Oppo F3 Plus review: Double take

Getting noticed in a busy place like the smartphone market is no easy feat but Oppo's decision to go after the selfie-loving crowd is one that seems to be paying off so far. Granted, technological gems like VOOC fast charging have likely played a part too, but it's no accident that the Selfie Experts are the most popular Oppo phones in our database.

Hardly a surprise then that the Oppo F3 and F3 Plus follow the same strategy. A 16MP rear / 8MP dual selfie setup is these guys' call to fame. The 6-inch F3 Plus that's about to keep us busy for a good while is quite a big bloke but, other than that, we don't yet know how it differs from its sibling.

Back in March, Oppo made both handsets official, and the focus was entirely on the Plus version. All we were told about the regular F3 is that it would sport a 5.5-inch display - no word on stuff like chipset, battery or even screen resolution. The gaps will likely be filled soon enough, but for now let's focus on the F3 Plus and the quick rundown.

Oppo F3 Plus key features:

• Body: Aluminum unibody, Gorilla Glass 5 front, 163.6 x 80.8 x 7.4 mm, 185 g
• Screen: 6.0 inches, IPS LCD with 1080 x 1920 pixels resolution (367 ppi)
• Chipset: Qualcomm MSM8976 Pro Snapdragon 653 octa-core CPU (4x1.95 GHz Cortex-A72 & 4x1.44 GHz Cortex-A53), Adreno 510
• Memory: 4GB of RAM plus 64GB storage; microSD slot (hybrid)
• Camera: 16 MP, f/1.7, 1/2.8" sensor size camera with phase detection autofocus, OIS and dual-LED (dual tone) flash
• Selfie cam: Dual 16 MP + 8 MP 120-degree, f/2.0, 1/3" sensor size
• OS: ColorOS 3.0, running on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow
• Battery: 4000 mAh Li-Ion (sealed); VOOC Flash Charge
• Connectivity: Dual-SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by); LTE-A (2CA) Cat6 300/50 Mbps; Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac; Bluetooth v4.1, A2DP, LE;
• Misc: Front-mounted fingerprint reader

Oppo F3 Plus main shortcomings:

• Non-removable battery
• No FM radio
• Older Micro USB connector and USB 2.0 interface
• No NFC
• ColorOS 3.0 still runs on Android Marshmallow

The Oppo F lineup started small. The original Oppo F1 selfie expert came as a compact (well, five inches nonetheless) budget option. It was followed by the much more ambitious F1 Plus that scored big time at the domestic box office, despite costing nearly twice as much at $450. Finally, the F1s settled in between to eventually become the most popular handset in the family.

     
Oppo F3 Plus in official photos

And while they say you shouldn't fix what isn't broken, Oppo decided to tinker in the second generation. The F3 Plus comes to take the lead, in a bid perhaps to show that the company feels much more at home in the upper market segment. With a Snapdragon 653 and a generous 4GB of RAM, the new phablet certainly sounds intriguing - and not only in imaging terms.

Dual cameras dramatically changed smartphone photography and placing a pair of lenses at the front - not just the rear - may as well be the new fad. We'll know soon enough if the Oppo F3 Plus benefits and how.

Unboxing

The Oppo F3 Plus ships in a fairly sizable, mostly white box. Besides the size, necessitated by the large phone itself, there is nothing really lavish or excessive about the packaging, which is probably smart as tt the end of the day, it's just going to end up in a closet somewhere.

The box itself uses a two-piece assembly and is entirely made out of cardboard, but a pretty sturdy one, complete with a soft-touch finish.

   
Oppo F3 Plus retail box

Inside, you get mostly cardboard as well. Only the cradle that actually holds the F3 Plus is made of plastic. It actually doubles as one of the sides of a box, housing a few leaflets, an ejector pin and a complementary rubber case.

You also get a VOOC fast wall chargers It is rated at 5V@2A and 5V@4A. The VOOC charging is arguably the best around, but it uses a few extra pins on top of the standard USB layout so you need the green-colored cable for it to work.

Last, but not least, hidden away underneath the cable are a pair of earbuds. Fairly decent ones at that.

Oppo F3 Plus 360-degree spin

Oppo hasn't really changed about the design for the "F" series lately. Things have been mostly the same since the F1 Plus brought in the rounded corners aestetics.

That's not necessarily a bad thing - matte metal finish with an unibody construction and polished champhers along the edges give the device plenty of premium feel. It's becoming the default formula these days so the F3 Plus has a little generic look, but we certainly wouldn't blame it for being ugly or cheap-looking.

Oppo went a little more creative on the back with its new "Six-String" antenna design on the back . It doesn't necessarily stand out less than the plastic inlays of most competitors, but it certainly looks better.

  
Oppo F3 Plus in the hand

An arguably more important part of the overall looks, the reasonably slim bezels around the display, kept the F3 Plus within the reasonable 163.6 x 80.8 x 7.4mm. It's not a Galaxy S8 type of bezel-banishing but it's a good job for the price range.

The weight comes in at 185 grams - a hefty device for sure, but you can't expect much better with a 6-inch screen.

Hardware overview

With a screen to body ration of around 75.1%, the F3 Plus outshines both the F1s (71%) and F1 Plus (73.9%). Sadly, it's an LCD panel, rather than an AMOLED one in this case.

  
Nice thing bezels on the F3 Plus

The three phones have almost identical functional elements distribution except for the secondary front camera that the F3 Plys brings. Oppo fitted the 8MP + 16 MP modules right next to the earpiece, on the left.

 
Two cameras at the front

Below the screen the F3 Plus has a touch sensitive home key. You can't actually press it, you can use it to unlock your phone through the always-on fingerprint reader.

The reader seems a bit slower and less accurate than previous Oppo units we have reviewed. That is to say, dependable enough, but not really best in the market. Oppo hypes up its "hydrophobic membrane" that should improve accuracy when your hands are moist, but we couldn't really detect any improvement over the R9s in that aspect.

 
Standard Oppo control scheme

The Home key is flanked by two more capacitive keys - the App switcher and Back keys. They are dimly backlit. So much so that they can be hard to see on the white front (used for both the Gold and Rose Gold editions). Eventually muscle memory takes over and you don't even look at them, but it can be confusing at first if you're coming from a phone where these keys are reversed.

Moving to the sides of the phone, we find volume rocker on the left and a right shared between the power button and dual nanoSIM card tray. It is a hybrid one, so you can opt for a microSD card instead of a second SIM.

    
Side bezels

The top of the F3 Plus is pretty clean, only housing a secondary noise-canceling microphone.

   
Top and bottom of the F3 Plus

The bottom, on the other hand, is quite busy. There is the main microphone and the microUSB 2.0 port (with VOOC fast charge support), flanked by a 3.5mm headphone jack and the loudspeaker grill. Sadly, no upgrade to Type-C or USB 3.0 this time around and, no fancy stereo setup either.

On the metal back of the F3 Plus there is another 16MP camera, but this one has a bigger sensor (1/2.8" vs. 1/3." for the front one) and a much brighter aperture (f/1.7 vs. f/2.0). And this is no ordinary 16MP sensor either, but a Sony IMX398 with Dual Pixel autofocus. Just like the one on the Oppo R9s. We'll see how it does in real life in the camera chapter.

  
Clean back side

The camera protrudes from the back - just a small circle around the main lens, less than you might expect on a phone this thin. Next to it is a dual-tone LED flash - an upgrade over the single LED on the R9s.

The Oppo F3 Plus suffers from a bland overall design - from a distance, it can be confused for a number of other smartphones (not just Android ones, if you know what we mean). However, the built quality is great and the in-hand feel is commendable. This is not a stand-out phone, just a very well made one and we think this will be enough for many. Just remember it's still a 6-inch phablet, so you need pretty big hands and a desire for some regular thumb stretching.