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OPPO F1s review — but first, let me take a selfie
Bronze Pokdeward
3
Review

OPPO F1s review — but first, let me take a selfie

by September 11, 2016
Positives

+ Reasonable pricing
+ Decent battery life
+ Smooth user experience
+ Premium build quality
+ Front and rear cameras offer decent image quality
+ True dual-SIM functionality
+ Quick fingerprint sensor
+ Screen is vibrant and bright enough for most usage conditions
+ Audio output is customizable with Dirac HD Sound

Negatives

- Generic design
- Weak chipset yields poor performance in games and benchmarks
- No fast charging
- UI may be oversimplified for advanced users
- 720p display does not belong in a 2016 smartphone
- Loudspeaker is loud but distorts at maximum volume

Pokde Scoreboard
Pokde Rating
Appearance
7.9
Features
7.9
Materials
7.9
Performance
4.9
Portability
8.9
Value
6.9
Bottom Line

The OPPO F1s is great for those who are really into selfies with its top notch front camera.

7.4
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Selfies are quite a common habit for young and old alike, nowadays. Before front cameras were mainstream, if one wanted to be in the photo they are taking, they either have to trust the autofocus to not turn them into a blurry mess, or get someone to take the photo for them. Thankfully, we now have increasingly powerful front cameras, which brings us to today’s device being scrutinized at Pokde.net. Say hello to the OPPO F1s, packing a 16 MP front camera.

Unboxing

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The OPPO F1s comes in a pretty standard rectangular packaging, with the product image and of course the labels.

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The underside of the package comes with a few highlighted features as well as a sticker with regulatory information on it.

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The outer sleeve with all the print slides off to reveal a clean white package with only the OPPO emblems.

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Lifting off the lid reveals the OPPO F1s basking there for you to admire.

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Lifting the tray the phone lay in reveals more compartments. Here are all the contents of the package. The charger is of the standard 5V 2A variety, which means you don’t get the blazing fast VOOC charging with the OPPO F1s. The OPPO F1s comes with a pre-installed screen protector and also a soft clear case, to protect your device from day 1.

Appearance

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The OPPO F1s looks quite generic. The front is dominated by the 5.5″ display, with the navigation buttons on the lower bezel. The home button also houses the fingerprint sensor, and is framed by a nice golden line. The top bezel is home to the hidden notification LED, 16 MP front camera, the usual call speaker and proximity sensor.

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The back looks like a seamless aluminium panel, except for thin silver bands that run along the top and bottom edges. The 13 MP camera and single LED flash are all the hardware you see on the back.

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The volume rocker is placed on the left edge, which feels quite jarring coming from devices that have all the buttons on one side. As you can see here, the OPPO F1s does not go for a unibody design. Instead, you get a plastic band wrapping around the side, with chamfered edges. We do know it is plastic, but at first glance it can easily pass of as lacquered metal.

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Over on the right we have the power button and the SIM tray slot.

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The mono loudspeaker is the rightmost grille, with the one on the left concealing the primary mic. No Type-C love here, as the OPPO F1s features a microUSB port. OPPO has not taken a leap of courage and the OPPO F1s still comes with a 3.5mm jack.

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Only the secondary microphone calls the top edge home.

Overall, the design of the OPPO F1s looks pretty premium, but one which is is pretty overused by now. Still, it is nice to see premium designs in affordable smartphones.

Specifications

CPU: MediaTek MT6750 64-bit (4x A53 @ 1.5GHz + 4x A53 @ 1.0GHz)
GPU ARM Mali-T860 MP2 @ 520MHz
RAM 3GB LPDDR3
Display: 5.5″, HD (720p) IPS display
Storage: 32GB internal (expandable with microSD up to 128GB)
Camera: 13MP f/2.2, single LED flash
16MP f/2.0 front camera
OS: ColorOS 3.0 based on Android 5.1
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
SIM: nanoSIM (dual SIM support)
Battery: 3075 mAh (non-removable)

Performance

The MediaTek MT6750 SoC is manufactured on the very mature 28nm HPM process. The 28nm manufacturing process has been around for quite some time already, so should be rather matured. As it is, we have tried out several devices with 14nm-based SoCs, and the difference in battery life is really quite noticeable. Still, the OPPO F1s should sport a pretty good battery life as the MediaTek MT6750’s CPU cores are clocked rather low. 3GB RAM should keep things running smoothly. The ARM Mali-T860 MP2 GPU should also ensure graphics performance on par with the latest mid-range devices. Well, that’s enough talk. Let’s run the usual suite of benchmarks.

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GPU scores are quite poor, but then this is not a phone destined to break benchmark records. You may not get the best experience in games like Real Racing 3, but if you are just an avid fan of Pokemon Go, you should be fine.

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The CPU is also relatively weak compared to recent offerings from the competition.

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Overall performance is tested in Antutu, and with the weak CPU and GPU score, it is no surprise to see a low score here too.

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The OPPO F1s does not do well in PCMark either.

For battery life, the OPPO F1s does not offer a way to keep track of the on-screen time. Therefore I just recorded the time I spent away from the plug. With a mix of WiFi and LTE connections, I managed to get around 24 hours of battery life. This was with quite heavy Whatsapp, Messenger, Facebook and Instagram use. I believe that it should be quite adequate for most users to last through a day of usage.

User Experience

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Single-handed usability is possible with this device, as it features pretty slim bezels. A 5.5″ display is pretty standard nowadays, so I believe no one will have trouble handling the OPPO F1s.

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As usual, the first thing I do when I start reviewing a device is to insert the SIM cards into the device. Lo and behold, when I thought true dual-SIM functionality is dead, the OPPO F1s actually features two separate nanoSIM slots and a microSD slot on a single tray!

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Front-mounted fingerprint sensors are not really my thing. Since I am used to fingerprint sensors placed on the rear of devices, a front one seems counter-intuitive. While I did not like the placement, the fingerprint sensor is pretty fast, unlocking the device immediately when I pressed down on it to wake it.

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UI-wise, you will not have an app drawer, as usual for most Chinese-manufactured devices. OPPO uses their own skin called ColorOS 3.0, which is based on Android 5.1 Lollipop. Yes, a 2016 device with Android 5.1.1. The stock apps have square icons with rounded corners, looking pretty similar to iOS. Thankfully, they do not try to enforce this theme on every third-party app.  The settings menu is simple, but I think it may be over-simplified, actually. One thing they threw away was the battery life breakdown, which really annoyed me when I was testing the battery life. I know it isn’t something people usually look at, but why remove it?

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Continuning to the camera UI, it looks pretty decent. Once again, it looks very simple. So simple, that you cannot even pick the resolution or add a grid to help you compose your shot. The main difference is you can enable HDR on the rear camera, and not for the front shooter. You do get a quick shortcut to the few settings available, and that’s it. Really, this is a point-and-shoot smartphone camera. The must-have beauty mode is where you can tweak how flawless you want to look, as well as your skin tone.

The image quality obtained from the rear camera is decent. However it can be quite disappointing because the image looks superb in the viewfinder, but when the photo is taken, the resulting quality can be a little off. The 16 MP front camera does take great shots, and selfies are about as detailed as they can get. In fact, you can actually use the front camera for landscape shots. Try and identify which one of these photos I took with the front camera. If you dislike the detail, you can also use the beauty mode to remove the detail and enhance your appearance. Have a look at the samples to see for yourself.Check out full-sized samples here on our Flickr page.

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The 5.5″ 720p display is really kinda outdated. As we are pushing towards 1440p screens, the 720p screen here is really just not as sharp as the competition. Still, colors are vibrant and brightness is more than adequate for sunlight visibility. Aside from text that looks a little less sharp, this is a pretty solid display.

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The mono loudspeaker on the bottom edge is loud, but can exhibit some distortion at maximum volume. Plugging in some earphones, audio is acceptable, with a pretty strong emphasis on bass tones. This can be tweaked with the Dirac HD Sound feature, which offers a simple but effective way of tweaking the audio output.

Conclusion

The OPPO F1s is a decent smartphone, with a smooth user experience and simple to use features. However it does not have blazing fast performance that the competition may offer. Considering that the main highlight of the entire device is its 16 MP front camera, this phone is targeted at the fairer sex This is a phone that just works, and should satisfy those who look to post the best #OOTD and #POTD on social media. The OPPO F1s is priced at RM1198, which is quite reasonable considering you are getting one of the best selfie cameras in a smartphone. If you are an avid selfie-taker, do give this phone a double take. I award this a Bronze Pokdeward for its smooth user experience, simple user interfaces and great front camera.

Pokde-Bronze

About The Author
Vyncent Chan
Technology enthusiast, casual gamer, pharmacy graduate. Strongly opposes proprietary standards and always on the look out for incredible bang-for-buck.
3 Comments
  • laveena
    May 15, 2017 at 3:15 pm

    Good Article. My vote is 4 Doogee Mix because of Super Small design Looks very Beautiful And Doogee Mix Price is Much better than Xiaomi Mix Also 4Gb And a 6Gb ram version Available . so better I buy Doogee Mix I am Super Excited to buy it

  • Chris
    February 25, 2020 at 6:45 am

    Hi Vyncent. Great review, I agree with pretty much all that you said. Just one note though, in regards to not being able to use a grid when taking a photo. The option for it is available, but for some strange reason not directly when in camera mode. You can find it by going into Settings, scrolling down to Camera, and from there the grid for the camera can be applied by toggling on/off the Assistant Line option.

    Thanks for an easy, honest and understandable read :)

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