We have been using the OPPO R9s for about 2 weeks as a daily driver and decided to write our experience with it. As per our policy, we only state the real user experience and conclusion on how worth of money the OPPO R9s. After all, we go for practicality rather than technical terms as we put ourselves on an end user’s point of view.

Design

We love how simple and classy the design looks like. Friends tend to mention that the OPPO R9s looks identical to an iPhone. Well, you can put it that way if you want to as its possibly a much cheaper yet somehow around same end performance. Metal body rim and back makes the design language absolutely eye-candy. OPPO in our opinion is very smart in designing smartphones, they keep it simple and as attractive as possible.  The antenna band on the back seems to be much improved with  three stripes each end known as “six string”.

Comparing side to side, it is a much slimmer phone than the OPPO F1s as the R9s is only 6.6mm thick making its overall weight at only 150g. On the front is the well-known 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 5 which makes the edges slightly curvy and seems like almost as curvy as the metal rim. Our first impression was, it’s going to be pretty slippery but in real life situation it did have a solid grip overall thanks to its matte finish which gives additional grip feeling that gives confidence. LED notification light is still present on this smartphone which gets activated with unattended notifications.

Best part about the OPPO R9s or rather most OPPO phones comes pre-applied with screen protector which saves you from spending some extra bucks hunting for one. Not to forget the transparent TPU casing that comes along as well. In layman terms, its good to mention it as a good-to-go smartphone.

Fingerprint scanner is embedded on the front which also serves as the home key. It’s not a button as you can’t press it, however it does recognize the pressure and serves exactly like how a press-able home button works like. The recent apps key is placed on the left side while the back key is placed on the right side of the home key. Again, point to take note will be it’s backlit which most phones are already removing it.

Camera

The front selfie camera on the OPPO R9s has a whopping 16MP f2.0 sensor. No doubt we being an OPPO selfie camera lovers. Photos are in good quality yet less noisy. There are various of filters to choose from and the beautify feature on the OPPO R9s is the best! We have snapped few selfies for you to decide about it on our camera sample section later.

The back camera, a strong selling point on the OPPO R9s will be its 16MP f1.7 aperture, featuring Sony IMX398 sensor. Dual Pixel Auto Focus (Dual PDAF) is claimed to be greatly faster than the PDAF enabled cameras, as such proven via the one present on the Samsung Galaxy S7. There’s lack of OIS on the OPPO R9s, however the f1.7 aperture does stand out on low light images, hence the outcome of the photos are definitely gorgeous. Do check our sample photos as well.

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Both front and back cameras support time lapse, panorama and beautify. The back camera can record up to 4k video quality while the front camera could do 1080p. Expert mode is still present on the OPPO R9s similar to the one on the OPPO F1s which we reviewed recently.

Display

OPPO decided to slot in a Full HD AMOLED display sized at 5.5-inch. It is a pretty decent looking display with good outdoor visibility especially during direct sunlight. There’s option to tweak the saturation, however there’s Eye protection display which filters out the blue light in order to protect your eyes especially when you’re in a low light environment.

Performance

This smartphone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 625 Octa core processor. Most of our readers would be glad to know and prefer having a Snapdragon powered smartphone rather than any other. Thanks to its 14nm process, the OPPO R9s barely heats up even while you’re browsing the web non-stop for few hours or even with a little gaming in between. 4GB of RAM helps its stability and processing time. Real life usage terms, its a very stable processor and a good choice for the OPPO R9s.

It does not lag at all and it seems like “force close” issues or sudden screen freeze issues are completely forgotten these days. In simple words, you will not face any issues in terms of performance in this smartphone. So, worry less and proceed to “tick” this criteria on your sticky note. 😛

Software & Storage

Out of the box, you will get Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow which is indeed a very stable version. OPPO’s skin on Color OS 3.0 does work well without any serious issues to worry about. The only thing that we worry would be if its going to get Android 7.0 Nougat? Well, OPPO is slow in terms of having major software updates to their existing smartphone. Let’s just wait and see if things would change this time out, although Marshmallow could do the trick for a year or another.

OPPO provided a hefty 64GB of internal storage for you to exploit. There’s 52.71GB available for you to use end-to-end as the OS take the remaining resource. If it’s not sufficient, do make use of the microSD card slot which is made available on the hybrid SIM card slot. OPPO claims the R9s could take up to 256GB without any issues.

Network & Connectivity

The OPPO R9s supports LTE connectivity as well as dual SIMs. Call quality is decent but not the best. We tried using it outdoors and realized it isn’t as loud as our best (HTC 10) however, its certainly one of the best of its price range. LTE connectivity on Digi network worked flawlessly and proved to have no network fluctuations.

OPPO R9s comes with OTG support, WiFi ac and Bluetooth V4.1 however there’s no NFC. There’s no USB Type-C as well with it featuring the regular micro USB 2.0.

Speaker & Battery

Notification sounds on the OPPO R9s gets very loud and tends to be “seeking for attention” outdoors. Speaker placement is common, placed on the bottom left of the smartphone and the sound quality is decently good. We watched the latest Flash episode and we had a pleasant experience with its audio as well as the video output.

Our favorite VOOC flash charge is back again after missing in action on the F1s. It takes about 30 minutes to reach 70% of battery percentage coming from 0%. This is ridiculously fast and saves plenty of your precious time. You will be good to go by time you get out of the shower and all dressed up. We all want this experience in real life situation, right? It’s possible with the OPPO R9s.

Battery life is similar to the one we got from the ASUS Zenfone 3 that we reviewed sometime ago. Battery capacity of the OPPO R9s is 3010mAh and will last you more than 1 day without any issues with about 3 hours of Screen-On-Time. This is recorded based on heavy usage of social messaging apps and non-stop web browsing on Chrome.

Conclusion

Straight forward speaking will be a YES to the OPPO R9s. This is a well-balanced and reliable smartphone from OPPO. We barely find any issues or complains to state here regarding the OPPO R9s. Everything is near perfect and will surely suit your preference. If you find that OPPO F1s does not fit your specifications properly, this will be the best choice and perhaps one of the best smartphone available out there with the price tag of RM1798.

You can actually purchase one for yourselfvia their official online store! Head to ===> OPPO R9s and get one for yourself. Ours is the Gold variant if you wonder and there’s also Rose Gold if its your preferred choice of color.