Yes! Oppo N3 and R5 take centerstage at Singapore launch

SINGAPORE— Over a thousand media people and bloggers from 15 countries were at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore last week to witness the launch of Oppo N3 and the Oppo R5. This is perhaps one of the biggest product launches I’ve  ever attended in many years. For Oppo Mobile, this was also a show of force and an indication that they are serious, or rather bullish, in the smartphone market.

In the Philippines, Oppo has only been around for less than a year but the company is huge in other markets and has been very well received. Oppo is also very well-known in other markets for making high-end audio equipment and has become the number one brand of Blu-ray players in the US. At one time, it even had Leonardo DiCaprio as endorser.

The growth of the smartphone market, especially with the popularity of the Android ecosystem, has forced a lot of global brands to innovate faster and compete more fiercely. Offering a unique product differentiator can give a brand significant edge especially when many others are mostly looking at hardware and price positioning.

That is perhaps one of the highlights of Oppo when it formally introduced the N3 with its motorized rotating camera and the R5 with its super slim form factor worthy of being crowned the slimmest smartphone in the world.

Suddenly, Oppo has our attention.

The Oppo N3 and its rotating rear camera

The first time there  was a rotating rear camera was with the Oppo N1. It was a unique approach to solving the challenge of making the front-facing camera as powerful and capable as the rear camera. In the age of social media where smartphone users are very used to doing video calls and taking lots of selfies, having a powerful camera both at the rear as well as the front can be a deciding factor when buying a new phone.

The Oppo N3 has done just that. Its 16-megapixel rear camera rotates all the way around to the front with a single push of a button, swipe of the screen or a gesture at the touch-sensitive back panel.

While the older Oppo N1 can do just the same, the N3 adds a motorized mechanism to do it automatically — the rear camera rotates on its own towards the front when you want to take a selfie. It’s not only smart and convenient, it also opens up other possibilities.

The motorized camera allows you to take better and more seamless panoramic shots. Just hold the device firmly, set the shooting mode to panorama, and let the camera rotate on its own while taking a long continuous shot of the scenery.   

The camera showcases Oppo’s unique target-tracking focus shift function. This allows the user to identify the target in focus and the camera will constantly modify its angle to follow the moving target.

The camera is developed in partnership with Schneider Optics and is capable of taking 64-megapixel high resolution images.

All these may sound gimmicky but it does the trick really well.

The rest of the hardware configuration is also impressive and can be considered worthy of flagship status.

Oppo has developed their own system for charging the handset very quickly. Called the VOOC Rapid Charge 2.0, this technology enables the device to charge up to 30 percent of battery life in just five minutes and goes to 75 percent charge in just 30 minutes.

The dual-sided Skyline Notification 2.0 embedded at the bottom of the phone not only plays a part in the phone’s aesthetic design but also improves notification visibility.

Another interesting feature of the Oppo N3 is that there is an area at the back that is touch-sensitive and can be used for navigation. This makes it more comfortable to navigate the UI of the phone during one-handed operation.

Oppo N3 specs

5.5-inch TFT display, 1920x1080 pixels, 401ppi

Corning Gorilla Glass 3

Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.3GHz quad-core processor

Adreno 330 Graphics

2GB RAM

32GB internal storage

Up to 64GB via microSD card slot

3G/LTE

Dual-SIM, Dual-Standby

Micro-SIM and NanoSIM slot

WiFi 802.11 b/g/n

Bluetooth 4.0

GPS with aGPS support

16MP rotating rear camera, CMOS sensor, f/2.2

3,000mAh Li-Polymer battery, VOOC mini

Color OS 2.0 (Android 4.4)

161.2 × 77 × 9.9mm (dimensions)

192 grams (weight)

Oppo R5: World’s slimmest smartphone

The R5 is the first smart phone to measure less than 5mm thick, a level that the industry had previously considered unachievable. In contrast, the new iPhone 6 is only 6.9mm thin, making the R5 about 30 percent thinner.

The handset is built using first-grade steel and designed with a beautiful micro-arc frame to make the entire device smooth and strong. The frame has been forged nine times and then finished by hand to give a perfect sheen and feel.

So, despite its very thin form factor, it should be able to stand the “bend test”.

With thinner frames and metallic build, one factor that may pose danger is heat dissipation. The R5 uses phase-change material, keeping it at a constant cool temperature. Its patented heat dissipation technology, Cool Element, protects the 8-core processor.

While still considered a mid-range phone, the Oppo R5 is powered by a Snapdragon 615 processor with 8 cores, each core running at 1.5GHz.

The rear camera of the R5 has a maximum focus time of 0.18 seconds and delivers up to 50MP high-definition photos. The Oppo R5 and N3 can achieve these really high resolutions by taking multiple samples and combining them into one high-resolution image.

Both the N3 and the R5 run on a customized version of Android 4.4 Kitkat which Oppo called Color OS 2.0. The customization provides additional features and functionalities only seen in Oppo handsets. Among them are Gesture commands that offer shortcuts to frequently-used functions like the camera, browser or a favorite application.

By assigning a Gesture command, an app or function can be launched straight from a locked screen or any home screen. You can even assign your own gestures to add to the standard ones already in place.

Between the two, I personally liked the Oppo R5 with its sleek design and very thin form factor. At 5.2-inches the Oppo R5 is just the right size.
 

Oppo R5 specs

5.2-inch AMOLED display, 1920x1080 pixels, 423ppi

Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615 1.5GHz octa-core processor

Adreno 405 Graphics

2GB RAM

32GB internal storage

3G/LTE

MicroSIM

WiFi 802.11 b/g/n

Bluetooth 4.0

GPS with aGPS support

13MP

2,000mAh Li-Polymer battery, VOOC mini

Color OS 2.0 (Android 4.4)

148.9×  74.5 × 4.85mm (dimensions)

155 grams (weight)

Both the Oppo N3 and the R5 are expected to be released in the Philippines as early as the middle of December, just in time for the annual Christmas bonus.

The expected suggested retail price of the Oppo N3 is P29,990 while the Oppo R5 is pegged at P22,990. Oppo is also in talks with local telcos to offer these handsets in their postpaid plans.