Oppo F3

Oppo’s dual selfie camera feature now comes to the sub-Rs. 20,000 price segment with the Oppo F3. We reviewed the F3 Plus (Review) back in March, which apart from being a good smartphone, had a practical use case for the secondary front camera, a feature we really appreciated.

The company has now brought that same camera setup to a more affordable price segment, and in essence, this model replaces the ageing Oppo F1s (Review). In order to achieve price point, Oppo has made a few compromises in the materials used for the chassis, the rear camera, and the processor under the hood. Let’s see if the new Oppo F3 can still deliver good value despite these reductions.

Oppo F3 design and build quality
If you’ve use the Oppo F3 Plus or at least held it, then you’ll instantly appreciate the smaller size of the Oppo F3. The phone is fairly slim at 7.3mm and light at 153 grams. It's a lot more pocketable compared to its more expensive 6-inch sibling. The 5.5-inch display with slim borders on either side makes it easy to use this phone one-handed, however the notification shade is still a bit of reach even for those with large hands. The sides of the display don’t blend with the body very smoothly, and the pre-applied screen protector gets in the way every time you swipe left or right.

The layout of the buttons and ports has't really changed compared to our last few experiences with Oppo smartphones. There’s a large capacitive Home button below the screen that’s flanked by two capacitive navigation keys, which are backlit. The power button is on the right, while the volume buttons are on the left. The SIM tray can accommodate two Nano SIMs and there’s a dedicated slot for a microSD card (up to 128GB). The chassis is built using plastic except for the back plate, which is metal. This surface is prone to scuffs so it’s advisable to use the bundled silicone case with the F3.

We found the brightness of the display on the Oppo F3 to be sufficient for outdoor use, and colours don’t get jarring like they did on the F3 Plus. The display is fairly sharp thanks to the full-HD resolution, and can resist damage thanks to the use of Corning Gorilla Glass 5. We didn’t have any issues with touch response either. The audio socket, Micro-USB port, and speaker grille are all on the bottom.

Overall, the Oppo F3 doesn’t disappoint in terms of build quality and aesthetics. It looks and feels very much like the Oppo F1s, which can be a good thing if you liked that design. In the box, you get a 10W power adapter, a data cable, a headset, a silicone case, a SIM ejector tool, and the instruction manuals.

Oppo F3 specifications and features
We understand that Oppo had to cut corners in order to bring down the price of this phone, but the choice of SoC is slightly disappointing. The F3 is stuck with an octa-core MediaTek MT6750T SoC, which is a mild refresh of the MT6750 seen on the Oppo F1s. From what we can tell, it only has a higher GPU clock speed. In benchmarks, the F3 produces decent numbers. We got 53,023 points in AnTutu but GFXbench resulted in just 17fps during a run of the T-Rex test.

The phone also has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, which is plenty for today's apps and games. Other specifications include Bluetooth 4.0, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n, USB-OTG, GPS, a proximity sensor, a compass, and a gyroscope.  There’s also support for 4G with VoLTE, but this phone lacks FM radio.