Here’s why I’d buy the OnePlus 15 over the Pixel 10 Pro XL

The holiday season is upon us, and so is the smartphone season. While Google and Apple stuck to their regular timelines, OnePlus decided to bring things forward a bit with its latest flagship. The OnePlus 15 may be a big visual departure from the OnePlus 13’s (yeah, there wasn’t an OP14 in between) circular camera island — which had honestly become a trademark OnePlus feature — but it brings some serious upgrades on the inside. The kind that can genuinely convince me to pick the OnePlus 15 over the Pixel 10 Pro XL.

You’ve probably already guessed where I’m going with this, and you’re right. Snapdragon flagships have always had a clear performance advantage over Pixel’s Tensor chips, despite the Elite Gen 5’s shortcomings this year. We had high hopes for the Pixel 10 series and its TSMC-made Tensor G5, but it didn’t impress performance-wise. It still fell short compared to the latest chips from Snapdragon and Apple by a solid margin.

While performance is a clear advantage, it goes hand in hand with gaming, and the OnePlus 15 has a lead there too. It packs a 165Hz display that the company is proudly boasting about. I know that marginal jump won’t make a visible difference for most people coming from 120Hz displays. But those who game will notice it and benefit from titles running at a mouthwatering 165fps. A few games like Call of Duty, Real Racing 3, Blood Strike, Standoff 2, and PUBG (via frame interpolation) support it right out of the box.

It’s a solid gaming phone that doesn’t look like a flashy gaming phone.

When people say phones should be thicker so they can hold as much battery as possible, it’s almost as if OnePlus was closely listening and actually delivered. The OnePlus 15 comes with a massive 7,300mAh battery. That’s almost 50% bigger than what the Pixel 10 Pro XL offers. And to top up a battery that large, you obviously need super-fast charging.

The OnePlus 15 gets you 80W fast charging (100W with certain first-party adapters), letting you top it up completely in 52 minutes — it should be even faster with the 120W adapter that OnePlus bundles outside the US. This charging time doesn’t sound as tempting as charging a 5,000mAh cell in around 30 minutes, but it’s still miles better than using a slow 25W adapter that takes two hours to juice up the Pixel.

OnePlus also offers 50W wireless charging using its proprietary tech, which unfortunately makes wireless charging an expensive affair since you can’t just pick up any off-market Qi charger for it. And it doesn’t support the Qi2 standard either to magnetically snap your phone to the charger, unlike the Pixel.

But knowing my usage, between super-fast charging and a battery that refuses to die in a day, I don’t mind these gaps.

Now that all phones look basically the same — flat sides, massive camera bumps — it’s the software that stands out. More specifically, the personalized lock screen, which is now the first impression of a person. iOS paved the way for fancy lock screens, and while Pixels do offer ways to personalize them, the options have been far more limited, and newer ones haven’t rolled out to the stable build yet.

Meanwhile, the OnePlus 15 ships with OxygenOS 16, which has a much richer lock screen customization interface, albeit heavily inspired by iPhones. You get depth effects, multiple clock sizes, styles, and positioning options to help your lock screen actually stand out. As a small statement of personality, the lock screen matters, and if choosing OnePlus over Pixel gets me better personalization, so be it.

I know the weight of what I’m saying, but hear me out. Pixels have long pioneered AI features, and the Pixel 10 Pro XL is loaded with them. I’m not discounting any of that. But what OnePlus has been doing lately also deserves attention, even if most of its AI smarts run on Gemini behind the scenes.

It’s a shame that the OnePlus 15 loses its iconic alert slider to a button. But that button defaults to a genuinely handy AI feature that I’d use far more than the slider. It connects to AI Plus Mind — OnePlus’ app that stores on-screen information, similar to Pixel’s screenshot app. With Gemini integration, you can pull up saved bits with queries in simple language, and Gemini can run multiple searches inside your captured notes to give you answers.

There are several paid second-brain apps out there, but having a native solution — with a dedicated button — is incredible. And with a memory like mine, which forgets too often and needs recalling even more often? I’m sold.

The Pixel 10 Pro XL starts at $1200 for the 16GB RAM variant, which is more than enough for all the offline AI models it runs in the background. But when you look at the OnePlus 15’s starting price of $900 for 12GB RAM, you start to realize that saving $300 is a pretty big deal, especially when you’re shopping for flagships, and so many things lean in OnePlus’ favor.

And if you absolutely need those extra 4GB of RAM, OnePlus offers a $100 upgrade that also doubles your storage to 512GB, still saving you a couple of hundred dollars in total.

I think the OnePlus 15 is better suited to my needs and taste, but the Pixel 10 Pro XL has a few things that can tempt anyone. It’s got a sharper, brighter display for superior HDR and outdoor visibility. It remains unmatched with seven years of major Android updates, while the OnePlus 15 offers just four. And while that OnePlus AI feature is perfect for my workflow, the Pixel 10 still offers a bucketful of excellent AI tools like call screening and Magic Cue that one might value more.

You just have to choose which one is worth your money, because both are excellent offerings in their own right.