Introduction
Oppo is one of the Chinese smartphone manufacturers that have a humongous lineup of smartphones in its budget, mid-range, and high-end flagship range. Its F-series is particularly popular in India, although others have rocked in the country as well. The last phone to make headlines in India in F-series was Oppo F11 and Oppo F11 Pro. Just recently, Oppo launched its successor Oppo F15 in India.
Read also: Oppo Reno 3 Review
Yep, Oppo F15 is an impressive successor to Oppo F11 and does manage to get an overhauled camera setup, a massive battery and a lot more beef to fight against its competitors Realme X2 and Redmi K20. However, it doesn’t get everything right since we are here to showcase a real-life review on the phone and not based on its specifications on-paper. The phone is surely impressive but does have a higher price tag when compared to the specs that its rivals bring on-board. So, do the specifications & performance among other aspects of Oppo F15 justify its Rs 19,990/- price tag?
Prices in India, Variants, Availability
The Oppo F15 is available in India with its 8GB and 128GB storage model at just Rs 19,990/-. The price might vary a bit depending upon the offers you club with it such as the additional exchange offers since Amazon is offering discounts via its exchange program at up to Rs 8,900/-. On the other hand, Flipkart is also running a massive exchange program with up to Rs 10,000/- off which varies heavily based on the make and model of the phone you want to exchange. You can get your Oppo F15 in two colours i.e. Lightning Black and Unicorn White.
Box Contents
Oppo offers in its retail box the phone (of course), a USB cable, charging adapter, SIM card ejector tool, quick start guide, TPU case, and a 3.5mm earphone and that everything that it has at the moment.
Specs at a Glance
The specifications on-board are impressive considering it’s the successor to Oppo F11. The phone packs in a MediaTek Helio P70 processor. The eight-core setup brings four high-performance 2.1GHz Cortex-A73 processors along with four power-efficient 2.0GHz Cortex-A53 cores on-board. The device also has a Mali-G72 MP3 GPU along with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Finally, the device is also shipped with UFS 2.1 storage system which isn’t as fast as UFS 3.0 we have seen with flagship smartphones but is still worthy.
Design and Build Quality
The phone’s design is one of its strongest suits. If you look closely, the phone doesn’t look too different from its predecessor when it comes to the front side. There’s a U-shaped notch with tiny bezels on the sides and an average-sized chin which is the same as that of Oppo F11. The phone is lighter at just 172 grams which put it in the front foot as one of the lightest devices you would find. It is super easy to hold thanks to its tall display bearing aspect ratio of 20:9.
Flip the phone and you’ll notice that it does have quite a gentle resemblance to Realme X2 Pro. The phone has a laminated back panel with gradient design which puts a white, pinkish hue, and blue colour on top. The phone doesn’t have Corning Gorilla Glass at the back so it is just a laminated plastic back and a plastic frame with a metal ring that circumnavigates the rectangular phone with curved corners. The plastic back still looks premium, has a slim stature, and an incredibly beautiful colour palette.
On the back, there’s a vertically stacked quad-camera setup on the left with Oppo branding at the bottom. The rest of the panel is free from any obstructions. On the right, you’ll find the power button, on the left is the volume rocker and a Dual Nano SIM card with a dedicated microSD card slot which pops out on pricking with the SIM card ejector tool available in the retail box. The bottom has a speaker grille, a microphone, a USB Type C port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Read also: Vivo Nex 3 Review
Display
The Oppo F15 doesn’t fail to impress here. The phone has a humongous 6.4-inch AMOLED panel with comes with 2400×1080 pixels FHD+ display and a Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The display is pretty vibrant with darker blacks and brighter whites.
Although the display has a brightness of 430 nits, it gets pretty bright and visible even when you are holding it under sunlight, unlike many other phones that tend to suffer in day time due to reduced brightness. The display is punchy and shows great colours and sharpness around text and icons as well. The phone’s display isn’t curved just. Since it’s an AMOLED display, you can expect it to perform really well irrespective of the conditions you throw at it and I never had a problem with the display even once when I was using the device to review it.
Oppo F15’s display is also way ahead of the LCD panels that both F11 and F11 Pro had on-board. The screen is tall with an aspect ratio of 20:9 and around 85.5% of the screen-to-body ratio. The bezels aren’t huge and neither is the chin. The phone has a rich 408PPI density display which means the details are more precise and more colourful than LCD counterparts. Also, there is an Always ON feature thanks to the courtesy of its AMOLED panel.
Performance
First of all, I am a bit biased when it comes to Snapdragon and MediaTek processors since the former has showcased its calibre while the latter has always been around headlines for its heating issues if not others.
It is a major letdown to see Oppo integrate the same MediaTek Helio P70 (12nm) chipset with Oppo F15 as it did last year with both F11 and F11 Pro. This means there won’t be any major upgrade to the performance, especially considering the Helio P70 isn’t able to keep up with Snapdragon 730 SoC that its rivals are running on.
Oppo says the phone is optimized to run on Helio P70 faster than its predecessors. The phone was able to run PUBG Mobile at medium graphics without any visible lag or frame drop. The phone didn’t heat up after playing the graphics-intensive game for some time. The same goes for Asphalt 9: Legends or COD Mobile or any intensive titles you can pick. The phone is equipped with Game Assistant and Game Boost and has better RAM management that keeps the phone at its optimum performance even while multitasking.
As per the AnTuTu scores, the phone received 194,983 points and 36fps on GFXbench’s T-Rex test. This puts the phone’s performance far behind its rivals K20 and Realme X2 that run on Snapdragon 730 and 730G respectively which is what I aforementioned as a letdown.
The phone can handle simple everyday tasks, multi-tasking and more efficiently since it has 8GB RAM on-board which compensates for the decreased potential a bit.
Software
Oppo F15 is equipped with Android 9 Pie-based ColorOS 6.1.2 and will get an update to ColorOS7 soon. The user interface has a lot of bloatware. The UI brings Android 10-styled gesture navigation in case if you want the whole screen to be a part of your viewing experience without compromising some for those hefty navigational buttons at the bottom.
The UI does bring a few features on top of those offered by Android 9 Pie such as Smart Assistant, Driving Mode, etc. Thanks to the inclusion of an AMOLED display, the phone also has an anti-flicker mode which is something that will put less strain on your eyes for sure. Apart from that, the OS comes with the latest January 2020 security patch which means it is resistant towards the latest virus and other unwanted elements.
There is no system-wide dark mode on ColorOS 6.1.2 but there are other features like Ultra Study Mode, Dual Wi-Fi, improved game space, an intuitive app drawer, and others. When it comes to appearance, ColorOS 6.1.2 is a bit letdown compared to ColorOS 7 and does look a bit cartoonish, but to some, it might look rich and beautiful as everything is available at the flick of a finger.
The phone does run on Android 9 Pie at this moment and will be getting ColorOS 7 based on Android 10 pretty soon. This means that it will be getting its first major OS upgrade this year followed by probably a second one next year in case if Oppo decides to support the device in the first place.
Cameras
Oppo F15 packs in a quad-camera setup at the back along with a single camera at the front. The selfie shooter is a 16MP camera aperture f/2.0, 1.0micron pixel size and 1/3.1” sensor size and focal length of 26mm. At the back, the phone has a 48MP primary shooter with an aperture of f/1.8, 0.8micron pixel size, PDAF, 1/2.0” sensor size. It is flanked by an 8MP ultrawide sensor which has an aperture of f/2.3, and FoV of 108°, 13mm focal length along with 1.12micron pixel and 1/4.0” sensor size along with a third 2MP monochrome and fourth 2MP depth sensor that completes its camera setup.
This puts Oppo F15 on the front foot when it comes to camera setup from a dual-camera to a quad-camera setup. Talking about the front 16MP sensor, it clicks decent images that are fairly usable although the skin texture is softer as something like a beauty mode is working in the post-processing. It also adds some artificial light in the selfies lighting it up a bit which doesn’t take away much of the details though. Overall, the front selfie is excellent and can shoot videos up to 1080p at 25fps.
On the back, we have four cameras starting with the primary 48MP sensor. The images are detailed and sharp. Colours are punchy and HDR where activated tends to have the upper hand in the image quality as well. The images are far better in the day time than compared to nighttime without the night mode enabled.
The ultra-wide sensor gives photos a 108° field of view which pretty night as well although you can spot noise a bit compared to the primary sensor. Then comes with a dedicated macros sensor and does take excellent photos. The phone has a portrait mode thanks to the depth sensor which takes photos in the bokeh effect with adjustable background blur.
Talking about low light photography, landscape photos aren’t that detailed and one can see noise in the images for sure. The same goes for landscape shots with night mode enabled although the details are fairly visible. On the other hand, closeups shots with night mode are decent in quality as well.
The rear camera setup can capture videos at 1080p at 30fps with gyro-EIS on the primary sensor although other sensors don’t have any stabilization.
Battery Life
The phone does have an impressive 4,025 mAh battery under the hood which is stunning given that the phone has a thickness of just 7.9mm. Under a specific HD video loop test, the phone was able to pull off 14 hours and 48 minutes of playback without any hassle. This does showcases that the phone’s battery is powerful enough to take you throughout the day even on heavy usage while you can squeeze one and a half-day on the battery if you use the phone with both moderate and heavy use combined.
Oppo ships a 20W VOOC 3.0 fast charge with Oppo F15 which is able to juice up the battery to 47% in half an hour and 88% in an hour. This is similar to OnePlus’ 20W Dash Charge that was shipped with OnePlus 6 although the latter had a small battery.
Read also: Oppo R17 Pro Review
Audio and Biometrics
Oppo F15 comes with multiple ways you can unlock it which includes Face Unlock and the in-display fingerprint scanner. Talking about the Face Unlock, the phone is able to recognize and authenticate users in a jiffy and the sensor is quite responsive for that matter. It even works in a room not well-lit. The in-display fingerprint scanner works like a charm as well. It is fast and unlocks the phone in less than a second with stunning animation. Overall, the FPS is faster compared to any other phone sporting Helio P70 so that’s a boost for sure.
Talking about the audio, Oppo F15 has a mono speaker setup which produces a loud sound. The sound is lacking bass so it is kind of above-average performer when it comes to the audio quality.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
Excellent battery life
Cons:
Average processor on-board
Average Camera quality
If you are upgrading from Oppo F11 or F11 Pro, Oppo F15 is surely a successor in many hardware specifications although the underlying chipset remains the same in the trio. This means that you won’t notice much difference in the performance. It will surely have a great difference since F15 uses an AMOLED panel which is vibrant and richer than any LCD panel so it is quite evident that the former is better than the latter.
While it has four cameras at its disposal, Oppo F15 managed to pull off an average or say a bit above average camera photography. No matter if you take front or rear, day or night time photography, the quality isn’t on par with its rival. The battery size and life is a great selling point since having a larger battery does make a phone worth buying compared to more performance in a phone with a smaller battery size which is a sort of compromise.
Oppo has moved away from having a rear-mounted FPS to an in-display fingerprint scanner which is highly responsive and has been improved as well and the same goes for its facial recognition system. One of the biggest changes is the upgrade to a USB Type-C port which has allowed Oppo F15 to optimize its fast as well.
It is definitely an upgrade over F11 if you are looking to buy a smartphone from Oppo F-series only but definitely a letdown if you have options like Redmi K20 or Realme X2 or POCO F1 which is an older yet powerful device and has a price tag cheaper than that of Realme X2.
Bottomline is, the phone seems underpowered given its price tag. Let us know what you think about Oppo F15 and if you are keen to buy it or have a look at it.
