Most of you might have realized and read my hands on review on the OPPO F1s. Based on that article, you would know some of the key points which I will be talking about during this review. I have used this smartphone for more than 2 weeks as a daily driver. This is my main phone till today and could drag a little longer because I am really getting used to the OPPO F1s. Want to know why? Read the entire review and get to know why this smartphone has a huge potential to be the best mid-range smartphone currently in the market.

Design Language

To be honest, the design of OPPO F1s is pretty common these days as most phones are getting the all metal/aluminium finish. Of course, some even failed making an attractive looking metal unibody smartphone. For the OPPO F1s, the design is pretty straight forward and some of my friends tend to directly say ” Hey it looks exactly like an iPhone 6 Plus!”. If you look at the outlook with a glance, it does look like an iPhone. You have to actually look at the detailing properly. It’s actually pretty attractive having the minimalist finishing so that it doesn’t look like its overly done.

Don’t think that the OPPO F1s is all metal like the OPPO F1 Plus. This smartphone isn’t made fully out of metal as the top and bottom back areas are made of plastic to ensure no issues faced for reception interruption. The OPPO F1s comes pre-installed with a clear screen protector giving you the extra protection. Of course it gets a lot of scratches and if you have the extra budget do go ahead and get a tempered glass instead. The display is protected with the Gorilla Glass 4, however it can’t really withstand scratches as how you think it could so it’s always safer to use a screen protector or a tempered glass.

This smartphone has a 5.5-inch IPS display with an HD resolution of 1280 x 720. Setting the phone at maximum brightness works pretty well under direct sunlight with no visibility issues. However if you’re always depending on the auto brightness, do take note that you might have some minor issues during direct sunlight and its always better to set it to the maximum brightness whenever necessary. For me, having an HD Display means having a better battery life if the overall processor and software is properly optimized that is.

Something that really works flawlessly will be the fingerprint scanner on the OPPO F1s. It works really fast and get accurate most of the time. Some brands tend to put a cheaper fingerprint scanner which doesn’t really perform well. However, there’s nothing to fear on the OPPO F1s of as it is really fast and surprisingly faster than one of my favorite smartphone, the Vivo V3 Max. Most phones have ditched having backlit capacitive buttons. But it is still present on this smartphone. Both the recent apps and back button are lighted which adds the value and assists in real life situation especially at night. Don’t forget the LED notification light which is present on the OPPO F1s which is placed on the top left.

In order to compensate the huge display size where some people might find it hard to use it one-handed, the button placements are near perfect and nicely planned by the designers. Of course, I do have large palms and find it to be easy. The power button on the right can be reached easily using my thumb while the volume rockers which are placed on the left side gets the medicine from rest of my fingers. The front 16MP camera is placed on the top left, near to the earpiece.

There’s still an headphone jack on the bottom of the OPPO F1s which is accompanied by the micro USB charging port. There’s also two noticeable speaker grills, which on the left works as the mic while the right one is the actual speaker. Looking at the back of this smartphone, there’s the 13MP main camera situated side by side with the LED flash on the top left.

I almost forgot to mention about the SIM card tray. Its placed on top of the power button and could cater up to 3 cards simultaneously. Two Nano SIM cards and one micro SD card in one shot thanks to the unique SIM tray by OPPO.

Performance

I know that people tend to prefer the Snapdragon series processor rather than Mediatek. For me it’s as simple as doing the job right. I have seen Snapdragon processors which tend to fail so badly and Mediatek ones which does terrible too. Over the years, Mediatek has done pretty decent job in having a reliable processor. On the OPPO F1s, you will find the MT6750 Octa core processor clocked at 1.5GHz. Lets get practical and rather technical here as I tend to look at user experience than the back-end. For me, it worked perfectly and there’s no noticeable lags or stutter. The OPPO F1s is smooth and therefore managed to perform nearly like a high-end smartphone. For the entire period of usage, I did not come across any Force Close issues and that’s impressive for me.

To help the performance on the OPPO F1s, it comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. Of course you can expand the storage capacity via the micro SD card slot made available. Do take note that this smartphone supports WiFi b,g and n only. It does not support WiFi ac and equivalent to other mid range phones these days, there’s no NFC as well. Do take note that this smartphone does support 4G LTE connectivity but there’s no support of VoLTE especially when you use the YES 4G prepaid or postpaid SIM. I am yet to try on Webe, but I doubt it would work as well.

Moving on, there’s also support of USB OTG just in case if you wonder. This is pretty important to some users who rely on it. I personally use it at my office where my USB flash drive carries loads of songs for me to listen. Of course with 32GB of storage made available its not gonna be a huge issue anyway.

Software

As for the software, the OPPO F1s comes out of the box with Android 5.1 Lollipop. The familiar and latest Color OS 3.0 takes place on top of it. The Color OS is one of my favorite although the Android version always stay outdated by OPPO. I have no idea why and I have even tried asking them why but they do acknowledge and they’re definitely getting something upcoming to fix that particular delay. On the first week itself, I did receive a minor software update which improves the stability and Pokemon Go’s in game experience. (That’s what was stated on the Changelog).

Taking screenshots by swiping down the screen with three fingers is very useful. In fact flip to mute is pretty useful when you’re in a meeting!

Like I mentioned, there’s no lags and unnecessary problem faced during my usage. Everything works flawlessly and there’s no need to be frustrated over not responding or Force close issues. Some things to take note of will be the drop-down notification bar where you can see the shortcuts. There’s blue light filter which helps you during the night which brings less harm to the eyes.

The Lockscreen magazine interface

Another feature that is pretty new to me will be its Lockscreen Magazine. Your phone will automatically download famous wallpapers and set it as your Lockscreen wallpaper. Do remember to set it to WiFi only or you can even turn it off if you don’t like it. I did keep it turned on as I find it to be refreshing to me whenever I turn the screen on. You can also swipe to the right to view more Wallpaper images as there’s actually plenty downloaded every time the updating is done. I don’t want to brag too much about this and you can check the screenshots to have a rough understanding.

The blue light filter is definitely useful during the night and the built-in File Manager is user friendly and convenient to use with FTP support.

One more thing that is worth mentioning will be its double tap to wake and sleep. Not many offer this feature and I personally find it to be very useful. Instead of always pressing the Power button, why not just double tap and make it easy? It also increases the lifespan of your Power button, agree? To the brands that have this particular Gesture, thank you and keep it up.

Some useful Gestures & Motions to play with

Camera

With the OPPO F1s, you will already know that it is well known for the Selfie camera. It is definitely very good and takes great selfies. The front camera comes with a 16MP sensor and f2.0 aperture. On top of that, Beautify 4.0 which is OPPO’s very own beatification mode within the camera software is definitely a killer. I have taken selfies on a lot of smartphones and personally OPPO’s selfie camera and software is the best. What I mean by the best is the way the beautification works. It corrects and doesn’t make the beautification level extremely fake. Most photos of mine are taken using “level 4” and you can go ahead and check on the camera samples later part of the post. It does look pretty natural isn’t it?

This is how your front selfie camera interface will look like.

The front camera can take Full HD videos and don’t forget that it only has fixed focus rather than auto focus. I would have preferred the auto focus as it could make the image look sharper and crispier. As for the front camera modes, there’s Time Lapse, Video, Photo, Beauty and Panorama. There’s also Gif, Double Exposure, and Various Filters to play with. The Patterns and Filters within the Filter mode are helpful and saves your time rather than editing it later with third party software.

In order to make your selfie taking session easier, there’s also Voice and Palm support. The voice support takes your photo by saying “cheese”, “take photo”, “image” and so on. While the Palm support means you can place your Palm in front of the camera indicating it to start taking photo. This could be handy when you’re taking with a group.

This is your main camera’s interface. There’s the Ultra HD feature to capture 51MP photos.

I haven’t talk about the main camera yet, right? That does not mean its not great. It is actually pretty impressive! I didn’t know that it could take impressive looking images. The main camera comes with 13MP sensor and f2.2 aperture. I know, its fairly lower than the front camera right? Anyways, the main camera has PDAF, Expert Mode and you can even save it in RAW mode. Needless to say, this is good enough for you to take great images. The shutter speed is fast and I would say that the macro shots are the best. Do check my sample images below to have a rough idea on how the image will be like if you’re planning to get the OPPO F1s.

Battery life and 4G LTE

In terms of battery capacity, the OPPO F1s comes with a non-removable 3075mAh battery. It does not have any fancy features such as quick charging or even OPPO’s very own VOOC flash charging. They do however provide you with 2A output charger which does charge the phone fast. Try not to use any other chargers instead because it slows down the charging process. If there’s no choice, go ahead and charge but you could save a lot of time if you have the 2A charger. For the battery life, you get roughly about 3 hours of Screen on Time with above average usage. This includes Pokemon Go sessions as well guys!

As for the 4G LTE connectivity, this phone works very well. I tend to always set the phone into loudspeaker while I have to answer call while driving. Usually, I won’t be able to hear the person’s voice clearly and tend to take the phone and place it nearer to my ears. As for the OPPO F1s, the single loudspeaker does work pretty well and gets really loud. The call quality is good and there’s no noticeable issues. One more thing to relate about how loud the speaker is when the alarm starts ringing. Most recently used phones, I tend to miss the alarm while the OPPO F1s does a great job waking me up precisely.

Conclusion on the OPPO F1s

This is the most anticipated part from most of my reader, the conclusion. Well, I would recommend the OPPO F1s if you love taking great looking selfies and I do agree with the statement from OPPO mentioning the F1s as the “Selfie Expert”. Another main reason will be its unique triple card tray. This will definitely become a trend in upcoming smartphones. If you would love to not spend too much and have a good looking smartphone, the OPPO F1s fits this bill as well. I would have definitely be happy if there’s VOOC flash charging in this smartphone but looks like this is what you can get for the price you pay.

If you’re interested on the OPPO F1s, please go ahead and purchase it via online retailers or even their authorized dealers with physical shop. The OPPO F1s is priced at RM1198 inclusive of GST. It comes in two colors Gold and Rose Gold.