Not too long ago, we saw the launch of a brand new Oppo smartphone – the OPPO F1s. With those specs, it’s an interesting phone to say the least. It aims at one being the only smartphone for “selfie experts”, but they might have also captured the hearts of those who seek the best value smartphone. Let’s take a look at the OPPO F1s here.
The OPPO F1s has a pretty extensive box itself – with a printed sleeve wrapped around the box. Sliding the sleeve off is relatively simple, as there’s a fair share of spare between the sleeve and the box itself, unlike other products.
The box then opens up to even reveal everything inside, with a pretty compact packaging design overall. Everything is nicely packed, and the things packed inside this box is pretty commendable too.
Overall contents were really good, except for the fact that the earphones included is really horrible – by that I mean it’s this type of earphones.
OPPO might as well just don’t include it in the box for two reasons. First, very few people are going to use such earphones. Secondly, it can save you cost, and potentially lowering the OPPO F1s’s price even lower than it is now. Or maybe OPPO just thought that this pair of earphones just doesn’t affect the cost of the OPPO F1s. In whichever case, I think the most generic pair of in-ear monitors would be better than this.
After opening all the boxes, it’s nice to actually find some hidden extra accessories that everyone needs – a screen protector (already installed) and a very thick TPU case. In my opinion, these two things are the tipping point when a dilemma on which smartphone to choose arises. Mostly the cases aren’t that easy to find, and most of them require a lengthy shipping time. Having these accessories right in the box itself feels absolutely great.
[nextpage title=”Design”]The design of it is fairly simple. At this point of time now, I guess you could even call it “common”, in a sense that every smartphone design is quite similar with many other smartphone designs. However, there’s no point in “fixing” a design that already works.
The button placements on the OPPO F1s is very classical too – with the power button and the SIM card/microSD card on right side, and the volume rocket on the left side.
This classic button placement position is great – especially for those who is a left-handed smartphone user such as myself. These buttons are very tactile, and has the correct stiffness so that it doesn’t accidentally trigger itself.
For those who doesn’t want to use the included TPU case however might worry about the slipperiness of the OPPO F1s. Well, I’m here to tell you fear not – the OPPO F1s looks like it has just a really subtle curve on the metal rim, but still is very square when held on my palms.
At the bottom is where the 3.5mm audio jack, charging port, and two grills are found. At first glance, I thought that the OPPO F1s would be a bottom-facing stereo speaker – but that’s not the case here. The grill on the left side is actually a microphone, whereas the one on the right is a speaker.
Let’s not forget about the included transparent case too. OPPO definitely took the time and effort into creating this case, as it wraps the buttons as well. They even included ridges for the buttons so that the tactility is maintained! This is a really high quality TPU case!
[nextpage title=”Connectivity”]For those who are getting the OPPO F1s – do take note about this. It supports two SIM cards and one microSD card slot (up to 128GB) together. There’s no SIM/microSD card slot that requires the user to sacrifice SIM card for a microSD card and vice versa. Just lay everything on the nicely labelled metal tray here, and slide it all in.
The metal tray itself here is labelled nicely too, as the corresponding slot number and SIM card size that the OPPO F1s uses is labelled properly. Also, it shows which side should the microSD card be facing upwards too, to potentially minimize the issue with broken SIM card slot.
On another side note, it even supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi connections to up 802.11N WiFi standards. It’s not surprising that it doesn’t support AC WiFi because let’s be honest here – it’s expensive and the adoption rate is real slow.
Other than that, the OPPO F1s comes with Bluewooth 4.0 and even supports OTG. The only thing that it doesn’t support is NFC. Again it’s not a necessity, but it’s something that I gripe about whenever I needed it – even though that happens rarely.
[nextpage title=”Display”]There really isn’t much to tell about the display here – it’s a 720p display. Not idea if they used IPS or what, but the colour shifting occurred when looking at it at about 60 degrees off angle.
It’s a really bright screen to be honest, and at times it did blind me at night too. The auto-brightness feature here doesn’t make the screen brightness fluctuate insanely. Also, there’s an option to manually fine tune the automatic brightness level too – so you can get a real feel of how bright you really want.
[nextpage title=”Camera”]
Rear-facing camera
I probably should also mention about the 13MP f/2.2 rear-facing camera here first. I thought that it would have a significant camera bump based on the pictures I’ve seen, but it actually looks fairly flushed. The bump is tiny, but will still slightly tilt the phone when laid on a flat surface.
These sort of camera bumps will definitely get the camera lens scratched, but thankfully OPPO did include a really thick case, which is thicker than the camera bump by a significant amount. Don’t have to worry about scratching the camera lens at all!
Since we’re still talking about the rear-facing camera, let’s get right into the image quality.
Honestly speaking, it performs decently. Not the best rear-facing camera that I’ve seen, as you can see that the exposure compensation is a little crazy at times. As seen above, I just took at a real quick speed. It does capture the details relatively well at Marriott Hotel’s lighting conditions, but the exposure is out of whack. It just couldn’t really get a nice exposure most of the time. When it does get the exposure right though, it looks great.
Oh yeah – I forgot to mention the Ultra HD photo mode. It takes a few pictures at 13MP, and stitches them together via software. It works quite well, but practically wise it’s the same as Super Resolution on ASUS smartphones which we’ve seen here, there, and everywhere.
Front-facing camera
Ahhh, this is where the magic happens. Touting to be the smartphone for “selfie experts”, it performs quite well with that 16MP f/2.0 selfie camera. Here comes some samples!
The selfie cam I think works really well. It can capture the details really nicely, and colour reproductions is great as well. There is no lens distortion much, and definitely lives up to its promotional tagline – for “selfie experts”. Actually, hold on – I think it makes non-“selfie experts” to be an expert instantly.
I guess the only one single downside of the front-facing camera is its focusing – or lack there of. It’s a fixed-focus camera, and I think if OPPO managed to cramp in a auto-focusing mechanism for its selfie cam, it’ll be even more amazing.
Oh yeah – it has Panaromic Selfie too.
Other remarks regarding camera
I’m going to blatantly point this out – the camera UI is way too similar to Apple’s. I suppose it’s good for those who are coming from Apple devices, since they already got used to the interface already.
It’s also weird that taking pictures consecutively instead of using their burst mode directly, saves pictures slower than using burst shot directly. Not sure why this happens or if OPPO has any method in fixing this, but it’s something worth noting. Till then, make sure to use Burst Shot mode generously.
[nextpage title=”Software”]I think this is the biggest downfall in the OPPO F1s. Personally I think it’s okay enough to use – with the ultra-fast fingerprint sensor that can unlock the phone instantaneously after placing my thumb on it and pressing it down.
The OPPO F1s is running on ColorOS V3.0.0i, and it’s based on Android 5.1. There’s nothing wrong with this – but how the entire UI built and UX is formed threw me off at times. The menus are messy and at times clunky, yet most of it doesn’t really have a proper explanation on how things are done either.
For example, the lock screen is great – with these different beautiful images showing up each time I press the power button, and constantly refreshing new libraries of pictures by itself over time. It’s a fantastic feature.
However, the notification and Quick Settings (I presume that’s what it’s called) menu is clunky and doesn’t really offer much context, especially the gestures that it supports. I found out that there are some gestures which work great, but some gestures are nonexistent.
The multitasking menu has some hidden features too – like dragging the card down to lock and unlock it from being cleared off the RAM, and swiping up to clear the app. It works magnificently well once you do understand how it works.
That said, it did confuse me at first as I have no idea what’s going on. Took a little but of extra exploration to find out what’s going on.
The themes available for the OPPO F1s is no joke. I really like that touch by OPPO.
[nextpage title=”Performance”]Let’s keep this short and simple. It’s running on a MediaTek MT6750 octa-core 64-bit processor with Malit-T860 MP2 graphics, has 3GB worth of RAM and 3,075mAh battery. Keep in mind that this is a phone with 720p resolution.
Running the usual test suite, the OPPO F1s manages to score decently at Epic Citadel, scoring at about 46FPS constantly through consecutively repeated tests.
On the usual Vellamo test, it performs relatively well too. Numbers don’t mean much, but when compared against other smartphones, it’s quite good. Doesn’t lag when I surf the web while listening to music, and constantly hammering the screen with my thumbs to type messages constantly.
Overall, performance wise it’s fantastic.
[nextpage title=”Battery”]Then comes the battery of course. It’s a 3,075mAh battery. However I had a hard time depleting all of its battery. I tried playing Pokemon Go extensively on the OPPO F1s, but failed drastically. The battery just managed to sustain for a very long time. The most I managed to milk out of the battery was till about 32%, and it was about 18 hours of usage. That’s pretty insane.
Temperature wise I don’t think it’s even necessary to put the entire graph out. The max that I got was about 40℃ as far as I can tell. It never once felt hot – just occasionally feels a tad warmer than it usually is.
Then comes the charger. I was actually quite disappointed realizing that OPPO only included a 5V 2A charger. I was hoping maybe for a first generation VOOC charger instead? That actually would be a great selling point for the F1s, OPPO.
Charging speeds though, it’s still a 10W charger. Nothing else to say much.
[nextpage title=”Wrap up”]The OPPO F1s got many things right. Metal body, an included phone case + pre-installed screen protector, touts great selfie camera, and priced below RM1,200 too. Well, they barely achieved the last point but it still stands.
OPPO managed to nail the performance and and optimization on the F1s, but needs improvement on their software. I think that a revamp on their ColorOS might be the answer to how OPPO can win our hearts. Camera-wise, it’s decent. For social media purposes, it’s beyond what I need. Let’s not forget it has a built-in 32GB storage too. Oh yeah, one last point – the fingerprint scanner is insanely quick. Pressed the home button with my thumb, and boom! UNLOCKED!
It’s available in Gold and Rose Gold (literally pink) colour options too. All these for for RM1,198? With another free leather phone case and an original 3,600mAh power bank by OPPO themselves? It’s a no-brainer deal – yet this offer is by OPPO Malaysia themselves! Sorry guys, the deal has expired!
Couple that with a Lazada voucher, you can get it for a pretty low price. Check out the deals here!
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