Oppo F3 Plus review 2017

Oppo F3 Plus is company’s first smartphone to feature a dual (16MP+8MP) front camera set-up. This is also the first 6-inch device from the company.

Oppo

Oppo, which is now the number one smartphone company in China according to IDC’s Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report, has successfully managed to position its products as ‘Selfie-Experts’ in India. For Oppo, the focus has clearly been on smartphone camera technology, with the company launching 5x smartphone photography technology at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February.

Additionally, 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.

Oppo F3 Plus

Oppo F3 Plus is company’s first smartphone to feature a dual (16MP+8MP) front camera set-up. This is also the first 6-inch device from the company. In terms of design, Oppo F3 Plus looks quite similar to a lot of other Chinese premium smartphones such as vivo V5 Plus, OnePlus 3T and company’s own F1 series devices. It has a sturdy built, and 4,000mAh battery that’ll easily last for a day.

Oppo F3 Plus has a 16MP+8MP dual front camera set up, and this is easily one of the best among Android smartphones that I’ve reviewed so far.

Oppo F3 Plus is clearly aimed at people who factor a smartphone’s front or selfie camera as one of the essential components while buying a smartphone. So, does Oppo deliver on its USP? We find out in our review:

Price: Rs 30,990

What’s good?

Oppo F3 Plus has a 16MP+8MP dual front camera set up, and this is easily one of the best among Android smartphones that I’ve reviewed so far. The colour reproduction is impressive as they appear close to real. The pictures are detailed, especially the ones taken in bright outdoors. The phone is capable of handling reds and pinks well, as the colours do not look over-saturated.

The 8MP front camera has 6P lens and 120 degree wide angle, which lets users take group photos. The 8MP lens only comes in the picture while taking group photos in group selfie mode; while the rest of the pictures are clicked by the 16MP front lens.

Oppo F3 Plus’ camera app has a small icon at the bottom that allows you to switch to group selfie mode when there’s more than one person in the picture. With 120-degree wide angle in the F3 Plus, I could click a selfie with six people in it, and portrait mode, which is impressive.

In places where lighting conditions are extremely poor, say in a car at night, the pictures have noise and lack details. But the same doesn’t go for fairly-lit places like a bright market at night, where Oppo F3 Plus does a much better job.

Users can shoot time-lapse videos with the front camera and normal videos in 720p. Then there’s the usual Beauty mode, common to Oppo’s ‘Selfie-Expert’ series and a Panorama mode. There’s also a Blur mode and filters to choose from before you click a selfie.

The rear camera is Oppo F3 Plus is equally good, one that can handle bright colours quite well. The color reproduction is close to real, which I liked. I was impressed with the details in pictures. The pictures don’t look grainy even in low-light conditions. Oppo F3 Plus’ rear camera also comes with all the above mentioned features, and also a few others like HDR mode, Expert mode and Ultra HD mode.

Oppo F3 Plus has a 6-inch full HD screen, which was a little big for me but manageable. Also, the phone feels heavy at 185 grams. In terms of design, I didn’t find it very different from the Oppo F1s that I reviewed earlier, but that’s not essentially a bad thing given I liked F1s’ design.

Oppo F3 Plus looks great. and has a metal unibody design with a nice metallic finish at the back. The capsule-sized home button doubles as a fingerprint scanner. There’s a single speaker grille at the bottom, along with a microUSB port and a headphone jack.

Oppo F3 Plus looks great. and has a metal unibody design with a nice metallic finish at the back.

The power button is on the right and volume rockers are on the left, and right within reach. The antenna lines are visible on top and bottom on the back cover.

The display is Full HD, one that didn’t give me any reason to complaint. I didn’t have to struggle to read from the screen in bright outdoors, and the viewing angles are great too. The big 6-inch Full HD screen seemed like a particularly good thing, while watching videos and playing games.

Oppo F3 Plus scores on the performance front as well. The smartphone can handle multitasking as well as switching between multiple tabs quite well. I watched Netflix TV shows straight up for an hour, and the F3 Plus didn’t quite heat up, though it was a bit warm at the top part on the back of the phone. However, with graphics-heavy games like Asphalt-8, the F3 Plus starts to get warm within first ten minutes.

Oppo F3 Plus scores on the performance front as well. The smartphone can handle multitasking as well as switching between multiple tabs quite well.

The battery is 4,000mAh that will easily last for a day and a half. In my case, regular usage includes browsing the Internet, and social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram, using messaging apps, streaming music online, and watching videos which is mostly on Netflix.

The F3 Plus takes about one and a half hours to get fully charged from 20 per cent remaining. The charge went up from 20 per cent to 42 per cent in just 15 minutes thanks to company’s VOOC technology. It shot up to 91 per cent in one hour, which is impressive given the battery size.

What is bad?

One of the things that bothered me is absence of dual stereo speakers. The sound quality isn’t very good either. A lot of times the speaker grilled got muffled, while trying to move the phone, ruining the sound experience.

One of the things that bothered me is absence of dual stereo speakers. The sound quality isn’t very good either.

Oppo F3 Plus comes with Android Marshmallow, which is almost two years old. Given the phone costs a bomb, we expected Nougat at the very least. The pricing is what surprises with the Oppo F3 Plus. If you compare this to OnePlus 3T, that phone is already on Android Nougat, and run Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, which is much more powerful than the 652 on the Oppo smartphone. Given that the premium mid-range market is so competitive, Oppo F3 Plus seems a bit on the higher side, especially for its specs.

Verdict

Oppo F3 Plus has only one competition on the dual selfie camera front: vivo V5 Plus. Both the smartphones feature similar specifications, and look very similar. But Oppo is charging extra for its brand, and the focus is entirely on the selfie. It’s also going to be available both offline and online in India, and the former is still a big chunk of the market in India.

Honestly if you’ve got a Rs 30,000 budget, and you don’t mind a 6-inch display, then you can try out the Oppo F3 Plus. It didn’t disappoint me for sure. Of course, the strongest choice in this price, at least for people buying phones online, is still OnePlus 3T.