Oppo launched its latest F21 Pro smartphone on April 10. With a unique design and some unique features, Oppo is quite confident about this smartphone.
With 8GB RAM and 128GB ROM, the phone is priced at Tk27,990 and pre-orders are going on right now.
Here’s what this smartphone has to offer.
Aesthetic
One of the main attractions of this smartphone is how it looks and feels. The weight is only 175 grams with 7.5 mm thickness.
The phone comes in two colours - Sunset Orange and Cosmic Black. Among these two, the back part of Sunset Orange has a leathery rear panel. Oppo calls it the “fibreglass-leather” design and they claim that this is more durable than vegan leather.
The back definitely gives a premium feel when holding the device. The leather has a textured type finish which provides a firm grip while holding the phone. It is also waterproof and the back won’t catch any annoying fingerprints.
Oppo claims that the back is also wear-resistant. At Oppo Lab, they rubbed the back of the phone with an alcohol-soaked pad, a rubber eraser, and a denim swatch over 5,000, 10,000 and 200,000 times to test the material's durability, which means no socrates from keys or credit cards in your pocket.
The phone has a ring-shaped light surrounding its micro camera unit, which can also be used as a notification light. It looks nice.
Display
The display size of the Oppo F21 Pro is 6.43 inches, which is not too big or small. The phone has a 90Hz AMOLED panel with a typical brightness of 430 nits and a peak brightness of 800 nits.
The display resolution is 1080 x 2400 pixels with a 20:9 ratio. It is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5.
The display of the F21 Pro is a decent panel, something you would expect from this price. The typical brightness is also good. However, 800nits peak brightness means you might face some difficulties using this phone under direct sunlight.
The display seemed very vibrant and it also offered a good viewing angle. Oppo surely used a good panel with this phone.
Performance
This is where things get disappointing. Oppo went with the Snapdragon 680 chipset for a smartphone that costs TK28,000.
To put things into perspective, Realmi 9i, Narzo 50 and Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 has a Snapdragon 680 chipset inside and all of them cost below Tk20,000.
With a 6nm chipset, Snapdragon 680 definitely saves a lot when it comes to battery life. However, the performance of this processor is not up to the mark.
At this price, if Oppo opted for older chipsets like Snapdragon 720G, it would have still made a lot more sense.
This smartphone is definitely not for gamers. However, during scrolling and using the interface, I didn’t witness any lags or slow performance, thanks to a highly optimized ColorOS 12.
This smartphone will be able to handle most of the day to day tasks. Yes, the app starting and closing time might look a bit slower, but that’s only the limitation of the chipset.
Camera
The camera of this smartphone is exciting because, wIth the primary 64 MP camera, it also includes a 2MP depth sensor and a 2MP microscopic (micro) camera.
The 2MP micro camera is truly outstanding. You will never feel like you would need this. But once you have it, you will often find yourself looking at objects from a close distance.
It doesn’t matter if you are looking at a grain of rice, tiny sugar cubes or the texture between threads of your clothes, the micro camera makes it better and more interesting. The fun part is since it requires additional light to capture and view objects on a micro camera, the whole unit is surrounded by a ring light and that ring light can also be used for multiple other functionalities.
However, as good as the micro camera sounds, there’s one lacking in the F21 Pro. It does not have an ultrawide lens. This is disappointing to not have the ultrawide camera in a smartphone that costs Tk28,000.
In front, it has a 32MP selfie camera. The selfie camera has a Sony IMX709 sensor which makes the selfies way better.
With this sensor, the photos captured with this phone will be able to compete with the selfies captured on premium smartphones.
Battery
Oppo F21 Pro has a 4,500mAh battery inside. For a smartphone with an AMOLED display and Snapdragon 680 chipset, it’s not bad at all.
During average day to day usage, the smartphone should easily last a day. With 33 Watts charging support, it will also charge faster.
Final verdict
Oppo F21 Pro is a good device. But like many other devices, it is built toward a specific demographic.
If you are looking for a phone to play games, this is not for you. This is not a performance-centric phone.
However, if you want the combination of a well-designed phone with a decent camera and performance, this device is recommended.
