OPPO has taken the covers off its first smartphone of the year with Vietnam as their debut market. As teased previously, the OPPO F series is their new mid-range smartphone lineup that promises premium photography at a reasonable price.
In terms of appearance, it looks like an improved version of its OPPO R7 series with some minor tweaks on the unibody metal design. It resembles closely with the R7 Lite and it gets a couple of upgrades in the hardware department.
At the front, the OPPO F1 gets a compact-sized 5″ display that does a HD 720 resolution of 1280×720. Powering the processor is an updated Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 Octa-Core unit, similar to the newly announced Redmi 3, and it gets 3GB of RAM for all your multi-tasking needs. On-board there’s 16GB of storage which can be expanded to 128GB extra with microSD. This is a Dual-SIM device that accepts a MicroSIM and Nano-SIM, but you would lose a slot if you need to use a microSD card.
For taking pictures, it gets a 13MP f/2.2 main camera with PDAF and it is assisted with a single LED flash. Meanwhile, the front gets an 8MP f/2.0 shooter with built-on beautification features for the perfect selfie. Keeping the lights on is a 2,500mAh battery which is slightly more than the OPPO R7 Lite and R7 models. Out of the box, the F1 runs on ColorOS 2.1 that’s based on Android 5.1 Lollipop.
In Vietnam, the OPPO F1 is priced at 6,490,000 Dong, which is about RM1,270 if converted directly. As an earlybird bonus, the first 1,500 buyers will get a pair of iLike Bluetooth headset thrown in for free. The OPPO F1 is now available in Gold and we expect them to release a Rose Gold version later on. With Malaysia as a key market, they are likely to release the OPPO F1 here very soon.
