Oppo F3 Plus review: Capable selfie-centric midranger that’s priced a tad steep
Even though people have been taking self-portrait photographs since the early 1800s, the sky-high popularity of selfies has helped them become one of the defining characteristics of the millennial subculture. From bathrooms to rooftops, there’s hardly a place where people don’t like to click pictures of themselves and post them on twenty different social media networks.
Such is the craze for these self-clicked photos that it has inspired smartphone makers to launch devices that are geared specifically towards the selfie-obsessed. The front cameras on these smartphones come with everything from high-resolution modules to LED flashes. However, it’s Chinese smartphone brands that have been leading the charge in this segment for quite a while, outing handsets with selfie-centric features that border on the obscene. And the latest to join the party is the Oppo F3 Plus.
Oppo’s freshly-launched ‘Selfie Expert’ comes with two cameras at the front, just like the Vivo V5 Plus , which came out earlier this year. Apart from that, the F3 Plus’ other hardware specifications aren’t half bad either. But is the total package worth shelling out Rs 30,990 on?
Let’s find out, in my review of the Oppo F3 Plus.
Design and build quality
Oppo F3 Plus follows essentially the same design language as every third smartphone out there -- a rectangular slab-like shape with rounded corners. That’s not to say it’s bad, it’s just generic.
The facade of the smartphone is home to a 6-inch panel, protected with a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 5. Above the display lies the earpiece, proximity sensor and selfie camera duo. A pill-shaped fingerprint sensor sits below the display, flanked by soft-backlit capacitive ‘Recent’ and ‘Back’ buttons. A thin, chrome-finished chamfered edge runs along the F3 Plus’ all four sides, making for a nice effect when the smartphone is moved under a source of light.
Speaking of the sides, they are rounded and blend (almost) seamlessly into the soft-touch metallic unibody enclosure. The left has the two volume keys, while the right is where you’ll find the power key and the hybrid dual-SIM/microSD tray. At the bottom, there’s a (mono) speaker grille, microUSB charging/data transfer port with two small screws at its either side, microphone and 3.5mm audio jack. A secondary microphone sits on top.
Flip the F3 Plus and you’re greeted by a smooth metallic rear panel, done in light Gold colour and having a shiny Oppo logo in the upper middle section. The top left corner is where the 16MP primary camera and two-tone dual LED flash are. The lower middle section has some regulatory information printed on it, something nobody is going to care about.
Lastly, there are two sets (one each at the top and bottom) of Oppo’s unique ‘Six-String’ antenna lines running across the rear panel, with each set having three ultra-thin lines. These look pleasing and help with the signal reception too.
In summation, I found the F3 Plus to be well-constructed smartphone. It looks and feels as premium. The rounded corners and smooth metallic behind make for a nice and comfortable in-hand feel. That said, this is by all means, a big phone. So unless you’ve got giant mitts, one-handed use is (almost) out of the question.
Display
Gracing the front of the Oppo F3 Plus is a 6-inch Full-HD IPS LCD display. With a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels and a sufficiently-adequate pixel density of around 367 ppi, the screen is mighty crisp and vivid. Colours look punchy but not oversaturated, and viewing angles are impressive too. Sunlight visibility isn’t an issue either, provided the brightness is cranked all the way up to the top.
It might not be comparable to Quad HD panels, but the F3 Plus’ screen does full justice to everything from graphics-rich games to 4K videos. So if you love multimedia consumption while on the move, you’re going to love the F3 Plus’ substantial and vibrant display.
Performance and software
Supplying the horsepower to the Oppo F3 Plus is an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 653 chipset, with four Cortex-A72 and A53 cores each. It is supplemented by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of on-board storage, of which approximately 49GB is user accessible. Should you need more, you can always put in a microSD card of up to 256GB capacity, though that would mean giving up the dual-SIM functionality.
Over the course of my testing period, I found the F3 Plus to be a zippy performer. From heavy games like 'WWE: Immortals' to multi-tabbed web browsing and from random switching among ten active apps to 4K video recording (more on that later), this thing handles everything thrown at it with ease. It does get a little warm during intensive tasks, but it’s not something that would affect day to day usage.
Oppo F3 Plus’ reliable performance shows in benchmark scores as well. When put through Geekbench 4, the phablet got single-core and multi-core scores of 1474 and 4462 respectively. As for AnTuTu, the F3 Plus scored 91698. These are more than decent numbers.
As for the software, Oppo F3 Plus comes with a now-dated Android 6.0 Marshmallow out-of-the-box, with ColorOS UI layer baked on top. As expected, there’s no app drawer and all app icons are laid out on multiple side-scrolling homescreens. However, apps can be arranged in folders. You can also download themes via the Theme Store, and these let you customize everything from app icons to wallpapers.
ColorOS itself comes with numerous handy features. From waking up the phone by double tapping the screen to taking a screenshot by swiping up with three fingers, there are a ton of gestures supported. You can also swipe down from the homescreen to search everything from contacts to messages, and use the Lockscreen magazine feature to automatically get new wallpapers on your lockscreen everyday (provided there’s network connectivity). Other features include an ‘Eye Protection’ mode that filters out Blue light to reduce eye strain, built-in app lock that can be used to individually secure apps, and more.
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