OPPO N3 officially announced with a 16MP camera that rotates itself

OPPO has finally unveiled its OPPO N3, the successor of its photography-centric N1. The rotatable camera on the OPPO N1 is rather unique, offering a 13MP shooter which can be rotated for both front and rear. On the OPPO N3, not only they have retained the rotatable camera but they have taken a step further by making it rotatable electronically.

This allows you to frame your camera shot in a single hand and you can tap and drag on the screen to adjust the angle of the camera. Apart from being an awesome selfie tool, the electronically controlled camera module also lets you take steady panaromic shots without worrying about unsteady hand panning. Taking a moving object? There’s also a tracking feature where the camera would automatically rotate to follow your subject. For better image quality, the N3 is fitted with a larger 1/2.3″ sensor that shoots at 16MP, which gives it an effective pixel size of 1.34 micron. For its lens, OPPO has also gotten help from big players such as Schneider.

The front display of the OPPO N3 is a 5.5″ IPS display that does Full HD (1920×1080) resolution. Underneath, it runs on a Quad-Core 2.3GHz Snapdragon 801 processor with 2GB of RAM and has 32GB of on-board storage. During the announcement, it is mentioned that the N3 will have dual SIM slots and have support for 4G LTE as well. The removable slot is quite unique with the first slot for nano-SIM thats 4G LTE enabled while the second slot can be used for either a secondary micro-SIM or used as a microSD. Which means you can either have 1 SIM + microSD or dual-SIM cards with no expandable memory card.

On the OPPO N1, the major gripe was the lack of notification light. On the N3, it features a Skyline notification light that arcs at the bottom of the phone. If that’s not enough, they have also announced a new O-Click 2.0 blue tooth remote. Now not only you can use it as a remote camera shutter but you can also use it for camera rotation and even use it to make phone calls. So if you’re phone is kept in your bag, you can answer it directly from this nifty little accessory. Over at the back, the OPPO N3 comes with a fingerprint scanner that also functions as an O-Touch button.

The VOOC Rapid charger which debut on the Find 7 is also available on the N3. It charges the non-removable 3,000mAh battery from 0-75% in 30 minutes and a 5 quick minute charge is enough to provide 2 hours of talk time. This time, it will be bundled with a more compact VOOC mini charger. The OPPO N3 is priced at US$649 which is about RM2,122. In our interview with OPPO’s product manager, the OPPO N3 is targeted to go on sale in Malaysia in December 2014.

You can check out more hands-on photos over at our OPPO N3 and OPPO R5 gallery.