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.
As it turns out, the F1 Plus is the same as the Oppo R9, just rebadged for our market. The latter was announced last month alongside another variant called the R9 Plus for the Chinese market. The F1 Plus is also billed as a "Selfie Expert" smartphone owing to its high-resolution front camera. However, this is not merely an Oppo F1 with a better camera and bigger screen - the company has added many more creature comforts that were missing in the debut model, which makes this an interesting product on its own.
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 phone feels incredibly premium in your hands thanks to the metal chassis and the rounded glass edges in the front. It very light too at 145g and is surprisingly comfortable to use with one hand thanks to very narrow bezels on either side of the screen. The display is a 5.5-inch full-HD Amoled panel which produces vivid colours and good levels of brightness. You even get Gorilla Glass 4 for protection. We noticed that the top half of the screen takes on a light blue hue when you tilt it forward, which is most noticeable on white backgrounds like web pages. At first we thought it was due to the screen guard that comes pre-installed but it is in fact the display.