OPPO F1 Plus Review: The New Selfie King?

OPPO F1 Plus Review: The New Selfie King?

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We review OPPO’s F1 Plus!

OPPO’s gone all-in with the selfie phone, it seems. After heavily marketing the F1 as the selfie expert, the Chinese company is looking to raise the stakes in the selfie game with the F1 Plus. The F1 Plus (or the R9, depending on where you live) tries to up the stakes in the selfie wars by using a 16-megapixel front camera – the highest we’ve seen so far for a selfie cam. Does the crazy megapixel count on the front camera guarantee its status as the selfie king?

OPPO F1 Plus specs

  • 2.0GHz MediaTek MT6755 Helio P10 octa-core processor
  • 4GB of RAM
  • 5.5-inch Full HD AMOLED display, 1920 x 1080 resolution
  • 64GB of internal storage, expandable up to 128GB
  • 13-megapixel rear camera with phase detection AF and LED flash
  • 16-megapixel front camera
  • Dual SIM
  • 3G, LTE
  • WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, Fingerprint scanner, VOOC fast charging
  • Android 5.1 Lollipop with ColorOS 3.0
  • 2,850mAh battery

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iPhone 6S, is that you?

Let’s face it, in this day and age, almost everybody takes liberal design inspiration from Apple’s products. That’s also true with OPPO, though the F1 Plus manages to integrate more than just the vauge stylings of Jonny Ive. For some reason the F1 Plus looks almost identical to Apple’s iPhone 6S, down to the placement of the speaker grille, USB port and 3.5mm jack on the bottom.

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There are certain differences of course – a more oblong fingerprint scanner, capacitive keys on the side (that you only see when you touch the screen or home button) and the large OPPO logo emblazoned on the back of the device.

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To be fair the F1 Plus does look great, and if there’s one company you want to take design inspirations from, it’s Apple. The phone sits perfectly in our hands, and the curved sides and corners don’t dig into our palm during extended use.

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The volume rocker is on the left side while the power button is on the right. The phone’s micro SIM/microSD expansion slot is on the right, above the power button. Just like other phones, the OPPO F1 uses a hybrid SIM slot – you can have two SIMs or a SIM and microSD expansion, but not both.

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Turn the phone over and you’ll see the 13-megapixel rear camera with phase detection AF and LED flash. Just like the iPhone 6S, the camera module does not sit flush on the back, which may be an issue if you lay the phone down on a flat surface.

The F1 Plus uses a 5.5-inch AMOLED display. Overall colors are good, with the AMOLED panel giving contrast, saturation and color an extra punch. Black levels are excellent, which is to be expected with AMOLED panels, and overall the display of the F1 Plus impressed us during its time with us.

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Helio P10 is good, but isn’t a monster

OPPO is the latest company to stuff MediaTek’s MT6755 octa-core processor (AKA Helio P10) in their device. The P10, paired with 4GB of RAM, does a good job keeping everything functioning nice and smooth. We encountered probably one or two hiccups while we had the phone, but that’s easily attributed to the initial setup we were doing when it happened.

In gaming the Helio P10 is good enough, though you probably won’t be able to crank up the detail settings in some games because of the GPU limitations in the device.

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Just like before OPPO’s included their own UI overlay in the F1 Plus, dubbed ColorOS, now in version 3.0. It takes away the app drawer and makes the phone feel even more like an iOS device, though if you prefer the stock look of Android you can always download a brand new launcher to fix OPPO’s issues.

We’ve been criticizing MediaTek for the performance of their wireless radios in the past iterations of their SoCs, but it seems that they’ve finally managed to address many of our complaints in the past with the P10. LTE performance is pretty good, able to lock on to LTE signals quickly and hold on to them longer. GPS performance has also been improved as well.

16-megapixel selfie camera is overkill

The OPPO F1 Plus has a 16-megapixel front facing camera with a F/2.0 aperture that, on paper, is supposed to deliver a better selfie experience compared to other devices. Does it? Short answer is yes. Selfies are generally good, though we were hoping for more detailed photos thanks to the higher resolution camera. Some of the photos feel like they were taken with a lower resolution camera than the 16-megapixel unit in the front, which is a little disappointing. There’s also no LED front flash, which is puzzling for a phone that’s supposed to be made for people who like taking selfies.

Thankfully the 13-megapixel rear camera does a better job. Image quality is good, despite most of our shots being taken in low light. All-in-all the 13-megapixel rear camera does quite a better job than the 16-megapixel one, which goes to show that camera performance does not depend on the number of megapixels alone.

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Great battery life, plus VOOC Fast Charging is awesome

The OPPO F1 Plus managed to keep running even in exceptionally busy work days during our time with it. You can expect around a day’s worth of battery life with a single charge, which is pretty impressive for a phone as thin as this. If you do manage to run down the battery of the phone, the VOOC Charging tech can put it to 100% from 0 in under an hour.

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Verdict: It’s a great phone all around, but pricing is dicey

Despite looking like the iPhone 6S’ long lost brother, the OPPO F1 Plus hits the right spots in design, performance, camera and battery life. Probably the only thing that’ll stop people from buying it is the price – at Php 21,990, it’s a tough sell, especially now that last year’s flagships are dropping to the same price point in stores.

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