Oppo recently created a new category within its smartphone lineup, called the F-series, with its central focus being camera quality. The Oppo F1 ( Review) was the first model to kick-start this series back in January and today the company has launched the F1 Plus, which was teased a few months back.
Look and feel
There’s no getting around the fact that the design of the F1 Plus has been heavily inspired by the current iPhone design. It’s not the first time companies have drawn inspiration from popular smartphones and it certainly won’t be the last. Oppo seems to have made efforts to ensure that the F1 Plus is not a direct ripoff, and the end result is quite satisfying.
The volume and power buttons are placed on either side of the phone and are comfortable to reach. We would have liked a bit more spacing between the volume buttons but as far as tactile feedback goes, we didn’t face any issues. The hybrid SIM tray is on the right, and can accommodate either two Nano-SIMs or a single SIM and a microSD card ( up to 128GB) .
The back of the phone has a very nice texture that’s smooth to touch but can get a bit slippery. We have a very familiar camera bump for the 13-megapxiel sensor, and an LED flash below it. The speaker grille, Micro-USB port and headphones socket are all on the bottom.
Specifications and software
The F1 Plus is powered by MediaTek’s MT6755 octa-core SoC, which is also known as the Helio P10. It’s a 64-bit chip built on the slightly older 28nm fabrication process and packs in a Mali T860 GPU. Coupled with 4GB of RAM, the overall performance is quite a bit faster than say, a Snapdragon 616. In AnTuTu, we got a score of 51, 022 points while GFXbench returned 16fps in the T-Rex test.
Performance
The F1 Plus runs very smoothly for everyday use and you’ll usually have about 2GB of RAM free for apps. We didn’t face any noticeable lag during our time with the phone. The fingerprint sensor is blazing fast and almost never skipped a beat. We did find the ambient light sensor to be a bit slow to react to changing light. 4G works on both SIM slots and a new SIM is registered quickly without the need for a reboot. Call quality is good too, and the speaker is fairly loud for conference calls.
Battery life
The F1 Plus packs in a 2850mAh battery which lasted for 13 hours and 3 minutes in our video loop test. Under regular use, we had no trouble going beyond a day with 4G. The phone also supports Oppo’s VOOC fast charging system, which managed to juice the battery up to 56 percent in just half an hour. One thing to keep in mind is that along with the special charger, you need to carry the specific USB cable that ships with the phone. A standard Micro-USB cable will not work for fast charging.