This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, December 17th, 2025.

We tell you what you need to know.

We gave you some important context, and we help each other importantly understand.

Today, One Plus releases its $700-15R phone.

And if you don't care all that much about cameras, you might want to snap it up.

Oh, you're speaking my language. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Sarah Lane. Let's start with what you need to know with the big story.

There are some big fans of One Plus out there. So a lot of people are very excited that One Plus has released the one plus 15R. R stands for

affordable, I guess. It is a more affordable version of the flagship phone that was released

five weeks ago. So they just released the 15 five weeks ago. And now we've got the 15R.

Sells for 700 bucks. That's about 200 bucks less than the 15.

Takes away the telephoto camera. So you only have two cameras, not three. That's one of the

biggest dings against it. You also give up wireless charging, which may or may not be a big

deal for you. The screen is only slightly bigger, but it is a little bit bigger. 6.83 inches,

has the same 165 hertz refresh rate and 1,800 nits of brightness as the

flagship.

So you're getting a 165 hertz refresh rate in a mid-range phone.

Has a slightly bigger battery, 7,400 millamph hour silicon carbon battery versus 7,300 in the

flagship, which you may think, wow, so it's got a

bigger battery. But it's also the first phone in North America with the Snapdragon Gen 5

chip set, not the Gen 5 elite. And that chip set is a little less efficient. PCMag found that

the 15R got 23 hours of battery life versus the 15th 26 not a huge disparity yeah

exactly but it's a little less uh also as an underscreen ultrasonic fingerprint sensor another nice

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