Oppo F7 Review: Taking the Mid-Budget AI Selfie Camera up a Notch

The Oppo F7 ad shows Virat Kohli taking a selfie with the phone. But is the phone really worth a shot?

Oppo F7 calls itself a ‘selfie expert’, but how much camera prowess does it pack? Here’s the complete review of the phone. 

(Photo: Aaqib Raza Khan/The Quint)

The design of Apple iPhone X received a mixed response. But since then almost every smartphone-maker, in all the possible segments, has decided to take it up a notch, and embrace the ‘notch’.

Oppo F7 gets a smaller notch than the iPhone X, which makes it a bit more acceptable. But what more should you expect, and should you accept this Oppo smartphone at a price of Rs 22,000 (4GB/64GB) or Rs 27,000 (6GB/128GB)? Scroll on.

Pros:

• Big 6.23-inch screen
• A sharp, 19:9 FHD+ display
• Competent performer
• Long battery life

Cons:

• Inconsistent camera
• Plastic body
• Lacks fast charging

What’s Good?

“Is it an iPhone? Is it a Vivo V9?” were the usual queries I faced while using the Oppo F7. The design cues are admittedly similar, especially because of the top ‘notch’ design at the front. Don’t prefer the notch peeking out of the frame? This phone allows you to conveniently hide it from the settings menu, after which it conceals the notch with a black band across the notification bar. Smooth.

Oppo F7 allows you to conveniently hide the notch from the settings menu.

Oppo F7 is a towering device, with a screen size of 6.23 inches. But it manages to sit comfortably in your palm, owing to the 19:9 aspect ratio which gives a panoramic screen instead of increasing its width. The display is sharp an clean with a 2,280x1,080p resolution. It makes watching videos and playing games a treat.

The phone has a longish design with an unusual 19:9 screen ratio.

What supplements the gameplay and other graphic applications, is what lies under the hood. The phone uses a MediaTek Helio P60 chipset, unlike the conventional Snapdragon processors used in competing smartphones. But this one manages to provide a smooth, lag-free performance, paired with 6 GB of RAM at your disposal.

Oppo F7 houses a long performing 3,400 mAh battery inside.

The 3,400 mAh battery is managed well by the software. Once charged in the morning, the phone managed to reach 1.5 days of regular usage which involved WhatsApp, YouTube, web surfing and games on the phone. Oppo F7 runs its proprietary Color OS 5, which is based on Android 8.1. The UI is clean with bright, poppy icons and colors.

What’s Bad?

The phone feels cheap with the amount of plastic used. The entire back panel is made of plastic and gets a lot of fingerprint smudges. Though it keeps the weight under check, it makes the phone highly susceptible to damage and looks a bit inferior to the competition.

The phone uses a plastic back with a faux metal look.

The phone is advertised as a ‘selfie expert’ but that is not the case all the time. The camera performance is quite inconsistent. It manages some really good, well-detailed shots in decently lit areas, but it throws up a lot of noise and soft photographs as soon as the light dips.

Oppo F7 has a single camera setup in the front and the rear, depending on AI to do its magic on the photographs, especially with the bokeh effects. This is exactly what Google attempted with the Pixel 2 camera, but the experience here is not as refined.

The AI selfie camera also blurred photos at uneven places.

A selfie with top light has been decently processed with the AI selfie camera.

Oppo F7 has a f/1.8 16 megapixel shooter at the rear, and a f/2.0 25 megapixel camera at the front. Though it looks impressive as far as specifications are concerned, the eventual photographs don’t really manage to evoke much awe. This is largely due to the heavy processing on part of the native software.

Indoor close-ups looks decently detailed.

But the details get compromised once you tap the ‘1x zoom’ to close in on the image. This looks like a digital zoom, trying to mimic the optical zoom available on Galaxy Note 8.

Though slightly noisy at the corners, the image seems to have balanced the highlights and low light areas. 

The image manages to keep all the fine details intact, but blows up a few highlights, and edges.

Though the battery is massive, you would need sufficient time to charge the phone to its full capacity because it doesn’t support fast charging. Seriously, a 2018 flagship phone which doesn’t charge quickly? Nobody has got time for that.

Why Buy It?

A long-lasting battery and a sharp display, with a notch to show-off. If that gets you going, this is the phone you could consider. The camera department seems to be a work in progress so tread carefully before thinking of it as a deal-maker or deal-breaker.

The phone doesn’t have sharp corners and the camera setup resembles Google Pixel 2.

In the end, the specifications and benchmarks are just numbers to show the technical capabilities of a phone. Because the ‘performance numbers’, or AnTuTu scores, can be fudged, as a hacker has alleged that Oppo F7 is likely doing.

The phone comes with a pre-installed screen guard.

Maybe they are, maybe not. The perfect phone for you should be the one which is in your budget, and gets your immediate requirements sorted in the best possible way. Can Oppo F7 be that for you? Let us know in the comments below.