On paper, the OnePlus 15 is a rock-solid Android smartphone with specifications that will put other companies to shame. Unfortunately, it is outfitted with one of the most powerful and power-hungry chipsets out there, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and once it is pushed to its limit, you can run into some serious overheating roadblocks. When running 3DMark Wild Life Extreme for just a few minutes, the benchmark application crashed due to high temperatures, leaving other features unable to work until those thermals stabilized.
The iPhone 17 Pro Max runs exceptionally cool when running the same taxing benchmark, highlighting the OnePlus 15’s Snapdragon 8 Elite 5 operating temperatures beyond the upper limit
A OnePlus 15 unit was in the hands of YouTube Max Tech, and while there were a plethora of tests performed, the part that caught our eye was the timestamp at which the content creator said that the Android flagship overheats. Sure enough, when firing up 3DMark Wild Life Extreme, which pretty much brings any GPU to its knees, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 reached its limit, despite the OnePlus 15 marketing material mentioning a vapor chamber with twice the dissipation capabilities.
Look at that heat
The iPhone 17 Pro Max runs significantly cooler
For comparison purposes, the iPhone 17 Pro Max was placed next to its latest competitor, and to compare the thermals after seven loops of running 3DMark Wild Life Extreme, the hottest temperature recorded for both devices is as follows:
- iPhone 17 Pro Max – 39.5 degrees Celsius
- OnePlus 15 – 52 degrees Celsius
When Max Tech ran the test again, the OnePlus 15 gave a warning that it was overheating after just eight minutes, forcing the application to crash. Due to this, other features of the smartphone became inactive too, such as the flashlight and creating a wireless hotspot. Apparently, Qualcomm has tweaked its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to consume too much wattage when firing up stress tests like this, resulting in uncontrollable temperature spikes.
When was the last time you saw this overheating warning?
In our earlier analysis, we reported that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 had to consume 61 percent more power than the A19 Pro just to beat it in Geekbench 6’s multi-core test. During the previous benchmark, Qualcomm’s flagship was chugging a board power of 19.5W, whereas the A19 Pro reached only 12.1W. In short, Apple has made its chipsets thoroughly efficient this year, despite sticking with TSMC’s third-generation 3nm process, like Qualcomm.
Keep in mind that this overheating problem only shows up when running tests like 3DMark Wild Life Extreme. In other real-world scenarios, the OnePlus 15 can get warm, but it still works flawlessly, including during gaming. However, phone makers and Qualcomm should stick to a realistic power draw of the internals or incorporate beefier cooling solutions to offset the increased heat generation. In any case, make sure to check out the video above and let us know what you think in the comments.
News Source: Max Tech
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