Oppo’s F7: Snap and beautify

How much selfie is too much selfie? Chinese company Oppo would likely say it’s never enough because in this evolution of its selfie phone, they’ve put in a 25 megapixels front camera, leaving the rear camera, which we can give up calling primary, to its 16 megapixels set up.

But more on that later. First of all, the F7 a good looking phone. It’s refreshing to see smartphones having a go at looking a bit different. The Oppo F7 comes in three colours - solar red, moonlight silver, and diamond black. I had the solar red and diamond black units to explore and really liked both colours. The red is a bit strong for some, but I liked it just as it was including the glossiness and the shine of light on the back. The diamond black has a fascinating pattern built in with large triangles that change colour and even look a dark blue when they reflect the light.

There are some grumbles around from those who complain that the back isn’t made of glass, but since it looks it, that didn’t really bother me a bit. If it can make the devices a bit lighter - and they seem to - why should one complain about the absence of glass? Plastic was only awful when it looked cheap and phone makers have long since got past that.

Like anything glossy, there’s the problem of fingerprint smudges and slipperiness, but that’s hardly just particular to the Oppo phone and holds true for most. The device has a 6.2 inch one but doesn’t feel too big and you can grip it quite well.

A notch above

An early adopter of the iPhone X’s notch, the F7 has plenty of screen space with barely-there bezels just about framing the 19:9 display. The notch can be sometimes ignored and sometimes be a cause for minor irritation, depending on what’s on the screen and how it’s utilising the space. If you’re trying to look at a wallpaper full-screen it will drive you mad, but if you’re watching a video in landscape you won’t know it’s there. The screen itself is pretty nice but it’s all arranged with apps instead of letting you choose what you want to put up front from the apps drawer.

Like almost all Chinese phone companies, Oppo has its own highly customised interface. It’s so full of settings and sub settings for you to add features to the phone that I feel this device is best in the hands of someone who’s comfortable tinkering with their phones, not just shooting selfies. They’ve thrown everything they could at it, from being able to use two sets of apps to smart gestures to multitasking. There are annoyances too such as not being able to quickly change wallpapers and and use widgets on the home screens, too many notifications and ones that aren’t easy to dismiss...

I didn’t find a huge difference between the two variants, one that has 6GB of RAM and the other that has 4GB. With 128GB and 64GB of storage. Even technical benchmarks yield very similar scores. What powers the F7 variants is a MediaTek Helio P60, an octa-core chipset meant to handle artificial intelligence tasks, they say. In any case, it works smooth all the way.

Where the AI comes into play on this phone is on the front camera. All those megapixels in a Sony sensor - 25 to be exact - are aimed at shooting you nice and clear. You have an aperture of f/2.0 to work with and the rear camera is a 16 megapixel shooter with an f/1.8 aperture. Everything is fine in good light, though maybe on the slightly saturated side. The front camera can sometimes result in over exposed looking images, depending not the light. The AI kicks in to make various subtle improvements to your face, if you like that sort of thing. Phone cameras seem to be the new Fair & Lovely.

The rear camera also uses AI for scene recognition and post processing of images to make the most of or enhance what you’re shooting. I’m not very fond of this trend and prefer to have my photos untampered with, but an increasing number of phones are trying to do the job for you.

Oppo has put it just about everything Indian users like - dual SIM, micro-SD slot, FM radio, a good battery (3,400mAh) and a whole lot of features. For a mid-range phone, the F7 offers quite a lot.

Price: ₹21,990 and ₹26,990

Pros: Comes in an interesting distinctive style, great display, light and ergonomically friendly, fast performance, Android 8.1, good camera, very feature filled

Cons: Dense settings may put off novices, a few interface annoyances, 6GB variant works out a little expensive, uses older USB port

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