Let's FACE it – How the latest Selfie Expert stacks up against four times costlier flagships

A good front camera has become an integral part of any smartphone. It is as important as the processor running inside, for what’s the use of a phone with a hefty processor, if the life it captures (and the face within) is full of low-resolution, darkness, and noise. In this age of technology, it doesn’t make sense to blindingly spend half-a-lakh rupees on a phone that doesn’t specifically give you what you want most from your phone. A simple example is a person who has a habit of recording everything wherever he travels – what you have at the end of your life are memories that you can share with your friends and family and feel proud about people you have met, places you have been to and things you have accomplished. A good front camera on your phone is essential for recording all that. Many flagships compare with OPPO F1s but none comes close to the quality OPPO F1S can offer. This is not just a blind statement but a fact that can be proven without much effort. Let’s start with an outdoor selfie. Outdoor – low light The selfies were taken on a cool evening under shade, so the light wasn’t very good for a front camera to work a marvel out. As visible in the pictures, Samsung Galaxy S7 and Nexus 6P do a fairer job than their costlier iOS counterpart the iPhone 6s be it the brightness or the overall resolution. The OPPO F1s also captures colors and skin tones only too well. It reads a good amount of light off the face and even the tree in the background is vividly visible which means pixels stay intact when you zoom in. C: From left to right, iPhone 6s, Galaxy S7, Nexus 6P and OPPO F1s At the heart of any camera, be it a point-and-shoot, DSLR or mirrorless camera, is a sensor. It captures light from the outside world, converts it into small electrical impulses and sends it to a processor that creates the digital photo. The reason why OPPO F1s selfie doesn’t appear to be low on light as does that of the Apple iPhone 6s (or as pixelated when zoomed in a little or edited) is because  has its backed by a 16MP sensor to capture every single detail. That’s more than ten times that of a similarly priced iPhone and twice that of any latest flagship like the Samsung Galaxy S7, Nexus 6P or iPhone 6s. Outdoor – bright light In fine ambient light, all phones do well. But in extreme lighting conditions, things get quirky. But what happens when you work against those conditions to take a selfie? In the next cluster of pictures, front cameras are held against the face and also against a bright light in the background, posing a hard challenge. Clearly the light was too bright for the iPhone 6s front shooter, it brightened the whole frame in a bid to increase light on the face. OPPO F1s does a decent job (and so does Ms four paws) as what needs to be captured is clearly visible and the sky color is okayish. Nexus 6P takes the best sky of all though the focus was set to the face. C: From left to right, iPhone 6s, Galaxy S7, Nexus 6P and OPPO F1s The Galaxy S7 plays in a similar manner as the iPhone. Though the sky is visible, can’t say it, about the faces. The selfie has a blasted background light giving it a heavenly feel, while you try to make out the faces. A higher number of megapixels on a camera don’t always imply a better photo. In fact, higher the amount of pixels increase noise in most cases. But maybe due to a large sensor size, OPPO F1s front camera could capture details without overdoing light. To be exact, it has a 1/3.1 inch sensor, which is almost as large as Apple iPhone’s main (rear) camera! A big sensor not only helps stabilize the extra pixels but its light and colour capturing capability is way beyond a sensor with conventional size, even if it had these many pixels. It also has lower noise as the pixels are wide spaced – the possibility that the image processor will be reading random brightness or colour variation is drastically reduced. Indoors Many-a-times it’s not only the camera that you shoot with, but also the environment that you shoot a photo in. The light could be dim or it could be too bright in an otherwise dark environment. The iPhone 6S and Galaxy S7 cameras shoot taking the environment into consideration, brightening the photo too much by cranking up the ISO, exposure or with software processed brightness. C: From left to right, iPhone 6s, Galaxy S7, Nexus 6P and OPPO F1s OPPO F1s and Nexus 6P both keep it natural. Though they do increase the overall brightness of the frame a little, the real look of the Selfie stays affected. The skin tones look real like their respective outdoor images and are way better than what the flagships click. Night photo What if there is almost no light to let into the camera, or a very irregular stream of lights disturbing your selfie? The following shots were taken in a dimly lit park at night, a mimicked situation of a late night party. Cameras increase sensor’s light sensitivity in these situations that often results in a grainy picture. That is exactly what iPhone 6s capture, while the Galaxy S7 wipes out foreground and background details – a sign of software over-processing. Aperture of a camera plays a big role when taking low light shots. It is an opening that sits between camera sensor and the lens to control light falling on the sensor. The maximum it can open is denoted by a number mentioned in the specifications – smaller the f/number, wider the aperture will be. iPhone 6S has a f/2.2 aperture and the Nexus 6P has an even smaller f/2.4 aperture. In very dim lighting conditions, the OPPO F1s doesn’t use software to brighten the photo it just lets more light in.   C: From left to right, iPhone 6s, Galaxy S7, Nexus 6P and OPPO F1s Still, with the help of large pixel size, Nexus 6P maintains good visibility of the face by capturing more light. But reddens the whole frame (could be a processing issue) OPPO F1s also captures good details but without disturbing the actual light to the greatest extent. The texture of the skin is maintained even in such low light, and there is no mention of noise whatsoever. OPPO also deploys a cheat here. As soon as the shutter button is clicked, the 5.5 inch display on OPPO F1s blasts a flood of white light, adding a bit more light to the face. The shutter has a timer to it to make sure there is no need to compose, pose, compose again and reach for the shutter to click; with timer, all can be done in one go to capture a more natural expression – something that people love in a selfie. Group photos – the wide lens OPPO F1s has a selfie panorama option that you won’t find in an iPhone. Generally, a selfie stick would be required to capture a group selfie, to distance the camera enough to make room for all. Like with a normal panorama shot that is captured by rotating the camera end to end, a selfie. But since except Galaxy S7, none of the other two had the same mode group selfies in normal mode are compared here. A wide angle lens is able to capture a wide field of view. It’s clear from the pictures below that OPPO F1s has the widest front camera, the Galaxy S7 and the Nexus 6P follow closely and the iPhone 6s trails behind. C: From left to right, iPhone 6s, Galaxy S7, Nexus 6P and OPPO F1s OPPO F1s also plays its software part effectively. It is installed with the latest enhancement tool – the Beautify 4.0 that reduces blemishes in a more natural way, if you ever needed to. The feature can be turned on at will, or selected to work at varying levels of beautification. When it comes to front camera, we found OPPO F1s to be the Usain Bolt of smartphones. It not only beats its competition, but beats them by a great margin, effortlessly. It’s not a secret that the phone carries the best front camera one can have on his/her smartphone. At almost one-fourth the price of iPhone 6s, OPPO F1s captures stunning selfies be it any light condition, time or place. For those who love taking selfies, recording the journey of their life, nothing beats the Selfie Expert OPPO F1s. This is a promoted post.