 "Oppo Find 7 review: Great design and stunning display, but poor battery life")
Oppo might still be a relatively unheard of brand for many but for those who’ve used their products will attest to the high standards of build quality, right down to their budget offerings. So far we’ve seen the **N1**, **Joy** and even had a go at the R1 and Find 5 mini. Even though all fall in very different price brackets, the stellar build and attention to detail has never failed to impress.
Today, we have the flagship Find 7 with us, which is available in a slightly cheaper variant called the Find 7a, sans the Quad HD display. Priced much lower than most current flagships with the same hardware, can the Oppo Find 7 find its way into the hands of those looking for a capable flagship on a budget?
Design and Build
The Find 7 has a plastic chassis but manages to feel every bit as premium as you’d expect a flagship to be. It’s quite slim at 9.2mm but a bit on the heavier side at 171g. The weight is evenly distributed however throughout the phone and it sits well in your hand no matter which way you hold it. The bezel is also incredibly thin which gives the illusion of all-screen.
The Find 7 still uses capacitive buttons for navigating the menu but we found the backlighting to be rather insufficient. The back cover has a microscopic chequered pattern, which is only noticeable once held. It offers some amount of grip when held though, which is nice. We also have a 13MP shooter and dual-LED flash combo in the back.
Quick Reads
View AllThe party piece of the Find 7 is the Quad HD, 5.5-inch display which is stunning to say the least. The brightness level is really good as well and is easily legible under sunlight. While the increased pixel density isn’t immediately discernable, it’s definitely one of the sharpest around.
Features
The Find 7 runs on the same Colour OS that we’ve seen on previous Oppo phones. This heavily modified version of Android runs absolutely smoothly and is one of the best skins out there in terms of functionality. You can customise the look by switching between different themes as well.
The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, running at 2.5GHz. The Quad HD display version comes with an extra helping of RAM bringing the total up to 3GB. There’s also double the onboard storage at 32GB which is expandable further up to 128GB. Looking at the benchmarks, it’s easy to see that the Find 7 is every bit as good as the established brands, if not better.
We had a slight issue with the auto-brightness however which wasn’t very consistent when moving from dark to bright areas. Also, in complete darkness, the screen is simply too bright for comfortable viewing and you have to manually lower the brightness.
Media
Media playback is very good and the Find 7 has a very loud speaker. Even at minimum volume, it sounds as if it’s at sixty percent. This can be quite annoying at times, especially in office environments. The music player is pretty slick and we get sounds enhancements from Waves MaxxAudio. You can choose from a list of presets or customise it yourself.
Connectivity
The Find 7 supports LTE and quad-band 3G and 2G. Other features include Wi-Fi ‘n’, Bluetooth v4.0, NFC, GPS and GLONASS. We’re missing Wi-Fi ‘ac’ here, which has become standard on high-end phones. There are plenty of productivity apps built-in like file manager and more.
Camera
This one packs in a 13MP camera in the back and a 5MP shooter in the front. Both feature an f/2.0 aperture which means you’ll be able to capture good low-light shots. The user interface has been heavily modified as well with plenty of more options added. Apart from slow shutter mode which we first saw in the N1, the Find 7 can also shoot in RAW.
Thanks to the beefed-up CPU, 4K video is also possible as well as 1080p at 60fps. Image quality is pretty good and phone is very snappy when it comes to focussing speed and saving an image.
Battery life
This version of the Find 7 packs in a 3000mAh battery but even that’s not enough to deliver good battery life. Compared to the G3, which had a similar screen and battery, the Find 7 drains its battery far more quickly and the main culprit is the display. **The phone also lacks LG’s enhancements like Graphic RAM**, which all help in prolonging battery life. You’ll be able to get through the day on a single charge with nominal use but use the screen or the camera too much and battery life goes for a toss.
Verdict and Price in India
The Oppo Find 7 is priced at Rs 37,990 which seems like good value at first when you factor in the Quad HD display. However, we feel the Find 7a makes more practical sense. Not only is it quite a bit cheaper, you also get a regular Full HD display, which shouldn’t impact battery life as much.
Rest of the specifications are more or less the same, which makes it a good alternative to the Nexus 5. If you’re dying to spend upwards of Rs 35,000 however, then **we recommend the Samsung Galaxy S5 instead.**
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