Oppo F9 review: Not your average notch

Positives

• Small notch
• Nearly bezel-less screen
• Unique colour choices
• VOOC quick charging is great
• Headphone jack

Negatives

• Only accessible in go with markets
• Sluggish performance
• MicroUSB

Bottom Line

• F9
• by Oppo
• The Oppo F9 brings a distinctive solution to the notch and is feasible in a few sexy colour options. Aside from that, there could be no longer much that makes this telephone stand out.

Oppo has made a few interesting smartphones of late, just like the high-end Oppo Find X with its growing digicam mechanism. The company’s new F9 isn’t fairly as thrilling at the spec sheet, but does a few interesting issues with its colour scheme and uniquely formed notch. We don’t anticipate this telephone to come to the united states every time soon, but felt it was nonetheless value a look.

Design

Although it would possibly copy the similar accepted seem of the iPhone, it is no longer made up of top rate materials.

There’s no denying the Oppo F9 is a blatant copy of Apple’s iPhone X design. Because of this, the Oppo F9 will most seemingly by no means come to U.S. markets (unless Oppo desires Apple to sue its pants off). Although it would possibly copy the similar accepted seem and form of the iPhone, it isn’t made up of top rate materials. The F9’s physique appears to be like like a mixture of glass and steel but it’s solely made up of plastic. This makes the F9 really sense substantially cheaper in contrast to different smartphones with glass or steel designs, however the physique is nonetheless fairly stable and tightly positioned together.



What makes the Oppo F9’s layout sexy is its gradient colour scheme. I even have the dawn red sort which is going from a brilliant red and fades to a purple as you technique the backside half of the phone. A distinctive diamond development at the again is visual at an angle. It’s my favourite factor in regards to the Oppo F9 and it’s magnificent to seem at. If red and purple aren’t your factor there’s also a twilight blue model, which fades from black to blue instead.

The Oppo F9 does now not have a USB Type-C port, rather utilizing the legacy MicroUSB.

Everything else concerning the F9’s layout is lovely standard. There’s a fingerprint sensor at the rear, energy button at the right, quantity buttons at the left, and a headphone jack at the bottom. Oddly, the Oppo F9 doesn’t have a USB Type-C port, picking the legacy MicroUSB. With how widespread USB Type-C is this was very shocking to see even for a mid-range device.

Display

We have now not viewed a notch this small pondering the Essential Phone, and the engineering to gain it really is lovely clever.

The F9’s different attention-grabbing function is its notch. The notch is perhaps essentially one of the foremost hated smartphone development of 2018, but Oppo has figured out a option to make it seem good. It’s known as a waterdrop notch and it’s a lot smaller and extra sexy than the traditional notch. We haven’t viewed a notch this small pondering the Essential Phone and the engineering to gain this notch is lovely clever. The notch only homes a front-facing camera, in contrast to most notches that also contain the speaker. The earpiece is rather seamlessly integrated into the best bezel of the phone.



The monitor screen is set as near edge-to-edge as you possibly can get, with very thin bezels all around. With a answer of 2,340 x 1,080, this LCD monitor isn’t most excellent you’ll discover on a smartphone, but I discovered it to be perfectly sufficient. The 6.3-inch monitor is large, delicate to use, and friendly to seem at. Colors are vibrant, textual content is sharp, and it’s shiny sufficient to see in direct sunlight.

The Oppo F9 can also be the primary smartphone to send with Gorilla Glass 6, Corning’s most long lasting glass. It’s seemingly succesful of surviving an regular of 15 drops from one meter, but I by no means dropped the tool to experiment this claim.

Performance

The Oppo F9 runs on a Mediatek Helio P60 processor and 6GB of RAM. Most of the time the Oppo F9 carried out fluidly. Launching applications, navigating by the interface, surfing the web, and different traditional smartphone sports have been smooth. The only challenge I had was with gaming. Gaming at the F9 is a really uneven ride and it feels as though the Mediatek processor isn’t succesful to maintain up. The cellphone even struggles with Clash Royale, that is a smooth tower protection recreation and never very graphically intensive. Oppo’s program program has a gaming mode to enhance gameplay and offer higher gaming performance but I didn’t observe a difference with it on or off.

In phrases of battery life, the Oppo F9 plays admirably. The 3,500mAh battery had lots of juice for the F9 to comfortably final me all day. Unfortunately, Oppo’s program program doesn’t make it smooth to gauge screen-on time statistics. I can say that YouTube took up 50 percentage of my usage, and I all the time ended the day with round 15 to 20 percentage battery left. The Oppo F9 can also be very fast to recharge with Oppo’s VOOC fast charging. This is one in every of the quickest charging ways accessible that you would possibly be extra acquainted with as Dash Charge on OnePlus devices.

Camera

On the rear, the Oppo F9 has a 16MP predominant shooter with f/1.8 aperture and a secondary 2MP sensor for shooting depth news and portrait mode effects. The digicam also gives a well sort of respectable points akin to time lapse, slow-motion video, stickers, AI magnificence mode, and Google Lens integration.

The front-facing digicam is attainable in at a whopping 25MP, offering lots of answer for zooming and cropping in your selfie photos. Selfie pictures are very good, with well element and herbal pores and pores and epidermis tones but I wasn’t a lot of a fan of the magnificence mode. You can modify the intensity of the magnificence mode manually, but for those who go away it up for the digicam to choose it’s very aggressive in softening the info in your face.

The rear 16MP shooter won’t blow your socks off, but it’s extra than adequate. In sunlight or well-lit conditions, the digicam plays well. Images are distinctive with well dynamic vary and colour reproduction continues a herbal appearance. In low-light scenarios, the picture high caliber deteriorates very quickly. Photos nonetheless retain lots of colour but lack sharpness, and there’s very little element within the highlights. This isn’t all too shocking pondering the camera’s loss of optical picture stabilization.

Software

My least favourite facet concerning the Oppo F9 is the program program experience. The F9 runs Android 8.1 Oreo with ColorOS, Oppo’s overbearing skin. ColorOS now not just adjustments a lot of the aesthetics of inventory Android but attempts to emulate iOS as a lot as possible. The appearance of the icons, wallpapers, and respectable points really revel in very similar. Some respectable points are beautiful unintuitive in contrast to how inventory Android handles them. Notifications can merely be swiped away to dismiss them on inventory Android, but now not on ColorOS. Instead, you must swipe the notification to the proper and tap at the trash can icon to dismiss it. This technique feels clunky and makes it tough to clean away notifications quickly.

Specifications Oppo F9

Display         :  6.3-inch LCD | 2,340 x 1,080 resolution | 19.5:9 aspect ratio
Processor      :  Mediatek Helio P60 | Octa-core
RAM            :   4/6GB
Storage         :        64 GB   |  MicroSD Yes, up to 256GB
Camera Rear   :    16MP sensor with f/1.8 aperture + 2MP depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture

Front: 25MP
Battery      :     3,500mAh |  Non-removable  |  VOOC Flash Charge (5V/4.5A)
SIM              :      Dual nano-SIM
Headphone jack  : Yes
IP rating             : No
Software             :   Android 8.1 Oreo with ColorOS 5.2
Fingerprint scanner  : Yes

Pricing & Conclusion

The Oppo F9 is reachable in choose areas like Vietnam, the Philippines, and India. In Vietnam, the F9 is priced at 7,690,000 dong (~$330). It will most doubtless expense extra to import one to the States, nevertheless it isn’t value doing that, as a result of its loss of U.S. LTE band aid — except you’re perfectly content material with 2G information speeds.

If you dwell in a area the place it’s available, the Oppo F9 provides lots of smooth cellphone good points for an less costly price. The display is virtually bezel-less with an sexy notch, it has dual cameras, and the colour concepts are very unique. It isn’t a game-changing smartphone, but it’s one other cellphone showcasing Oppo’s continued efforts in layout innovation.

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