OnePlus 16 lands with some insane perks. Alas, you can’t get it in the US

OnePlus has launched the OnePlus 16 in China, and there are some wild numbers on the spec sheet. A 9,000mAh battery. A display that can hit 185Hz. A Snapdragon chip crossing the 5GHz mark. Even the main camera has jumped to 200MP. Sadly, none of it matters much if you are in the US. The OnePlus 16 is not officially available here, so American buyers will have to admire all this hardware from afar.

The battery situation is frankly ridiculous

The biggest surprise for me is the battery. OnePlus has somehow stuffed a 9,000mAh battery inside a phone that is only around 8.5mm thick. For comparison, the OnePlus 15 already impressed us with its 7,300mAh battery and excellent endurance, which is one of the main reasons it is our choice for the best daily driver. Charging tops out at 100W wired and 50W wireless, and the phone also has bypass charging that sends power directly to the phone during gaming instead of constantly topping up the battery.

Compared to last year, the design is largely unchanged, but the Tomorrow’s Starlight finish hides an LED array underneath the rear glass, which can light up and pulse. OnePlus has also thrown in IP66, IP68, IP69, and IP69K protection. And just like other Chinese flagships of this year, the main camera now has a 200MP sensor with OIS, joined by a 50MP ultrawide and 50MP 3x telephoto. A 50MP selfie camera sits up front.

Then there is the gaming hardware

Display is also among one of the bigger upgrades here, as the company has installed a 6.78-inch BOE OLED that runs at up to 165Hz during normal use, but supported games can push it all the way to 185Hz. At the center sits Qualcomm’s new 2nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, which can reach 5.01GHz. Memory goes up to 16GB of LPDDR5X, paired with as much as 1TB of UFS 4.1 storage. The OnePlus 16 starts at 5,699 yuan in China, roughly $850. It is an absurd amount of hardware for the money.