The Chinese corporation known as Oppo have been making waves over the past few years with its no-nonsense and affordable smartphones that pack a mean punch in terms of design, usability and features. One smartphone that does stand out from the crowd is the Oppo F1s, a successor to the F1 and Oppo’s latest flagship device.
Known for its exceptional selfie-taking abilities, the F1s took Malaysia and the rest of the world by storm when it was released back in August 2016. But, whether it lives up to the expectations of being the self-proclaimed ‘Selfie Expert’ still remains to be seen.We took the F1s through a tour of our lab to see whether it has what it takes to stand up against the highly competitive and evolving smartphone market.
Capture Anything and Everything
Right off the bat, the F1s comes with a 13 megapixel primary camera with f2.2 aperture lens paired alongside phase detection autofocus and an LED flash. The secondary camera however, far outweighs the primary with 16 megapixels, f2.0 aperture lens and can record up to 1080p videos. Now, I’m not much of a selfie person – mainly because I’m not narcissistic – but I can see the appeal as to why people would have countless selfies saved in their album, to a certain extent at least.
For the sake of this review and for work, I had but no other choice to break my one rule – no selfies, ever (with the exception of a pretty girl were to ask me to take one then sure). What I liked about the front-facing camera – and I can’t believe I’m actually typing this – is the amount of features that come with it. From being able to choose between having a fair or rosy complexion to selecting between various filters, double exposure and also creating GIF animations. Word of caution to the men and women out there – if you’re ever considering on hitting up someone at the club or a bar that you know through social media, be sure to check what smartphone they’re carrying because they may very well be gorgeous on Instagram but something else entirely different in real life.
Before
After
As you can see from the two pictures above, the Before image is the F1s’ regular selfie camera while the After image is with the camera’s built-in Beauty feature (Fair or Rosy). Ultimately, it depends on how you would like to deceive your friends and followers. The Beauty camera also instantly removes any and all blemishes on your face, making you look much better than you do in real life (much like how beer goggles work).
*Editors Note* The girl used in the picture is not single and very much not available if anyone is thinking about that.
The collage above depicts the seven different filters that are pre-installed into the F1s selfie camera – Monochrome, Sweet, Memory, British (what?), Tokyo (seriously?!), Elegant and Fresh. Please do not mind the constipated face; it appeared when I first tested the camera out on myself where I thought I looked half-decent only to realise the Beauty effect was on.
Aside from testing out the selfie camera (and realising I am just not photogenic), I also played around with the primary camera on the F1s, which was a pleasant surprise as it performed much better than I expected. Although not as magnificent as the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, the iPhone 7 Plus or even the Huawei P9 Plus, the F1s does hold its own weight reasonably well as the camera quality does capture pretty decent pictures with enough detailing in the colour and focus of the subject.
Obligatory picture of food because I’m Asian like that.
Sadly, the F1s doesn’t perform very well during the night as most shots turned out grainy and noisy. However, the silver lining to my journey through the streets of Singapore in the middle of the night was the colour quality of the images, which turned out much better than I had hoped for.
To cap things off, I had to add a picture of my dog just to make everyone reading this go ‘awww’ or ‘ewww’, depending on your relationship with dogs.
Overall, I would say both the primary and selfie camera on the F1s performed much better than I had expected from them. Props to Oppo for actually pulling out all the stops with the F1s, making it an affordable smartphone with an above average camera.
Performance
First off, I would like to point out that the F1s comes with the Android Lollipop v5.1 OS paired with Oppo’s very own ColorOS v3.0.0i. Now, with that being said, I was fairly disappointed at the fact that Oppo decided to stick with the Lollipop and not keep up with the majority of the Android smartphones that are already on Marshmallow and some already on Nougat. However, it still does perform reasonably well as Oppo ensures there to be minimum bloatware on the device while still retaining core Android features.
I ran the F1s through two different benchmark tests – PCMark 8 as well as AnTuTu Benchmark tests.
The left screenshot was taken after running it through PCMark 8 and the screenshot on the right is from the AnTuTu Benchmark test. Sadly, these benchmark tests scored the F1s much lower than expected. When it comes to daily usability, I can’t say I’m overjoyed by its performance nor can I say I’m disappointed by it. It struck me as your run-of-the-mill smartphone that could be used to browse social media, stream videos and play games. There isn’t any outstanding feature of the F1s that makes it stand out and that’s where the camera comes into play.
One saving grace of the F1s would be it’s long-lasting battery that can last up to three days on a single charge! The downside is you would need to keep it in Low Power mode, which hinders its performance rather drastically. In any normal situation, the F1s could last up to between 10 – 13 hours before charging, which is pretty standard as most smartphones these days.
Design
At first glance, you wouldn’t be able to tell the F1s and the F1 apart due to them being eerily similar from the front. What I enjoyed most about the F1s was the slim bezel, allowing more room for the 5.5″ IPS LCD screen. The F1s also gets the bio-metric fingerprint scanner treatment, much to the dismay of F1 users. Overall, the F1s is a great device to have in your hands without slipping off your fingers thanks to its fit-to-palm figure.
Overall Thoughts
The F1s is going at a retail price of RM1,198, which is considered a really good deal seeing as you will mostly be paying for the performance of the camera and not for the device itself. I can see plenty of ‘models’ and ‘social media influencers’ getting their hands on the F1s solely because of its camera. Then again, I’m nowhere near being an ‘influencer’ so what would I know about which is the best smartphone for one to use *cough* iPhone 7 *cough*.
Specs
Price: RM1,198
Dimensions (HxWxD): 154.5 x 7.4 x 76 mm
Weight: 106g
Processor: Mediatek MT6755 or MTK7650
Memory: 3GB/4GB RAM
Storage: 32/64GB
Operating System: Android Lollipop v5.1 w/ ColorOS v3.0.0i
Display: +-5.5″ IPS LCD
Graphics: Mali-T860MP2
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot, Bluetooh v4.0
Score
Value – 10
Performance – 7
Features – 9
Design – 8
Usability – 8
Total: 8.4
Verdict: If you’re looking for an affordable-ish smartphone with an above-average camera paired with average performance ratings, the Oppo F1s is perfect for you.
