A 240Hz display? The latest OnePlus 16 leak reeks of desperation

OnePlus has been having a tough few months, with its products seemingly on a downward trend and with rumors around the company being shut down entirely in favor of OPPO (a rumor OP expectedly dismissed). But it seems like OnePlus wants to make a last-ditch effort at survival — one that may make it look a lot desperate given how it’s playing with its own identity.

OnePlus has launched a mid-ranger in China that aims to be a gaming phone without fully embracing a gaming persona. In parallel, the rumor mill around its upcoming flagship — the OnePlus 16 — is rife, indicating some interesting choices … the kind that smells of deep desperation.

Trying too hard to be noticed

Back in the day, when 60Hz was still the norm and 120Hz only appeared on flagships, it felt like a huge upgrade, one that was actually noticeable to most users. As we go up the refresh rate ladder, the visual difference starts to diminish. Going from 90Hz to 120Hz won’t seem like that big of an upgrade compared to switching from 60Hz to something higher.

I’ve heard not a single soul complain about not having enough hertz on their phone that already refreshes at 120Hz. Even so, dedicated gaming phones are already pushing the limit by going up to 144 and 165Hz, which already feels overkill. However, OnePlus thought that still wasn’t enough and is due to launch its next flagship with a 240Hz display. That number clearly isn’t for the benefit of real-world users — it’s there just to make the spec sheet look cooler.

There are only a handful of Android games today that can hit 120fps, while most titles settle for a still handsome 60fps. Those niche games are already hitting the current 120Hz ceiling and just can’t make use of any extra hertz. And even if games try to push past that frame rate, it would have such a severe impact on the phone’s thermal performance and battery life that it wouldn’t even make sense to run games on a mobile phone without active cooling.

OnePlus is simply trying to solve a problem that doesn’t even exist.

Not every big upgrade is bad

It looks like OnePlus is really following the philosophy of going big or going home. But I think there is a silver lining here, too.

Among other rumors, the OnePlus 16 is set to go a notch higher than the OnePlus 15 and house a mammoth 9,000mAh battery. It’s like a dream coming true, since we’ve all been asking for more and more battery capacity on our phones so we don’t have to lug around power banks and remember to charge our phones every single morning. I can get behind the idea of such humongous batteries in phones, as long as they don’t make the phone too heavy to be a pain on the wrist or too thick to be a brick.

And I think this is also where OnePlus’s long-standing superfast charging capability will shine. While typical 4,000-5,000mAh batteries can juice up in about 30–40 minutes with OnePlus’s proprietary 100W (or more) charging speed, having a 9,000mAh battery only makes sense if you aren’t spending an entire day charging it. If the phone lasts two days straight with an hour or so of plug-in time, I’d call that a win.

Secondly, OnePlus looks to be doing something very interesting with its camera. While Samsung uses a 200MP sensor for its primary camera on the Galaxy S26 Ultra, OnePlus is rumored to use such a high resolution for its periscope telephoto camera. If it works as expected, that high-resolution sensor will help improve detail when you zoom in beyond the phone’s optical zoom limit. I find the approach very interesting, and I might use the phone’s telephoto camera much more if it can capture that much more detail on faraway subjects.

But despite these being useful additions, it still feels like OnePlus is pushing extremes just to stand out.

Does OnePlus know what it wants to be?

Whatever the OnePlus 16 turns out to be based on these leaks, it surely doesn’t feel like a balanced product. OnePlus is pushing every single aspect of the phone to its limits — to a point where it has gone from being thoughtful to feeling like a collection of headline features. That’s not a good image to project for a flagship smartphone; a brand that is trying too hard to impress reeks of desperation.

Back in the day, you would pick up a OnePlus phone for top-notch performance and a software experience that found a balance between the simplicity of a Pixel and the feature-filled nature of Samsung, while everything else was just good enough. But OnePlus broke that image long ago. And right now, it’s trying to chase too many things all at once just to get your attention.

Trying to get ahead in the spec race has pushed OnePlus to flirt with gaming phones to the extreme. And clearly, the OnePlus 16 isn’t going to be one, so who is it trying to cater to with its super high refresh rate screen that has no real-world implications compared to literally any other phone on the market?

For as long as I can remember, the tech community has slammed OnePlus for offering passable cameras rather than going full throttle. Even its parent company’s flagships have proper flagship-class image performance, but OnePlus has always fallen short.

Instead of addressing such feedback (hopefully the OnePlus 16 makes up for it), the shift to a spec sheet that earns OnePlus bragging rights shows why it is falling behind in this smartphone race. From the looks of it, I doubt anything is going to change this year, too.