OPPO F19 Pro Review – All That Glitters is Not Gold

Oppo F19 Pro is another mid-range smartphone from a Chinese manufacturer. The device arrives with some improvements over the F17 Pro including a larger battery, the latest software, and a few things here and there. Oppo F19 Pro was released alongside Oppo F19 operating on a different chipset.

Irrespective of what the specifications mention, it is important that the phone has good standing when tested in practical cases to be worthy of takers. Here’s a detailed hands-on review on Oppo F19 Pro that you must read to know ins and outs about the smartphone.

Oppo F19 Pro arrives in two storage configurations. This includes an 8GB+128GB variant at Rs 20,999/- while the 8GB+256GB variant is up for grab at Rs 23,999/- available via Amazon India, Oppo India online store among other avenues. Get No Cost EMI, 6 months partner offers, and more on your purchase. You have three colour options to select i.e. Crystal Silver, Fluid Black, and Fantastic Blue.

Before we talk in detail about the Oppo F19 Pro let’s see what the on-paper specs look like?

• Display: 16.33 cm (6.43 inch) Full HD+ Super AMOLED Display
• Processor: MediaTek Helio P95
• Storage: 8GB, 128GB/256GB
• Software: ColorOS 11.1 (Based on Android 11)
• Rear cameras: 48MP + 8MP + 2MP + 2MP
• Front camera: 16MP
• Battery: 4310 mAh, 30W VOOC 4.0 Flash
• Weight: 172g
• Dimensions: 160.1 x 73.2 x 7.8 mm

Call it a new smartphone in the market and only a few people will believe. This is because Oppo F19 Pro is almost the same as its predecessor Oppo F17 Pro which is something not everyone paying a whopping Rs 20K would like to hear. No doubt it is a good-looking phone but it is almost the same design from a year back.

In any case, the back panel is not glossy but on a matte side with a rough finish on the back that looks appealing. But even with that, you will have to be cautious or the phone will slip off your hands. The back panel uses polycarbonate plastic and the same goes for the frame although it shimmers as if it is made up of aluminium. This translates into a classy and cool design which is impressive.

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The phone weighs 172 grams making it a bit heavier than F17 Pro. However, it is curved around the sides so holding the phone is never a problem. Note that although the weight is more than its predecessor, 172 grams is nothing in front of its 180 to 190 grams rivals which is considerably heavier than F19 Pro. So, you are actually compromising on some things when it comes to F19 Pro but it is worth it if you are an Oppo fan and want to stay in the F-series but hey, don’t upgrade from F17 Pro if you have it already.

There’s a triple SIM card slot (plus microSD) at the left side along with a tactile volume rocker. There’s a power button on the right side. You get access to a USB-C port, a bottom-firing loudspeaker, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a primary mic at the bottom and that’s all about the peripherals on-board Oppo F19 Pro.

You get a massive 6.43-inch Super AMOLED FHD+ panel boasting a resolution of 1080×2400 pixels and 409 PPI density. Oppo F19 Pro is tall at a 20:9 aspect ratio and produces 430 nits of typical and 800 nits of peak brightness as advertised.

The display is huge at 6.43-inch and with a tiny punch-hole notch, it barely takes any screen real estate all while being out of sight in most cases. Most of the smartphones in this price tag are stuck with waterdrop-shaped notches but luckily, F19 Pro is still with a punch-hole cut-out only to be downgraded from two front shooters in F17 Pro to just one in F19 Pro.

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Talking about the display, it is AMOLED and I don’t have any doubt that it has a superior colour reproduction to an LCD panel. However, the lack of a high refresh rate does bug me since many of its rivals have HRR. Note that if you are upgrading from phones with a standard refresh rate, you won’t feel a thing.

The display gets sufficiently bright when you need to view the screen under broad daylight. The advertised brightness is high although it is based on a small test sample that the companies are free to choose and market. In any case, the display does get bright and viewable under broad daylight.

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As it is AMOLED, you get rich features, inky blacks, and an overall, enhanced viewing experience, unlike LCD panels. There’s no problem with viewing angles as well.

Oppo F19 Pro is certified with DRM L1 which means users can stream FHD content on OTT platforms which includes Amazon Prime Video, Netflix among others. The lack of stereo speakers can hamper the experience though.

Oppo F19 Pro comes with a MediaTek Helio P95 mid-range SoC built on a 12nm node. The chipset is bifurcated in two clusters which include two 2.2GHz Cortex-A75 cores and six 2.0GHz Cortex-A55 cores flanked by PowerVR GM9446 GPU. There’s a 128GB/256GB UFS 2.1 storage and an 8GB RAM configuration available on-board.

The MediaTek Helio P95 SoC on F19 Pro is the same as that of F17 Pro. This means the performance of the two is almost similar and lags quite a lot when compared to Snapdragon 732G and Dimensity 800U that are available on smartphones in almost the same price bracket.

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AnTuTu scores are at 198,529 points; GeekBench 5 is at 392 points on single-core and 1534 points on multi-core tests.

Usual tasks such as messaging, browsing the web and social media, watching movies, calling, and a whole array of day-to-day tasks are handled efficiently. Apps do stutter a bit when you launch them but that’s okay. The real test for Helio P95 comes when it is subjected to games since it isn’t a gaming-tuned SoC like G95.

The chipset lets you play COD Mobile on High graphics and High FPS although, within a session, you would feel the phone has heated up. This also results in lags and stutter and frame drop which are the common outcomes when you are playing on an underwhelming chipset (or for a longer duration) without carrying for the heat dissipation. Casual games such as Dr Driving or Alto’s Odyssey are easy to play.

Oppo F19 Pro is among the latest devices from Oppo and thus arrives with Android 11-powered ColorOS 11.1 out of the box. The software is pretty fun to use with a whole array of features including Chat Bubbles, updated permissions module for apps, three types of Dark Mode, updated location and mic privacy indicators, and so on. With that, you get a bunch of pre-installed apps with your F19 Pro but it’s the same for any smartphone you buy unless it runs on a clean stock Android OS. Since F19 Pro arrived with Android 11, it is highly likely to get Android 12 as well although you will have to wait for the official confirmation.

With Oppo F19 Pro, you get a quad-camera setup at the back while the front is headed by a single cam. Talking about the rear cam setup, this includes a 48MP primary sensor with f/1.7 aperture, PDAF; an 8MP ultrawide snapper with f /2.4 with 120° Field of View; a 2MP depth, and a 2MP macro sensor with f/2.4 aperture each. There’s a 16MP selfie shooter with an f/2.4 aperture.

The camera setup on F19 Pro hasn’t changed much compared to F17 Pro. The primary snapper at 48MP captures good-quality images at daytime that are vibrant in colours, sharp, and with good exposure levels. Certainly not the best camera in the price segment but with a 48MP snapper at your disposal, you do get convincing shots.

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If you compare shots taken by the primary cam with and without night mode, you will see a significant improvement in the former one. It does manage to retain more details, sharpness, and highlights, although the darker areas could easily get a tonne of noise.

The 8MP ultrawide snapper on the device is in line with the snapper found on rival devices. It captures wide-angle images, however, colours seem washed out and the edges are softer which is something that the software does while correcting distortion on the edges. If you are thinking about photography via the ultrawide snapper at night, I would say activate night mode to get some usable images. However, the results depend on many factors including the intensity of light.

Then, we have a 2MP macro and a 2MP depth sensor. The latter is used with the primary camera to create convincing portrait shots. On the contrary, the macro sensor did a good job capturing subjects from a close distance with colours looking great and good detail retention.

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Finally, we have the selfie shooter at 16MP. It is convincing enough to take a tonne of selfies and more without any issue. Indoor and nighttime photography on F19 Pro can suffer degraded details and overall highlights.

When it comes to the battery, Oppo has surely upgraded it a bit from 4,000 mAh on F17 Pro to 4,310 mAh on F19 Pro. It is not a significant improvement though. The battery life is about a day on moderate usage while light usage will keep the battery afloat a few hours after a day of backup. If you indulge in heavyweight apps, you will get a shorter battery backup as usual.

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The 30W fast charging tech you get with F19 Pro is capable of juicing up the battery from zero marks to 100% in about 65 minutes. The charging speed is fast but it replicates the one seen with F17 Pro so we could’ve expected a slightly faster charging tech here.

With Oppo F19 Pro, you get a single speaker setup. It is loud and clear and it can be categorized as average if not the best. However, a stereo speaker would have made quite a lot of sense. But there are abundant options you can choose from for devices with stereo speakers under Rs 20K.

Of all the connectivity features listed on Oppo F19 Pro specifications, the device packs in a dual-band 802.21ac Wi-Fi support along with Bluetooth v5.1 with LE, A2DP, and aptX HD. There’s no NFC on the device though. You get a USB Type-C port for data sharing and charging. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack as well. Finally, you get coverage to A-GPS, QZSS, BDS, Glonass, and Galileo.

You can connect to 4G VoLTE, VoWiFi, and other 4G LTE-related services with Oppo F19 Pro with ease. Connecting to incoming or outgoing calls wasn’t an issue especially on Jio 4G and call drops were minimal just for your information. There’s no 5G or else Oppo would have named it Oppo F19 Pro 5G.

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The device packs in PIN and Pattern unlocking mechanisms as said. Apart from that, you get a Face Unlock that you can use to unlock the phone. It is quick although when it comes to reliability, the under-the-display fingerprint scanner is quick, secure, and reliable. It is an AMOLED display and thus, a UD FPS works well. A side-mounted FPS would have been more convenient.

Pros

• Super AMOLED display
• 16MP dual-selfie camera
• MediaTek Helio P95 chipset

Cons

• Only 4215 mAh battery
• Display with a normal refresh rate
• No 5G connectivity