The OnePlus 16 camera spec rumours are starting to pick up pace, but I remain to be convinced that they mean progress.
According to Yogesh Brar, the OnePlus 16 will resist peer pressure and adopt another 50Mp main camera.
As the tipster points out (see below), the current trend among OnePlus’s China-based contemporaries is for a pixel-packed main camera. The late 2026 / early 2027 flagship offerings of Xiaomi, Vivo, iQoo, and, indeed, parent company Oppo are all said to be going with a 200Mp main camera.
Of course, having more pixels doesn’t necessarily make a camera better. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra has a 50Mp main camera, and it’s arguably the best in the business, thanks largely to its huge 1-inch sensor.
However, after a slightly shaky generation (in photographic terms) with the OnePlus 15, you can count me a little concerned about these latest OnePlus 16 rumours.
Step in the wrong direction
While the OnePlus 15 is a fine phone with blazing performance and particularly outstanding battery life, I couldn’t help but find it a little disappointing.
We’ve grown accustomed to smartphones getting better and better from one generation to the next, but in certain key respects, the OnePlus 15 simply wasn’t. Not everyone on the team would agree, but I’d argue that both its design and display represented a step back from the OnePlus 13.
Most importantly, so was its camera set-up. For the OnePlus 15, the brand ditched its Hasselblad partnership and decreased the size of its image sensors across the board.
As such, this latest OnePlus 16 rumour doesn’t really give us the vital information. How big is it? And if Hasselblad has once again been left out of the tuning process, what’s the special sauce that’s going to lift this phone’s main camera above its (by the time of release) two-year-old ancestor?
Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd
Zooming forward
One camera department that was technically improved in the OnePlus 15 was its telephoto camera, with a move up from a 3x to a 3.5x optical zoom length.
According to tipster Smart Pikachu, OnePlus is rolling things back in this respect – but it’s not necessarily all bad news.
Over on Weibo, the tipster has claimed that the OnePlus 16’s telephoto camera will revert to 3x, but that it will leap from 50Mp to 200Mp.
Again, I’m not particularly fussed about the number of pixels here, but the move to 200Mp at least signifies a change in sensor. The OnePlus 15’s telephoto camera also rolled back on sensor size compared to the OnePlus 13, but the 200Mp telephoto cameras we’ve seen so far in the Oppo Find X9 Ultra and the Honor Magic 8 Pro have been reassuringly chunky.
All in all, we’re none the wiser as to whether the OnePlus 16 camera is going to fix the biggest shortfall of its predecessor. With the OnePlus brand’s future seemingly hanging in the balance, I sincerely hope so.
