OPPO F3 Unboxing, Quick Review: A Handier Dual Selfie Cam

OPPO F3 Unboxing, Quick Review: A Handier Dual Selfie Cam

We unbox the OPPO F3!

When OPPO officially unleashed their first dual selfie camera equipped phones around a month ago, the standard F3 was conspicuously missing from the proceedings. After relentlessly teasing the release of two phones, only the bigger F3 Plus was unveiled and announced on stage. For whatever reason it looked like the regular F3 wasn’t yet ready for prime time, and its release was relegated to a later date.

Well, today we’ll finally be able to take a look at the F3 Plus’ smaller brother. The F3 still has the same dual-selfie front facing camera that the F3 Plus came with, but now it’s contained in a smaller and easier to handle package. Is the F3 better than its bigger brother?

OPPO F3 specs

  • MediaTek MT6750T octa-core processor
  • ARM Mali-T860 MP2
  • 4GB RAM
  • 5.5-inch FHD display, 1920 x 1080 resolution, Corning Gorilla Glass 5
  • 64GB expandable storage, via microSD
  • 16-megapixel rear camera
  • 16-megapixel + 8 megapixel front cameras
  • Dual SIM
  • 3G, 4G VoLTE
  • WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, A-GPS
  • Fingerprint scanner
  • 3200mAh battery
  • Android 6.0 Marshmallow (ColorOS v3)
  • Php 16,990

Packaging and contents:

Just like the F3 Plus, the F3 comes in OPPO’s trademark white packaging, with a photo of the phone displayed proudly on the outside.

Inside the box is the F3 and the normal accouterments that come with a smartphone, mainly a USB charger, USB cable, a pair of decent-looking headphones, documentation for said phone and a silicone case.

Initial impressions: looks great, but internals are a bit worrying

It’s not surprising that the F3 has many of the design cues of its bigger brother. The company certainly took a lot of inspiration from Apple in designing the F3, but that’s not really surprising (or unique) in this day and age.

The F3 features rounded corners and a smooth back, and it seems that OPPO has gone with metal in the construction of the F3. The entire phone looks pretty nice, though we’re a little surprised that the F3 wasn’t made from a single block of aluminum. Instead, there’s plastic strips on the top and bottom at the rear that interrupts its mostly metal backside. OPPO’s done a good job blending the colors so the material change isn’t too obvious but you can see it if you know what you’re looking for.

Moving around the phone, you’ll see the power button on the right, and the volume rocker on the left. The dual SIM tray is on the right, and allows you to use two SIMs along with a microSD card. That means you won’t have to choose between two SIMs or bigger storage.

Moving on you’ll see the USB port on the bottom (sorry, it’s not USB Type-C), 3.5mm jack and the single speaker grille.

Up front is the 5.5-inch full HD display, with the front dual-selfie cameras directly on top. There’s no difference in the optics for the front cams – you’re still looking at a 16-megapixel primary shooter and 8-megapixel super wide angle lens.

The front mounted fingerprint scanner is flanked by physical Android navigation keys.

The dual selfie cameras work exactly like they did with the F3 Plus – the main 16-megapixel camera is for taking regular selfies, while the secondary 8-megapixel camera is set at a wider 120 degree angle to make it easier to take group photos. No artificial bokeh gimmicks here – just better and wider selfies.

The F3 is definitely easier to handle and hold than the F3 Plus, owing to its much smaller size. We know a lot of customers have held off buying the bigger F3 Plus because of its ungainly size, especially for people who have smaller hands. The F3 fits quite comfortably in our palms, thanks to its 5.5-inch display.

While the F3 Plus featured strong hardware, we’re not completely sold on the processor OPPO chose to power the F3. The device uses MediaTek’s MT6750T octa-core processor, which is paired with a ARM Mali-T860 MP2 GPU, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage.

Since OPPO is asking for quite a fair amount of money for the F3, we feel that the company could have put in a better performing chipset. We’ll have to see though if the processor is up to the task of taking on the rigors of daily use. From our short time with it the F3 performed well, without any hiccups in navigation or use. The phone unfortunately only has Android Marshmallow on board, and comes with the company’s ColorOS UI overlay.

That’s it for this unboxing. The OPPO F3 is priced at Php 16,990.

Read more:

OPPO F3 Plus Review: Super-Sized Selfie Expert

Head-to-head: OPPO F3 Plus VS Vivo V5 Plus

Selfie Battle: OPPO F3 Plus VS Vivo V5 Plus

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