The Oppo f11 Pro is clearly the most underrated smartphone in Nigeria at the moment. It is a device that gets people asking ‘which phone is this?. From the eye catching motorized pop-up front camera, to the gradient finish at the back, the immersive display and high quality camera, you definitely want to catch every detail and offerings.
Design and display
Oppo F11 Pro is a 6.5-inch smartphone with full HD+ IPS LCD display and a design which doesn’t follow the conventional trend of notches, hole punch, dew drop and front camera present on the display. What you have is a nearly all screen display with tiny bezels at the top and sides that gives a full immersive viewing experience for multimedia consumption and a noticeable chin at the bottom. I personally like the display, no implementation that interferes in form of notches, dew drops, sensors nor front-facing camera which I hardly use.
The stunning gradient from blue to black to purple back of the F11 Pro gives it a premium finish that you’d hardly believe it is made up of a combination of plastic and glass with rounded corners , thin bezel display and of course, you have fingerprints left all over which warrants frequent cleaning. The phone is big at 6.5 inches and will require handling with both hands most of the time however you can still handle with one finger as the buttons are placed within reach. The power button is placed on the right side which can be easily reached with the thumb, fingerprint scanner at the back is well positioned to easily unlock the device easily.
The volume rocker is placed on the right side but reaching out to this will require the use of the second hand. Oppo didn’t do away with the headphone jack as it is present alongside the USB charging port and the loud speaker at the bottom of the phone. You do not have the USB type C port as expected in more recent smartphone models but I guess this is because OPPO has a charging technology that is based on the micro-USB.
Camera
The cameras are the major highlights and USP on the OPPO F11 Pro, touting a 48MPand 5MP dual back camera and a 16MP motorized front camera. The back camera takes really nice photos. By default, the camera is set at 12MP at 4:3 aspect ratio but you can select the 48MP option if you really decide to shoot at a high resolution. In actual fact, there seem not to be so much difference in photo quality between pictures taken at a higher resolution of 48MP and that of the 12MP except for larger image sizes and higher resolutions. The second 5MP back camera offers depth sensing with f/2.4 aperture.
The combined dual back camera takes extra sharp photos and performs well under low light conditions, although you get best shots outdoors and under adequate lighting conditions, it is also important to emphasize that even under worse lighting conditions, you will still get good quality images.
Check out some pictures taken with the back camera….
OPPO F11 pro camera can also record SLO-MO and time-laps, shoot in panorama mode, night mode, HDR and portrait mode. It is also embedded with Google Lens, an image recognition technology developed by Google and an expert mode where you can tweak exposure metering, white balancing, among other adjustment.
There is so much about the OPPO F11 camera that includes AI object and scene recognition, a high level machine learning technology that automatically identifies the scene and object which the camera points at.
Picture lovers also have access to a robust editing suite embedded into the camera app which allows you edit and tone up your pictures for the gram. I really like the editing functionality as you may not require an additional photo editing app to pimp your pictures for social media
The front camera is a 16MP camera with f/2.0 aperture that slides up from the top when launched. This takes quality selfies and portrait-mode shots under adequate lighting conditions and even under very low light condition.
The low-light selfie capability is very impressive on this particular device as the quality is better than what you get on more expensive devices. You can also shoot 1080p videos at 30fps with the front camera, record in SLO-MO and time-lapse.
The front camera also uses face detection to unlock the device, although this may not be as secure as Face ID but it really works well and fast. I won’t suggest using the front camera to unlock the phone all the time considering the number of times one does that in a day.
The motorized front camera would probably give customers some form of concern over how it may easily get damaged should there be an accidental fall while it is up but OPPO got that covered with the presence of a gravity sensor which detects when the phone is falling down and automatically retracts the camera to prevent damage to the camera…….impressive stuff right!!
Battery
There’s a 4,000mAh battery providing power for this smartphone which is also supported by OPPO’s VOOC 3.0 fast charging technology that works with micro-USB so there is no type C port. The fast charging is only supported by the flash charge power adapter and it works just fine. Charging the phone from 0-51% takes about thirty five minutes, on another trial, the battery charged from 4%-89% in one hour.
A full charge at the beginning of the day took me all day without the need to recharge, regardless of how much I used it. Even with heavy usage that involved calls, active presence on social media, WiFi and location service turned on, I was still able to get through the whole day.
Performance
The smartphone runs on Android 9.0 with an overlay of ColorOS 6. You get all the Android offering alongside the customisations of the ColorOS. By default, all apps are installed on the home screen as there is no app drawer but you can customize your option to use the app drawer if you do not like apps being littered on the home screen. So yeah, app drawer is available. Swiping to the left of the home screen presents you a smart assistant pane with quick functions like currency converter, step tracker and other customizable functions. There is also a smart bar on the left bezel of the screen that pulls out a floating window to access quick shortcuts like screenshots, camera and other apps.
OPPO F11 Pro is powered by a Helio P70 chip, 6GB RAM and an internal storage of 128GB which can also be expanded by using a micro-SD card. Phone runs smoothly without lag, switching within apps is fluid, apps opened do not close nor restart after a while. Overall RAM management is excellent. There is also an app called Game Space that helps to manage phone performance when playing games. This app also allows you hide all the aps from your home screen and can only be accessed from within.
My overall experience with the OPPO F11 Pro has been great and all i can say is that it would be a great buy except for the invasive banner notification that refused to go away when you swipe. This is something very minor that can be fixed after a software update.
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