Last
year's
Oppo N1 had a unique 206-degree swivel camera. However, what it
also had was a huge 5.9-inch screen and a huge footprint considering
the camera module was fixed above the display. Oppo realised the need
for a mini version of this phone and recently announced the N1 Mini, which has a 5-inch screen instead and a watered-down
specifications list. The swivel camera is carried forward to this phone and looks
as intriguing as ever. We got to play with the smaller (or is it
really?) N1 to form our opinions about the device. Read on.
Look and feelMini
versions of popular flagship phones have smaller footprints compared
to their larger siblings. The screen sizes on these mini
phones vary from company to company. However, it is clear that Oppo is
not taking this concept literally enough, by fitting a 5-inch screen,
which is still huge by most standards, on the
Oppo N1 Mini. The phone has a width of 72.2mm and height of 148.4mm,
which includes the 206-degree rotating camera. The 9.2mm
thickness of the phone is on the higher side.
Thankfully, the weight of 150g is distributed evenly across the device
and it fit snugly in our palms. All said and done, the N1 Mini is much,
much smaller than the original N1, which was a behemoth.
Another
differentiating factor in the N1 Mini is that it is available in two
funky colours - cool mint and yellow - in addition to basic white.
We got the cool mint variant for review and it reminded us of the
Sony
Xperia T3 (
Review |
Pictures).
The
camera's mechanism is
rather smooth and looks like it should last at least until your next
upgrade. There are parallel metal strips running around the edges,
and the corners are nice and curved. The slightly curved rear helps you
grip this phone. The rear panel is not removable and so Oppo uses a
removable SIM tray. This tray lies on the right along
with the volume buttons, whereas the power button sits on the left.
There
are two microphones - one on the rear and another on the bottom. The
bottom also houses the 3.5mm jack, Micro-USB port and speaker grill.
Overall, the Oppo N1 Mini, despite its plastic build, is a
looks and feels like it is worth every paisa
you spend on it.
Specifications and softwareOn paper at
least, the Oppo N1 Mini has mid-range specs. The Snapdragon 400 SoC has four 1.6GHz CPU cores and an Adreno 305 GPU.
There is 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage space. There is no slot
for a memory card, which we think could pose a bit of a
problem if you often find yourself strapped for storage space on your
smartphone.
The now-famous 13-megapixel
camera has a 1/3.2-inch sensor and LED flash, and of course functions as
both, a front and rear camera. The N1 Mini supports Bluetooth
v4.0 and NFC. It can connect to 3G networks and has support for 4G LTE
networks as well but since it doesn't have support for the 2.3GHz band
it
wont work on current Indian LTE networks. A 2140 mAh Li-Ion
battery provides the juice to power the phone.
The 5-inch
720p IPS LCD panel looks good with its 294ppi density. Ideally, we would
have liked a 1080p panel but the 720p option on the N1 Mini is in fact
not too bad. We liked the viewing angles and the rather natural colour
reproduction. The sunlight legibility, on the other hand, was average at
best.
In this day and age where even much cheaper phones are
running Android KitKat out-of-the-box, we are really surprised that Oppo
is persisting with Android Jelly Bean for its phones. Oppo uses its own skin called Color OS on top of regular Android, and
unlike its Chinese competitors and their implementations, Oppo's UI has
an app drawer. It doesn't look drastically different from stock Android
but there are some really useful tweaks that users might
appreciate.
Starting with the locking mechanism, Oppo lets you double-tap the Home button to lock the screen. The
lock screen is identical to Android Jelly Bean's stock implementation.
Swiping down from the top right corner of the screen displays a gesture
panel. One can set custom gestures for basic
tasks such as opening the camera, making phone calls etc. The notifications shade also has a ton of quick setting
toggles that are fairly useful. For example, there is an option called
End All which essentially cleans up system memory for smooth
performance.
Another tweak that we liked is that the phone immediately
recognises when a headset is plugged in and can launch the Music Player
app automatically. By the way, the Music Player, with its gramophone
animation, is one of the coolest looking apps we've come across.
There are also apps to help manage battery life and data usage.
An app called O-Cloud lets users back up their contacts and text
messages to the cloud. Oppo bundles a folder full of security apps including App encryption, Data saving, Guest
mode, Holiday mode, Permission monitor and Block.
Oppo
also sells an after-market accessory called O-Click that connects to
Oppo phones via Bluetooth. It can be used to find the phone if
misplaced, and if it is in range, it also works as a camera remote,
which is quite cool.
CameraDespite already having
spent time with the Oppo N1, we are
still intrigued by the swivel camera implementation. The 13-megapixel
sensor should be great for folks who like clicking selfies, since the
front and rear cameras are the same unit.
(Click for full size)The
Oppo N1 Mini's camera is fairly quick at shooting and from focus to
shot
doesn't take too much time. In our daylight samples we noticed that
colours were really accurate and adequately punchy for those who prefer
slight oversaturation in their photographs. We couldn't detect much
noise and there was no chromatic aberration either. However, there is a
bit of barrel distortion in most of our shots. Oppo's
proprietary Pure Image Engine comes into play in the HDR shots, as the
software starts working overtime to set the exposure just right. In our
night shots even the colour of the dim sky looked natural. Coming to the
low-light settings, the camera does a fairly decent job but we could
definitely detect noise. We captured a 1080p video and it looked decent
too.
(Click for full size)A
small gripe
we have with the camera is that in an effort to focus quickly and
create depth in the background, the camera fails to focus
properly a lot of the time. There is no doubt that self portraits look
rather
nice and detailed. The N1 Mini's camera has a unique Ultra-HD mode where
Oppo claims that six photographs are taken in quick succession and the
best parts of each are merged to create a single 24-megapixel frame. We
couldn't really
see any substantial difference between this mode and the regular
13-megapixel shots.
PerformanceWe've reviewed so many
phones based on the Qualcomm's Snapdragon 400 SoC that we can actually
predict benchmark scores. The Oppo N1 Mini performs just like any
other similarly specced smartphone. We logged scores of 10,799 and 21,841 respectively in the Quadrant and AnTuTu benchmark
tests. Our regular
graphics benchmark tests, GFXbench and 3D Mark Ice Storm, returned
scores of 10.7fps and 5,837 points respectively. These numbers are not too
different from what we saw on phones like the
Motorola Moto G (Gen 2) [
Review |
Pictures],
Sony Xperia T3 and
HTC Desire 816 (
Review |
Pictures). All things considered, not once did
we face any lag while using the phone, and some high-end games also
worked absolutely fine.
The phone managed to play all our test
videos without any hassles. The speaker is adequately loud and it
doesn't crackle at high volumes either. The bundled earphones are really
uncomfortable to use for long periods and don't sound that great
either. We tested the call quality and during this process calls
dropped on a couple of occasions. Sound quality on the other hand is good.
The phone lasted 6 hours and
35 minutes in our battery test, which is okay, but we noticed that in real-life usage we
were reaching for the charger more often than we would have liked.
VerdictOne area where Oppo falters is in pricing the
N1 Mini. It is available for Rs. 26,990 online and offline.
The company is charging a premium for the unique swivel camera, which
also performs well. Unfortunately for Oppo, the HTC Desire 816 has a
fairly powerful 13-megapixel rear camera and a decent 5-megapixel front
shooter as well. It is available for around Rs. 24,000. Even its
successor, the newly launched
HTC Desire 820,
with a 64-bit octa-core
Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC, 13-megapixel primary camera and 8-megapixel
secondary camera is priced at just Rs. 24,990. These factors
considered, the Oppo N1 Mini will be fighting a tough battle in a
price-sensitive market.
Oppo N1 Mini in pictures in pictures
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