Quick first look
When the whole world was going gaga over
the ‘slim’ new iPhone 5, a company in China was quietly going about its
business and thinking about releasing its own iPhone killer. Yes, it would be
slim and light-weight. But, it would be on a larger 5-inch form factor. And the
display resolution would be 1920x1080. That’s right, full HD on a 5-inch
display. We’ve already seen how such smartphones can look and feel with our
experience with the HTC Butterfly, so we can expect more of the same with the
Oppo Find 5.
The
Oppo Find 5
Although it is still not officially
available in India, there are ways to get it imported here, if you really want
it that bad. So why is the world taking notice of this rather unheard of
smartphone? Besides the fact that they have now started launching their phones
in UK and US, their incredible spec-sheet and sheer performance is
mind-blowing. And the build quality of this is truly stunning. Move over
Samsung Galaxy's plastics and even the iPhone and also the Nokia Lumia 920. The
Oppo Find 5 outdoes them all. And some.
What makes it tick
The Oppo Find 5 is one of a series of
Android phones we'll see this year to pack a 5" screen of 1080p
resolution. Just like them, it has a powerful quad-core processor and a robust
GPU - and neither is this a whim but a necessity (every frame on the screen has
more than double the number of pixels of a 720p screen). Oppo has taken a page
from the Sony playbook and equipped the Find 5 with a 13MP camera capable of
HDR video. The camera also jumps on the HFR bandwagon with a 120fps mode
(though only at VGA resolution). On the up side, Oppo has done a very good job
of the design - the Find 5 looks like it belongs to a high-end smartphone line
(we mean that in a good way) and the steel frame gives the phone a sturdy feel.
It is fairly thin at 8.9mm and the curved back makes it feel thinner still.
It's got proper battery backup too - 2,500mAh is more than what many direct
rivals typically have.
The
Oppo Find 5 is one of a series of Android phones we'll see this year to pack a
5" screen of 1080p resolution.
The missing LTE is not quite the
deal-breaker just yet, but it's a part of the future-proofing of a 2013
flagship. Non-expandable storage is another issue for a phone boasting a
massive Full-HD screen and Dolby Mobile. If you get the 16GB version, you risk
running short and quite quickly at that. Find 5 is certainly an ambitious
project and on paper it's pretty well executed - there's skill and character aplenty.
Crisp bright display
Though it wasn't the first smartphone
released in the world which had an astounding pixel density of 441ppi, it still
was the first to announce that they are going to come up with such a display.
Even though they were beat by HTC, Oppo has still done an exemplary job with
the Full HD IPS LCD on the Find 5, which is protected by Gorilla Glass 2. From
all accounts, it does seem like Oppo has created a winner which will
blow the Super AMOLED’s and Retina Display’s out of the water.
Text rendering, multimedia and gaming is
bound to look spectacular. In terms of detail, that is, the candy-colored icons
may not be to everyone's taste. Not all apps however, have icons optimized for
such high resolution yet (even most tablets don't have that many pixels), so
some get up-scaled. That makes them look softer, but the pixel density is so
high that they still look good, although clearly lacking the level of detail of
the bespoke icons.
New interface
The Oppo Find 5 runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
with plenty of custom touches to it. Everything is rendered at 1080p resolution
but thanks to Project Butter and the powerful Adreno 320 GPU, the running is
extra smooth. Oppo has swapped out the lockscreen with its own. Actually there
are two lockscreens out of box (each with an alternative view). The default one
is the simple swipe-to-unlock kind and dedicates most of the screen real estate
to the wallpaper. An optional charging status widget is all there is. Overall,
the interface on the Oppo Find 5 is fast and smooth. It's fairly functional too
- the customizable toggles in the notification area are nice and the homescreen
can be tweaked to your liking too.
The
Oppo Find 5 runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with plenty of custom touches to it.
Early judgment
Oppo doesn't have a history in phones, but
you'd never tell just by looking at the Find 5. It's a beautiful device with
killer specs and, better still, it's priced lower than the competition.
We are really loving the idea of a phone
with the 5-inch screen and the 1080p resolution (plus things like great viewing
angles and that coveted laminated look) - that make for an amazing picture.
However, we worry about the screen glass (it doesn't seem particularly tough)
and the dead pixel is another issue. Anyway, beyond that the Oppo Find 5 seems
to get most things right - the Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset offers plenty of
processing power (enough to handle the resolution), the 13MP camera is good if
not great (plus movie HDR is a very rare feature), there's good battery backup
(2,500mAh), NFC, Dolby Mobile and a recent enough version of Android.
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Specifications
·
5" 16M-color 1080p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with
441ppi pixel density
·
Android OS v4.1.1 Jelly Bean with custom UI
·
Quad-core 1.5 GHz Krait CPU, 2 GB RAM, Adreno 320 GPU; Qualcomm
Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset
·
13 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geo-tagging, HDR
·
1080p video recording @ 30fps with HDR mode, continuous
autofocus and stereo sound; 120fps HFR mode
·
1.9 MP front-facing camera, 720p video recording
·
Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA; Wireless TV out
·
GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS
·
16/32GB of built-in storage
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MHL-enabled microUSB port
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Bluetooth v4.0
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