OPPO F1 first impressions: quite a looker, and promises loads of selfie fun too

“The new F1 from OPPO impresses with its design and aims to please selfie lovers”

Chinese brand OPPO isn’t new in India, and is known for its well-designed smartphones, some of which score high on innovation… such as the Find 7 (review) and the N3 (review) for example. In some sense, these devices were ahead of their time. If you recall, the Find 7 was the first smartphone in India to offer a QHD display, a spec that is becoming mainstream for most premium flagships today. The Find 7 also featured VOOC, the brand’s proprietary fast charging technology. Fast charging, implemented slightly differently by different smartphone brands, is also becoming quite popular now. The N3, like its predecessor, the N1 (review), came with a swivel camera that handled both primary photography and selfie duties. The brand focusses quite a bit on the photography aspect, as is evident from most of its offerings. However, it has been overshadowed by rivals that offer more loaded smartphones for lower prices. With the new OPPO F1, it’s attempting to get back into the game in a much stronger way, as the phone boasts quite a few compelling features and a gorgeous, all-metal bod that should get it its share of the limelight. Let’s take a closer look.

Comparisons with the Apple iPhone 6 design are inevitable when one holds a compact, all-metal phone with rounded edges. That said, we think the OPPO F1 can probably stand out on its own in terms of looks – the 5-inch phone is not just compact, it’s quite lean as well. Nestling in the palm like a baby wrapped in a blanket, it looks and feels rather premium, all thanks to its slim metal body that curves around the edges. The 2.5D curved glass on the screen imparts an even more classy appearance, along with adding a certain character that makes the fascia look rather interesting.

 

The left spine is home to a pair of volume keys, separate ones instead of the usual rocker implementation. On the right, you’ll find a power key along with an ejectable tray that can gobble up a micro-SIM, along with either a nano-SIM or a microSD card.Talking about the front, you’ll find a row of capacitive navigation keys below the screen. These keys aren’t backlit, which seems like a shame. On top, there’s the front cam, earpiece and sensors. The headset socket and micro-USB port are the top and bottom respectively.

 

 

Flip to the rear, and you’ll see a rectangular glass window on top left, covering the primary camera lens. An LED flash is placed below it. Then there’s OPPO branding, and further below, the phone speaker.

The 5-inch screen offers HD resolution, and while we’d prefer full HD at this price, looks good and pumps out vivid colours. We didn’t face an touch sensitivity related issues either. With an octa-core Snapdragon 616 processor and 3 gigs of RAM providing the horsepower, the performance seems smooth, based on our brief usage. Out of 16GB of storage, a little over 9 gigs was free on our demo unit, but do give us time to check out a retail unit before we confirm available storage. Up to 128GB more can be added by way of the microSD slot, though you’d need to forsake dual-SIM capabilities for this. The usual connectivity options are available, covering 4G LTE and USB OTG as well. The 2,500mAh battery that fuels the device seems a tad weak on paper (considering most others in the same price bracket offer beefier batteries), but we’ll wait till we get a chance to use the F1 extensively before passing judgement.

 

The OPPO F1 runs the latest version of ColorOS, based on Android Lollipop. The custom ROM offers mostly the same interface and features we’ve seen on OPPO’s phones earlier, but there are a few new additions as well. There’s no dedicated app drawer as usual, and the preloaded apps include a Theme Store as well. The leftmost home screen is completely occupied by a music widget. Some of the other noteworthy options and features available in settings include a notification centre that gives you control over app notifications, ‘Real soundtrack’ tech for audio enhancement, and a customisable eye protection mode for the screen.

 

A variety of gestures are supported, including double tap to wake, double tap home key to sleep, and pinch close with multiple fingers to launch the camera. You can use upward or downward swipes using three fingers to capture screenshots, while the same gesture using two fingers lets you control volume. Screen-off gestures, like drawing the letter ‘O’ to launch the camera, ‘V’ to switch on the flashlight, and controlling music playback are also supported, and custom gestures can be defined as well.

Camera prowess is touted as one of the hero features of the OPPO F1, and it offers a 13MP shooter at the rear, along with an 8MP snapper up front. In fact, its selfie-taking abilities are said to be a key highlight, and it offers related features to support that. One of these is a screen flash feature that lights up the screen while you're taking a selfie, attempting to enhance the results in case the lighting is low. The camera app packs in quite a few options, but they’re all hidden from view, as the app features a clean, minimal interface at first glance. All you’ll see up front are the toggle for the front camera, flash options and the option to switch between still shooting and vidoes.

 

Tap the modes button on the side, and you’ll see the various modes available. These include beautify, HDR, panorama, slow shutter, Ultra HD, filters and a GIF mode. These shortcuts are editable, which means you can hide these if you want, and add other functions from the list available under the large button labelled “More functions”. The list includes double exposure, super macro, and even an expert mode that offers manual functions. There’s a RAW mode for stills, a feature that’d be appreciated by photography buffs who like to play with their captures post shooting. As far as video is concerned, the OPPO F1 lacks the option to shoot in 4K, restricting the max resolution to 1080p. Slow-mo and time lapse options are there though.

Overall, we walked away impressed with what the OPPO F1 has to offer. The design is certainly the highlight, while we still have to figure out how capable those cameras are. OPPO isn’t known for pricing its phones aggressively, but at Rs 15,990, the F1 seems reasonably priced. That said, it still can’t match up in terms of pure specs with others in the same price range, going head-to-head with the likes of the OnePlus X (review) and the Lenovo Vibe S1 (review). A few others which are priced lower, the LeEco Le 1s (review) for instance, are better in terms of pure specs too. Just specifications however, aren’t everything… and it’s the user experience that matters. As far as we’re concerned, the OPPO F1 has what it takes to be a compelling option, but for that, it needs to deliver on the basics – performance, battery life and camera quality. If it can do that, OPPO could have a winner on its hands. A detailed review will separate the wheat from the chaff, so watch this space.

BlackBerry PRIV first impressions: the flexibility of Android with the premise of added security

“The PRIV may very well be BlackBerry’s last chance to make a space for itself in the smartphone market”

On June 18, 1815, Napolean Bonaparte fought a battle in Waterloo against the British and Prussians, and faced defeat. 200 years later, someone else is fighting an uphill battle in Waterloo – BlackBerry, the company which made emailing on the go hip and cool, is now on the brink of extinction in the smartphone era led by Android and iOS. There are quite a few other similarities between Napolean and BlackBerry as both rose through the ranks (the former in terms of his empire in Europe, while the latter in terms of popularity). However, as they say, history doesn’t repeat itself, and the brand might have another chance to revive its fortunes.

A few months ago, the flailing Canadian company took a bet – perhaps its biggest and boldest yet – by taking the veils off a smartphone christened PRIV that ran Google’s Android operating system. Today, the brand has brought the device to the Indian shores and we were among the first ones to get our hands on it. It goes without saying that we were quite interested to see how this marriage between BlackBerry’s hardware and Google’s software has turned out, and in a nutshell, it's quite impressive. Let’s delve into the details of why we think so, based on our brief usage of the BlackBerry PRIV.

Almost a decade ago, sliders were in vogue – as they offered large screens at the users’ disposal along with featuring keypads that slid out. The BlackBerry PRIV is a throwback to that era as it also has a slider form factor. Up front, you get a large 5.4-inch touchscreen display, with a physical QWERTY keyboard underneath that slides out.

Due to this form factor, the BlackBerry PRIV tips the scales on the higher side at 192g. It’s not in the race for the title of the slimmest smartphone either, as it has a waist size of 9.4mm. Similar to the Passport (review), the device seems to have unusual dimensions too, since it's larger and wider than most offerings of its size.

 

The tapered edges of the phablet help in ergonomic handling, although it’s not ideal for one-hand usage. The phone has a dedicated mute button, which can be found on the right, and is flanked between volume keys. Towards the left spine, you’ll find the power switch. While the top sports a microphone, an ejectable tray for a nano-SIM and another one for a microSD card, both the 3.5mm audio socket as well as the micro-USB port are placed at the bottom.

 

At the back, you’ll find the brand's signature textured pattern with BlackBerry’s logo towards the middle. A primary camera along with dual-tone LED flash also sits here.

The 5.4-inch AMOLED display offers a dense resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels, resulting in rich pixel density of 540ppi. The display is among the best out there with crisp visuals and stunning colours. The brightness levels are impressive and viewing angles also seem to be wide enough. For protection against scratches, the screen gets a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 4.

Similar to the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge (review | FAQs), the screen on the PRIV curves on both sides. The edge on the screen offers a bar that can let you quickly call your favourite contacts as well as letting you open the phonebook.

The hardware keyboard features a four-row layout, with the first three offering alphabets along with backspace and return keys and the last one having frequently-accessed functions like the spacebar, caps lock, etc. Interesting, the keys are of capacitive type for accepting touch input, similar to the ones on the BlackBerry Passport. The slider also comes with a speaker grille.

Being a flagship offering, the BlackBerry PRIV comes with top-of-the-line hardware, with the onus of performance lying on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 808 SoC. The chipset offers a combination of four cores humming at 1.4GHz, while two cores run at 1.8GHz. Taking care of the multitasking aspect is 3 gigs of RAM, which along with the processor ensures that the device delivers a smooth experience. We didn’t find any lags during our time spent with it, though of course, we will put it through our real-life usage before passing any judgment.

Storage is being taken care of by 32GB of memory on board. Unlike many other flagships, it can be topped up with the use of a microSD card – up to 2TB cards are supported.

In the imaging department, the PRIV offers an unusual sensor – an 18-megapixel camera with f/2.2 aperture. The snapper also comes with optical image stabilisation capabilities along with phase detection autofocus. To illuminate low-light environments, it gets a dual-tone LED flash. For videos, the mobile can record 4K videos as well as slow-mo videos at full HD resolution.

Selfie enthusiasts would slightly be disappointed though as the BlackBerry PRIV comes with just a 2MP camera at the front. While the images should be decent, it’s not a match to the experience offered by many other handsets these days, even priced below Rs 10,000.

The bragging rights of the BlackBerry PRIV is the fact that it runs Android 5.1 Lollipop. This means that all your worries about the apps available in BlackBerry’s app store has vanished, as you can simply head to Google's Play Store to explore the vast number of titles. The manufacturer has also added its security chops in the OS with features like DTEK, data encryption, etc. along with some nifty things such as pop-up widgets. You also get the brand’s one-stop communication platform dubbed BlackBerry Hub, bringing all the messages from messaging apps / email services at one place.

The DTEK app helps you in monitoring the security status of the smartphone. It also has a permission manager which lets you see what permissions an individual app has. However, unlike the implementation by Chinese manufacturers, it goes a step further by telling how many times a permission was accessed by a particular app.

 

We also liked the idea of pop-up widgets as the brand is expanding upon this useful concept. Instead of having them always there on a home screen (and thus consuming extra space), you can simply flick upon an app and it’ll offer a pop-up view. BlackBerry has opened its API to app developers for building this functionality and quite a few popular apps likeWhatsApp offer this capability.

As far as connectivity is concerned, the device supports 4G as well as the usual roster of options including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and NFC. Powering the show on the BlackBerry PRIV is an embedded 3,410mAh Li-ion battery. The smartphone also comes with Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 letting it charge quickly. The phablet is even compatible with wireless chargers, although they need to be purchased separately.

BlackBerry has failed to make a noticeable dent in the recent past possibly because it has been unable to change with times, especially when it comes to pricing. All its smartphones charge a premium, and the PRIV seems to have gone even a step further. It’s priced around Rs 62,990, which in our frank opinion, seems way too expensive even when we consider the overall package and BlackBerry’s promise of security. Additionally, at this price point, it’ll be up against the formidableApple iPhone 6s / 6s Plus (review) as well as the Samsung Galaxy Note5 (review).

The PRIV may very well be BlackBerry’s last chance to make a space for itself in the smartphone market, and we’ll surely be keeping an eye out to see if it's capable of doing that when we run it through our review gauntlet.