China-based Oppo has done well in India, capturing 8.6 per cent market share in 2016, and the company has progressively shifted its strategy towards the premium end of devices.
Betting on the selfie culture across the country, the company is now looking to tempt users with the new F3 Plus smartphone.
At Rs 30,990, the Oppo F3 Plus offers a lot for your money. A large battery, a six-inch 1080p display, a dual front camera set-up and plenty of storage — and that's just the beginning.
Here is what works for the device.
The Oppo F3 Plus has a sexy, svelte, metallic body that screams it's a premium device. The "six string" antenna is aesthetically pleasing and ensures solid reception.
The home button doubles up as a fingerprint sensor and looks similar to the one in Samsung's Galaxy line-up of devices.
The sensor recognises the stored print in an instant, only occasionally failing if your finger is wet.
The screen is guarded by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 and the full-HD display is bright and detailed, but the colours seem oversaturated at times.
The Oppo F3 Plus features an 8MP camera with wide-angle lens, giving a larger field of view to get those sweet 120-degree shots — perfect for capturing all of your friends.
The 16MP front camera with large f/2 aperture produces natural-looking selfies with depth and minimised noise.
Low-light performance was also quite appreciable.
With the face beauty mode on, the camera app airbrushes your face, making it brighter and cleaner than normal photo mode.
The performance of the rear camera is respectable but does not impress like the Xiaomi Mi 5. It supports HDR and also includes an expert mode to modify ISO setting, tweak exposure and shutter speed.
The ColorOS 3.0 on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow is responsive, provides a faster, smoother performance and automatically manages background apps and their power usage, saving battery.
Inside the Oppo F3 Plus there is a Qualcomm MSM8976 Pro octa-core processor clocked at 1.95GHz and paired with Adreno 510 GPU.
Performance wise it runs well and the average user probably isn't going to run into any trouble. Driven by 4GB of RAM — from web browsing, movie watching, and casual gaming — the device performs smoothly.
The smartphone also comes with "VOOC Flash Charge" and the company claims that five minutes of charge is enough for two hours of talk time.
The 4,000mAh battery lets you cruise for approximately a day-and-a-half on normal usage. The Low Power mode helps you extend battery life when power is running low.
What does not work?
ColorOS 3.0 may be an improvement on previous iterations, but seems less intuitive.
The device got pretty warm while playing Asphalt 8.
Conclusion: The Oppo F3 Plus is a premium-looking smartphone that comes at half the price of the current flagships. If you want an iPhone 7 Plus but your budget won't stretch, this could be a contender.