Oppo F1 Plus First Impression – Looks Good, Feels Good

Oppo unleashed its ‘Selfie Expert’ F1 Plus, with an imposing 16MP selfie camera in India for a price of 26,990. The pricing for the Helio P10 powered Android handset isn’t particularly mouth-watering, but it isn’t half as absurd as what we are used to seeing from Oppo camp (that is, when pitched against online rivals from other Chinese players). We thoroughly examined the Oppo F1 Plus at the launch and here is what we felt.

Key specifications and features of Oppo F1 Plus :

Looks stunning!

The metal-unibody design Oppo F1 Plus looks pure stunning. You could argue that the handset is remarkably close to a certain fruit-based company (yeah, the choice of Gold and Rose Gold colors isn’t helping Oppo’s case either), and I could scowl at you defiantly, but neither of us would be completely wrong.

Even if it is the iPhone 6s or One A9 – ish, Oppo has certainly refined and improved upon the base design. The Oppo F1 Plus is crafted from metal, has very narrow side-bezels, is quite slim and light and feels great when held in hand. It is not simply a scaled variant of Oppo F1 (which feels cheap in comparison), but that is kind of obvious since it’s a re-branded Oppo R9. Compared to other phones selling for around 25K, the Oppo F1 Plus does stand out as impressive. Its only challenger is Xiaomi’s Mi5.

On the front, Oppo is using a good quality Full HD AMOLED panel. The hands on prototype had a tempered glass pre-installed. Just below the display you will find a home key + fingerprint sensor combination. The scanner is very fast and accurate. You will have to press the home key first, but 8 out of 10 times that we tried it, the handset could read our thumb impression and unlock almost instantly, as soon as the home button was released.

The Helio P10 in Oppo F1 Plus

The Helip P10 (MT6755) is a relatively new chipset in India, which is largely untested and thus here are a few things that you should know. The Helio P10 is an evolution of MediaTek’s MT6752 (Lenovo K3 Note) that also borrows from last year MediaTek superstar, the Helio X10 (Le 1s).

This is one of the first MediaTek chipset that adopts big.LITTLE configuration. The 8 Cortex A53 cores are divided in two clusters, clocked at 2.0GHz and 1.0GHz respectively. Allowing all 8 cores to run at maximum frequency helps under heavy load, but is accompanied by a harsh battery penalty for day to day tasks.

Also Read:Decoding Chipsets – A Beginner’s Guide For Understanding Smartphone Processors

 

Further substantiating power efficiency claims is the fact that the P10 is based on TSMC’s new 28HPC+ process which addresses performance and power issues faced in 28nm HPM process (Snapdragon 801, Snapdragon 805, MediaTek MT6752).

Dual ISP and 21MP camera support is what it borrows from Helio X10. The GPU is also updated to Mali-T860 MP2 and thus you can expect slightly better gaming performance than MT6752 (and certainly better than MT6753). Like most other MediaTek chips presently being used, Helio P10 also uses World-modem, so you can expect similar cellular network support.

The point being, Helio P10 primarily focuses on improved battery life, but should also offer some performance enhancement. Is it fit for a 27k handset, especially when players like Xiaomi are offering Snapdragon 820 for lesser? It is still too soon to answer that.  The handset felt quite snappy in our hands on time, but it remains to be seen if the same will hold in the long run.

The Helio P10 in Oppo F1 Plus is supported by ample 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage, out of which around 50GB is available at user end. You can also add a MicroSD card slot at the expense of second SIM card.

Selfie prowess

The main selling point for Oppo F1 Plus is its 16MP selfie camera which comes with a F2.0 wide-aperture, wide-angle lens. The selfies that we clicked seemed pretty good even in the tricky ambient lighting. The high 16MP resolution also seems to make a difference when the shots are viewed on a larger display. Oppo claims it’s beautify mode works without being overwhelming and we did see some merit in these claim. The primary 13MP camera also seemed pretty decent.

Here are a few initial camera samples.

Oppo F1 Plus Camera Sample

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Color OS 2.5

The Android Lollipop based Color OS borrows heavily from iOS in terms of design and aesthetics. There was no bloatware on the hands on prototype, and the UI seemed well sorted. Color OS provides several customization options, a one hand mode, quiet mode, gesture support and more. However, at this point of time, we would have preferred Android Marshmallow as base software.

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Conclusion

With beautiful design and camera hardware, the Oppo F1 Plus casts a very positive first impression. The price is still on the higher side, but that is understandable because Oppo plans on pushing this through offline channels. You could always find better specifications from phones like Xiaomi Mi5, but if hardware performance is up to the mark, Oppo F1 Plus shall offer an equally enchanting experience. We will reserve our final verdict for our full review.