Oppo F1 is the first smartphone of Oppo’s F series under which the company promises to launch camera centric phones. So obviously, the Oppo F1 promises a lot in the camera segment. It boasts of an 8 megapixel front camera with f/2.0 Aperture and a 13-megapixel auto focus rear camera with f/2.2 aperture and LED flash. The camera features include Beautify 3.0, 8 live colour filters, and the smartphone’s screen can also be used as a flash in low-light conditions to enhance the picture quality.
This dual SIM smartphone has an aluminium unibody design with thickness of just 7.25mm. It has a 5-inch HD (720×1280 pixels) IPS display with 2.5D Gorilla Glass 4 protection. It is powered by a 1.7 GHz octa-core Snapdragon 616 processor, 3GB RAM and Adreno 405 GPU. The Oppo F1 runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system with ColorOS 2.1 on top of it and gets the power from 2,500 mAh battery.
The handset comes with 16GB of internal storage, which can be further expandable by upto 128 GB via a micro SD card. For connectivity, it offers 4G, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and a Micro USB port.
I used the phone extensively for over a month and here is our detailed review of Oppo F1 which is priced at Rs 15,990.
Design
If looks are everything for you then you would love the Oppo F1 for sure. It is slim, compact and a gorgeous looking phone. Wrapped in a metal body, the phone feels quite tough. It also has one of the smoothest metal back panel I have seen in a smartphone in the recent times. It feels great in palms and even if you have sweaty hands, you won’t feel that uncomfortable while using it. Anyway, the Oppo F1 ships with a transparent back cover which can be used to protect the looks of the phone and ofcourse it offers better grip.
The Oppo F1 comes in golden colour that has white colour front panel. Two parallel silver colour lines on its side panels further add to its oomph factor.
As you might have guessed by right now, the Oppo F1 has a unibody and hence the SIM cum micro SD card slot is there on its side panel. However note that it has got just one hybrid SIM slot and can hold two SIMs or one SIM and a micro SD card at a time. The power button and volume rocker, which are on the right and left hand side respectively, are made of metal as well and since it is quite a compact handset (expected for a 5 inch device), they are easily reachable.
The side panels are slightly curved. The 3.5 mm jack is at the top while a micro USB port is at the bottom along with a microphone. The back panel has the Oppo branding laser printed. At the top left corner, in the back cover, lies the rear camera under which there is an LED flash light. There are three speaker holes at the bottom of the back panel.
In the front, there are three off screen buttons below the display while above the screen likes a speaker grill flanked by the front camera and a proximity sensor. An indicator light is also there, above the display.
All in all, the Oppo F1 is one of the best looking phones in the market today and can take on the phones which cost twice its price.
Display
The Oppo F1 has a 5 inch display. This IPS display offers good viewing angles and has high definition Resolution which feels a lot less than what few of its competitors offer – full HD. However, do keep it in mind that it has a 5 inch display only and hence it offers pretty decent 293.72 ppi pixel density. It does have a superb colour output as well. Not, even once during the usage I felt any issues with the resolution. Infact, most of the time I thought it has full HD resolution.
The screen also has good brightness and thus you can use it outdoors without much discomfort. However, I felt some issues with the auto brightness but its not a deal breaker for sure. Touch output of the screen is also quite good. It also supports glove and wet touch input as well.
Camera
Oppo F1 is being marketed as a “Selfie Expert”. Hence I was especially interested in its cameras. The Oppo F1 has a 13 megapixel rear camera along with LED flash and an 8 megapixel front camera. The rear camera is armed with a f2.2 aperture while the front camera is armed with much better f2.0 aperture which is not usually seen in smartphones. Most of the time, the front camera comes with narrower aperture than the rear camera. But in Oppo F1 its just the reverse case. (Note that camera with wider aperture has better speed and can capture brighter images in low light).
The Oppo F1’s front camera is also armed with various features like filters like Natural, Fresh, Tokyo, Mono, Sweet etc, allowing the user to take selfies to represent his/her various moods. It comes with Beautify, Audio picture, GIF, time lapse etc features. There are no flash lights for the front camera but you can use the screen as a flash light.
The rear camera is also armed with various features like HDR, Beautify, GIF, various filters, Ultra HD, Panorama and Slow Shutter.
As expected, the Oppo F1 is strong in camera department, especially considering the fact that it has a price tag of just Rs 15,990. Both the front and rear camera offered good output in various lighting conditions. The focussing and colour reproduction is managed quite well the camera software and the hardware. You can check out their sample pictures here and decide for yourself.
Memory and Connectivity
It is kind of mixed bag when it comes to connectivity. The Oppo F1 with dual SIM and 4G connectivity sounds good on paper but it has a hybrid SIM slot and can either hold two SIM cards or a micro SD and a SIM card. It though offers OTG functionality so you can use pen drives with it to further expand its storage.
The Oppo F1 has Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi (b/g/n) and GPS as well. Ofcourse it has a micro USB port and a 3.5 mm jack.
Battery
The Oppo F1 has a 2500 mAh battery which seems average for a 5 inch phone. But the battery is well optimised. Through out the review, I usually extracted a day’s usage comfortably. Even with heavy usage, I used to get about 10 hours of back up.
It also has a smart power saving mode that reduces CPU power consumption to save power. If you go really low on power, you can opt for Ultra Power Saving mode that shuts off everything except call and SMS features.
Performance
The Oppo F1 has the 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon octa core processor and 3 GB RAM which is more than enough for multitasking and high end games. Through out the review, I did not find any lag even while multitasking or gaming.
The phone has the Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system with a customised UI – ColorOS 2.1. The UI is quite simple and resembles a lot like the default Android UI. But it has few nifty features. For instance, it comes with a ‘Lockscreen Magazine’ feature and it does offer a lot of good looking wallpapers and there are plenty of them. You can choose from various of themes like auto, movie, games etc (you can even select all of them) and everytime you switch the phone on, you will be greeted with a new wallpaper.
Another nifty feature is its Music Player which you can access just by swiping to the extreme left screen of the home screen. The App comes in full page and looks really good.
There is no app drawers and everything is laid out in the home screen itself in the ColorOS.