It’s a time when almost every smartphone looks the same, thanks to the trending design language. Apple launched the iPhone X last year and since then, the ‘notch’ design has more or less become the standard even among the Android phones.

However, over the past week, whenever I pull out this new phone from my pocket, either people around instantly and accurately recognise it or they go ‘wow’ and ask about it. I’m talking about Oppo’s yet another move to stay ahead of the competition with the launch of its new F9 Pro.

Design

Oppo is pushing design boundaries yet again with the Oppo F9 Pro, a phone with a ‘water droplet’ notch. A screen-to-body ratio of 90.8 percent pegs the new Oppo offering ahead of the industry benchmark, the iPhone X, in terms of design excellence. While Apple could not manage more than an 82-percent screen-to-body ratio, Oppo managed to fit in a massive 24 MP front camera, proximity, ambient light censor, as well as the speaker in a tiny droplet of space, leaving the rest for an edge-to-edge display experience. And with a brilliant 6.3-inch display, watching videos and playing games on the device is sheer pleasure without getting the feeling that you’re holding a phablet.

The IPS FHD+ display with a 2340 x 1080 p resolution offers one of the best displays in the segment, mostly comparable to phones a class above. The screen gets Corning Gorilla Glass 6 protection, but for the extra cautious lot, the phone comes with a separate screen protector already pasted on the screen — attention to detail in the packaging is commendable.

The design reinvention goes beyond the screen and you’ll find that the back panel is equally flaunt-worthy. The shimmering red-purple or blue-black diamond design, which shifts between the two colours at different angles, is surely an eye-catcher. The back panel looks so good that we had to keep the protective case away to allow the design to redeem itself in full glory.

Performance

Under the hood, the F9 Pro has a mid-segment Helio P60 chipset along with 6 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage (expandable).

And this is where it gets tricky for the F9 Pro. Just a week after its launch, Xiaomi’s Poco F1 has redefined the price for phones in this range, offering top specs at about ₹10,000 cheaper than the OnePlus 6. The Poco F1 comes with a Snapdragon 845 processor, which is the same processor found in Samsung’s Galaxy S9 and the OnePlus 6. And priced less than the Oppo F9 Pro, the Xiaomi phone does give some serious competition to the latter.

While there were no performance issues while running multiple apps on the device, the UI seems to have some lag issue even when no app is running in the background. That’s surprising for a phone with 6 GB of RAM and ample processing power. Oppo needs to optimise its ColorOS UI to take advantage of Android 8.1 Oreo running on the F9 Pro.

We experienced lags even in fingerprint and face recognition, which honestly was quite a bummer for a phone with such good specs.

Oppo’s biggest draw with the F9 Pro is its fast charger, promising two hours of talktime with just five minutes of charge. And that does live up to the hype. When we compared it to the OnePlus Dash charger, we found both almost exactly as fast. That probably has something to do with both brands belonging to the same parent group. Add to it the 3,500 mAh battery and you’ll forget carrying power banks. The SuperVOOC charging technology, as Oppo likes to call it, was also seen in the Lamborghini Edition of the Oppo Find X. It lets you play heavy-duty games like PUBG while being charged simultaneously without experiencing any excessive heating.

Camera

The F9 Pro follows the market trend of primary dual cameras with a fairly capable 16 MP sensor with f/1.8 aperture along with a 2 MP depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture. The overall camera performance was good, with minimal noise even in night shots. However, we noticed some lag in the autofocus, especially in portrait mode. There’s a vivid mode built into the camera app that turns up the saturation level of your pictures, making them pop out a bit without using an editing tool.

To appreciate the quality of pictures, you’ll need to zoom in and check the details. Those details, however, are a problem on the front camera that ends up showing all the blemishes on a user’s face. But of course there’s a beauty mode so you see a smooth, almost blemish-free face in every selfie.

A 25 MP sensor with an f/2.0 aperture ensures that the front camera does better than those I’ve seen on most other phones. Oppo has also added some new emojis to the camera app for the Snapchat fanatics. Overall, the ‘selfie expert’ lives up to its name with the Oppo F9 Pro.

Price: ₹25,990 (cheaper online)

Pros: Droplet notch, good design, fast charging, excellent selfie camera

Cons: Underpowered processor, lag in camera autofocus, bloated UI

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