Official OnePlus 15 photos show there's life after Hasselblad

Back in June, we reported on a dramatic change coming to the next generation of OnePlus phones. That report suggested that the brand would be ceasing its partnership with Swedish camera giant, Hasselblad, which has previously collaborated on the optics in its devices.

Now, the first images from the post-Hasselblad era have been showcased – and it's not as bad as we first feared. In a blog post on the brand's website – machine translated from Chinese – OnePlus announces the end of the Hasselblad era, and shares a trio of pictures taken with its new in-house camera system.

That's called Lumo in the blog post, though reports suggest it might be called the DetailMax Engine in other regions. I'd wager that Lumo is a little snappier, personally.

All three of the sample images are taken using the 85mm equivalent focal length, and the results look stellar. Colours look really nice, and there's a solid degree of detail, albeit without the depth of field you'd find in a dedicated setup.

Still, what it lacks in physical sensor capabilities, it makes up for in computational power. The report suggests that the system has been designed to capture people, with exceptional performance in portrait blur, motion capture and telephoto imaging.

That sounds like a seriously competent setup, and one which should tantalise phone photography lovers everywhere. I've long been a fan of the brand's photography prowess, and this proves that there is more to it than just a Hasselblad logo.

Clearly some of that magic has rubbed off, and the results prove that a post-collaboration landscape should still be competitive among the best Android phones on the market.

The camera technology should arrive as part of the OnePlus 15 launch, and if historic release schedules are anything to go by, that will come around the end of the year. We'll have to wait and see, but I'm certainly excited to give this one a go.