JOIN USOppo F19 review: Stylish mid-range phone
Last month, Oppo launched the standard F19, a watered-down version of the popular F19 Pro series. The company has kept the design language pretty much the same, but the internal hardware has undergone some changes to keep the price in check.
The company is offering F19 in one configuration 6GB RAM + 128GB storage for Rs 18,990. I have used the device for a little over a week and here are my thoughts.
Design, build quality and display
As said in the first impression article, Oppo F19 is one of the best looking phones and the company has done a commendable job of keeping it slim despite the large battery (5,000mAh).
Our review unit is a Midnight Blue and comes in dual-tone colourway having dark blue and silver-grey hue on the shell. Another colour is Prism Black and it also good.
The rear side is smooth and glossy. Unfortunately, it is a fingerprint and dust magnet and needs a lot of cleaning. This is not a deal-breaker, as the company is offering a free transparent silicone rear cover case with the retail box.
It not only gives a clear view of the phone's beautiful colour, but also keeps the device from damages caused by accidental drops.
The back has a minimalist design with just Oppo engraving at the bottom right corner and the curved rectangular camera module with LED flash in the top left corner.
Oppo F19 sports a 6.43-inch full HD+ (2400 ×1080p) AMOLED screen. It has a tiny camera in the top left corner and the rest about 90.8% of the front panel is the fully functional display. It is a treat to watch HD content for long hours.
The display supports 60hz display refresh rate, offers peak brightness up to 600 nits and pixel density of 409 ppi (pixels per inch), just good enough to view the contents even under direct sunlight.
Under normal condition, it supports touch sampling rate of 135Hz and when game mode is on, it can touch 180Hz.
It also comes with an in-screen fingerprint sensor and works fine in terms of responding to the finger touch. Also, there was a negligible number of false rejections.
Performance
Inside, Oppo comes equipped with an 11nm class Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 octa-core processor with Adreno 610 GPU, 6GB LPDDR4x RAM, and 128GB storage (expandable).
It does a fine job in terms of functioning day-to-day chores such as opening apps, loading and operating the camera, binging on video content, browsing the internet and other stuff. There was no discernible lag-ness while playing games.
On the Geekbench 5.0 performance testing app, it scored 312 and 1348 points on single-core and multi-core tests, respectively. It's not great, but decent enough for a phone in the mid-range class.
It runs Google's latest Android 11-based ColorOS 11.1. The user interface is subjective, as purists like me love stock Android without any secondary layer of the interface to operate a phone. I love it if the phone has straight forward navigation and uniformity in terms of how the apps look. But, we are a minority in a country like India, where most people prefer more customisation and like to use it to match their style. And Oppo just facilitates it. The company offers its own utility tools such as calendar, compass, clock, cloud storage, note apps, file manager and theme store.
As far as the battery life is concerned, it consistently offered two days of normal usage. I am not much a gamer and also don't binge on video streaming all day; but if you do indulge in such activities, fret not, the device will still be able to deliver a full day of battery life.
Oppo is offering a Type-C 2.0-based 33W charger with SuperVOOC 2.0 technology and this is enough to fully charge the phone in around 90 minutes. Also, it can power up the phone from zero to 54 per cent in under 30 minutes.
Also, it boasts AI Night Charge technology. It can adapt to the user's sleep pattern and pauses at 80 per cent mark, and slowly continues to charge and make sure the phone's battery level hits 100 per cent mark just before the owner wakes up.
Camera
It comes packed with a triple camera module-- main 48MP (f/1.7) + 2MP 4cm macro sensor (f/2.4) + 2MP depth sensor (f/2.4) with LED flash on the back.
Oppo F19 takes pretty solid pictures in the daylight. It adds a bit of warmness to the colours of the subject particularly the flowers.
It offers 5X digital zoom and comes in handy while taking photos of a big statue to see the details at the top. However, it lacks a wide-angle sensor.
As far as the portrait images are concerned, it does a decent job in creating shallow depth of field around the subject. The edges are quite sharp with a clear separation of the background and the foreground of the scene.
Even the macro shots come off really good on the Oppo F19.
In the night mode, the photos come off a bit grainy. It should be noted that the images look good on the compact screen, but on the PC screen, we can see the noise in the screen.
But, on the bright side, the normal photos taken with just the LED flash on in the night condition, come off good.
On the front, Oppo F19 houses a 16MP snapper (f/2.4, 27mm (wide), 1/3.09-inch sensor, 1.0µm). It takes decent photos and even covers a lot of space in a single frame, which comes in handy for group selfies.
Both the front and the primary rear camera have full HD (1080p) video recording capability at 30fps (frames per second).
Final thoughts
Oppo F19 is a decent mid-range phone worth the asking price. What impressed me the most is that despite the massive battery capacity, the company has managed to keep the phone slim and also, it exudes premium hand-feel.
The device works without any fuss while doing day-to-day chores and also gaming experience is on par with rivals in its class. As far as the photography is concerned, it takes pretty good pictures in the sunlight and in low-lit conditions, the quality is decent.
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