Dubai: After the success of F1 and F1 Plus photography centric smartphones, Oppo has come out with F1s. The Chinese is billing the F1s as a selfie expert with 16MP front facing and 13MP rear cameras.
Sony Xperia XA Ultra also has 16MP front-facing camera but it is expensive.
The 5.5-inch HD display sports 720x1280 pixel resolution (267 pixel per inch density), is powered by 1.5GHz MediaTek MT6750 octa-core processor with 3GB of RAM and 32Gb of internal storage capacity.
One good advantage is that it has a dedicated microSD slot, which supports up to 128GB, apart from dual Nano-SIM 4G LTE card slots. It runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop OS out of the box instead of Marshmallow. Oppo said that update will be available at a later stage.
The screen displays decent colours but the resolution could have been better. The 2.5D arc-edged screen is made of Gorilla Glass 4.
The all-metal body comes with a fingerprint sensor which is integrated into the home button and it is impressively responsive. It unlocks the device very fast. It weighs 160 grams.
The user interface — Oppo’s Color OS 3 — can be customised with different effects and themes. There is no app drawer like Huawei phones. The ColorOS supports myriad of gestures, from double tab to wake and sleep, all the way to quick navigation, fast app launching and even custom gestures.
The headphones socket, along with a micro-USB port and mono speaker are placed at the bottom. The SIM tray sits on the right. The sides are clutter-free. There is nothing on top, beside a small secondary noise-cancelling microphone. The left side only features a pair of volume buttons.
The F1s is big on gesture controls.
The phone comes with suite of apps from Google along with Theme Store, Kingsoft Office, Security Centre, File Manager, and a video player. O-Cloud is also present.
The F1s is a very good phone and handled most tasks thrown at it easily but playing 3D games warms the rear side a bit but nothing too alarming.
Camera is where the phone stands out. The 13MP autofocus rear camera uses the ISOCELL sensor made by Samsung, with f/2.2 aperture and LED flash takes good photos with colours and details. Image quality is pretty good for landscapes and macro shots. In lowlight conditions, the photos turn to be a bit darker but not too much colour noise.
It has different shooting modes like GIFs, slow motion videos, audio photos and double exposure photos. What I liked the most was the manual options; it gives the ability to change the shutter speed and aperture size and focus manually.
The rear camera is capable of shooting videos at 1080p resolution at 30 frames per second but no 4K recording. There is also the slow shutter option that lets you manually control the shutter speed and also the Ultra HD mode that uses a clever stitching mechanism of four photos into one with a resolution of 51MP.
The camera app is simple but it offers the five common modes including time-lapse, videos, photo, beauty and panorama that work for the front as well as the rear camera.
The 16MP front camera with a wide f/2.0 aperture lens and a 1/3.1-inch sensor is where the device excels.
Dubbed as the “selfie expert”, the phone and the software tricks help to capture lifelike selfies for a budget device.
The screen turns into flashlight to illuminate the face and snaps can be captured by waving the palm. It has “Beautify” filter to take care of those skin blemishes. I love voice activation and the panorama selfie function that stitches together a 120-degree panorama.
The audio quality from the rear-mounted mono speaker will never feel it is from a budget device. It produces pretty loud and does not get distorted when turned to the maximum level.
The front camera is capable of shooting videos at 1080p resolution.
Gaming proved to be good with very minor frame drops in games like Asphalt 8 and Dead Trigger 2.
The CPU and GPU (Mali-T860) are both underpowered as MediaTek has traditionally been considered as the cheaper alternative to Qualcomm processors.
Regarding connectivity, it includes WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, 4G LTE, microUSB, along with VoLTE (voice over LTE) support. There’s no NFC.
The 3,075mAh non-removable battery gave more than 11 hours of video playback and more than 10 hours of internet browsing, which is pretty good. It does not support Oppo’s VOOC fast charging capabilities. Due to the 720p display, the device lasts for a day for moderate users which includes incoming and sending of emails, WhatsApp and other messenger services, watching a few videos, placing a few calls and browsing. It is priced at Dh999.
Pros
• Value for money
• Good cameras
• Fast and accurate fingerprint sensor
• Dedicated microSD slot
• Good battery life
Cons
• No fast charging support
• No front-facing flash
• Old operating system
• No optical image stabilisation
• Display could have been Full HD
