Chinese brand Oppo has got traction in global as well as in Indian markets and all this has been made possible to large extent by the company’s F series of camera centric phones. After launch of F1 and F1 Plus smartphones earlier in the year, Oppo has now come out with F1s with its prominent feature of selfie camera of 16MP. This phone retains all the camera features available on F1 Plus which is premium offering and Oppo has probably launched F1s for those whio could not afford its expensive F1 Plus. The F1s has almost the same design which has been intensively borrowed from iPhone 6. Let us analyse whether FIs justifiies its price tag of Rs. 17,990.
On the design front, you cannot distinguish whether you are holding F1s or F1 Plus in your hand. This phone has all-metal body with glossy gold trim that runs along the edges of the phone which adds to the aesthetics of the phone. Its back panel has very refined surface and results in solid grip. The phone will not slip from your hand unlike those phones with glass cover or glossy metal found on few other Chinese branded phones. This phone gives you feel of an iPhone as far as its design is concerned and you won’t mind holding such a fine device in your hand.
On the back, the 13MP camera with LED flash has been provided and the battery is non-removable. As for the controll of the phone, the volume rockers are on the left hand side and power button is on the right side which are quite fast and responsive. The SIM tray is also given on the right side and the plus point of this is that it has three slots. Unlike hybrid SIM slots on majority of the phones, on this device you can put two Nano-SIM cards and also microSD card slot for extending the internal storage upto 128GB.
At the bottom of the phone, their is micro USB port and also 3.5mm audio jack alongwith speaker grille. Despite the advent of USB Type-C port for charging, Oppo has stayed with micro USB port. On the front, the fingerprint sensor has been integrated with home button on the front panel which is flanked by backlit capacitive Recent Apps and Back buttons. The 16MP selfie camera, which is the prominent feature of this phone is on the top of the display alongwith notification LED.
Despite the fact that F1s boasts of an impressive front and rear camera, this phone is also packed with decent hardware to lay its claime for an allrounder. This phone features a 5.5 inch HD (720×1280 pixels) IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection. It is powered by an octa-core MediaTek MT6750 processor with the Mali-T860 MP2 GPU. It has 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage which can be extended upto 128GB via microSD card.
The 5.5-inch display of this phone is good and produces rich colours but could have been better with full HD resolution. The display has good viewing in direct sunlight but viewing angles are average and color reproduction could have been far far better had Oppo used the full HD resolution display on this display keeping in view of the fact of its price range. On the brighter side, the display comes with an eye protection mode that filters out the blue light to create a soothing screen display that is gentle on the eyes and protects your eyes.
The fingerprint sensor integrated into the home button is very easy to set-up and we are impressed with its responsiveness. We have tested it umpteen times and continuously for fifty attempts. Surprisingly, it has never failed to respond and unlocks the phone instantly.
Oppo is promoting the F1s as a ‘Selfie Expert’ smartphone as it is packed with very powerful front camera. Oppo has given due attention to its front camera to capitalise on the selfie craze of the youngsters. Its 16MP front-facing camera has 1/3.1-inch sensor and f/2.0 aperture. For clicking beautiful selfies, Oppo has enhanced Beautify 4.0 features in this camera which now incorporates seven beautify levels and two skins tone modes. It is now possible to capture brighter selfies with clear skin and vivid eyes and striking features. The front camera also comes with Selfie Panorama feature for wider coverage of group and Screen Flash feature. You can also capture the selfies by waving your palm in front of the selfie camera and also with voice command by saying cheese.
As claimed, the selfie camera does full justice to the hype created by Oppo. It is capable of capturing good looking selfies with lot of details and sharpness. The selfies clicked by us turned out to be quite vibrant and these were captured without using any filters. Surprisingly, the selfies taken in lowlight also come out quite good and this is one of the remarkable featureof this phone. To make selfies look more stunning, their is ‘Beauty’ mode feature on the camera that enables you to enhance the skin tone at the time of clicking selfie.The front camera is capable of recording 1080p videos and also provide options of various modes such as GIF, Various Filters and Double Exposure. Selfie clicked on this phone and you can’t ask more:
I have no hesitation in saying that Oppo F1s front camera is the best selfie camera compared to even high-end smartphones for selfie experience and this phone is one step ahead of reputed brands for which you have to shell out a huge amount.
Although, lot of attention has been given to the front camera yet the rear camera also performs very well. The F1s is also equipped with a 13MP rear camera with phase detection auto-focus (PDAF), f/2.2 aperture and Dual-LED flash. The rear camera also provides same shooting modes plus Expert and Ultra HD modes. We have snapped few images with this camera and they have come out very vibrant and sharp. These were clicked in daylight and reproduces the exact colors and have good depth.
This phone is packed with 3075mAh battery and it lasted for full day when I used it with 4G SIM card with data mode on all the time. During my usage, I regularly used two email accounts, did lot of surfing and regularly checked my facebook and twitter accounts and also clicked few images and occasionally checked few Youtube videos. Sadly, Oppo has not included theire signature VOOC fast charging feature in this phone and the battery charging takes a lot of time but thank God, yoy do not have to charge for two times in a day.
This phone performs very well as it is powered by MediaTek MT6750 octa-core processor paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage which is quite sufficient for an average user and you can extend it to 128GB. During our testing, it handled all the task very well. You can run multiple tabs on Google Chrome and swith between apps without any lags and browsing the web go like a breeze. Playing heavey games is no issue on this phone but the phone heats up a little bit if you play the games for long time and that happens even in high-end phones also. Call quality and reception of this phone on 4G is quite good and the mono speaker gives fair amount of audio output in full volume.
Conclusion
The Oppo F1s is being marketed as selfie-focussed smartphone. No doubt, this phone has great charm for its front camera but its rear camera is also a winner in all aspects. Besides its USP of front camera, this phone ticks all the right boxes as far as its overall performance is concerned. Being an all-rounder, this phone can be termed as Yuvraj of smartphones to use the crickeing analogy and association of Oppo with Yuvraj Singh.
No device is perfect if rated in all the set parameters and similarly, this phone also lacks a little bit in its display which is not bad but could have been more better. Similarly, fast charging feature of the battery is missing in this phone. But if you are photographic enthusiasts especially for the selfies and want to flaunt a good looking device in your hand then probably Oppo F1s is the ideal choice in the range of Rs. 18,000. You can get other phones also for this price but then you will miss the Midas effect in your selfies.
