OPPO F3 Review

Introduction To OPPO F3:

OPPO has grown impressively in the last year, a brand that was a just a newcomer in 2015 has now taken the Pakistani smartphone market by storm. In 2016, the company took the selfie craze to the next level by launching the F1s smartphone. With its excellent design, build quality and front selfie camera, OPPO managed to set some new standards for the mid-range smartphone category.

This year is not so different at all, OPPO kick-started the year by Launching the F3 Plus in march which was the first smartphone by the company featuring dual front selfie cameras and now we have the new OPPO F3 which is the latest addition to the Selfie Expert series having dual front camera setup. Featuring 4 GB RAM, 64 GB ROM, Fingerprint sensor, and  16MP + 8Mp front facing dual camera setup the new selfie expert is said to snap some amazing wide-angle 120-degree selfies. Just in case if you prefer watching videos over a written content and are not into reading the lengthy reviews then you can watch the Video Review below discussing each point in detail.

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Specs Sheet of OPPO F3:

Design of F3:

The Oppo F3 comes in a typical Oppo design, much like the Oppo F1s from last year and features the same iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s looks. The machine has a solid unibody metal design with smooth rounded edges and slim antenna lines on top and bottom of the rear panel. The back is a bit curved, notably around the edges and the Rear camera protrudes slightly at the back which gets a bit annoying while placing your phone on plain hard surfaces. No doubt the Handset is very slim, elegant and high end but we are still missing that innovative and unique design that OPPO had done in the past with N or Find series.

On the front side, black borders on the screen edges are minimalist, covered by a 2.5D glass which makes the screen feel overflowing on the edges. Like the OPPO F1s, it also has a capacitive touch home button just below the screen which doubles as a fingerprint sensor.

The one-touch fingerprint sensor is surrounded by the capacitive keys for back and multi-tasking. Just a touch on the scanner and it’ll let you in, you don’t need to press it like on F1s. The scanning speed is pretty fast as it unlocks the phone under a second. 

The power button and SIM tray are placed on the right side while the Volume keys are placed on the left.

The gadget’s Three in One SIM tray will also support two standard Nano SIM cards along with a shared memory card. Unfortunately, Oppo is not equipped with a USB Type-C port on this device, while many recently released competing for products such as Samsung Galaxy A5 2017 has it.

3.5mm audio jack, Micro USB port, and speaker grill are all conveniently placed down below,  at the very bottom. so there won’t be any problem while using the earphones and charging at the same time.

In general, the Oppo F3’s design impresses from the front, the double-edged bezel on the sides is optimized to create a visual effect that makes the phone look even slimmer. However, the rear lacks innovation and does not escape the iPhone-like feeling despite the appearance of small antenna bands.

F3’s Display: 

OPPO F3 boasts a 5.5-inch IPS LCD screen having a Full-HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, protected by Gorilla Glass 5. The pixel density of F3 is also good at 401 ppi. The display generates some crisp and sharp colors, with adequate brightness levels and has good viewing angles. 

The F3 screen has a maximum brightness of up to 500 nits, which is higher than many of the recently launched smartphone. It’s a key factor that should have made the screen look better outdoors but despite that F3’s display is not that bright to tackle the direct sunlight. Contrast and blacks are quite deep. However, some colors such as blue and red deviate from the standard which seems like to be done deliberately to refine the overall colors and to make the colors look more pleasant. F3 also features the ‘eye protect mode‘ which filters the blue light of the screen to protect your eyesight and preserves your natural sleep cycle.

Performance:

F3 by OPPO comes equipped with an integrated 1.5 GHz Octa-core MediaTek processor, Paired with  Mali T860-MP2 GPU, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal memory. The memory can be further expanded up to a whopping 256GB with help of a micro SD card.

Just because F3 has mid-range specifications on paper, really does not means its a dropper. It’s certainly not going to win any race relying on the benchmarks but in reality, OPPO’s F3 is a performer and at the end, this is what that matters.

In real life, every operation on the phone runs smoothly. OPPO F3  is able to handle any heavy graphics game thrown at it without any problem. 4GB of RAM makes it a good multitasking machine. However, the phone gets heated up after about an hour of continuous heavy gaming such as NOVA 3 or Dead Trigger 2 or even while taking pictures or making videos. Nevertheless, the metal body helps a lot to cool it down quickly. The 3200 mAh battery lets you play longer without having to charge the phone again and again.

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Moving on to the connectivity, the F3 packs 4G LTE, 3G, GPRS, GPS/A-GPS, GLONASS, Bluetooth 4.1 and micro USB with OTG support. The lack of USB C in today’s modern age is, however, a downer.

OPPO’s F3 features a top-notch speaker that ensures a loud and clear sound while listening to the music or playing games even when the volume is set to the max.

Software:

OPPO mobile F3 runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Color OS 3.0 UI on top which is kind of a mixed bag. Don’t get excited as there’s not much new in the OS in terms of the features if compared to its predecessor the F1s. But at the same time, we must admit that COLOR OS is one of the lightest and snappiest UI  that we’ve encountered, smooth as silk with no ugly transitions. Stock apps are thoughtfully designed in a pleasant teal color tone. The F3’s default OS doesn’t come with an app drawer which obviously means that you’d need to install a third-party launcher to better organize all of your apps at one place.

Accessing the notifications is a two step tedious process and the biggest irritant so far, you need to pull down the quick toggle screen first and then swipe left to reach the notifications tray. It’s pretty unnatural and makes it hard to updated. Moreover, F3 is stuffed with a pile of built-in stock apps with 2 sets of almost everything one from the Google and one from OPPO whether its the browser, photo gallery or music player. Security center is where F3 packs most of its cleaning utilities. Here, you can boost your performance by clearing up the RAM and cache, can also preset the privacy permissions, and even do a virus scan, which is powered by Avast.

Cameras:

With F3 , Oppo’s focus is once again on the Selfie Camera so eventually, the OPPO F3 will be assessed by its camera, especially by the dual camera setup on the front. After all, it’s a Selfie Expert, right?  

The F3 is equipped with a 16.0 MP primary front camera with f/2.0 aperture and an 8MP secondary camera with a 120-degree wide angle lens. Same kind of dual front camera with a super-wide angle lens can also be found on the LG V10, but Oppo’s dual-camera system offers a higher resolution with the ability to achieve bokeh effect to add a depth of field.

The front dual camera is impressive indeed. You can easily switch between the portrait and wide-angle shots. Selfies snapped in well-lit conditions are crispy and vivid and clearly steps above the front cameras of other smartphones at this price range. The beautification software of F3 is just perfect, there aren’t any lags and it’s quite responsive as compared to other beautification apps.

Camera app comes loaded with numerous modes and features i.e Selfie, screen flash, Panorama, Palm shutter and smart facial recognition. OPPO seems to have nailed the whole Selfie thing as you can now add more people in your selfies, apply bokeh and add context and story. However, the shots with the Wide Angle Camera sometimes look more like selfies taken with Go Pro Action Camera, with little distortion at the edges. Though Bokeh effect works well in most situations but sometimes it also mistakenly blurs the hair or other body parts.

13MP camera on the back is not as exciting but still, manages to produce some sharp and vivid photos though it strives a bit in low lighting conditions. The camera app is blazing fast and the sensor is quick and snappy with no lags what so ever.

Overall, where the front dual camera setup is able to set up some new selfie trends, the rear camera is just about average.

Battery:

F3 truly shines when it comes to the battery life, despite being a slim device from OPPO it still manages to tuck in a 3200 mAh battery inside its belly. The back cover is non-removable. The battery is more than enough to blaze through the day but the bad news is that this phone does not supports VOOC charging which means that you’ll not be able to fast charge the F3. Leaving the OPPO F3 ON over night with data-standby drains about 7 to 9% of the battery which means there aren’t any bloatware consuming your precious battery.

We kept the screen continuously on for about 3.5-4 hours while playing “Run Sheeda Run”, Subway surfer, browsing WhatMobile and Facebook and had around 17% of battery juice still left after a complete work day of 12 hours, not bad right? but do note that the actual usage depends on a lot of factors including but not limited to the Signal strength, number of calls, screen on time and how much and what type of apps you use.

Conclusion:

F3 is one of  OPPO’s best product in more than a year. The handset brings together all the elements that are worth experiencing, such as solid build, beautiful design, large-screen, Bright and vivid display, good battery life and best of all its dual front camera setup that you could easily rely on for some amazing selfies. Though some minor drawbacks are there but these can easily be ignored as F3 comes with some powerful configurations that satisfy most of your entertainment and work related needs.

We can’t help it but say, this one’s definitely a keeper. The handset looks and feels so stylish that it could leave many competing smartphones in its dust. At 34,899/-, this level of craftsmanship is practically a steal.

OPPO F3 is now available in Pakistan. For more details regarding Specs & price please see OPPO F3 Price in Pakistan

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