Oppo R7 Review - Premium design, Good Performance but overpriced

OPPO is a Chinese electronics manufacturer based province in China. OPPO, Globally registered in 2001 and founded in 2004, the company has the OPPO brand name in many parts of the world. Oppo every time comes up with its superb design , perfomance , featured smartphones & after OPPO launched the super-thin R5 smartphone last year. OPPO decided to sacrifice a few key functions and specs for the sake of slimming down, which actually turned out to be a negative in the long run.Now when the OPPO R7 launched they kept those negatives of R5 & tried to avoid those mistakes .Here is the OPPO's full review about how it sticks to the market in between this tough competition.

The R7 isn’t as noticeably thin as last year’s R5, this new model is still a gracefull device. Measuring just 6.3mm thin, the R7 was able to regain the 3.5mm headphone jack this time around, which was a feature that was noticeably missing from the R5. The entire frame consists of a premium-feeling metal material that provides a slight lip on both the front and back sides. The combination of the slight lip on the sides and hefty metal build makes for a nice in-hand feeling. The right side features the volume rocker and SIM card slot, the left houses the power button, and at no surprise to us, the USB port is found at the bottom. A 2.5D glass panel can be found up front covering the 5.0-inch 1080p display, with capacitive keys housed directly below the screen.

Display shows the first impression & same like the R7 features a 5.0-inch Full HD AMOLED display with a standard pixel density of 445 ppi covered in Gorilla Glass 3. The AMOLED panel works to bring a higher level of saturation than most other types of panels in smartphones, and the colors on this one show quite well in mostly all tasks.While the viewing angles are quite good, the prominent black bezel surrounding the lit panel is very noticeable at times. we found no problems with sharpness in areas of text and contrast kept blacks at a good level .

There is a focus on software optimization with the processing package rather than just a move toward sheer power. Many consumers’ beliefs, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 615 processor is considered a mid-range CPU throughout. However, this device’s CPU features eight cores, which actually proves to perform quite well with everyday tasks. The device also features an Adreno 405 GPU and 3GB of RAM to help power OPPO’s Color OS 2 software overlay, which feels surprisingly simplistic and light.User interface transitions moving about render little to no incident in performance, and changing applications is quite easy. . Overall, though, the device performed perfectly well in day to day usage, and with how smooth Color OS seems to be now, it’s not hard to put the R7 among the many phones that perform very well on the daily.

The most important point about hardware front is the return of the 3.5mm headphone jack, which was omitted because of size constraints from the R5. The rear-facing speaker is pretty loud and has a bit more attention given to the lower ends, which isn’t typical of units of this type. There’s also a subtle dimple on the top and bottom of the phone’s back plate that lifts up just enough to emit sounds better from the surface, which is a really nice touch.This Chinese network version of the R7 posed an all too familiar problem for me , a lack of LTE connectivity,but thankfully the HSPA+(High speed package) network on T-Mobile has been more than adequate for using this particular region’s unit for daily usage in the States. The R7 comes with a dual SIM card slot, with the ability to repurpose one into a microSD card slot for storage above the built-in 16GB. While the hardware and software optimizations can definitely help, the non-removable 2320mAh unit in the R7 produces battery life that’s about as average as it gets.One welcome feature is also available in the R7 is the inclusion of OPPO’s VOOC fast charging technology, which can bring the phone up from 0% to around 70% charge in 30 minutes.

OPPO’s typical camera application returns this time around with a number of modes that were all introduced in their last few smartphones. Plenty of handy modes like HDR, GIF creation and Ultra HD are all present and can be accessed by hitting the icon in the corner of the app. Swiping the viewfinder switches from photos to video capture, which is done in 1080p resolution. Moving around to the front, you’ll be happy to know that the familiar Beautify mode is present, which allows you to take arguably better selfies with the 8MP front-facing shooter. Self portraits are quite good overall, though they lose a bit of sharpness due to some noise reduction in post processing.

Oppo software comes out with Color OS 2.1, some changes had to be made. It might not look or perform too differently than before, it’s definitely much smoother. Customization remains a major selling point with Color OS, as it’s pretty easy to change the look of the software with the built-in theme engine, the option to add media pages for some extra fun on your home screens, and even the ability to add different transition effects for the home screens – a feature that will prove itself useful, seeing as how Color OS still doesn’t feature an app drawer.There are some nifty gestures built in to the device like the ability to draw a circle on the turned off screen to launch the camera or perform a double tap to wake the device. .It’s worth noting that the R7 still runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat, which might upset some users. Android 5.0 Lollipop has been out for some time now, so there’s not really an excuse for the device running old software. However, OPPO recently released a beta version of Color OS based off of Android 5.0, which we can expect to see roll out to this device sometime very soon. 

Oppo's R7 looks great, but the $400 price tag will push potential buyers away. There are cheaper phones out there that are just as good, and better ones don't cost much more. - Cnet

OVERALL SPECIFICATIONS :

Key Specifictions
Display	5.0 inches (~66.7% screen-to-body ratio)
Resolution	1080 x 1920 pixels (~445 ppi pixel density)
Processor	Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615 & Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & quad-core 1.0 GHz Cortex-A53 ,Adreno 405
RAM	3GB
Storage	16GB
Camera	13 MP, 4128 x 3096 pixels, Schneider-Kreuznach optics, phase detection autofocus, LED flash
OS	Android OS, v4.4.2 (KitKat)
Battery	Non-removable Li-Po 2320 mAh battery
Announced on	May 2015