OPPO F-3 CAMERA REVIEW

Oppo's dual selfie camera feature now comes to the sub-Rs. 20,000 price segment with the Oppo F3. We reviewed the F3 Plus (Review) back in March, which apart from being a good smartphone, had a practical use case for the secondary front camera, a feature we really appreciated.

The company has now brought that same camera setup to a more affordable price segment, and in essence, this model replaces the ageing Oppo F1s (Review).

By Oppo F-3 Camera

 In order to achieve price point, Oppo has made a few compromises in the materials used for the chassis, the rear camera, and the processor under the hood. Let’s see if the new Oppo F3 can still deliver good value despite these reductions.

Despite the slightly dated SoC, there isn’t any noticeable lag in the interface. The Oppo F3 handles multitasking pretty well too. The phones gets a bit warm while gaming or watching videos for an extended period of time, but not to the extent that usage is hampered. Button feedback and placement is good and we didn’t have any issues with call quality either. There is a notification LED, placed next to the front cameras, but it’s only triggered for missed calls and messages, not WhatsApp or other apps. The volume level for alerts is good but the placement of the speaker isn’t ideal, and your palms tend to block it when gaming or watching videos in landscape mode.

Full-HD videos play just fine and we didn’t have any trouble with our high-bitrate files. There is a sound enhancement feature built into the OS called Real Sound Technology, which is jointly developed by Oppo and Dirac Research. The effect isn’t very significant when using the bundled headset, but can be felt better with more capable headphones.

Around the back, we have a 13-megapixel sensor with Dual PDAF and an f/2.2 aperture. Focusing is quick in good lighting although we noticed that the speed dips a bit in low light. Landscapes taken in daylight have good detail although the colours could have been a little more vivid. Auto HDR mode works well too. Macros look good on the phone’s display but aren’t very sharp once you actually zoom in. Low-light shots are acceptable but details are a bit lacking in landscapes and macros. The single LED flash isn’t too powerful either.