OPPO has been in business for many years now and in that time, the company has been doing its bit to further smartphone technology. The company also has a number of firsts under its belt. So without further ado, let’s a look at some of the notable developments courtesy of OPPO.
The OPPO F3 Plus was a very interesting phone in its own right. The highlight of the phone may have been its dual-front camera setup, but the rear camera of the phone was equally interesting. The 16MP rear camera sported a brand new 1/22.8-inch IMX398 Sony sensor, which was co-developed with OPPO. The sensor offered dual-phase detection autofocus, which doubled the sensor’s pixel array area, where the photodiodes were embedded. According to OPPO, this resulted in a 40% improvement in focusing speeds in low-light conditions.
While making batteries larger was the obvious step to increasing the battery life of a smartphone, OPPO also understood that users would grow extremely tired if it took a long time to charge these large batteries. Thus was born OPPO’s proprietary faster charging technology, dubbed VOOC charging. The technology is said to be the world’s 1st low voltage fast charging tech, which offers 4x faster charging as compared to conventional charging mechanisms. Furthermore, it also offers five layers of protection to ensure safety while charging.
Back in 2012, OPPO launched the Ulike 2 — a smartphone that wore its selfie credentials on its sleeve. The smartphone offered a 5MP front camera, which doesn’t seem much right now, but it was huge as far as selfie cameras then were concerned. It also came with a bunch of beautification features, which weren’t common for its time as well. A year later, Oxford Dictionary would announce ‘selfie’ as the word of the year and the rest is history.
With the OPPO N1’s launch in 2013, the company tried to innovatively tackle the issue of poor image quality of the front camera. How OPPO offered a large megapixel camera on the front and back was through a single 13MP camera, mounted on a rotatable section, which can be both the front camera and the rear. As a result, smartphone users could take high quality selfies with the added benefit of a dual-LED flash.
Artificial Intelligence is currently one of the biggest buzzwords in the world of smartphones but OPPO was one of the first smartphone manufacturers who applied and marketed A.I in their smartphones. The OPPO F5 was one of the first smartphones in India to offer an AI-enabled camera. The phone was able to analyse multiple positioning spots on a user’s face. The AI then uses this information to automatically enhance the facial features and create a better looking picture. This tech was then carried over to the phone’s successors, the OPPO F7 and the new, OPPO F9 Pro, getting better with each iteration. The OPPO F9 Pro also brought its own list of impressive features. This includes the gradient colour design, the inclusion of VOOC Charging and a water drop notch design that helps to increase the screen-to-body ratio.
OPPO isn’t a company that is always content with just simply riding the wave. It hasn’t been shy about experimenting with new technology and has played its part in redefining the boundaries of what smartphone technology could or should do.
[This is a brand story by OPPO]