The Chinese smartphone returns with some new models and a raft of new features
Last week, Oppo debuted their new latest flagship smartphones, the N3 and R5, aimed at grabbing people who value innovation and style over big brand faithfulness.
With the N3, Oppo has kept their most innovative camera feature of 2013, from the N1, with some twists. The N1 has introduced a rotatable camera function to the smartphone market which gives you the ability to take both frontal and rear photos with the same 16MP camera by turning it back and forth. But, it was a slight let down that the camera itself was not up to par with other flagship phones out there at the time.
This time, the N3 has replaced the old lens set with a 16MP lens set from Schneider and claims it can take DSLR camera quality pictures.
I'm not a photography expert, but the photos I took with this rotatable camera look very vibrant and sharp. Oppo also claims the Schneider lens gives the same picture quality level as the renowned Leica lens (that's something open to professional debate).
Apart from the lens, they added several nifty software-based functions, such as an ability to let its rotatable camera rotate itself or be ordered to tilt with the phone's touch screen or the rear touch sensor, or even its complimented gadget (the O-click) and a feature to focus-lock on to a specific object while leaving other parts of the picture blurred out.
I tried taking several vertical panoramic photos with the auto-rotating camera and was quite impressed by the results. It's fun but may be quite situation-specific and not the kind of photo you would normally take. I guess only time will tell what this kind of photo is best for.
They also added a fast charge function that lets you charge up the phone to 75% in half-an-hour (with a much smaller adaptor than their previous ones). This is a very welcome feature due to the fact that most smartphones these days eat so much power and take such a long time to charge back to full strength. An inclusion of a large stylish notification light at the bottom of the phone is very cool but might be annoying to some, especially at night, because the light takes up such a big portion of the bottom part of the phone to tell you that you've got gazillions of mails and messages waiting for your attention.
The N3 has a 5.5-inch Gorilla Glass 3 screen (which is pretty big but not the largest on the market), a large 3,000mAh battery, equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 MSM8974AA CPU clocked at 2.3GHz, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. All this means the Oppo N3 has, pretty much, the same, and a little more, spec than all the other flagship smartphones out there right now. If specs mean nothing to you, having a faster machine basically ensures you're able to do dozens of thing at once, without making the thing become slower than a sleepy sloth.
Apart from the N3, which I found pretty cool but a little pricey (US$649/ 21,200 baht), Oppo also showed a new smartphone which focused on slimness and durability, the R5. This phone is the thinnest phone to date. The phone is also mostly built from aluminium to make it look and feel premium with a lower price tag ($499).
Both of these will be equipped with Android with Oppo's Color OS on top and will be available in Thailand at the beginning of 2015.
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