OnePlus confirms its new phone will debut Qualcomm's latest SoC

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is Qualcomm’s highest-end mobile SoC, driving recent Android flagships like the OnePlus 15. But all that power comes with increased costs — and worse thermal performance. Now, though, OnePlus has confirmed that another of its upcoming devices will debut a new Qualcomm chipset that better balances performance and trade-offs.

OnePlus has shared that its OnePlus 15R, its “ultimate value flagship device,” will be the first phone released worldwide to feature the (non-Elite) Snapdragon 8 Gen 5. OnePlus says it worked with Qualcomm to design the 8 Gen 5 in a collaborative project that started in 2023.

Qualcomm teased this announcement a week ago on Chinese social media platform Weibo, saying at the time that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 would debut in the Chinese market in the OnePlus Ace 6T. We now know that that phone will be marketed internationally as the OnePlus 15R, a follow-up to the OnePlus 13R, which we liked quite a bit.

We don’t have specifics about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 yet, though OnePlus cites “a 36% improvement in CPU performance, an 11% improvement in GPU performance and 46% improvement in AI performance” versus the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. OnePlus hasn’t shared pricing information for the 15R, but the OnePlus 13R retailed for $600.

OnePlus will share more details on the upcoming 15R release on Wednesday, December 17.