Oppo now has a market share of 23.6 percent, with many
smartphones focused on this selfie-centric audience. The company’s latest
smartphone, the Oppo F3 features
dual front-facing cameras, allowing you to capture selfies and wide-angle group
photos.
Keeping up with the trend, the company had a
good run with its selfie-centric smartphones starting from OPPO F1 and F1
Plus. While more companies concentrate online, OPPO is one company which also
gives importance to offline, which in turn has helped them gained an edge.
The F3 is Oppo’s
second smartphone after Oppo F3 Plus to come
with dual front cameras. While the F3 Plus is priced at Rs 30,999, the F3 is
more aggressively priced at Rs 19,990. Its closest competitors are the Gionee A1, Vivo
V5s and Vivo V5 Plus.
Can Oppo F3 be
first choice of selfie lover ?
Look And Design
The Oppo F3
features a unibody design, but unlike the F3 Plus that features an all-metal
back panel, the F3 comes with a sturdy polycarbonate body with a metallic
finish. The 5.5-inch display with slim
borders on either side makes it easy to use this phone one-handed, however the
notification shade is still a bit of reach even for those with large hands. The
sides of the display don’t blend with the body very smoothly, and the pre-applied
screen protector gets in the way every time you swipe left or right. Just like other OPPO F-series smartphones, the look of the
F3 is top notch with brilliant attention to detail. Moreover, the mobile feels
good to hold and offers a comfortable grip ergonomically.
If you’ve use
the Oppo F3 Plus or at least held it, then you’ll instantly appreciate the
smaller size of the Oppo F3. The phone is fairly slim at 7.3mm and
light at 153 grams. It's a lot more pocketable compared to its more
expensive 6-inch sibling. On the front, you have a 5.5-inch full HD
display with 2.5D curved glass. Above the display, you have the dual-camera
module, an earpiece and the ambient light sensor. Below the display, you have
the capacitive Android navigation buttons for back and app switcher, and a
non-clickable home button that also doubles up as a fingerprint sensor. The
volume rocker is placed on the left, the power / sleep button is placed on the
right, while the 3.5mm audio jack and microUSB port are at the bottom. The dual
SIM-card tray is placed on the right, just above the power button, and one of
the best things about the tray is that it accepts two nano SIM cards and has a
separate microSD card slot, which is a pretty good setup compared to the hybrid
SIM-card slots seen on most smartphones.
Specifications
This is obvious
that if there is cut in price then there will cut in other things like
specifications of software. Same happened with F3, but the choice of SoC is slightly
disappointing. The F3 is stuck with an octa-core MediaTek MT6750T SoC, which is
a mild refresh of the MT6750 seen on the Oppo F1s. The phone also has 4GB of
RAM and 64GB of storage, which is plenty for today's apps and games. Other
specifications include Bluetooth 4.0, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n, USB-OTG,
GPS, a proximity sensor, a compass, and a gyroscope. There’s also support
for 4G with VoLTE, but this phone lacks FM radio. In today’s world FM is not
more important so don’t have any issue with it.
Software
The OPPO F3 is shipped with Android 6.0.1
Marshmallow with Color OS 3.0 on top. Seriously, Marshmallow. We didn’t expect
that. This almost out dated version. This is Nougat era.
Just like other Chinese UI’s, the Color OS doesn’t come with
app drawer and looks more of iOS interface. Users can arrange their apps on the
home screen as per their preference and also group them into folders. Pulling down the notification shade only shows you quick
settings toggle switches, and you have to swipe right to get to your
notifications, which can be annoying. The drop-down
notification bar has several toggles, a shortcut for settings and lets you to
adjust the brightness using the slider. When you swipe right on the
notification panel, it will take you to the page where you can access all the
notifications. There are built-in tools available to free up the storage, free
RAM and optimize the performance as well. It also has a virus scanner that
protects the device from malicious software and files. Oppo also has its lockscreen magazine, which when enabled,
cycles through different wallpapers. O-Cloud is for backing up your contacts
and messages, and there's a custom app store for curated apps. Other preloaded
apps include Google’s suite, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and WPS Office.
Performance
The OPPO F3 comes powered by Octa-Core MediaTek
MT6750T 64-bit processor clocked at 1.5GHz with Mali T860 as GPU taking care of
graphic department. Performance
is good without any stutter or lag during our casual usage. It also handles multitasking pretty
well too. Like majority of smartphone,
it gets a bit warm while gaming or watching videos for an extended period of
time.
We also tried several games including Asphalt,
Clash of Clans, Subway Surfers, and the graphics were good.
It has its own dialing app offering an access
to contacts at the bottom. It has a Touchpad for OPPO keyboard by default and
it’s pretty good to use as well. If you want you can also change the keyboard
too. The Earpiece volume is loud enough to hear even when you are in the noisy
environment.
The OPPO F3 has a fingerprint sensor on the
front just below the display. His placement of fingerprint sensor can be good
for some people and can be bad for other but according to us it is best placement of the fingerprint sensor , since
it’s where your thumb finger rests on it every time. The home button is not
clickable because fringerprint sensor is
integrated in it. As usual, the
fingerprint sensor is quick to unlock the phone immediately when you place your
finger on it. Apart from unlocking, you can also use the fingerprint scanner
for App encryption and to keep your important files safe.
Camera
Moving on to the
highlight of the Oppo F3, the dual front-facing cameras. The smartphone uses
two cameras – a combination of a 16-megapixel camera for selfies, along with an
8-megapixel sensor with 120-degree wide-angle view for group selfies.
The camera app interface is slick with the
flash, HDR and photo mode toggles at the top, while the bottom half has the
gallery shortcut, shutter button and camera mode switcher button for single or
dual-camera mode. You can swipe left to right to switch between beauty,
panorama, time-lapse and video modes.
Coming to quality of camera ,the images are brilliant with lots of detailing and good
color reproduction. Unlike Vivo V5 Plus, which offers a depth of field on its
secondary camera, OPPO opted for a wide-angle lens with 120-degree field of
view, making it more special for those who clicks group selfies often. The quality of images is not as good
with the secondary front camera as it is with the primary one, especially in
low light, but it’s acceptable. The
screen flash really helps in reducing noise from faces but there's no escaping
noise in the background of a shot.
The Oppo F3
comes with a 13-megapixel rear camera with phase detection auto-focus (PDAF) and an f/2.2 aperture. Focusing is
quick in good lighting although we noticed that the speed dips a bit in low
light. The camera is an average performer,
day light shots look decent at times, but under harsh sunlight, the photos tend
to look overexposed as the camera module fails to capture enough information.
Other times, photos appear dull, even in bright outdoor conditions. Under low
light, the camera is able to capture just bearable shots, but some graininess
is easily visible.
Battery
The OPPO F3 comes with 3200mAh battery . The OPPO F3 offers amazing battery
life .We easily managed to power this phone
through a full day’s worth of regular usage.
On a full charge, it easily lasts for a day
with heavy usage including, 4G calls, gaming, browsing and of course the
selfies. It also has a low power mode that extends the phone usage time by
cutting down the apps, reducing brightness and lock screen time and other
connectivity options.
Conclusion
On the whole,
the Oppo F3 is a decent smartphone that comes with a sturdy design and build
quality, plenty of onboard storage (64GB) and RAM (4GB), a quick and reliable
fingerprint sensor, all at a competitive price of Rs 19,990. However, there isn’t much competition right now as it's the
only smartphone in this segment with this sort of dual camera feature. If that
doesn't matter and you’re looking for a bit more power under the hood, then you
always have the Moto G5 Plus. The Oppo F3 is a good upgrade over the Oppo F1s,
but there are areas that could have used some improvement. FM radio is still
absent. The rear camera performance is
average at best. For those looking to buy a smartphone that lets you click good
selfies and group selfies, while offering acceptable overall performance, the
Oppo F3 could be a good option. Otherwise there are many good smartphone
available in market and you can choose according to your need.
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