Oppo N1 Review

Introduction

The second most profitable smartphone vendor in China, Oppo, is growing leaps and bounds this year, and when you look at its 2013 crop of handsets, that's for a good reason. After the first phone with 13 MP camera and second with Full HD display, Oppo Find 5, then the very thin and light dual SIM Oppo R819, the company now outs a unique cameraphone, dubbed the Oppo N1.

Its signature features are the rotating 13 MP camera module at the top, the touch navigational panel on the back and the huge 5.9” 1080p display, but the phone also has some interface and gesture navigation tricks worthy of the “unique” moniker.

In the year of the phablet, however, has Oppo managed to churn out a device worthy to be considered amongst so many good big-screen phones out there at its flagship price? Let's find out...

In the box

• In-ear stereo headphones
• O-Click Bluetooth Remote Control
• Wall charger
• MicroUSB cable
• SIM ejector tool
• Warranty and information leaflets

Design

The Oppo N1 is one big phone. So big, in fact, that with its 6.72 x 3.25 x 0.35” (170.7 x 82.6 x 9 mm), it only gives way to the Xperia Z Ultra phablet. It is taller than phablets like the HTC One max, Lumia 1520 and the Galaxy Mega 6.3, but narrower than Samsung's handset, so at least holding it is fairly possible. One-handed operation, though? Forget it, most of the time you will be forced to use this thing with both palms, since the touch are on the back is only good for scrolling, swiping or launching a preset app.

The build is pretty sturdy, in Oppo's established unibody polycarbonate tradition, with a two chanfered metal rims around the sides and the camera swivel. That last one is the phone's unique selling point, as it allows the 13 MP shooter with dual LED flash to rotate 206 degrees around its axis, so you can have it pointed towards you, the ceiling, or objects in the rear at any given time. Not that there is much benefit in that, compared to the typical rear/front cam setup, rather than the ability to capture better selfies and some quality video chat streaming, compared to your average front-facing shooter.

The swivel also contains the earpiece and ambient light plus proximity sensors, so if someone calls you while doing a selfie, you've got to turn the earpiece half around and then talk. Nothing else interrupts the matte white back of the Oppo N1, save for a tiny hole that houses the second noise-canceling mic, and the barely visible touch panel border markings (more on the O-Touch panel later). The rest is housed at the bottom – there is a speaker grill there, a microUSB port, an audio jack, and the other microphone.

The volume rocker on the right is easy to find and press, with good tactile feedback, and situated just right on the gargantuan body. The power/lock key above it, though, is too small and flush with the surface to be comfortably felt and pressed without looking, plus it feels wobbly under your fingertip. The left houses a micro SIM card tray that can be ejected with the special tool found in the box. Navigating the interface is with three responsive capacitive keys situated in the thick black bezel underneath the display part.

Display

The 5.9” 1080x1920 pixels IPS LCD display of the Oppo N1 sports excellent 377ppi pixel density, which is more than enough so as you don't tell the individual pixels when looking closer at icon edges, text or solid colors. The screen is protected with Gorilla Glass 3, but we wouldn't rely on that fact if the handset is dropped face down and its gigantic surface meets concrete, for instance.

The colors are a bit on the warm side while their saturation level isn't flying way above the standard RGB gammut range like on most OLED displays, where the colors appear vivid, but not natural. The panel is of average brightness and reflectivity, so outside under direct sunlight you might not be able to tell what's on the screen fine. Viewing angles are what we'd expect from an IPS display, meaning very good, both the vertical and horizontal ones.

O-Click accessory

The Oppo N1 comes with the aptly-named O-Click Bluetooth remote control accessory. It is essentially a keychain ring with battery-powered button and low-energy connectivity that can last quite a while.

You can use it as a remote shutter for the camera, or double-press the O-Click to make the phone start ringing, so as you can find where you left it. These features can be controlled with the dedicated O-Click app, which also serves as the initial point of contact with the accessory.

Alternatively, the contraption starts beeping when you exit a predetermined range between the device and the smartphone, presumably helping not to forget one or the other somewhere. It often starts beeping from too short of a distance, though, so carrying the O-Click on your keychain with this function on gets rather annoying. Luckily, you can deactivate it and use it as camera remote only.

Interface and functionality

The N1 sports Oppo's Color OS on top of Android 4.2, which seems to be based on the Go Launcher, with its hundreds of themes and wallpapers that can be easily selected and applied to the N1 as well. There will be a version with CyanogenMod out of the box in December, making it the first phone to ship officially with the renowned custom ROM project, that is now emerging as a separate company.

Oppo's Color interface has received some features unique for the camera-centric N1, such as a dedicated photography homescreen, dubbed Exclusive space. There you will find a camera widget that uses part of the screen as a viewfinder, and you can take pictures as well as toggle the flash directly from there. Beneath it is a scrollable timeline with snapshots of all your photos, along with time and date they were taken.

There are a bunch of other handy helpers peppered thoughtfully in the interface and menus, too. The pull-down notification bar, for instance, houses each and every toggle you might need in three rows, alongside screen brightness adjustments, so you don't have to go into settings or swipe to reach anything. On top of that, it shows a data counter with your plan limit, and the amount you've used so far. Another brainy thing we find in the app drawer, where downloaded 3rd party apps are marked with a little green dot next to them, and a plethora of utility apps are neatly tucked into separate folders.

The default color scheme of Oppo's interface is very pleasant, too, with its green accents, and attention is paid to even minute things, like the presence of a festive wallpapers toggle that automatically displays backgrounds that reflect the current holiday. The amount of thought and options that went to Color OS is akin to HTC's Sense UI, and Oppo's interface design team surprisingly beats much larger companies like Samsung and LG here.

O-Touch rear panel

The Oppo N1 has a unique touch panel on the back that lets you navigate the interface and launch apps. It's no fingerprint sensor, just a touch sensitive rectangle right under your index finger on the back, where you can slide your finger in various direction to scroll or move sideways in the current app, as well as launch an app when you double tap it. It works well, and aids in one-handed navigation, which is a plus on such a gigantic phone.

Besides the rear touch panel, Oppo offers another navigation option. Sliding down your finger from the top right will evoke the typical Android notification bar, but the top left will pull down a gesture drawing area. There you can draw a circle to launch the camera app, a “V” sign to launch the flashlight, and add a number of others. It might sound like an addition for the sake of it, but Oppo had the brilliant idea to also make these drawing gestures work when the screen is off. Thus drawing a circle on the blackened display will launch the camera app directly from a locked screen, and a “V” will turn the LED lamp on, which serves great when there is no light around. You can also control the music player with gestures from there, and muster up your own combinations.

The gesture features are taken even further by Oppo. Pinching in with a few fingers anywhere in the interface will launch the camera, swiping up or down with three fingers will take a screenshot, and doing the same with two controls the volume – pretty helpful options which we found ourselves using on a regular basis, especially the volume control gesture.

Processor and memory

The Oppo N1 is powered by a 1.7 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600, which is just a step below the best Qualcomm offers at the moment in the form of Snapdragon 800. It is more than enough to power the interface, plus any apps and games thrown at the N1, though its Krait 300 core and Adreno 320 GPU are less powerful than the Krait 400 one and the Adreno 330 in the Snapdragon 800. The difference might be noticeable in some games and benchmarks, but at this stage of mobile processor development the app requirements can barely keep up with even Snapdragon 600, let alone 800.

The memory situation is decent, with 2 GB of RAM for some enhanced multitasking, but no microSD slot for storage expansion, though you can choose from both a basic 16 GB model and a 32 GB one.

Camera

Oppo touts the N1 as “The Return to Innovation”, chiefly on account of the 13 MP swivel-mounted camera at the top. Oppo throws at us quite a bit of superlatives about the N1 camera, like wide f/2.0 aperture, 7-element optics and a dual mode LED flash, too, whose diodes are with different intensity, depending on whether you are using the camera as a rear or front-facing shooter. Oppo also has its so called Pure Image software to control the dedicated image signal processor (ISP). Oppo say they chose to put a tailored ISP to control the 13 MP sensor and the picture-taking process, as this gives it more flexibility over the stock one embedded in Snapdragon 600, and allowed it to make the camera very fast, to the tune of 0.6 second shot-to-shot times. Thus Oppo joins the ranks of manufacturer devices with such dedicated processors like Nokia's PureView Lumias, the HTC One series, or the Sony Xperia Z1, for instance.

As a sensor, we still have a 1/3.06” sensor, which is about the average mobile device size, and with 13 million pixels crammed on it. It doesn't have optical stabilization, for better low light performance. Oppo flaunts that up to 8 seconds exposure times are available with the N1 for night shots, but to achieve a blur-free picture in the night you have to hold the phone extremely steady or use a tripod.

When it comes to quality, however, the phablet is severely lacking compared to other flagship, and even midrange Androids. The pictures come out with less detail than what one would expect from a 13 MP unit, and the amount of noise present drowns the details even more. We definitely expected better quality from a high-end device, especially one touting its camera. The photos sport fairly accurate color representation and white balance, relaying the colors you see with your own eyes naturally. However, the phone's automatic measurements sometimes result in underexposed frames that look much less lit than the scene is in reality.

Indoors the pics get very noisy, unless the amount of light is abundant, and blur is usually a part of the picture if you don't keep the giant phone extremely steady. In fact, there is even more noise and blur than we've achieved with phones that have no pretenses to be camera-centric. If we compare it other high-end handsets, like the Galaxy S4 for example, the Oppo N1 is just not good enough.

Note that the camera software in our unit might not be the final one just yet, so picture quality might be improved further with a firmware update.

Since the rear camera is also the front-facing shooter when you turn it towards you, your selfies should be leaps and bound above anything on the market, right? Not really, as the usual indoor photos disadvantages apply here, and apart from more detail than with your typical front shooter, the snaps with the N1 aren't much to talk about in this case, too.




Video is shot with 1080p resolution, but the average frame count doesn't hit 30fps, rather stays slightly below. The footage is still fluid and detailed enough, but comes underexposed like the stills, and thus a lot darker than it should be.

Multimedia

The gallery is simply called Photos, and sports a number of on-handset editing possibilities for your pictures, though the sharing options only cover the basics like Hangouts and Facebook instaled out of the box.

Oppo had a whole homescreen on the R819 dedicated to the music player widget, but on the camera-centric N1 such a homescreen is reserved for the camera ability, and music playback is done in a more orthodox way. You can change the so-called Exclusive screen to the vinyl widget that controls the music player app, but out of the box the N1 comes with the camera homescreen.

The music app still has a cool vinyl icon, and a very pleasant, easy to use interface with big buttons. There is a Dolby Mobile surround sound mode you can turn on for allegedly fuller sound, which, however, simply seems to turn up the sound intensity. It comes, however, with a few visualized equalizer presets, and a custom one can be made by pulling the animated sound curve directly with your finger for some interactive equalizer experience.

Oppo supplies ergonomic in-ear hedaphones with the N1, whose stubs are slightly tilted for better fit in your ear, like the ones that come with the LG G2, and they have an additional opening, similar to the iPhone 5s and the Galaxy S4 pair, arguably providing better acoustics. The overall effect is pretty pleasing, compared to the typical earbuds that come with smartphones these days, yet they give way to the headphones that are bundled with the above-mentioned phones in terms of sound quality. The loudspeaker is also very good – pretty strong and comparatively clear.

The video player has no issues running every major format thrown at it, including MKV and DivX containers, up to 1080p resolution, but its interface is devoid of additional options, save for the playback ones.

Call quality

Voices in the earpiece of the Oppo N1 sound a tad too muted for our taste, even at the highest volume. Call quality is clean otherwise, without audible distortion, but you will have trouble hearing the caller in loud environments. The two noise-canceling mics, on the other hand, relay our voice loud and clear to the other end, weeding out parasitic noises.

Battery

The giant 3610 mAh battery unit capacity in the Oppo N1 is its pride and joy, as it should allow you almost two days of average usage out of the handset. There is a handy Power Management app that estimates the time remaining with the current usage, and breaks down your biggest juice consumers. You can also turn on power saving features with it, after the battery level reaches a certain threshold.

Conclusion

If you are eyeing a 6-incher like the Oppo N1, you are probably aware how uncomfortable to operate with one hand or even carry around such a phone would be. That being said, it is a very well-made device, with solid build, good looks, and flagship specs.

Surprisingly for a phone touted as camera-centric, the swivel-mounted camera, is subpar compared to even much less expensive phones out there, so besides more detailed selfies, its rotating mechanism is of dubious benefit.

What we liked, though, is Oppo's Color OS interface with its polished looks, little touches, and rich gesture navigation options, including a touch panel on the back of the phone. The N1 also comes with a handy O-Click keychain remote out of the box, and a pair of very good in-ear headphones.

Unfortunately, the Oppo N1 commands a high-end price of slightly below 600 USD or EUR without a contract, which is pitting it against all the formidable competition out there. If you are hell-bent on a phablet, Nokia's Lumia 1520 will deliver a much better camera and video sound recording coupled with a superior display that has the same diagonal as the N1. The Galaxy Note 3 has a slightly smaller screen, but is way more compact, and its camera will also deliver better results that the Oppo phablet. The HTC One Max is about as huge as the Oppo N1, but it offers two great stereo speakers at the front, though its so-called UltraPixel camera will offer even less detail than the 13 MP shooter on the N1. Let's not forget also the mother and father of all phablets – the giant 6.4” Xperia Z Ultra – which is extremely thin and waterproof to boot but lacks flash.

Going down in size, the Lumia 1020 has a much better camera. When we enter Android land, the Xperia Z1 with its great 20 MP shooter and waterproof body. We'd be remiss not to mention the G2 or Nexus 5 cameras whose OIS helps for excellent low-light results, and Google's phone is much cheaper to boot. The Samsung Galaxy S4 also deserves your attention as an option with a very good camera, vibrant display and pretty compact chassis.

Thus Oppo's intriguing N1 might be poised to become a niche device for folks in search of that perfect selfie from a phablet at this price tag.

Software version: 1.0.0