Choosing the Oppo Find 5
I’d been looking for an upgrade from the UMI X1 I bought in November last year, and had shortlisted a few available and upcoming phones, namely the Jiayu G4, UMI X2, Zopo ZP980, iOcean X7 and maybe 1-2 more which I might have missed here. I decided to settle on the Jiayu G4, since apparently the G3 was the best built phone in its generation of Chinese phones last year, and expected the G4 to continue the legacy. I was determined to wait until the G4 was made available, and in the meantime I had to sell the UMI X1 because there were talks of UMI releasing the X1 and X2 in my country, which would mean I’d get much less if I sold the phone after they got launched here.
However with the start of a part-time job I began to look at more expensive options. With my extra income I considered the Meizu MX2, Oppo Find 5 and Galaxy S4. A few months later I am the happy owner of an Oppo Find 5, which I chose over Meizu and even the mighty Samsung Galaxy S4!
When I decided on the Find 5 I spoke to Oppo about who the official reseller in India was, their answer was there isn’t one, but they did offer me a generous discount after mentioning I would be reviewing the phone. Unfortunately I couldn’t take Oppo up on their offer due to payment restrictions in India and ended up buying the phone through Aliexpress, a process which I am happy to report went smoothly with Find 5 arriving at my home in only a few days!
Oppo Find 5 review
Design & Quality: 10/10
Superb build, feels very solid in the hand. Since there are no moving/removable parts (even the battery is non-removable), the phone is extremely sturdy and there are no creaks whatsoever. The ‘feel’ of having this phone in hand will probably remind you of the Lumia 920 if you’ve ever played with one.
The phone isn’t meant to be particularly thin at 8.9mm, but the curved back makes it feel thinner than it actually is, since the edges are thinner than the ‘meat’ in the center. The phone isn’t a lightweight device either, but this adds to the overall sturdy feel. Although I found the 5-inch phone to be comfortable, people with smaller hands might want to wait for the rumoured Find 5 mini to launch. In a nutshell the design is simply amazing, and is bound to attract a lot of attention. I feel the Find 5 and the Meizu MX2 are the best looking phones currently available!
The physical button placement will take some getting used to it, since OPPO decided it would be better to have the power/wake button on the left instead of on the right as on most mainstream devices.
Connectivity: 10/10
Gizchina News of the week
Everything works fine, no problem here. The phone uses a micro SIM card, so anyone who’s looking to buy the Find 5 is advised to get one from their carrier. I however, was impatient and decided to do some home-hackery to cut the normal SIM into a micro SIM and thankfully, it worked. Haven’t yet tried pairing it up with my headset but I believe there shouldn’t be a problem. The phone comes with NFC and 2 NFC tags. +1 to OPPO for this.
Battery life: 9/10
Battery life is about average with the stock Oppo ROM, but switching to the Cyanogenmod ROM drastically improves this. On the stock ROM you can expect the phone to give you one whole day of use where as, on CM10.1 you can expect 1.5-2x times of use plus you can enjoy more support and stability from the CM ROM too!
Performance: 10/10
Simply amazing. However, I’d like to point out that I don’t really play games on my phone, and since I’m coming from a rather low-end device (UMI X1, MT6577), the difference I feel might be a little more than what others might feel. Taking nothing away from the phone, it feels super fast and slick.
Menus load in no time, transitions from screen to screen are smooth. The phone uses a quad core 1.5 GHz Krait (Snapdragon APQ8064) processor, same as that of the Nexus 4.
Camera: 8/10
The phone comes with a 13MP Sony Exmor RS sensor, which is capable of HDR video. Pictures from the camera in daylight are an absolute treat, however the phone does leave a little to be desired when it comes to low-light photography. This, however, is a software issue which can be solved by upgrades, so you can hope to see better pictures from the phone in the future.
Loudspeaker/Sound:
The earpiece sounds a little low in volume on the CM10.1 ROM (known bug), but with the stock ROM it works absolutely fine. The loudspeaker sits at the bottom on the backside, with machine grilled holes. The volume from the speaker is the loudest I’ve heard on a smartphone, and the quality of the sound is very nice, no distortion whatsoever. However, I don’t really use the loudspeaker, I prefer listening to music on the Dirac HD earphones, the quality on those surpasses that on my iPod and a CC1600 based player by miles, although there is a little leakage on the earphones since they’re open type.
Firmware:
I’d gone through a few forums before I bought the phone, and apparently there were a few bugs in the official firmware. However, OPPO are very active with firmware updates and push out a new update every two weeks or so, so users can expect the issues to be ironed out. My first Android was the LG Optimus One, and since the phone I’ve only been using AOSP/CM based ROMs. So, without wasting much time I was on to CM10.1 on the OPPO as well, and have been loving it ever since.
Value for money, etc: 8/10 (8 only because of the exchange rates, 9/10 otherwise)
Dirac HD and Gorilla Glass 2 are some goodies on the phone which make it really worth the money. I paid $585 or 32,689INR for the phone, which is an OPPO Find 5 32GB Midnight Edition and for about 35,000INR you can buy the Xperia Z here, I suffered a bit thanks to the exchange rates prevalent at the moment. Even if the phones were priced equally, I’d probably have gone for the OPPO, since I wanted something new and unique, and Chinese!
[templatic_contentbox type=”author” title=”About the Author”] I’m a 20yr old engineering student from India, who’s very much interested in the latest technology from around the world, especially China. You can find me writing about various topics on my website. [/templatic_contentbox]
Excellent Review..Thanks
+1
Indeed. Maybe the reviewer could add a sample video and maybe some sample photos taken with the phone..?? 😉 Enjoyed reading this review,, Makes me want to buy thing. 😛
Well I’m currently on CM as mentioned in the review, and camera features on CM aren’t fully optimized yet. I wouldn’t like to give you guys a false impression, since the camera on stock ROM is much much better.
Yash 3339 you may find this useful http://drewdoesit.com/
Thanks Simon!
Welcome 🙂
+1
This phone is definitively a must-have (i mean, this year…)
Yeah, the ‘this year’ part is as important as any other part of the sentence, you never know for how long you are at the top!
Also Check out PAC Rom. This ROM has all the best features from ParanoidAndroid, AOKP and Cyanogenmod 10.1 rolled into one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvA63VIvHeY
Here is the link to the Rom:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2268850
Thanks again! However, I’ve tried almost all custom ROMs, none are fully stable ATM. Waiting for the release of MIUI now.
Ah ok fine. When it comes out post the link here please.
Excellent review… I am a great fan of Chinese phones. One thing I hate about this phone is “its pretty slim breadth wise” which limits its operational fun. Till now I haven’t see a 5 inch phone which is a little broader similar tosomething which sSamsung note is offering . A down point on design from my view
Nicely done.
how much discount do u get from making this review? from which online store? i’d love to get a discount also by reviewing my future chinese phone…..hopefully it will be mi3…..hopefully………………………..
Hi LILJOHN, unfortunately the discount was not for this review, it is for a website I write for. Plus, I could not avail the discount thanks to incompatibility of my credit card with PayPal. The discount was from OPPO themselves, worth 50USD.
seriously…=)
Nice review tick all boxes..! Bt,spending 33k for a chinese phone i dont think its a wise idea (its my personal view) coz wid only S/W updates in future till now as no words when Oppo is coming in India, no matter how d gd phone is… Bt,at d end of d day it all goes down to paisa, u hav got enough to splurge i guess..!
P.S- U cud hav get HTC ONE At 38k..!
Thank you. As said in the write up, I could afford it only because of the part time job. And yes, I know the HTC One is available for 38k INR, but there is something about Chinese electronics which still manages to sway my mind!
Good review, and superb phone. My wife loves it!
Must be the King of android smartphones.
Hey yash
Great review..can u tell me how much u paid for this one from aliexpress?
Thanks Ashish. As said in the review, paid 585 USD. Just got the bill from the credit card company, and the total now is 33,980 INR.
Agree on the money exchange part, unless you are using USD as denomination. Also, usually seller at Aliexpress charge more at premium shipment like DHL or UPS but that not an issue since all package sent thru them is intact. I’ll keep buying from China as here in Malaysia phone price were also a premium (most of the top phone is pricier than a decent notebook/laptop)
Any tips to avoid customs tax duty & sirim? Thanks
Excellent review, it would be nice to see some more from you . Now you have the perfect excuse to become a phone collector -it’s what the people want 🙂
I really can’t understand when you are waiting for the Jiayu G4, UMI X2, Zopo ZP980, iOcean X7 (all Dual-Sim options) and then you go to a Single-Sim phone !!!
This Oppo can’t be an option for me once it is only single-sim…
I wouldn’t use the dual SIM feature even on the JiaYu G4 or the likes, i.e., I wasn’t going to buy the G4 for the dual SIM.
Excellent review, Oppo are on the up
Hey ! You can get Oppo find 5 midnight 32 gb edition for $569 with free delivery worldwide.
Just check the link : http://oppostyle.com/
Thanks !
Hi! Yes, I was aware of that but there were problems processing my card with PayPal, so had to go with AliExpress!
No words about the display at all? I found it’s even better than HTC One and Xperia Z.
Haven’t gotten a chance to play with either of those. Anyway, in itself, the display indeed is pretty amazing. Don’t know how I missed out on that. What I love the most is that fact that the space between the digitizer and screen is so less. Text feels like fine print at times.
awsome review bro…i think u r from gadgets to use! i follow ur web:):) gud 1
Thank you!
I’ve just bought the 32GB international version direct from Oppo for around £368. No other phone can compete in terms of OTA updates and a full 2 year EU warranty.
I will hopefully post my own review in a few weeks.
Thanks for the review OP
Hi,
I want to buy this phone, but i have few queries –
– What about the after sales services?
– They do not have any emi options, but can we ask Credit Card Providers for emi options?
– What is the warranty period?
– In case of any misshaping(which occurs to me often) how will they help me or service or repair? Do i need to send them back by courier?
Congrats Neel 😉