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These $350 OnePlus smartphones have bigger batteries than the Galaxy S25 and iPhone 17 combined

OnePlus's latest Turbo smartphones pair huge batteries with mid-range pricing, signaling a shift in how endurance is prioritized in smartphone design.

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Electronics, Phone, Mobile Phone
OnePlus

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer has launched two new smartphones in its native market — the OnePlus Turbo 6 and the Turbo 6V — both of which feature a gargantuan 9,000 mAh battery. In a market where phones over $1,000 feature 5,000 mAh batteries, the OnePlus smartphones set new endurance benchmarks.

Let me give you some context. Samsung’s $1,049.99 Galaxy S25 Ultra features a 5,000 mAh battery (and the Galaxy S26 Ultra isn’t expected to have any significant improvements in that area). The $1,199 iPhone 17 Pro Max (eSIM variant) sports a 5,088 mAh cell.

When midrange phones outlast premium flagships

Even the newly launched $899.99 OnePlus 15 and the $699.99 OnePlus 15R, which are among the biggest battery smartphones, feature 7,300 mAh and 7,400 mAh batteries, respectively. However, the OnePlus Turbo 6 and Turbo 6V virtually break all the standards set by these phones.

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Both the Turbo 6 and the Turbo 6V, which cost less than $350 when converted from the Chinese price (for the baseline variants), feature a 9,000 mAh battery, almost as big as the combined capacity of the S25 Ultra and the iPhone Pro Max.

With such a massive battery, the Turbo smartphones should easily last over a day between charges, leaving you with around 40-50% battery for the next day (depending on your usage). I consider this a legitimate step toward normalizing two-day battery life on smartphones.

Furthermore, the OnePlus handsets also support 80W wired charging, which might not sound a lot for 9,000 mAh batteries, but should still charge the phone in around an hour and 30 minutes. In retrospect, the charging speed is faster than most non-Chinese flagships available in the United States.

Unfortunately, none of the smartphones is available outside of China yet. There’s a good chance the Turbo 6V makes it to the Nord outside of China, but OnePlus hasn’t confirmed anything yet.

Talking about other specifications, the Turbo 6 and the Turbo 6V sport a 6.78-inch 1.5K AMOLED screen that supports an extremely high refresh rate (165Hz on the former, 144Hz on the latter). Powering the Turbo 6 is the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 SoC (also found on the Nothing Phone 3), while the Turbo 6V runs on the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 SoC.

Both phones are available in multiple memory and storage variants: Turbo 6 with up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage, and Turbo 6V with up to 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Cameras, however, are similar on both phones: a 50MP primary camera, a 2MP monochrome sensor, and a 16MP selfie shooter.

The baseline OnePlus Turbo 6 (12GB + 256GB) costs CNY 2299 in China, which is about $328, while the entry-level Turbo 6V (8GB + 256GB) costs CNY 1899, about $271. They’ll be available for purchase in China from January 8, 2026.

While we’re not certain when these handsets will be available in the U.S., they’ll surely help shift buyers’ expectations away from budget smartphones and encourage other manufacturers to up their battery game.

Shikhar Mehrotra
For more than five years, Shikhar has consistently simplified developments in the field of consumer tech and presented them…
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