Details of the Oppo R1, pricing, specifications and rear camera have been published leading Chinese tech sites to dub the phone a ‘low-light photography weapon’!
Oppo have clearly shown everyone that they intend to keep producing smartphones with class leading camera technology. The company seem adamant that all smartphone, regardless of price, should have a worthy rear camera.
Yesterday we posted details of the Oppo R829T, an entry-level Oppo phone, today more details of their mid-range R1 have emerged giving us some nice details of the overall specification and rear camera set-up.
The Oppo R1 will go on sale for 2498 Yuan ($411) here in China, which is quite a lot of money fora phone with a 1.3Ghz MT6582 quad-core processor and 1GB RAM, but Oppo are trying to offer users better build-quality and photography with the R1 rather than all out power.
The body of the Oppo R1 consists of 2 sheets of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 front and rear to give a scratch resistant glossy finish. Inbetween sits a 5-inch 1280 x 720p display, 2410mAh battery, and 16GB of build-in memory, but the jewel in the crown is the main camera.
A 8 mega-pixel Sony rear sensor with saphire glass lens, f2.0 aperture and larger than average 1.32 µm size plus Oppo’s own image processing software should ensure the R1 can take some pretty stunning low-light/night photos. There is also a selfie compatible front Sony 5 mega-pixel shooter with wide-angle lens.
Oppo have also loaded the R1 with the latest ColorOS meaning you get all the great new features including gesture controls and optimised battery life, however only a China Mobile TD-SCDMA version of the phone has been listed with no news of a WCDMA model just yet.
Are Oppo on the right track by building higher quality phones with better cameras, or do you think the R1 is just to expensive?
I Like what oppo is trying todo here. Could have opted for a smaller screen 720p @ 4.3″ seems like the right size imo but photography being a center of focus i can see why a bigger screen is required not every capture images for viewing on the pc most view them on the device.
So is the R Line the Budget Line the N Line the Phablet Line and the Find the Flagship “phone” line?
Should have used the MT6588,but otherwise I think it is okay. Would I buy it over the R819? No I wouldn’t,not for 400 dollars.It is a one trick pony.
damn i skipped the pricing yup 400 is too much oppo devices are overpriced imo i take it back don’t know what oppo is trying to do
OPPO design phones based more on the user experience than the specsheet. Good thing about that is if they say the camera is awesome it really is. Bad thing is,well,look at that processor 🙁 It is capable enough but come on,they could’ve been more generous.
low light winner always goes to nokia lumia
The price is too high for the specs 250$ is worth
Mid-spec phones with a great camera is a good strategy and I would gladly pay extra. However Chinese phones with Sony sensors are already quite good camera-wise and this generation mid-tier CPUs and displays are more than enough for most users.
The MotoX bet on this strategy and is doing fine. I was considering it until I saw a huge amount of purple fringing on every test shot. Motorola went through the trouble of designing and building a new sensor array and then slapped cheap glass on top of it.
My point is mid-tier camera-centric phones sound great in theory but usually underdeliver. They cut corners. Cameras take an enormous amount of lab work to design and calibrate correctly. Decent camera performance can be had by buying a Sony sensor and following their design guidelines – what Chinese phone manufacturers do. Great camera performance means paying top engineers, spending months in the lab and building on years of imaging experience.
Unfortunately for the consumer on a budget who wants excellent camera performance the best bet is buying last year flagships from Apple and Samsung.
Can Oppo do it? In benchmarks neither the Find5 or the N1 top the charts. But Oppo have great engineers and they put a lot of thought in their designs. In a few iterations they might be able to beat the big boys.
As for the R1 I will wait for the benchmarks. The point of reference is the Galaxy S3 since they are so closely matched in specs and price.