It’s official: the OnePlus 15R will debut a brand new Qualcomm chip

Qualcomm has teased a new chip aimed at an emerging class of almost-flagship smartphones, and the OnePlus 15R could be the first to benefit.

The chip giant has taken to Chinese social network Weibo to issue a teaser for a chip launch taking place on 26 November, which is Wednesday of next week.

Said chip will be the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, which will provide “Flagship performance with its 8-core processor”.

If you’re at all confused, note the lack of ‘Elite’ in the name. This would appear to be a somewhat downscaled version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip that powers the OnePlus 15.

OnePlus 15R link

Backing this point up, just a couple of days earlier on Weibo, OnePlus chief Li Jie Louis posted some interesting news. It seems the forthcoming OnePlus Ace 6T will be the first phone to feature this Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip.

If you haven’t been keeping up with your Chinese smartphone news, the OnePlus Ace 6T is widely tipped to make its way to global markets (with one or two potential tweaks) under the OnePlus 15R name. OnePlus teased the latter just recently.

Last year’s OnePlus 13R was a scaled back alternative to the OnePlus 13, with a slightly more modest spec list and a corresponding upper-mid-tier price tag.

The OnePlus boss is promising and “incredibly powerful” phone that provides an “outstanding” gaming experience, continuing OnePlus’s curious shift in focus onto gaming performance for the OnePlus 15 range.

In that vein, he also mentions that the OnePlus 15R will be able to “easily handle 165fps games” – which both confirms that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is going to be a seriously capable chip, and that the OnePlus Ace 6T/OnePlus 15R will include a 165Hz display, just like the OnePlus 15.

Given the date provided by Qualcomm, then, we’re expecting a OnePlus Ace 6T announcement on or shortly after 26 November. The OnePlus 15R will presumably follow in short order.