OPPO F1 Plus Selfie Expert [Review]

Unboxing of OPPO F1 Plus

Unboxing experience of the OPPO F1 Plus isn’t exactly extraordinary. It comes in a pretty standard cardboard box which has the phone in front while all the accessories lay just below it.

Design & Build Quality

OPPO F1 Plus has the same great build quality that we have come to expect from the flagship OPPO devices. It is only 6.6 mm thick and has a minimal bezel design which gives this 5.5″ phablet an easily manageable profile. Not to forget, back-side of the F1 Plus is made of the silk metal which we have seen on the OPPO R7 and OPPO F1 smartphones. Not only does it feel good to the touch but it also makes the OPPO F1 Plus a solid device.

Design language of the OPPO F1 Plus is quite highly influenced from the iPhone 6S. This is quite easily noticeable when looking at the back-side of the F1 Plus. In fact, we wouldn’t blame you if you find the OPPO F1 Plus and the iPhone 6S to be almost identical.

Oval home button on the front of the F1 Plus has a fingerprint sensor concealed within it. This probably is the best fingerprint sensor implementation to date because not only is it accurate but it is quite faster than what we have seen on the Apple iPhone, Huawei Mate series and Samsung Galaxy devices. It can rarely act out but other than that, we were totally impressed by how fast it is in taking you from screen off to the home screen (specifically, it takes around 0.2 seconds to do so).

Performance & Battery

OPPO F1 Plus has a Mediatek Helio P10 2.0GHz (Octa-core) processor and a 4GB RAM at its center. Moreover, it has a dual-core Mali-T860 GPU and 64GB of built-in storage with expansion option of up to 128GB using a microSD card (which uses the SIM card 2 slot).

In our experience with the device, Helio P10 Octa-core CPU is capable enough to perform all day-to-days tasks quite effortlessly and we have never had it halt while performing resource hungry operations either.

Thank to the 4 gigs of RAM that the F1 Plus packs, switching between running applications has always been seamless as well. Although a dual-core GPU doesn’t seem much these days, but our mobile gaming experience on the F1 Plus wasn’t that bad. It ran games like Asphalt 8 and Need for Speed without any hiccups.

Unfortunately, since the F1 Plus has a Mediatek chipset it’s benchmark scores are below average and not exactly what you’d expect from an octa-core processor.

Moving onto the battery, F1 Plus has a pretty average Li-Po 2850 mAh battery which of course is non-removable. Battery timings aren’t exactly extra ordinary but in our day-to-day use, on average our F1 Plus review unit went through a day and a half on a single charge.

We feel that the battery timings shouldn’t be a deal breaker for anyone because F1 Plus does support VOOC flash fast charging technology which enables the device to be fully charged in about 60 minutes.

Camera Quality

Camera interface of the F1 Plus is pretty simple to use and quite similar to what we saw with the OPPO F1. Interestingly, the ability to download and install new camera modes has been stripped out but most of these modes have been made available by default. These pre-installed camera modes include: Normal, Ultra HD, Various Filters, GIF, Double Exposure, Expert Mode, Selfie Panorama, Time lapse and Panorama.

OPPO has made it pretty clear this time that the main focus of F1 series is selfie experience, by giving the OPPO F1 Plus a front-camera larger in megapixels than the primary cam. So, the F1 Plus comes with a 16MP selfie shooter and a 13MP back-camera.

OPPO F1 Plus’ 13MP primary camera is a pretty decent shooter. Image quality is good, considering that the images have a good enough level of detail and sharpness. Colors are vivid and color tone of the images is quite consistently natural as well but sometimes images produced can be more inclined towards either a colder or a warmer tone.

Front camera of the F1 Plus, despite being a 16MP shooter, does not do justice to F1 lineup’s “Selfie Expert” moniker. Images produced are not as good as you’d expect from a 16MP camera and level of detail is also not satisfactory. Images taken outdoor — in sunlight — mostly turn out to be over exposed.

Below are a few sample images from the selfie shooter of the F1 Plus.

OPPO F1 Plus Review Wrap-up

Here is a list of our key findings from this OPPO F1 Plus review:

• Same great build quality as we have come to expect from OPPO flagships.
• Minimal bezel design and 6.6 mm thickness give the F1 Plus a manageable profile.
• Silk metal back of the F1 Plus feels good to the touch and makes the device solid.
• Design language is highly influenced by the Apple iPhone 6S, so some people would consider this just another iPhone wanna-be.
• Fingerprint implementation of the OPPO F1 Plus is not only super fast but also very accurate.
• Day-to-day performance is hiccup free but low benchmark scores due to the Mediatek chipset.
• Quite average battery timings due to the 2850 mAh Li-Po non-removable battery but charges in only an hour, thanks to the VOOC flash fast charging.
• Camera interface is quite simple and easy to use. Image quality is also good. Pictures are sharp, contain details and have vivid colors.

OPPO F1 Plus is definitely a welcome upgrade over the OPPO F1. It has a more premium build quality and definitely packs a bigger punch than the OPPO F1. If the good build quality and compelling technical specs of the F1 Plus aren’t enough to convince you into buying one, maybe it’s similarities with the Apple iPhone 6S will.