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OPPO’s latest addition to the company’s popular F-Series lineup packs premium features in the mid-ranger segment.
The smartphone industry has shown a strong surging trend towards the midrange flagship category as of late. While OPPO has been consistently leading the pack with its constant releases in the domain, with the release of their latest in the F-Series: The F19 Pro, OPPO is armed and ready to take over.
The OPPO F19 Pro is the iterative successor of the F17 in the F-Series known for its classy, lightweight design and first-in-class camera innovations. OPPO’s latest offering packs the right mix of sophisticated looks, an artificial intelligence-boosted 48 MP Quad Camera with AI Colour Portrait Video support and an anti-lag software experience, all at the alluring starting price of ₹21,490. Throw OPPO’s superfast 30W VOOC Flash Charging 4.0, and gaming-ready performance into the mix and you get a recipe for a device that is hard not to recommend to any smartphone user.
Let’s take a deeper dive into the OPPO F19 Pro to see why it has taken the segment by storm.
Camera
There’s always chatter around OPPO’s camera innovations and the AI features on this device are no exception. Armed with a 48MP AI Quad-Camera setup, videography and photography are the OPPO F19 Pro’s strong suit.
While portrait mode photography was the last trend to make its way down to budget phones, OPPO takes it a step further with AI Color Portrait Video. The camera sensors work in tandem with the onboard processing mettle to identify the subject in real time and apply a bokeh effect to the background. This makes for stunning and cinematic hollywood movie-like recordings with the convenience of a point-and-shoot style home camera. The Camera app itself is stuffed to the gills with tweaks and features like Pro Mode to make this camera truly your own.
The 16MP front camera also comes equipped with Portrait and Beauty modes. OPPO also introduces a feature to the segment which was previously only seen in ultra-high-end dual-screen devices: Dual-View Video mode. This feature enables you to simultaneously view and capture from both front and rear cameras, capturing not just the moment but also, the person behind the lens. Imagine capturing both sides of an electrifying concert, or a tender moment with your little loved ones. The possibilities are endless.
The daytime photography of the OPPO is on par with the segment leaders but the nighttime is where it shines. The camera sensors create stunning visuals, in both photos and videos regardless of light thanks to the built-in Night Mode capability.
The F19 Pro also introduces a new Monochrome Mode which can isolate specific colours in a video and render the rest as black and white. Be it your bright red Christmas sweater, lush green landscapes or even the splashes of gulaal on your face this Holi, this camera is sure to make colours pop.
Battery
The 4310mAh power pack inside the OPPO F19 Pro is a sleeper hit. Not only does it have enough juice to last you through your day, but the 30W VOOC Flash Charging 4.0 brick provided by OPPO in the box will refuel your phone from 0 to 69% in around 30 minutes and fully charges the device in just 56 minutes. The software battery optimisations punch above their weight as well, further reducing background battery bleeding and keeping you charged up for longer.
For reference, we were able to extract 2.9 hours of calling in just 5 minutes of charging. Safe to say, you will not have to carry around a powerbank all day for users of the F19 Pro.
Performance and Storage
Under the hood, the OPPO F19 Pro runs a MediaTek Helio P95 SoC and 6/8 GB of RAM with 128 / 256 GB ROM, expandable with an SD Card upto 256 GB. The chipset, which is upto 11% faster than the competing Snapdragon 662 seen in similarly priced devices, paired with OPPO’s proprietary System Performance Optimizer makes using the F19 Pro a lag-free experience.
OPPO has also implemented a host of first-in-class gaming optimizations such as a dedicated Gaming Focus Mode, which minimizes all incoming calls and notifications into non-obstructive bullets while allocating all of the phone’s memory reserves to ensure a cracking gaming experience. It also enables hardcore gaming fanatics to remap the volume control rockers to specific in-game functions: a feature only seen in high-end gaming devices.
In our controlled usage, the OPPO F19 Pro’s Android 11.1 based ColorOS was a breeze to navigate, with decent game loading times, minimal frame drops on medium-high settings and optimised memory management. It’s no surprise that a phone with stellar gaming performance rallies through day-to-day productivity tasks too, all without breaking a sweat.
Design
Taking the phone in your hand, the first thing you’ll notice right off the bat is its minimalistic and elegant design. The device is 7.8 mm in thickness and weighs just 172g. It’s lightweight nature lends it a much sleeker footprint. The dip-dyed composite shell is quite scratch and fingerprint resistant, and is subtly curved around the edges to provide a great hand feel and comfortable grip for long hours of scrolling and gaming.
The F19 Pro comes in two colour options. The matte finish Space Silver variant has a dazzling iridescent gleam to it when viewed from different angles. The Fluid Black colourway looks slick and stealthy as it blends with the rear camera module, but its glossy finish means you’ll have to watch your greasy mitts for fingerprints.
Display
The OPPO F19 Pro has a 6.43-inch AMOLED front panel. The single hole-punch cutout for the front camera and the smartly concealed proximity sensor in the thin bezel ensure maximum display real estate resulting in 90.8% screen-to-body ratio.
The resulting display panel is vivid and bright with deep blacks and punchy colours. Rated upto 800 nits, it can get sufficiently bright even in direct sunlight.
OPPO also bundles in software accommodations for all your late-night scrolling sprees in bed, with a feature called All-Day AI Eye comfort. The phone adapts to your viewing habits and provides the best viewing profiles to minimise the ill-effects of long hours of staring at your screen.
Tucked behind the OLED screen is OPPO’s third-gen In-Display Fingerprint 3.0 scanner which is snappy at a response time of 470ms. Upfront, the camera and sensors enable Face Unlock which can work without you having to take your pandemic-staple masks off every time.
Price and Availability
The OPPO F19 Pro is available in two storage configurations, the 8GB RAM and 128GB storage version costs ₹21,490 will go on sale starting today. While the 8GB RAM while the 256GB version is priced at ₹23,490 and will go on sale from March 25th. The device will be available across the mainline retailers and on Amazon. To further make the more impressive OPPO is offering a bundled discount under which the Enco W11 earbuds will be available at a price tag of just INR 999, while the OPPO Band Style will be available for INR 2,499 with the OPPO F19Pro+ 5G or the OPPO F19 Pro.
THE VERDICT
The mid-range flagship segment is getting more and more competitive. With budget brands flexing their mettle by providing bang for the buck and premium brands cutting costs (and features) to hit a specific rupee amount, OPPO sits comfortably atop the competition with their latest F-Series offering. Between an all-day battery, a feature-packed camera, slick design and lag-free performance, the OPPO F19 Pro has something for everybody, with enough oomph to give you a flagship feeling at a pocket-friendly price.
