Oppo’s focus on camera-centric smartphones started off when they had launched the F1, the first one in the F-series back in January. They followed it up with the F1 Plus which was an upgrade on several fronts such as the camera, display, CPU and RAM. And now, the F1s tries to go back to being a camera-centric smartphone rather than offer premium specifications and features.
Starting off with the exterior, the design is almost the same as the F1 Plus. The all-metal body feels premium where the buttons offer a satisfactory tactile feel and aren’t difficult to reach. The top panel houses only the mic module while the bottom panel holds the 3.5mm audio jack, micro-USB port and speaker grille. Since there weren’t many apps installed and running on the phone, we were able to unlock the phone quickly using the fingerprint sensor. Considering the current generation of fingerprint sensors on other phones, most of them have now become quite fast. With support for dual-SIM slots, it was a smart step to not go for a hybrid SIM tray. This means along with supporting two nano-SIM cards, the tray also has a microSD card slot, forming a triple-tray slot. With an internal storage of 32GB, storage can be extended up to 128GB.
The huge 5.5-inch IPS LCD display has a resolution of 720×1280 which is disappointing at this price and the company should have gone for a full HD display. There’s a 13MP camera sensor on the rear and it was able to take really good shots indoors and under soft-light conditions. The main-feature of the phone, the front 16MP camera took sharp selfies, taking in a lot of details. The real test will be under low-light conditions and we will try it out once we get the phone in our labs. The default camera app comes loaded with features such as Beautify 4.0, Selfie Panorama and in-built filters. Nothing spectacular since third-party camera apps also include these features, but having them included inside the default app is welcome. It ships with ColorOS 3.0 which is Android Lollipop 5.1, another disappointing feature since Marshmallow has been available for quite a long time now.
The CPU doesn’t see an upgrade compared to the previous F1 Plus, although the Mediatek MT6750 should be able to handle everyday tasks for the phone. As mentioned earlier, the phone isn’t directed to be powerful on the processing front, rather it wants to click the best pictures. We will only be able to determine how much the CPU can push on other aspects after running it through our test process. The RAM sees a downgrade compared to the F1 Plus with 3GB available in the F1s. We saw the F1 Plus supporting Oppo’s VOOC Flash Charge, the company’s quick charge technology, but sadly, the F1s doesn’t support VOOC. Probably to compensate that, the battery capacity has been kept at 3,075 mAh, and we are keen on finding out how long does the battery last in a single full charge.
To conclude, the F1s offers decent features and specs and if you look at the price of Rs. 17,990, the pricing could have been better. Both the cameras take brilliant pictures and the phone offers a premium feel with its all-metal body.