Oppo’s ‘Selfie-Expert’ series smartphones come with Beautify software that enhances a user’s photos artificially. Following on the footsteps of vivo, Oppo has now launched a smartphone with dual front camera set-up. Oppo F3 Plus bears the same design language, we saw on the F1, F1s and F1 Plus, except for the screen size, which is now bigger at 6-inches.
Unique about the dual camera on the front when compared to the vivo V5 Plus which incidentally also sports dual selfie cameras Well, the V5 Plus uses the secondary camera to capture depth information à la the iPhone 7 Plus and shoot images with increased depth in the background. OPPO has decided to go the wide angle route for its dual front camera just like the rear cameras on the LG V20 and the LG G6. The OPPO F3 Plus’ secondary camera on the front offers a 120-degree wide angle view.
Battle of dual selfie camera smartphones
Selfies aside, this time around the phone also packs in a more powerful Snapdragon processor and is a tad bigger too. Here’s my in-depth review of the OPPO F3 Plus.
Specfication:
The OPPO F3 Plus features a 6-inch full HD display with 2.5D Gorilla Glass 5 protection on top. Under the hood, it runs Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 653 quad-core processor paired with Adreno 510 GPU. In terms of memory, the OPPO F3 Plus comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage.
The smartphone is fuelled by a 4,000mAh battery and is equipped with the company’s VOOC charging technology. On the software front, the OPPO F3 Plus runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Color OS 3.0 layered on top. The connectivity options offered by the smartphone include Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 4G, VoLTE, and dual-SIM. Speaking about competition, the OPPO F3 Plus The smartphone is priced at Rs 27,980. The other smartphones that the OPPO F3 Plus would compete with at this price segment include the OnePlus 3T priced at Rs 29,999 and the Honor 8 which is priced at Rs 29,999.
Design:
The Oppo F3 plus offers a good metal build along with a simplistic design. While the rear of the device will remind of the iPhone 6S Plus, the front looks very similar to the Google Pixel XL. But none of these top end smartphone have got dual lens front camera which tries to offer D-SLR-like selfies.Top left corner on the rear you can find the camera and a single LED flash module as well. OPPO uses a six-string antenna design (three strings at the bottom and three strings on top) on the rear. The Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro used a similar pattern. Curiously, OPPO has decided to go with a micro-USB port and not USB Type-C, but I guess it has something to do with VOOC fast charging tech. The fingerprint scanner is placed on the home button below the display and it unlocks the phone incredibly fast. The power button is on the right whereas the volume buttons are on the left, and all the buttons offer decent tactile feedback. Also, the phone uses a hybrid SIM tray which means that you will have to sacrifice one of the SIM slots in case you want to add a memory card.
The device gets an all-aluminium body with antenna bands at the back, which is also slightly curved, aiding a better grip. The device is 7.35mm thin and weighs a little over 185g.
Display:
The Oppo F3 Plus comes with a 6-inch fullHD IPS LCD display. While a 1080p resolution panel sounds disappointing on paper in the day and age of big QuadHD displays, it has crisp and sharp colors, good viewing angles and adequate brightness levels.
As with most IPS displays, the blacks are not as deep as I would have liked and the colors are not as vivid as what you seen on an AMOLED screen. The Oppo F3 Plus also comes with an 'eye protect mode', which basically acts as a blue light filter for the display and helps alleviate eye strain at night. But as noted earlier, the light for the capacitive keys bleeds into the bottom of the display which is annoying when you are using the phone in a dark room.
Camera: crowd control
Coming to the camera quality of the Oppo F3 Plus, the device offers excellent selfies under good lighting conditions. It also comes with a screen flash feature (first introduced in iPhone 6S) to brighten selfies taken under low light. Overall, this is no doubt one of the best selfie phones. It would have been great if Oppo would have added a LED Flash in the front as well.
OPPO has you covered. With the secondary 8MP camera attached to a 120 degree wide angle lens, you can fit your entire group of friends and maybe even more. While OPPO claims that the algorithm has been tuned to reduce image distortion, it is physically impossible to entirely eliminate distortion. You will notice that the edges show an evident lens distortion and there is some softness too .
The 16MP rear camera is capable of producing good images. With “Expert Mode” users have the flexibility to shoot as per their requirements. The primary 16MP camera can also shoot decent low-light selfies without the need for a screen flash thanks to the f/2.0 aperture, which lets in a decent amount of light. A dedicated Beauty mode is also available for folks who had like to pretty up their faces. Lest I forget, you can also use the second camera to shoot wide angle videos in 1080p.
Battery:
Oppo F3 is running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Oppo’s custom ColorOS 3.0 skin on top. The device is powered by a 4000mAh battery and supports Oppo’s proprietary VOOC Flash Charging technology, which promises to deliver 2 hours of talk time in 5 minutes of charge. The device charges using a microUSB port.
Pros:
Pros:
- Good stuff
- Dual front cameras
- Stellar battery life
- Good build quality
- Bad stuff
- Average rear camera
- Software lacks polish
- High price
Performance:
The Oppo F3 Plus smartphone is powered by a 1.95 GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor with 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The device supports microSD cards of up to 256GB. It runs Android 6.0-based ColorOS 3.0 interface. Overall, the phone is made to cater to the needs of power users and delivers well on multitasking front as well. The same problem we had reported in the F1 Plus persists here as well: apps that have a lock icon in the multitasking carousel cannot be closed without unlocking it first. I don’t know how the software determines which apps are meant to be locked by default. Furthermore, during my testing period, the top rear part of the phone turned hot when I was downloading and updating more than a couple of apps from the Play Store. This is something I experienced with the Galaxy C9 Pro as well and therefore it would be safe to assume that it is a Snapdragon 653 issue.
The handsets supports Reliance Jio VoLTE for both voice and data.Difference in sound quality when paired with my Shure SE215 reference earphones. But I think personal mileage could vary depending on the earphones / headphones used. In phone calls I noticed that the sound from the earpiece was slightly muffled when compared to Lenovo, Motorola, or Samsung phones. But, the microphone quality is good and the person at the other end of the call had no complaints. Even the 4G performance on Airtel was stable throughout.
Verdict:
If you are into a lot of selfies and want a perfect smartphone to flaunt yourself on social media than the Oppo F3 Plus is ideal choice. While smartphone brands mostly focus on the rear camera, the Oppo F3 Plus differs with dual lens front camera for providing “D SLR” selfies. It is no doubt one of the best selfie camera smartphones for Rs 30,990. Apart from the camera performance, the Oppo F3 Plus manages to offer a pleasing overall experience. However, when it comes to flaunting a smartphone for the price of Rs 30,000, the Honor 8 or OnePlus 3T is definitely more appealing.
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