Oppo N1 is equipped with a 13 MP (f/2.0, 6-element lens, dual LED flash) swivel camera which rotates roughly 206 degrees. More than 180 degree revolution means that the camera acts as a secondary camera as well as a primary camera. This essentially means you’ve got a 13 MP front-facing camera!
Though this is an interesting functionality but with moving parts there is always a concern about the sturdiness of that particular part. Oppo has cleared the air and said that they’ve built the unit to withstand 100,000 rotations. Mathematically this computes to around and about 5 years provided you rotate the camera 50 times a day!
The 13 MP camera is barely a ground breaking feature but what’s worth noting is the fact that the images produced are far superior to what you would get from any high-end Android device. Rendered images are sharp with natural colors and carry a balanced contrast. In terms of speed Oppo N1 is said to have a boot time of 0.6 second, however, In actual testing it turned out to be closer to 1 second. A time difference of 0.4 second may not sound too big but less is always better!
Moving to the Camera UI. I used the preloaded Color OS instead of CynogenMod for all the testing and image capturing. The factory default setting has Burst mode enabled by default using which you’ll get up to 20 full-resolution shots in a matter of 4 seconds (calculates to 5 fps). The Oppo N1 also includes a slow shutter feature of up to 8 seconds, HDR image processing, and beautification feature that provides an air-brush like feature.
The camera UI is straightforward, there’s a button at the bottom-right corner of the viewfinder offering five camera modes viz. Normal, HDR, Panorama, Beautify and Slow shutter. The normal and beautify modes further have 6 scene modes located at the top-right corner viz. Auto, Smart scene, Portrait, Landscape, Sports and Sight.
The settings options are located at the top-left button, where you can toggle between the available:
- Image resolutions viz. 13MP at 4:3, 10MP at 16:9, 3MP at 4:3 and 2MP at 16:9
- Video resolution i.e 1080p, 720p, 480p, HDR and slow motion at 480p
- Tap shutter, timer, shutter sound, location and O-Touch shutter.
The flash settings are on, off, auto and fill light. The first 3 options are pretty straightforward but the “fill light” is the one which needs a bit of explanation. In the dual LED the top one is for a diffused, softer light that’s activated in fill light mode. The “fill light” mode is greatly useful when you are using camera as a front-camera.
About the video capturing abilities, Oppo N1 captures 1080p video @ 30 fps. It has on-board noise-cancellation system for recording videos concentrated on a particular person/group. This is very useful when you have to capture a speech or a conversation (say a board meeting!). The downside to this is the lack of an option to turn off noise cancellation, there are times when you need a more general sound base of surrounding environment. The HDR video mode turned out to be a great feature as well. The recorded video resulted in great colors, better than the HDR in still-camera mode.
Camera Samples
Overall the camera produces one of the most sharp and stunning images I have seen on any Android device as of now. The macro shots, selfies, focused captures, et al are of sheer quality. This being said there is one area where I found the camera software floundering is the HDR mode. There were times when the stitching looked unnatural due to color clipping. It might be because of slow processing time for HDR images or the software pumping up the contrast on the highlights. This is something which can be fixed with a software update and I am hoping Oppo is working on it.
Barring this small hitch the camera experience on Oppo N1 is near-perfect! The Oppo N1 camera is one piece of tech I feel I could rely on as and when required without tinkering with the setting to get a perfect shot. All I gotta do is Take out Oppo N1, Point and Shoot!
Just to refreshen the memory of our readers, Oppo N1 phablet was launched in India in January and comes with convincing hardware features. This phablet sports a 5.9-inch full-HD IPS display(1920×1080 pixels),377PPI, and is powered by a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, coupled with 2GB RAM,16GB of internal storage. This phablet is packed with a powerful 3610mAh battery, and runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. For connectivity, Oppo N1 supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, NFC GPS and Bluetooth 4.0.
Currently, the Oppo N1 is available at Rs. 36,990 at snapdeal.com.
