VERDICT
Offering a flagship feel at half the price of its competitors, the Oppo R9s is one of the best mid-range handsets on the market, though don't expect stellar game performance.
PROS:
- Premium feel,Solid build,Long battery life,Fast charging,Great selfie camera
CONS:
- Struggles with gaming,ColorOS still needs work,Over-saturated colours
Steadily climbing its way into the number one position among smartphone makers in China, Oppo has made a name for itself by offering customers premium-feeling handsets at half the price of the competition. With this strategy, it’s perhaps no surprise that the company owns 23 percent of the market share in its home country (by comparison, Apple currently holds a 6 percent market share in China).
Now, its latest handset, the Oppo R9s, has just launched in Australia, and we got our hands on one for review.
Looking at the Oppo R9s in its naked form, it’d be easy to mistake it for an iPhone 7 – its thin, rounded aluminium body, slightly-protruding camera bump, matte finish and similarly-placed buttons seem clearly modelled after the Apple flagship (though its pill-shaped capacitive home button gives its Android status away), as does its new iOS-aping ColorOS 3.0 software.
But what the phone may lack in design originality, it makes up for in sheer value. Though it has a retail price of AU$599 (around US$457 and £365), many of the hallmarks we’ve come to expect from a premium phone are present here.
With the R9s, Oppo has produced its most polished phone to date. Though its success in China is a given, does the Oppo R9s have what it takes to become the king of mid-range phones in the western world? Though it’s only non-Asian market is Australia at present, its success here could open up wider avenues for Oppo in the future. And if it doesn’t happen, it won’t be for fault of this impressive handset.
So far, there's no word on when the Oppo R9s will arrive in the US and UK, but we'll keep you updated on any developments. However, it is currently available in Singapore at a price of S$679.
So far, there's no word on when the Oppo R9s will arrive in the US and UK, but we'll keep you updated on any developments. However, it is currently available in Singapore at a price of S$679.
Design
As was mentioned earlier, the iPhone 7 was a clear touchstone in the Oppo R9s’ design. Smooth and rounded, the only sharpness you’ll find here is in the screen’s edges, which aren’t quite as close to the handset as they are on Apple’s flagship. It is thinner, though – the Oppo R9s is 6.6mm thick, compared to the iPhone 7’s 7.1mm. It’s rather slippery in the hand, but thankfully, Oppo has included a clear silicone case and an already-applied screen protector with each handset.
Like the iPhone 7, the Oppo R9s has a capacitive touch home button which doubles as a fingerprint sensor, and while it doesn’t provide the faux ‘click’ sensation of Apple’s handset, it does offer a slight tremor when pressed. Where it does have Apple beat, however, is in its speed – the Oppo R9s offers one of the fastest sensors we’ve ever experienced, seemingly unlocking the phone instantly. It’s also got a hydrophobic membrane over it which helps the sensor register your prints, even when your digits are moist.
Whether this means the sensor offers less security than its rivals is unknown, though after numerous attempts, no one other than myself was able to unlock the handset. Joining the home button are two capacitive ‘recents’ and ‘back’ buttons, which are set in that order from left to right – Galaxy-style. Again, like the iPhone, the device’s power button sits on the right edge and two volume buttons on the left.
A dual SIM tray offers space for (you guessed it) two nano-SIM cards, or one SIM card and a microSD card up to 256GB to join the device’s 64GB of onboard storage. On the bottom of the phone, you’ll find a speaker grille, a micro USB port and, thankfully, a 3.5mm headphone jack.
At first glance, you might not notice the antenna lines across the R9s’s back. Though the R9s shares the iPhone 6’s antenna placement, its ultra-fine “six-string” antenna layout is almost invisible from certain angles, giving it more of an iPhone 7-like appearance.
Screen
Boasting an exceptionally bright and vibrant 1080p AMOLED display, the Oppo’s R9s is no slouch when it comes to delivering striking images. Admittedly, the screen’s colours err on the side of over-saturation, and aside from settings that turn down brightness or reduce blue light for the sake of your eyes, there’s not much that can be done about this. That said, I’d personally take over-saturated colours over drab, undersaturated ones.
At 5.5 inches, the handset’s display puts the Oppo R9s directly in line with the iPhone 7 Plus, and while Apple’s phablet feels quite large in the hand, the R9s does not. This is due to the R9s’ thinner frame, as well as its almost non-existent side bezels and slightly smaller top and bottom bezels.
Interface
Based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Oppo’s ColorOS 3.0 is something of a mixed bag. Though it’ll certainly please people making the transition from iOS, those looking for a pure Android experience might find themselves running for the hills.
Like iOS 10, Oppo’s interface spreads every installed app across multiple home screens in four vertical rows. Unlike the Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, the R9s’ default OS doesn’t come with an app drawer, meaning you’ll have to install a separate launcher to hold all of your apps on one screen.
A downward swipe from the top will provide you with quick access to the handset’s various functions, though annoyingly, this takes up the whole screen – you’ll have to perform a second swipe from left to right in order to reach your notifications. Needless to say, having to perform multiple swipes in different directions to view and clear your notifications list is far from intuitive, and unlike the app drawer problem, this issue can’t be circumvented with the use of a different launcher.
Elsewhere, ColorOS 3.0 has some standout features that offer a pleasing take on the Android experience. The R9s includes a suite of gestures which can be used to launch a number of functions or control certain aspects with the screen switched off. For instance, drawing a circle on the screen will immediately launch the camera app, while drawing a V will turn on the flashlight. Aside from these pre-loaded gestures, you can create your own gesture commands using letters of the alphabet.
In the Oppo R9s’ settings, you’ll find that the phone’s interface is quite customisable. One of my favourite features lets you replace the carrier name in your status bar with real-time network speed information – an option that’s also available in Huawei’s Mate 9 handset.
There are also a number of theme customisation options, such as Lockscreen magazine, a returning feature from the previous version of ColorOS. This lets you set up a constantly rotating set of lockscreen wallpapers, either from your own images or from Oppo-provided channels which you can subscribe to, such as Art, Fashion, Automobiles and Beautiful women (!).
Also appreciated is a fully-featured Oppo Security Centre, which lets you monitor your phone’s memory usage and clear your RAM, set privacy permissions and perform virus scans powered by Avast. Even if you don’t go into the section regularly, the R9s will notify you when certain apps are hogging your memory or if junk files need to be cleared.
Camera
Rather impressively, the Oppo R9s has 16MP rear and front-facing cameras. The primary camera features a customised 1/2.8 inch Sony-developed IMX398 sensor with an extra-wide F1.7 aperture for improved low-light photography, created exclusively for the R9s.
In our experience, it performed admirably in daylight, if a little sluggish at times. On some occasions, onscreen presses of the shutter button would fail to register, resulting in some missed posing pet moments.
In low light situations, shots of perfectly still objects worked quite well, accurately capturing images with very little noise present. Any movement at all will almost guarantee a blurry shot, though.
Video capture works well, though we’d recommend only shooting at 1080p or below. Though the phone is said to capture 4K at 30fps, our test footage at this resolution was extremely choppy, especially during movement or panning shots. I’d be surprised if this footage was above 15fps.
That said, as a day-to-day camera, the Oppo R9s’ primary sensor is capable of some terrific still photography. This is largely due to the camera’s dual PDAF (phase detection autofocus) technology, which allows the phone to snap into focus fairly quickly.
On the other side of the phone, you have a 16MP camera that provides an exceptional selfie experience. Its 1/3 inch sensor sports a F2.0 aperture for surprisingly good low light shots. Combine this with Oppo’s extremely flattering Beautify 4.0 software, which now gives you control over the rosy pallor of your face, and you have one of the more impressive selfie cameras of any handset currently on the market.
Music
For a mid-range handset, it’s nice to see that the Oppo R9s offers Dirac HD sound and a number of genre-specific equaliser presets. Admittedly, I didn’t notice a huge amount of difference between the presets for Metal, Hip-Hop and Jazz, for instance, though that could be because the device’s general audio level was a little lower than I’m used to.
Listen to music at full volume in a quiet area, and you’ll find that the R9s offers a rather pleasing audio experience. Outside in the real world though, with cars and pedestrians and the usual sounds that come from riding on public transport, you may find its audio to be a tad weak.
Three sliders are available to create a custom sound profile for yourself, allowing you to adjust bass, baritone and treble levels, but if you like to listen to your music loud and with deep bass, these sliders won’t really help with that.
Performance and battery
Though it has a whopping 4GB of RAM and a rather powerful Octa-core processor, the Oppo R9s is held back slightly by its older Adreno 506 GPU. Based on GeekBench results, the performance of this one is about where you’d expect: halfway between a budget handset like Motorola’s Moto G4 Play and a flagship like the Galaxy S7 or Google Pixel.
That said, mid-range phones aren’t aimed at power users who are after extreme graphical performance, but rather at people who use their handsets to perform regular day-to-day tasks, like messaging, running apps, taking photos and browsing the internet. Because of this, the phone’s PCMark for Android results provide a more accurate representation of how the R9s will perform for its desired user base.
Unfortunately, it's hard to gauge the accuracy of its PCMark benchmark results, as the Oppo R9s turned in a score that would make even the most high-end flagship handsets on the market kneel before it. Earning a mammoth score of 7001 in our ‘PCMark - Work 1.0’ benchmark test, the Oppo R9s seemingly annihilates the Google Pixel’s 4461 result and the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge’s score of 4713, which seems a little unlikely to us.
If you’re after a handset that can game with the best of them, this isn’t it. However, for web browsing, video playback, writing and photo editing, this phone is more than capable of that.
On top of its work-related proficiency, the Oppo R9s’ 3,010 mAh battery also impressed – our PCMark for Android tests revealed a lengthy 12 hour and 10 minutes lifespan for the R9s. While that’s less than Oppo’s R9 Plus’, which offers a battery life of 14 hours and 48 minutes, it’s greater than almost everything else out there.
And, If you do happen to find yourself running low on power, the R9s will give you two hours of talk-time from a 5-minute charge, and 75 percent battery after a 30-minute charge, thanks to Oppo’s proprietary VOOC Flash Charge technology.
Verdict
With the Oppo R9s, it's clear why the company has been so successful in its home country. It has delivered a phone with a premium look and feel, terrific battery life and exceptional work performance at half the cost of a flagship phone from Apple or Samsung.
We liked
It looks and feels like an iPhone 7, with a stylish (yet derivative) design that leaves most other mid-range handsets in its dust. At $599, this is level of craftsmanship is practically a steal.
It's got a 12-hour plus lifespan, which is quite impressive in itself, but when combined with its ultra fast charging technology, you have a handset that's unlikely to leave you in a tight spot.
It looks and feels like an iPhone 7, with a stylish (yet derivative) design that leaves most other mid-range handsets in its dust. At $599, this is level of craftsmanship is practically a steal.
It's got a 12-hour plus lifespan, which is quite impressive in itself, but when combined with its ultra fast charging technology, you have a handset that's unlikely to leave you in a tight spot.
We disliked
Though its performs well in a work capacity, its weak GPU performance leaves something to be desired.
Though its performs well in a work capacity, its weak GPU performance leaves something to be desired.
Though it continues to improve with each iteration, Oppo's ColorOS still needs some work, with its hard-to-reach notifications and lack of app drawer being particularly frustrating.
And, while the AMOLED 1080p screen offers striking images, its colours can be a little over-saturated.
Final verdict
For the price, the Oppo R9s is a remarkably stylish and sophisticated smartphone that offers a number of premium features. Though its OS still has some quirks, and its gaming performance is average, the R9s is a terrific phone that offers long battery life, good work performance and impressive photographic capability. With the R9s, Oppo practically has that 'king of the mid-range' crown in its much-deserved grasp.
Final verdict
For the price, the Oppo R9s is a remarkably stylish and sophisticated smartphone that offers a number of premium features. Though its OS still has some quirks, and its gaming performance is average, the R9s is a terrific phone that offers long battery life, good work performance and impressive photographic capability. With the R9s, Oppo practically has that 'king of the mid-range' crown in its much-deserved grasp.
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