We had first heard about Oppo a little more than a year ago when rumours about the unheard-of-before company developing a rotating camera was doing the rounds. About two weeks ago, the Chinese company entered the Indian market with its brand new smartphone, the Oppo N1. Usually, yet another Chinese brand entering the market wouldn’t make the news, but Oppo has a couple of neat little tricks under the hood that made everyone get up and take notice, including us.
At 5.9-inches, the Oppo N1 sports a tall, slim profile and is definitely a handful. The screen which is a full-HD one looks bright and vivid and is a delight to read books and watch videos on. With its 377 pixel per inch (ppi) Gorilla Glass 3 display, The Oppo N1 beats the likes of the Apple iPhone 5s (326 pixel).
In what can be seen as a unique departure from most other mobile phones, the rear panel of the Oppo N1 is a lot more interesting than the fascia. The back panel of the Oppo N1 is touch-sensitive, the touch panel featuring a proprietary O-Touch interface which can be used to scroll documents or Web pages.
But hands-down the most interesting aspect of the N1 is its rotatable 13-megapixel camera, which doubles up as the front and rear camera. The camera is equipped with a dual flash – a normal and diffused – for softer lighting effect. The diffused flash’s brightness is user-adjustable. We tried the snapper to see how good it really is and the first thing that stands out is its low-light performance. The camera compensates well in dimly lit conditions, incorporating more light into the image. The only downside to this is the image turns out to be quite grainy. In well-lit conditions, the photos are decently captured but a couple of times we had trouble with the focus. With some indoor shots, we would tap to focus but it would take 2-3 attempts to get the camera to focus right and not get a blurry image. This did not happen with outdoor shots.
Another aspect of the Oppo N1 that we absolutely loved was the keyboard. Not only is it highly accurate, when you type on it, it almost feels “soft”. In more ways than one Oppo N1’s keyboard could easily be the equivalent of a ThinkPad keyboard.
PerformanceWith a screen as massive and a feature-loaded interface, it’s a good thing that the company has packed in a 3,610mAh battery to power the handset. The smarpthone itself runs on a quad-core 1.7 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 mobile chipset, the same processor that powers the HTC One. With a 2 GB RAM it’s difficult to catch the phone slowing down or failing to multitask at any point in time. No wonder then that the Oppo N1 scored a super impressive 9685 points on our Quadrant Standard Benchmarking test, scoring higher than the likes of the LG Optimus G Pro.
The Oppo N1 looks fresh (despite its massive display), packs in a bunch of interesting features and doesn’t compromise on tech specs. For a first launch from the brand, we’re definitely impressed by the Oppo N1.
₹39,999
Love – Great display, decent battery life, innovative features
Hate – Massive form factor