Oppo F1 Plus first impressions: A 16MP front camera to beat most rear cameras

Oppo has launched the upgrade to its mid-range Oppo F1 in the form of the Oppo F1 Plus, which comes with a 16MP front facing camera, making it one of the first cameras to have a higher megapixel count on the front camera than on the rear camera. The Oppo F1 Plus is priced at Rs 26,990 and will be selling from mid-April onwards. We spent some time with the device post the launch and here are our first impressions. Build and Design Oppo has gone with a metallic build for the Oppo F1 Plus. It comes in three colors - silver, gold and Rose. The rounded edges ensure that the phone has a good grip and despite the metallic build, isn’t very slippery. It measures 6.6mm thick.  The front face has a 5.5inch FullHD AMOLED display and it has really slim side bezels (at just 1.66mm thick). But one handed operation is a bit awkward. The top and bottom bezels are comparatively thicker. There’s a home button at the base which also a the ceramic fingerprint sensor inside it. While the left hand side has the volume rocker button, the right hand side has the power/standby button and the dual hybrid SIM card tray. At the lower end you have the speaker grill section, micro USB data transfer/charging port and the 3.5mm audio jack. On the rear you have the Oppo branding embossed on the centre and there’s a 13MP rear camera located on the top left hand corner. The camera protrudes out slightly. All in all, the Oppo F1 Plus has a pleasant design and just like it’s other phones, it maintains the slim form factor. Display The Oppo F1 Plus comes with a 5.5inch FullHD AMOLED display. While the text looks sharp and the colours appeared vibrant, we found that the brightness levels weren’t that great in sunlight, although we didn’t notice any colour tinge on the phone. We need to use the phone extensively to arrive at a proper verdict regarding that.  Chipset, RAM, Storage Oppo F1 Plus houses the MediaTek Helio P10 chipset (MT6755) which has an octa core processor clocked at 2.0GHz. This is paired with 4GB of RAM. In terms of storage you get 64GB out of which around 53GB is usable. You can expand the storage using a microSD card to up to 128GB. The Oppo F1 Plus was quite responsive and we did not face any noticeable lag while using it. But we have to use it for a longer period of time, play games, test the camera to see how the performance holds up. The system uses around 10.11GB of space which is quite a lot but with 64GB storage that’s not really an issue. A lot of people will like the fact that Oppo F1 Plus lets you expand the storage.  OS, Connectivity The Oppo F1 Plus comes with Android 5.1 OS along with the colorOS 3.0 skin atop it. The colorOS 3.0 skin is a major departure from colorOS 2.0 in terms of design language and also comes preloaded with much less bloatware, which is a good sign. Two of the main features of colorOS 3.0 include Sleep Power Saving mode (which is similar to Android M Doze Mode) and Personalised cleaning mode (which automatically cleans trash). Even app icons have now got a refreshed look, some of them looking quite similar to iOS app icons. In terms of connectivity you have a hybrid dual SIM card slot, WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0 and more.  Camera, Battery This is one of the only phones that we have seen, which has a higher megapixel count on the front camera than the rear camera. The Oppo F1 Plus’ standout feature is its 16MP front facing camera which comes with a custom sensor which  Oppo has worked on to improve sensitivity and cut down on noise. We shall have to test it out in various lighting conditions to be able to comment on it. There is also a Beautify 4.0 feature to go with the front camera which Oppo claims is less aggressive with the digital makeup features. On the rear side you have a 13MP camera. The camera user interface hasn’t changed much from the Oppo F1 except for the updated Beauty mode. The phone is capable of shooting up to full HD video. There is a 2850mAh battery housed inside the phone which is non removable. Just like it’s predecessors the Oppo F1 Plus also supports VOOC flash charging technology.  Conclusion Oppo F1 Plus comes with a unique feature which has the front facing camera as a better showpiece than the rear camera. It looks good and has decent specs. The colorOS 3.0 is refreshing. But at a Rs 26,900 pricing will it’s overall performance justify the pricing? We will have to wait and thoroughly review the phone to give a complete verdict on that.