-on display barely affects the battery

This is where the OnePlus 15 simply destroys the competition. A 7300 mAh battery — that’s almost twice as much as the iPhone 17 with its 3692 mAh. Yes, I understand that iOS is better optimized, that Apple squeezes the maximum out of its batteries. But you can’t cheat physics: 7300 mAh means two full days without charging with active use.

My typical day: messengers, social media, a couple hours of YouTube, navigation, camera. With the iPhone 16, I barely made it to the evening. With the OnePlus 15, I go to bed with 30-40% charge. Sometimes I forget to put it on the charger — and in the morning there’s still enough for half a day.

And if it does die — 120W charging fills the battery in 41 minutes. The iPhone 17 maxes out at around 30W, and a full charge takes over an hour. There’s also 50W wireless charging — also faster than the competitor.

OnePlus 15 in Games and Everyday Tasks

The iPhone 17 runs on the A19 chip, and Apple traditionally boasts about performance gains. But the OnePlus 15 is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 — Qualcomm’s top processor, manufactured on a 3-nanometer process. Eight cores, clock speed up to 4.61 GHz, support for up to 16 GB of LPDDR5X Ultra+ RAM and UFS 4.1 storage.

There are absolutely no complaints or questions about the OnePlus 15’s performance speed

In real life, this means everything flies. Apps open instantly, multitasking works without hiccups, and games run at maximum settings. Genshin Impact on high — no problem. PUBG Mobile on ultra — effortless. And the smartphone doesn’t turn into a hand warmer thanks to an advanced cooling system.

For comparison: the base iPhone 17 has only 8 GB of RAM. The OnePlus 15 in its top version has 16 GB. When you have 20 browser tabs open, navigation running, and music playing — those gigabytes make a difference.

How OnePlus 15 Cameras Differ from iPhone 17

The camera story is interesting. OnePlus this year dropped its partnership with Hasselblad and introduced its own DetailMax image processing engine. Many were skeptical, but in practice the results turned out to be excellent.

Plus, the OnePlus 15 has optical zoom. The iPhone can’t boast that

On board are three 50 MP modules: a main Sony IMX906 camera with optical stabilization, a periscope telephoto lens with 3.5x optical zoom, and an ultra-wide-angle module with a 116° field of view. The front camera is 32 MP with autofocus.

The iPhone 17 has two 48 MP cameras (main and wide-angle) and an 18 MP front camera. There’s no telephoto lens — it’s only available in the Pro version. That means for optical zoom you’d have to pay at least 50 thousand rubles more.

The OnePlus 15’s photo quality is impressive: natural colors and high detail, excellent performance in night mode. The DetailMax philosophy is minimal artificial processing and maximum realism. The sky is blue, not acid-bright. Skin looks like skin, not like it’s been through an Instagram filter. Plus, the smartphone can record video in 8K resolution at 30 frames per second.

OnePlus 15 Price and Why It’s a Better Deal Than iPhone

And now the most important part. The iPhone 17 at launch cost around 110 thousand rubles in Russia. Now, in 2026, you can find it for 62-67 thousand. But the OnePlus 15 costs approximately 56 thousand rubles for the 12/256 GB version with coupons. At the same time, you get a smartphone that in terms of specs surpasses not only the base iPhone 17, but in many ways the iPhone 17 Pro as well.

Let’s summarize the key specs in a table: