Pop-up selfie cameras and high-resolution sensors seem to be the flavor of the season. After weeks of teasing, Oppo finally revealed the F11 Pro at an event in Mumbai where we had the chance to spend a bit of time with the hardware. Read along to find out our first impressions of the Oppo F11 Pro.
Oppo F11 Pro hands-on: Design
The Oppo F11 Pro adopts nearly all the visual tropes that are trendy right now. From pop-up selfie cameras to gradient colors at the back, the F11 Pro is a visually stunning device. The rear of the phone, admittedly the most striking bit, is a mishmash of three different colors that stretches from a dark blue to a very pretty purple. As expected, the plastic back is a fingerprint magnet and will probably get scratched big time. Oppo bundles a cover in the box and the phone ships with a plastic screen protector pre-applied.
The thing that strikes you the most when you hold the Oppo F11 Pro is the sheer size of the phone. This is a hefty device with considerably thickness. The phone weighs almost 190 grams and you can definitely feel it in the hand. That said, Oppo has done a decent job at weight distribution and the phone never really tips over.
The Oppo F11 Pro has a huge 6.53-inch display and that plays a big role in increasing the sheer dimension of the device. The Full HD+ LCD display looks bright and vibrant but stretched across the large canvas, it isn’t quite the sharpest around.
You might find the pop up selfie camera just a bit too slow if you use face unlock often.
The pop out selfie camera on the Oppo F11 Pro is centrally aligned which is supposed to improve aesthetics but I can’t really say it adds to the look in any meaningful way. There’s support for face unlock as expected, but the pop-up slider is just a smidgen too slow to make this a viable solution in every-day use. Unlike the Oppo K1, there’s no in-display fingerprint scanner, but you do get a standard fingerprint reader at the back that seemed to be fast enough in my brief time with the phone.
Oppo has always had a focus on the camera capabilities of the hardware. It comes as no surprise that the phone has a 48MP camera sensor at the rear. This is the same 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor that we’ve seen in the Redmi Note 7 Pro. The camera is paired with a 5MP depth sensing unit. On the front, the phone has a pop-up 16MP camera. I took a few test shots and the images looked promising on the Oppo F11 Pro’s display but I would want to reserve judgment till I’ve had time to take the camera for a proper spin.
Over on the right hand side is the power button while the left hand side has segregated volume keys. You’ll also find a hybrid SIM slot on the right hand side.
Oppo F11 Pro hands-on: What lies beneath
Powering the Oppo F11 Pro is a Mediatek Helio P70 chipset that is paired with 4 or 6GB of RAM and 64 or 128GB of storage. As talked about earlier, storage can be expanded using a microSD card but you’ll have to sacrifice one SIM slot for that. Running Color OS 6 on top of Android Pie, the phone has quite a few pre-installed third party applications onboard.
Our pet peeve with Oppo smartphones continues on the F11 Pro as well. The microUSB charging slot is bound to miff quite a few prospective buyers.
The phone ships with a new version of Oppo’s fast charging tech dubbed as VOOC charging.
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Now in its third edition, Oppo claims that VOOC charging can top off the phone in about 80 minutes. I obviously did not get to test that in the short amount of time I had with the phone but that’s one aspect that i’m quite keen on trying out. Battery capacity on the Oppo F11 Pro is 4,000mAh.
The Oppo F11 Pro is priced at 24,990 rupees (~$350) and goes on sale in India starting March 15. Oppo is aiming at making the phone available across online and offline retail channels. With its combination of an eye catching design and nifty features like the pop up camera, the phone should definitely attract a lot of eyeballs on the shelves. Oppo has traditionally been very active with marketing in the offline channel and we feel a non-spec-driven audience might find a lot to like in the Oppo F11 Pro.
A non-spec driven audience might find a lot to like in the Oppo F11 Pro.
The Oppo F11 Pro goes against competitors like the much simpler looking Nokia 8.1 and the performance-oriented Pocophone F1. Do you think the Oppo F11 Pro strikes a perfect balance between the two radically different approaches? Let us know in the comments section.