Oppo has always been a Chinese company that I’ve always respected, they are just so different from so many other Chinese smartphone makers, when the company announced their thinnest smartphone ever made – the Oppo R5 – I was impressed by how incredibly thin and advanced the engineering process is, despite being positioned as a mid-range smartphone, it still packs some of the most recent hardware internals that shouldn’t be disappointing. A few weeks with the world’s thinnest smartphone has come to a conclusion, the love needs to be controlled.
Oppo R5 Video Review
ICYMI: Oppo R5 Unboxing Video
Oppo R5 Hardware Specifications
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 1.5GHz Octa-Core
RAM/ROM: 2GB/16GB
Display: 5.2″ Full HD (1920 x 1080) AMOLED
Camera: 13MP Sony IMX214 f/2.0 (Main), 5MP BSI f/2.0 (Front)
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 b/g/n/ac, BT 4.0 LE
Networks: TD-LTE/FDD-LTE/DC-HSPA+/GSM
Battery: 2000mAh
Slim, Strong and Polished Build
Remember #BendGate, it so happens that when phones are so thin and they get bent easily, the Oppo R5’s steel body construction and slimness at 4.85mm isn’t something you call weak, to be frank I actually dared myself and tried bending the phone, it wasn’t possible and all I got was a painful mark on my fingers, the Oppo R5 is really strong.
During the launch, Oppo mentioned that the R5’s side and edges have a hand polished coating applied to it, which results in an extremely smooth frame that makes it really premium and enjoyable to hold. The phone’s body isn’t ergonomically designed and there isn’t any curved or rounded corners, which many of my friends hasn’t like the phone’s form factor, no doubt it is thin, the phone isn’t nice to hold one handed.
All of that slimness requires some compromises on the phone’s design. First, the protruding camera, then omitting a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a small 2000mAh battery size, its still really impressive despite of that, however no slim phones are perfect. Last, but not the least, Oppo does provide a MicroUSB to 3.5mm converter out of the retail packaging, which we don’t have it in our review unit.
Despite all of that design challenge, Oppo has managed to fit in an impressive AMOLED display on the phone and imagine how thin those panels can be, you also get a front firing speaker that produces extremely loud and clear sound. One thing we didn’t like is the lack of storage expansion, in which the phone needed one as you can fill up the internal storage very easily.
Beautiful and Heavy Software Experience
I have to confess, I love ColorOS for some reasons. First, it looks unique in some ways despite having features similar to other Chinese launchers, then the launcher is fully packed with gestures which I have used a lot. Oppo’s own launcher runs on top of the latest build of Android KitKat and should get its update to Android Lollipop pretty soon. Similar to most other launchers, ColorOS has omitted the app drawer and comes with an online theme store full of Asian made themes.
ColorOS isn’t exactly a light resource launcher, I’ve often encountered crashes of the launcher without doing anything to the phone and there are times the phone freezes for no reason, which results in restarting the phone. Things can get pretty annoying at times, force closes always seem to happen when I just freshly booted the phone, hopefully Oppo releases a software fix to address this.
In terms of performance, the Snapdragon 615 processor isn’t performing to its full potential since KitKat still doesn’t support 64-bit processors, you still get smooth transitions on the user experience, however don’t expect apps to launch snappily, at least the performance from Qualcomm’s chip is better than Mediatek’s cheap and low performance chips.
ColorOS is a beautiful on the Oppo R5, though its software features aren’t the most useful or can be gimmicky at times, we certainly hope that Oppo will continue to improve its software and seriously, make it less resource consuming.
Impressive Camera and Imaging Software
Since the N1, Oppo has been noticed as the next smartphone maker that focuses on smartphone photography. Although theOppo R5 doesn’t have a swivel camera found on the N3, it’s imaging capabilities shouldn’t be underestimated, the phone packs aSony IMX214 sensor on the back and it takes brilliant pictures outdoors and under low light, it measures white balance accurately and results in a natural color saturation on pictures, Oppo’s very own PureImage 2.0 engine also has something to do with it as well.
I’m extremely impressed with the camera app, it offers very interesting shooting modes that I’ve never or rarely find it on other smartphones, not even the camera oriented Lumia smartphones, you can shoot RAW images, oversampling pictures to 50 Megapixels and take extremely close up shots with the Super Macro mode, Oppo has really gone all way out to offer the best camera experience on their smartphones, and these features really work.
Close up taken using Super Macro mode
Chinese smartphone makers are the first to kick off with high resolution front facing cameras, the Oppo R5’s 5-megapixel front facing camera doesn’t disappoint in taking clear and wide angle selfies, however it doesn’t really work well indoors so make sure you have a selfie monopod or super steady fingers ready.
If you happen to browse through Oppo’s product page you’d have realized that the phone supports up to 4K video recording, that option is unfortunately missing in the camera settings and we hope Oppo will resolve this before releasing the phone on shelves, video quality is decent despite no stabilization.
Benchmarks, Battery Life and Network Quality
While we’re not sure if the Oppo R5 is already running on the final version of its software build despite all the bugs and compatibility issues found, the phone performs decently in benchmarks, scoring figures higher than most mid-range devices and on par with some past flagship smartphones, we expect to see a performance jump once the phone gets updated to Android Lollipop. Gaming performance on the Oppo R5 is good with smooth frame rates, thanks to Oppo’s own ‘Cooling Element’ technology, the phone dissipates heat extremely fast when idle.
As you may have guessed it, having such powerful hardware internals and a mere 2000mAh battery size isn’t going to cut, you can easily drain the battery in a mere 6 hours if you are the extremely heavy user with always on LTE connection, the phone’s battery will only bring you as far as 13-14 hours if you are using in a light weight manner.
Before you start trolling about it, Oppo does compensate the poor battery life for one thing – the superfast VOOC mini rapidcharger that pumps 5A of amperage to the phone, resulting a super fast charging speed that will get you 0-75% in a matter of 30 minutes, I can confirm that, because you’ll see a percent increment in every 25-30 seconds, how we wished we have a VOOC rapid power bank.
The Oppo R5 maintains a reliable network connection throughout my usage, the company has ensured that its stainless steel and aluminum chassis are designed properly, LTE speeds performed great on the phone and our callers have reported great voice call quality from our end.
Verdict – A decent product that can be further improved
The Oppo R5 is the best slim smartphone in the market, despite having a few hardware limitations and early software issues, the phone’s incredibly thin form factor and decent hardware internals have got us hooked, the R5 truly redefines on how a premium and powerful smartphone can be made. Thus, we should be seeing more Chinese smartphone makers coming out with even thinner form factors, fixing the hardware flaws of the R5, probably having an even more powerful processor onboard. Does it make sense to own such a thin smartphone? Yes, and probably not.
The Good:
+ Extremely slim and solid body construction
+ Fully featured camera software
+ Great camera performance
+ Front firing loudspeaker
+ Reliable cellular network connection
+ Dissipate heats really fast
+ VOOC Rapid Charging is mind blown
The Not So Good
– Unrealized 64-bit performance
– Heavy software
– No storage expansion
– No 3.5mm headphone jack
– Expensive
The Oppo R5 is now available for preorders at RM1,598 and will be officially available on December 27, the phone gets a score of 7.3/10
