5.5-inches currently seems to be the sweet spot for a smartphone and Oppo has picked up on that. This is one aspect of the best-selling F1 Plus that has been preserved, however, size is only one part of the equation that makes for a good display. To keep costs down, the Chinese OEM has cut back on both technology and resolution.
The Oppo F1s ditches the superior AMOLED panel of the F1 Plus and relies on a much simpler LCD one, just like the original. While there is nothing wrong about that, the 720p resolution is stretched a little thin on the large area making for a noticeable decrease in quality compared to the original. There is still no pixelation or any noticeable fuzziness unless you look close, but there is a slight bump down in sharpness.
The panel used in the F1s also seems to be pretty close regarding performance to that in the original F1. It gets fairly bright at 420 nits, and the contrast is decent at 933:1. When showing an all black image, there is almost no light bleeding from the backlight either.
So overall, the screen may not be the best one we have seen, but it's still decent with the low resolution being our only serious grudge with it.
Display test | 100% brightness | ||
Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | ||
0.46 | 408 | 897 | |
0.00 | 351 | ∞ | |
0.45 | 420 | 933 | |
0.28 | 452 | 1609 | |
0.49 | 475 | 975 | |
0.00 | 340 | ∞ | |
0.42 | 403 | 953 | |
0.42 | 497 | 1192 | |
0.30 | 455 | 1542 | |
0 | 346 | ∞ | |
0.58 | 416 | 717 | |
0.00 | 421 | ∞ | |
0.00 | 425 | ∞ | |
0.32 | 495 | 1560 | |
0.42 | 520 | 1238 | |
0.49 | 561 | 1145 | |
0.63 | 527 | 839 |
The same goes for sunlight legibility.
Color accuracy is also about average, nothing special or impressive. The average deltaE being around 6.9 with the maximum drifting all the way out to 14.8. Overall, the panel on the F1s is about what you would get out of the original F1, only half an inch bigger in diagonal.
As already mentioned, the Oppo F1s conveniently comes with either one or two separate nano SIM card slots, neither of which gets in the way of the microSD. As for speed, you get Cat. 6 LTE with a theoretical maximum of 300 Mbps downstream and HSPA+. Other Internet connectivity options include Wi-Fi a/b/g/n (150Mbps speed, there's no ac).
Local connectivity includes Bluetooth 4.0, sadly not 4.1. You don't get NFC either, but this seems to be the trend with Oppo's devices. This omission may not be a big deal for you but it means you can't use your phone with a contactless payment solution, so this may or may not be an issue depending where you are coming from.
The microUSB 2.0 port handles charging and data, but it also supports USB OTG so you can hook up external hardware to the phone. However, to use this feature, you need to switch its toggle, which is 'hidden' in the Settings menu.
You do get FM radio as well, as a more old-school source of music and entertainment. However, there is no added functionality here such as RDS, broadcast recording or track recognition.
If we had to point out one aspect in which the Oppo F1s feels like an upgrade over its predecessors it would have to be the battery capacity (oh and the front-facing camera of course, but more on that later).
The new smartphone offers a 3075 mAh battery (sealed in), which is higher than both what the F1 (2,500 mAh) or the F1 Plus (2,850 mAh) have. Also, if there is a silver lining to using a lower resolution screen and an underclocked processor, battery endurance has to be it.
The Oppo F1s managed a respectable 75-hour endurance rating in our battery test, which is marginally better than what the F1 Plus got. The individual call, web browsing and standby times have all been improved compared to the F1 Plus. Video playback, however, appears to be a bit more power-hungry this time around - likely an issue with optimization.
The F1s behaves better with two active SIM cards as well, so the marginally thicker profile needed to accommodate the bigger battery seems to be well worth it. However, we have to admit we expected the difference compared to the F1 Plus to be somewhat bigger.
The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritties. You can also check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.
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