OPPO Find 7 : Hands On Review (techetron)

 
The Android market is saturated with devices for every budget but very high quality or premium devices are a rare breed, with only a handful rightly able to make that claim. Oppo wants to be among those select few and show the rest of the world what they are made of and their flagship Find 7 is their best weapon for the task.

https://youtu.be/HVXPMRUF4uk

Design

The Find 7’s design upon first glance is not anything that would make you swoon but the real beauty of the device comes through when you look closer. The handset was clearly made with excellent craftsmanship. The metal alloy body feels really nice and solid in the hand and the flat sides allow for easy gripping. The back of the device is removable and is made up of carbon fibre. Frankly speaking, the material feels very nice and is a pleasantly refreshing departure from the overused plastic and slippery metallic finishes of many devices in the market. The back features a very subtle curve which at first sight is not really noticeable but can clearly be felt when the curve rests gently on the palm. Removing the back reveals the removable battery, microSD slot and SIM Card slot. Though the device has a pretty large 5.5 inch screen, it does not feel very big in the hand or pocket. 

One of the main reasons behind this is due to the thin profile and slim bezels which make holding the device in one hand an easier task. even though it does not feel very big, the device has a good bit of weight to it which again, gives a reassuring feel of sturdiness. The power and volume buttons are conveniently positioned to either side of the device and is in just the right spot for you fingers to easily reach. However good the aesthetics are, the main standout aspect of the design is the skyline notification LED that sits discretely on the chin of the device.

The blue LED gently glows and permeates from the centre to the edges of the chin and looks downright fantastic. Very few companies pay attention to notification LEDs but Oppo has implemented this rather unnoticed yet vital feature in a very elegant way. The only downside to this is that the LED is only blue and can not be configured to glow a different colour for a different notification but you can’t’ have everything can you?

Display

Oppo has never shied away from pushing the boundaries when it comes to their displays, having made one of the first 1080p displays on smartphones with the Find 5. The Find 7 brings again to the table their bold willingness to push for maximum pixel count with the first quadHD (2560 x 1440) smartphone display to hit the market. Many have argued over whether or not 2k is overkill but those who have experienced 2k displays first hand will usually beg to differ.

The Find 7 comes with an IPS LCD display which is 5.5 inches across and has a massive pixel density of 538 pixels per inch. This screen size therefore requires the user to perform some tricky hand gymnastics in order to use it in one hand. Colours look good and accurate, the display is not oversaturated and it offers great viewing angles. Our one gripe with the display was the maximum brightness level which was below what we are used to but it is most certainly not a deal breaker.

Software

The Find 7 runs on Android 4.3 Jellybean with their in house Colour OS on top. Colour Os, as the name suggests, is vibrant and colourful. It comes packed with a boatload of customizations and also offers the user the ability to greatly change the look and feel of things. Now depending on your particular taste, Colour OS could be either a good or bad thing. I know many people love nothing but the purity of vanilla Android Dr others (such as yours truly) loves to change every possible aspect of the software. Right out of the box, Colour OS come with a built in theme engine that has access to a store filled with numerous themes for both the homescreen and lockscreen. If stock Android is your preference, there is a Jellybean theme along with many other cool ones.

Even though you can change certain aspects of the UI, there are some things that can not be changed such as the notifications shade or the look of the settings app. Applications like the dialer and messaging have also received some sprucing up from Oppo and in essence, carries a white futuristic or ultra modern pallet throughout. Where Colour OS really stands out though is in its gesture functionality. Oppo has paid a lot of attention to gestures and even has a dedicated panel for drawing gestures by simply sliding down from the top left corner.

When the device is off, a short double tap on the display will unlock it whereas double tapping the home key will put it back to sleep. In the settings panel, there is a section dedicated completely to gestures. The gestures are fully customizable so you can configure your own gestures such as drawing a circle on the screen when off to instantly launch the camera. While screen off gestures have a slight bit of latency, the screen on gestures are very fast.

What impressed me most though was the voice unlock feature where you just have to say the command “OK Snapdragon” to instantly unlock the device completely hands free. All in all Colour OS is very vast and goes deep to make changes to the stock Android experience. Whether you like it or not relies mostly on your own personal tastes but the bottom line is that the OS is fast, responsive and just flies on the Find 7.

Performance

As mentioned before, the phone is very zippy. It flies through all functionality and is really helped by the fact that the device runs on a Snapdragon 801 SoC clocked at 2.5GHz with 3GB RAM. We could not find any noticeable stutters throughout our usage and overall enjoyed the buttery smooth experience.

The 3,000 mAh battery will get you through a day of moderate use but for more intensive users, pulling off a full day may be a stretch. In the modern day, given how phones are getting thinner and more powerful, battery life becomes a huge concern and one way to counter this is via fast charging. Fortunately Oppo ships the Find 7 with what they call VOOC charging, the special 4.5 ampere charger fills the battery up from 0% to 75% in just a half hour!

Camera

Going into the unboxing, we knew that the camera was one of the Find 7’s highlight features and sure enough, it left us very impressed. The 13 megapixel f2.0 SONY EXMOR RS sensor found in the device is no slouch when it comes to producing quality images and video, that combined with a rather minimalistic UI allows for a great camera experience. While the camera offers things like panorama, HDR and a beauty mode,the main draws are in features like long shutter and Ultra HD picture which basically takes numerous pictures and stitches them together to form one giant 50 megapixel photo.

The camera even allows you to shoot in RAW format. Taking pictures is an instantaneous procedure although there is a bit of processing time required for Ultra HD and RAW format photos. To keep it short, the photos produced are great. Even in low light, the camera did not fail to impress us. Switch over to video mode and the Find 7’s camera continues to show off. You can record video at Full HD and even in 4k at 30 fps. What we enjoyed using the most was the 120 fps slow motion video recording which gave us some quality clips. Below the camera module is a dual LED flash that gets the job done in most situations. Going to the front of the device, we have a 5 megapixel camera with a wide angle 80 degree lens that allows more people to fit into a shot.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Oppo Find 7 is an awesome smartphone from nearly every perspective. It offers virtually everything the smartphone consumer looks for in a product and even some extras. Given that the device was unveiled earlier this year, the rest of the market has since moved on to slightly faster SoCs. Nevertheless the Find 7 strongly holds its ground and delivers a wonderful experience and we would strongly recommend the device for purchase, especially if you are in the market for phablets.

Pros	Cons
Great 2k display	Color OS has a slight learning curve and may not suit everyone’s taste
Fast charging	Battery life is not the best
Fast SoC with 3GB RAM	Battery life is not the best
Good camera

Posted in: Hands on Review