The OnePlus 15 is a perfect phone, according to my review score, and I couldn’t ask for more. It beats my best expectations across key criteria like display quality, battery life, and overall performance. Of course, some phones are better in one or two specific metrics, but none in every way.
The Galaxy S26 won’t be Samsung’s best phone ever – nobody would buy the Galaxy S26 Ultra if it were. Still, could the Galaxy S26 Ultra be a perfect phone, with a perfect 5/5 score on TechRadar.com? Well, to reach perfection, Samsung shouldn’t just focus on copying what OnePlus does best, because it’s already doing those things pretty well.
OnePlus focused on durability and battery life with OnePlus 15
Both the OnePlus 13 and OnePlus 15 proved to be the most durable mainstream (ie, not for construction or military) smartphones you can buy. They can even withstand jets of hot water during a trip through your dishwasher. Samsung’s phones are nearly as durable, but going the extra mile would help close the design score gap.
Samsung phones may not be as durable as the OnePlus 15, but they are among the most durable devices you can buy. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is water-resistant all the way down to the S Pen, which can be submerged in water, and there’s no problem if the S Pen silo gets flooded. The Ultra can’t survive a dishwasher (presumably), but that’s not how I wash my phones.
Battery life will be harder for Samsung because OnePlus is using a new solid-state battery technology that most of the big phone makers have ignored so far. While Samsung’s phones get great battery life, the OnePlus 15 gets hours more screen time in our Future Labs tests.
OnePlus may be the battery life champ, but Samsung is a close second, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra really impressed me with its longevity. The latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite (and the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5) chipsets have proven to be incredibly efficient.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra lasted for more than 18.5 hours in our battery rundown tests. That’s longer than the Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max and almost every other Android phone that came before. It isn’t as mindblowing as the OnePlus 15 with its 26.5 hours of screen time, but it’s still a strong second-place finish – enough to last more than a full day of hardcore phone use.
The OnePlus 15 charges much faster than any Samsung phone, too. With 80W wired charging and incredible 50W wireless charging, the OnePlus 15 can be ready for another day of work while the Galaxy S25 is still grasping to last another few hours before bedtime. If Samsung wants to match the OnePlus 15 battery score, it will need to charge faster than any previous Samsung phone.
Samsung should improve the things Samsung has always needed to improve
Samsung phones have two web browsers, two photo gallery apps, and two app stores … too many twos
Where can Samsung improve, if not durability and battery life? First, the Galaxy S25 design is looking a bit dated; the Galaxy S25 Ultra looks more like the last Galaxy Note than any new smartphone. I’d like to see a big design update on every Galaxy S26.
Samsung will need even bigger improvements for its software. Samsung’s current OneUI software story is a wild tale of highs and lows. Its phones are densely packed with too many features.
This means you get amazing tools like Samsung DeX, which effectively makes your phone interface look like a laptop on the go when you add a monitor and keyboard. You get the best multitasking software and tons of useful productivity tools. You can make apps pop-up, snap to the sides, disappear into a bubble, or float on top of everything.
It also means that Samsung phones can be unwieldy – other features can be hidden, buried deep in submenus, or hard to find altogether. Foundational apps come with duplicate Samsung versions for no obvious reason – Samsung phones have two web browsers, two photo gallery apps, and two app stores, fer cryin’ out loud! That’s too many twos.
Samsung needs to sacrifice some of that ambition in favor of usability. By focusing on hardware design for the next few generations and declaring a moratorium on software bloat, features could be cut by half, and Samsung would still make the most feature-packed phones ever imagined.
Samsung can make a perfect phone, just like OnePlus, but not by doing what OnePlus does best. It already excels at so much; now it needs to pare back and refine its efforts. The perfect phone is already hidden inside the Galaxy S25 Ultra, if Samsung would just take away the fuss and leave the parts I like best.
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