We may be just three months into this year, but 2019 is turning out to be quite the year for Sony. Not for it’s smartphones, no. Sony is behind the feature most new smartphones are banking on, to become outright bestsellers — The 48MP camera. So far, there are four phones already in the Indian market offering the same, and all except one relies on the Sony IMX586 sensor. It’s a camera never before seen in smartphones, and seemingly enough, it doesn’t seem to fetch a high premium either. Oppo became the latest OEM to announce a smartphone with the 48MP camera, the F11 Pro. It comes right on the heels of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro, opening up the market even further to hi-res cameras. The 48MP camera is now available for as low as Rs 13,999 and as high as Rs 37,999 on the Honor View 20. The Oppo F11 Pro sits in between, and for an aggressive price-tag of Rs 24,999, the phone does have quite a lot more to offer.
We got our hands on the Oppo F11 Pro at the launch event and made good use of it for a while. Here’s our first take —
The Oppo F11 Pro blends three colours together to offer a gradient colour design, never before seen. The company calls it the Thunder Black variant, and it shines purple and blue in the corners and black in the middle. The camera unit is housed in a raised unit along the center, and the front camera pops up from above the unit and blends in seamlessly when hidden. Since the front camera is taken care of, there’s no need for a notch and the Oppo F11 Pro gets the all-screen treatment. The display stretches all the way to the edges on the top, but has a distinct chin on the bottom which doesn’t hamper the experience in any way. The design is one of Oppo’s primary justification of the Rs 24,999 price tag. There doesn’t seem to be a protective glass on top of the glass body, especially on the back. If I would be using the phone, I would definitely put a case on it, which would ultimately mar the experience.
Coming to the pop-up camera itself, it’s a curiously made one. It’s transparent on both sides and is a tad slower than the one on the Vivo V15 Pro. Oppo claims the module can work 100 times a day over five years. It also apparently closes if the phone slips out of your hand, before it falls to the ground.
The phone is powered by the MediaTek Helio P70 processor coupled with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The choice of the processor left me confused. Just a day before, Realme unveiled a budget Android phone at Rs 8,990 powered by the same processor. And now, the F11 Pro priced at Rs 24,999 is also powered by the same chipset. Oppo justifies the price with the design and the cameras, but then again, is this supposed to be a high-end phone? Or a mid-range phone housed in a high-end body? MediaTek did hype up the processor at the launch event claiming a faster CPU, GPU and a triple ISP setup. It’s the triple ISP that supports the 48MP Sony sensor and along with a dual-core APU, the 48MP camera uses Oppo’s AI algorithms to optimise photos.
The processor is also used to offer, what Oppo calls HyperBoost. It gets automatically activated (meaning there’s no way of knowing), and apparently boosts app launch speeds and optimises the memory to make games run smoother. We will be testing out the phone’s performance in our in-depth review soon.
More than anything, it’s the camera on the back of the Oppo F11 Pro that makes it a compelling choice. The 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor is a fantastic choice and it’s shaping up to be a total disruptor among smartphone cameras. While Oppo would want to take the credit for the cameras, it’s actually all Sony’s doing. The sensor has a 1/2-inch surface area and has 48 million pixels. By default however, the phone takes 12MP photos by default. There’s also AI scene recognition and AI-powered portrait mode too boot. Early samples reveal there is definitely a marked improvement from what older Oppo phones offered before, but how does it compare against other 48MP cameras in the market remains to be seen.
The F11 Pro also comes with VOOC 3.0 fast charging. The 4,000mAh battery on the phone charges 49 percent in 30 minutes. We will be testing out this claim as well in our tests.
Overall, the Oppo F11 Pro does have something to offer for everyone. There’s a lot for the mobile photographer on offer, something for the design enthusiasts and also for budding mobile gamers. But how well everything works is something we will find out soon enough.