I took over 500 photos with two of the best Android phones of 2025 – here’s who wins

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He OnePlus 15 was officially released, less than a year after its predecessor, and I’ve been testing it for several weeks. As an Android flagship, it naturally draws comparisons to other flagships available in the United States.

OnePlus has been particularly proud of its cameras in recent years, and rightly so. The OnePlus 13, in particular, was a great shooter, and one could expect this DNA to continue for the OnePlus 15. But there are some differences from 10 months ago.

OnePlus 15 camera news

First and foremost is the collaboration with Hasselblad. The OnePlus 15 is no longer co-branded with the photography company, meaning it no longer comes with fun Easter eggs like XPAN mode, which is something we were worried about when we first found out it was ditching its iconic partnership.

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However, I have been working with the OnePlus 15 review sample provided by OnePlus to see what the phone is capable of. When you want to know if a camera is the best, you compare it to the best camera phone of 2025 (so far): the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Here is the hardware these phones are using.

First, the OnePlus 15 has a 50-megapixel triple camera setup on the back. The main shooter has an f/1.8 aperture and a 1/1.56″ sensor, the ultra-wide sensor has a 116-degree field of view, and the telephoto lens has a periscope lens with 3.5x optical zoom.

Meanwhile, on the Samsung, you get a 200-megapixel main camera with f/1.7 aperture and a 1/1.3″ sensor and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera with a 120-degree field of view. For telephoto lenses, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has two of them.

There is a 10-megapixel 3x optical zoom lens and a 50-megapixel optical zoom lens. Finally, on the front, the OnePlus has a 32-megapixel selfie camera and the Samsung has a 12-megapixel selfie shooter.

Out of the box, Samsung gives you more options and the 200-megapixel main camera is particularly attractive. That said, the 50-megapixel shooters across the board should lead to a more consistent shooting experience with the OnePlus phone. So I headed to my local Six Flags amusement park to see how things turned out. Here are the results.

1. Main chamber (daytime)

On paper, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra dwarfs the OnePlus 15’s main sensor by around 150 megapixels. That reflects reality. It’s not that any of these shots are bad per se, but the Samsung phone manages to capture more detail in the wall textures and more accurately reflect specks and dirt on the wall, while the OnePlus 15 smooths out a lot of that.

It’s probably a more presentable photo, but the S25 Ultra more accurately reflects the reality of what’s there.

2. Main chamber (night)

The problem with testing cameras at night in a Halloween-themed amusement park is that you’ll get varying amounts of smoke in the foreground, regardless of how you shoot it. However, the OnePlus 15 gets the nod for this photo. It may have been the extra smoke present in front of the Rakshasa statue, but the Samsung photo came out a little blurry, while the OnePlus photo came out too sharp.

Plus: OnePlus 15 vs. Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: I compared the two best Android flagships

When reduced to the size of a phone screen, the OnePlus 15 looks more presentable. There’s also the matter of the “Warning: Keep Out” sign to the left of our subject – you can read it on the OnePlus photo, but not on the Samsung photo.

3. Ultrawide (daytime)

From the beginning, we have a mix of things. The OnePlus 15 is the clear winner here (pun intended) because its sensor is capable of capturing more detail in the corn stalks and trees surrounding the carousel midway. Both Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra features are blurry and low resolution.

Truth be told, that probably doesn’t matter much on a phone screen – it’s really only visible when photos are zoomed in on a 32″ computer monitor. On a phone screen, Samsung actually captures more on the sides since it’s a wider field of view, but overall OnePlus gets the nod for this one.

4. Ultrawide (night)

Moving into the night, this is usually when cameras start to significantly lose their effectiveness, especially when it comes to auxiliary cameras (read: not the main camera). In this case none of these photos are bad, but Samsung takes the crown here. The details of the stairs and handrails visible in the photo are a little more defined, while they appear blurrier in the OnePlus photo.

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That said, the anti-aliasing of darker areas is smoother on the OnePlus photo, while the Samsung photo appears more pixelated and glitchy. This could once again be a case of Samsung catering to its audience: the phone screen crowd.

5. Telephoto lens (10x)

Going back to the carousel for a moment, this is a good example of the OnePlus 15’s photography abilities. These photos, taken side by side in excellent lighting, show a slight advantage for the OnePlus phone because they were taken at 10x, which is not a native zoom resolution for the OnePlus 15.

However, in this case, the OnePlus phone managed to produce a better photo with sharper contrasts and greater depth. The Samsung phone looks over-processed and bland, especially the corn texture and the pumpkin man’s face. This is a great shot for OnePlus; well played.

6. Telephoto lens (100x and more)

Both phones have triple-digit zoom shooting capabilities. Samsung maxes out at 100x, while the OnePlus 15 can zoom up to 120x. Both cameras rely heavily on AI once you get to these extremes, and the results are a bit surprising. In both cases, the OnePlus 15 produced a clearer image of both the Foghorn Leghorn and the Six Flags Fright Fest flag, which, by the way, was 528 feet away and atop a 330-foot tower.

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Oh, and the flag fluttered in the breeze. Despite all that, while Samsung’s photo is little more than a confusing mess, the OnePlus 15 not only took a clear-as-day photo, it also managed to get the fonts right – notice the curl at the top of the “g” and the jagged “R.” This is, simply put, an extraordinary shot and OnePlus should be very proud. Of course, the text is relatively easy.

Then there’s the Foghorn Leghorn statue, which was about 250 feet from me. Despite that, you can clearly see the definition around the character’s head, and there’s even a bit of depth to the plants sprouting in front of him. Meanwhile, Samsung captured similar definition, but the color is blurry and the overall photo looks blurry. This is a clear victory for OnePlus and once again well played.

7.macro

Macro photography, the fine art of photographing subjects up close, is always a good test for phones. In this case, the choice is quite close between Samsung and OnePlus. It’s a game of inches, with the OnePlus 15 getting more light (and therefore color) out of branches and leaves, while the Samsung handles shadows in a more natural way. The Galaxy S25 Ultra also produces a more contrasty image between the foreground and background (read: it’s easier to distinguish branches from bokeh/blur).

In the end, Samsung wins for me, but by a very small margin.

The final result

Overall, both phones offer an excellent camera setup and while the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra works well in most use cases, the OnePlus 15 excels in the most extreme scenarios. Both phones have excellent main cameras, although the S25 Ultra gains a slight advantage due to its ability to capture more information.

But when it comes to telephoto, the OnePlus 15, in most cases, is hard to beat. This is surprising, considering that Samsung has been offering AI-enhanced zoom for much longer and even has two dedicated telephoto lenses.