Oppo F3 Plus: Selfie cameras may not be enough to challenge OnePlus 3T

Oppo’s new smartphone is a truly big screen phone, yet it doesn’t feel bulky

A phone’s camera capabilities are a priority for consumers. Chinese phone maker Oppo has often claimed how good the cameras in their phones are, including the selfie camera. Its latest phone, the F3 Plus, continues in the same vein and offers two front facing cameras (16 megapixels and 8 megapixels, respectively) and a single rear camera (16 megapixels).

Priced at Rs30,990, the Oppo smartphone will compete with OnePlus 3T which starts at Rs29,999. The advantage that Oppo has is that its phones are also available in brick-and-mortar stores, unlike OnePlus, which sells phones only through online stores.

Camera and more

In F3 Plus, the16-megapixel camera on the front is paired with an 8-megapixel 120-degree wide angle camera for group selfies. It also allows users to adjust depth of field in selfies. The 16-megapixel camera on the rear is powered by Sony’s IMX398 sensor and has an aperture of F/1.7. The OnePlus 3T’s16-megapixel rear camera uses Sony’s IMX 298 sensor and has an aperture of F/2.0. It has a single 16-megapixel front camera for selfies.

Form factor

Oppo F3 Plus is a metal-clad phone with front facing fingerprint sensor. Despite being a truly big-screen phone with a 6-inch display, it tips the scales at 185g. Most phones with similar screen sizes easily cross the 200g mark, and this feels like a significant improvement. That is not the only surprise element though. While it packs in a 4,000mAh battery, it doesn’t feel bulky and is just 7.4mm thick. The OnePlus 3T has a smaller battery (3,400mAh) and screen size (5.5 inches) compared to the Oppo phone, which weighs158g and is also 7.4mm thick.

The Oppo F3 Plus comes in black and gold colour variants, while the OnePlus is available in gunmetal, gold and midnight black colours.

Big screen versus big screen

The F3 Plus’ 6-inch LCD screen offers a resolution of 1,920x1,080p and pixel density of 367ppi. The OnePlus 3T’s 5.5-inch AMOLED display offers the same resolution of 1,920x1,080p but a higher pixel density of 401ppi. This means, the display on the OnePlus is likely to look a little sharper. This may not necessarily mean the display on the Oppo F3 Plus will be inferior, and a lot will depend on the content that you are viewing.

The F3 Plus also has a layer of Gorilla Glass 5, which besides being scratch-resistant can also survive drops from a height of 1.6 metres, it is claimed. The OnePlus 3T uses Gorilla Glass 4.

Hardware matters

Oppo F3 Plus runs Qualcomm Snapdragon 653 octa-core processor with 4GB RAM and Adreno 510 graphics. Though a powerful processor, it is not in the same league as the top-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 quad-core chip (paired with 6GB RAM and Adreno 530 graphics) in the OnePlus 3T. If outright performance is a criteria for you. there is only one phone that stands out. The Oppo phone has a slight edge in terms of storage, as it offers 64 GB internal storage and can accommodate 256GB more via microSD card. The OnePlus 3T doesn’t support microSD cards, but offers 64GB storage in the lower priced variant. There is also the OnePlus 3T variant with 128GB storage, which costs Rs34,999.

Custom UI versus plain Android

The Oppo smartphone runs a slightly older Android 6.0 with Oppo’s proprietary Color OS UI on top. The OnePlus 3T now runs Android 7.1.1 (one of the very few phones to run the latest Android, apart from the Google Pixel phones), and also has the advantage of a completely clean user interface.