I looked in my crystal ball and it showed me what the OnePlus 16 Ultra will be like

2026 started with a bang – and apart from the literal explosions and teutonic shifts in global affairs that happened to happen in the past days – we just might get a proper OnePlus flagship later this year.

It could be called the OnePlus 16 Ultra or the OnePlus 16 Pro… or why not get two separate maxed-out flagships?! Let's not get too excited, as this is just a rumor about the distant future for now.

But if the OnePlus 16 Ultra (or Pro) is really to happen, I have an idea what it might be like.

Where is OnePlus at the moment?

Allow me to take a step back and comment briefly on the current OnePlus situation. The last three OnePlus flagship killers (or, as they're more widely known as "killer flagships") are certainly not guilty of the Samsung/Apple sin of spewing out "the same" phones year after year with modest, incremental updates.

The OnePlus 12, still used by many across the world despite being released two years ago, is a solid, premium, curved handset with one of the best-looking camera islands out there (at least to me). Then came the OnePlus 13, which reverted things to a flat display and a different design, packed new camera sensors, got a bigger battery and a slimmer chassis.

Since the OnePlus 14 moniker was skipped because of Chinese cultural preferences, we currently have the OnePlus 15. This one doesn't look at all like a flagship to my eyes – strictly speaking in terms of design. This camera island screams MID-RANGER (yes, in capital).

The OnePlus 15 in detail

But don't let that fool you: the OnePlus 15 is a mighty tool. It comes with the latest and greatest from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset. Under the hood, it has a large 7,300 mAh capacity battery (with 120W fast charging support, amazing!), blazing fast UFS 4.1 storage… and it's cheaper than the OnePlus 13.

The display on the OnePlus 15 is a tad smaller at 6.78-inch display (opposed to the 6.82-inch panel on its predecessor), but it has a higher refresh rate that jumps to 165Hz. Another downgrade is the resolution, as it drops from 2K to 1.5K.

That's not the end of it.

The main camera got a smaller-sized Sony sensor (although it's still one of 50 MP resolution), the ultra-wide snapper also got a tinier sensor and… the periscope dedicated telephoto camera did as well. As a rule of thumb, you want physically bigger sensors on your cameras, since those capture more light. More light equals higher-quality photos.

The ultra-wide experience is not fun at all

But wait, there's more. Besides packing smaller camera sensors, the OnePlus 15's ultra-wide camera is disturbingly impractical.

That's because the OnePlus 15's ultra-wide offers a field of view of 116º, which equates to 16mm in terms of full-frame numbers. The difference between a lens with a field of view of 120º and 116º (or 13mm versus 16mm) is subtle on paper, but in practice, it's huge, and I'm not being cheeky here.

My colleague Peter laid it all out in detail – with photo examples for all you doubting Thomases out there.

What the OnePlus 16 Ultra will be like

Mild shock: that was my initial reaction when the OnePlus 15 was unveiled.

But now it all starts to make sense: the "vanilla" OnePlus 16 will follow suit with the OnePlus 15: a flat display, top-shelf performance with the latest Snapdragon silicon, great battery (and even greater charging speeds), a high refresh rate (there are rumors that the OnePlus 16 will get a panel that offers 240Hz!), intuitive OS and some gamer-specific embellishments.

That's a flagship alright, but what's missing from the picture?

Why, a high-end camera experience! I see in my crystal ball that the "vanilla" OnePlus 16 (and OnePlus 17, 18, etc.) will transform itself into a device that's aimed at gamers.

The OnePlus 16 Ultra (or Pro), however – and that's only IF such a phone materializes – should pack a quadruple camera setup on its back. OnePlus should double down and catch up with the rest of the gang: Vivo, Xiaomi, Oppo, Samsung – they all have (or have had) camera-centric models.

The OnePlus camera experience is fine and all (minus that narrow ultra-wide on the 15), but in terms of versatility, it's no match for what even older phones like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra can do.

The camera factor

Because, speaking frankly here, what is a flagship these days? We're at a time when even budget-friendly devices are promised 10,000 mAh capacity battery cells; when even mid-rangers offer mind-blowing performance; when many phones punch way above their category in terms of build or design.

Yet, it's really difficult to find a (relatively) new $300 phone with four cameras on its back, two of which pack huge sensors and get the periscope treatment. Hence, it's the camera. That's what makes a flagship… a flagship.

The most important financial decision that you can make when shopping for a phone is to ask yourself if you're obsessed with mobile photography. If not, don't give your hard-earned cash to those intergalactic corporations for a flagship. Save yourself several hundred bucks and just get a decent mid-range phone. There are a ton of options out there.

If, however, the camera bug has already bitten you, you have no other choice but to pay up. It is what it is.