Oppo R819 review: Asian blade

Google Now

Google Now gives you a short overview of information it believes is relevant to you right now. Going to work in the morning? Google Now knows this and lets you know there's a big traffic jam on your usual way to the office, so it offers you a re-route.

It can interpret a lot of things from your search history as well. If you've been searching for, let's say, your favorite football team, Google Now will prepare a card showing you the next match the team is playing and will provide you score updates once the game begins.

Google Now

Google has also integrated Voice Actions. They can handle stuff like sending messages (SMS or email), initiating a voice call, asking for directions, taking a note or opening a site. Google Now can also launch apps, check and manage your calendar and look for nearby places of interest and stuff like movie openings in theaters.

One problem Google Now has on the Oppo R819 is that there's no gesture shortcut to launch it, you can't long press a button for it, you have to use the Google Search widget or the shortcut in the custom app switcher.

One big advantage of Google's Jelly Bean is that the voice typing functionality doesn't require an internet connection to work. You can enter text by speaking anywhere you can use the on-screen keyboard - be it the Messaging app or a note taking app - without the need for a data connection as long as you have downloaded the needed language packs (and those only take about 20-25MB of your storage per pack).

Making voice typing available offline also made it faster as it's not dependent on your connection. What's even more impressive is that the transition hasn't cost it anything in terms of accuracy.

Synthetic benchmarks

The Oppo R819 uses a Mediatek MT6589 chipset with a quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU (clocked at 1.2GHz), 1GB of RAM and a PowerVR SGX544 GPU. Those don't sound like killer specs, but should feel right at home in the midrange.

Single-core performance isn't great - it's comparable to that of the old Cortex-A9 core. That's typically no match for Krait cores, but at least Mediatek fits 4 of the A7s, which should compensate in the next couple of benchmarks.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Oppo Find 5
  267
• HTC One X+
  280
• LG Optimus G
  285
• Sony Xperia V
  279
• HTC One mini
  293
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  346
• Oppo R819
  396
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  409
• Sony Xperia L
  435
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  499
• Sony Xperia go
  543
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  552
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  554
• HTC Desire X
  639
• Sony Xperia E dual
  800
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  831

Linpack puts the R819 very near the bottom of the chart, but there are last year's flagships like the Galaxy S III, One X and Optimus 4X HD keeping it company. Geekbench 2 meanwhile puts the former kings further up the chart, but the HTC One mini is barely faster than the Oppo here (while it was much faster in Linpack).

Linpack

Higher is better

• LG Optimus G
  608
• Oppo Find 5
  593
• Sony Xperia SP
  348
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  413
• HTC One mini
  320
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  214.3
• Nexus 4
  213.5
• Sony Xperia L
  191
• Meizu MX 4-core
  189
• HTC One X+
  177
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  175
• HTC One X
  160
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  141
• Oppo R819
  126.5
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  107.7

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

• LG Optimus G Pro
  3040
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  1937
• Sony Xperia SP
  2105
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1845
• LG Optimus G
  1723
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1661
• iPhone 5
  1601
• HTC One mini
  1417
• Oppo R819
  1360
• Sony Xperia L
  1073
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  970

AnTuTu puts the whole system to the test (CPU, GPU, RAM and storage) and places the Oppo R819 close to the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini and ahead of the One mini. Those are some of the hottest midrangers from two of the biggest Android vendors, so well done Oppo.

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15547
• Oppo Find 5
  15167
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  14518
• Oppo R819
  13245
• HTC One mini
  11434
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  11203
• Sony Xperia L
  9746
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  6650

Running GLBenchmark at 1080p offscreen proved to be fruitless - the single-core PowerVR SGX544 is clocked relatively low in the MT6589 chipset and just can't do 1080p.

Epic Citadel runs at screen resolution - 720p in this case - and we set it to High Quality. The Oppo R819 hit just under 51fps, which is very close to the Adreno 320-powered LG Optimus G and ahead of the Samsung Galaxy S III and Oppo Find 5. This means 3D games are more than playable on the R819 and there's always the option to move to High Performance (or equivalent) setting if a new game proves too heavy.

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• HTC One mini
  56
• Sony Xperia Z
  55.6
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  55.5
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  54.7
• Nexus 4
  53.9
• Asus Padfone 2
  53.4
• LG Optimus G
  52.6
• Oppo R819
  50.9
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  41.3
• Oppo Find 5
  38.6

Relatively low single-core performance hurts the JavaScript speed, but the score is very close to decent performers in this category, so even JavaScript-intensive pages should render okay on the R819.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  1185
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1192
• HTC One mini
  1237
• Sony Xperia V
  1189
• Oppo R819
  1409
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  1460
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  1660
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  1654
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  1863
• Sony Xperia L
  2539
• Sony Xperia E dual
  2824
• Sony Xperia J
  2853
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  3578

For overall HTML5 performance, the Oppo R819 comes within reach of the Galaxy S4 mini and the HTC One mini in BrowserMark 2, while Vellamo places it further down, sandwiched between the LG Optimus G and Nexus 4.

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2314
• HTC One mini
  2164
• Oppo R819
  1967
• Sony Xperia V
  1957
• Sony Xperia L
  1809
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  1592
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  1154
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  1079
• Sony Xperia E
  992
• Sony Xperia E dual
  975
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  908
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  714

Vellamo

Higher is better

• HTC One mini
  2252
• Sony Xperia SP
  2497
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  2078
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2019
• Oppo Find 5
  1658
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1641
• Sony Xperia L
  1640
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  1572
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Oppo R819
  1401
• Nexus 4
  1310
• Samsung Galaxy Fame
  1234
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  1072
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1065

Mediatek set out to make a budget chipset and already have a solid portfolio of phones powered by the MT6589. This should mean better developer support. As for daily use, it offers good enough performance on all fronts.