A couple of months back, OPPO launched its F19 Pro+ 5G smartphone in India, which is the third phone to be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 800U SoC in India. At Rs.25,990, can the F19 Pro+ justify its price tag or is it just simply overpriced? We got hold of the phone for a few weeks and here’s our review.
Design
The OPPO F19 Pro+ features a lightweight body with a minimalistic design. The slim profile of the phone stands out immediately, which measures just 7.48mm. The railing on the edges has a smooth curve, making it feel very comfortable to hold.
The back panel is another beautiful element for the smartphone. It has a matte texture finish with a glossy shine. It does stand out quite a bit in a good way, and it does not attract fingerprints.
Coming to the button placements, the power button is present on the right side, the volume rockers are present on the right along with the dedicated dual SIM + microSD slot arranged in a single tray. The secondary microphone is on the top, the 3.5mm audio jack, primary microphone, USB Type-C port, and the loudspeaker grill are present on the bottom. Audio from the speakers is good even though it is mono.
The rear camera module has quite a significant bump housing four cameras sensor behind a single piece of Gorilla Glass 5. In the box, OPPO includes a clear, soft-plastic case that will reduce the effect of the bump and protect the smartphone a bit from accidental drops.
Display
The OPPO F19 Pro+ has a 6.43-inch Full HD+ (2400 × 1080) AMOLED display with a punch-hole. The bezels on the three sides are quite thin with a slight chin at the bottom, giving it a total screen-to-body ratio of 90.8%. It doesn’t have a high-refresh-rate screen, but I did not feel like I missed this feature too much. The display is bright (with up to 800 nits brightness), deep blacks, amazing contrast, and great sunlight readability. The colours are vibrant and wonderfully saturated. It supports HDR, and watching content on YouTube or Netflix was good.
It has a 3.7mm punch-hole that houses a 16MP camera. The proximity and ambient light sensors are present under the screen. The phone has an in-display fingerprint scanner which is quick to unlock the phone. The smartphone has the usual display enhancement options like the OSIE visual effect, and you also get the option to adjust the screen’s colour temperature.
Performance
The F19 Pro+ is the MediaTek Dimensity 800U (MT6873V) 7nm processor chipset, which has an octa-core CPU design that can boost up to 2.2GHz, along with a Mali-G57 MC3 GPU. There is only one RAM and storage option offered, which is 8GB of LPDDR4X memory and 128GB of UFS2.1 storage respectively.
I found the performance of the F19 Pro+ to be good throughout our review. There were no issues with day-to-day usage and the OS overall felt quite smooth. Apps opened quickly, and they stayed in the RAM, which is no surprise considering that there are 8GB available.
Animations, especially for navigating the system UI, almost always felt smooth except for the occasional hitch. It is only a 60Hz display, so the animations weren’t as smooth as those you would find with a 90Hz screen.
It certainly wasn’t a deal-breaker, but it is something to keep in mind when purchasing this smartphone. During long gaming sessions, the thermals stayed under control and the phone did only get slightly warm but never uncomfortably hot.
Camera
OPPO places a huge focus on the camera capabilities for the F19 Pro+ with its quad rear-camera setup and dual front cameras. Let’s lay out the specs – in the back, you have a 48MP main camera with f/1.7 aperture, OV48B sensor, 8MP 119° ultra-wide camera with f/2.2 aperture, and a 2MP macro and a 2MP mono portrait camera with f/2.4 aperture. In the front, you have a 16MP sensor with an aperture of f/2.4.
The main shooter outputs 12MP photos by default, and in good lighting conditions, I was happy with the photos I got. They were sharp and had a good amount of detail in them. The colours were accurate and thankfully, not too punchy which is quite common in non-flagship smartphones. White balance, at least in the photos I clicked, came out neutral and exposure compensation was good too. Most of these attributes were shared with photos from the ultrawide camera too, except for its sharpness. Ultra-wide shots are typically noticeably softer and sadly that is the case here too.
Low light shots are a place where the camera would struggle a bit, but not too much. It was able to pull a decent amount of light in poor conditions, however, the photos clearly lacked detail when you zoom in. The portrait photos from the rear camera of the F19 Pro+ were really good though. It does after all have an extra lens that is dedicated to depth sensing. The edges between the foreground and the blurred background were clear and well-differentiated.
I liked the photos from the front camera too. A good amount of detail, especially in the face. There is the usual amount of face smoothening features offered, but I had them all turned off. Thanks to the dedicated sensor, OPPO did a great job with the edge detection in portrait selfies, which is becoming increasingly common in many smartphones. Check out some samples below.
It supports up to 4K 30 fps video recording. It has an AI Highlight Portrait Video feature that has an Ultra Night Video Algorithm that can detect and automatically apply algorithms that dramatically improve the visibility of nighttime footage.
It uses HDR Video technology to balance the extreme exposure that’s common when filming outdoors and even indoors. Night HDR Video is combined with Ultra Night Video to deliver a high-quality HDR Night video shot.
Software, UI, and Apps
The OPPO F19 Pro+ runs on Android 11 with ColorOS 11.1. There are loads of customization options now, from the home screen icons to the notifications drawers icons and more. There are even three types of system-wide dark modes offered. Since it is based on Android 11, you get all of its features such as Chat bubbles, updated notifications, Nearby Share, and the new app permissions for access to the camera, location, and microphone. You can now swipe in either the left or right direction to dismiss it, which was not the case before.
With regards to the pre-loaded apps, the F19 Pro+ comes with a usual selection such as SoLoop, WPS Office, YT Music, Snapchat, Netflix, OPPO Relax, HeyTap Cloud, etc.
These can be uninstalled quickly enough and will be re-installed back if you reset the phone.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
On the left edge of the smartphone, within the SIM tray slot, there is space for two Nano-SIM cards and a dedicated slot for a MicroSD card. During our review, I did not face any dropped calls, the audio through the earpiece was loud and clear and the microphone recording was reported to be clear too.
The phone supports Dual 5G SA/ NSA with support for N1/N77/N78/N41 bands, 5G dual channel support in NSA mode, Dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5.1 and GPS/GLONASS/Beidou/Galileo.
Battery life
The F19 Pro+ is powered by a 4310mAh battery cell, which is a good size in my opinion. During my review, I was able to consistently get over a day of heavy use, and nearly two days with moderate to light usage. By the time the smartphone died, I could manage to get over 6.5 hours to 7 hours of screen time, which is impressive.
The F19 Pro+ supports OPPO’s Super Dart fast charging that will charge the smartphone with the included 50W adaptor. Fast charging with a long-lasting battery is always an excellent combination. OPPO also offers a feature with ColorOS 11 called Battery Guard where the smartphone will learn your wake-up times and, if kept for charging in the night, it will keep the phone at 80% charge and bring it to a 100% charge right when you wake up. This can help improve the overall battery life of the device.
Conclusion
The OPPO F19 Pro+ is a beautifully crafted sleek device with a great screen, lots of RAM, and storage, and an above-average camera experience. The phone feels fast and smooth, both in day-to-day usage and gaming, and ColorOS 11 is a breath of fresh air in terms of the phone’s software experience. With all this considered, for most people, I believe the F19 Pro+ at Rs. 25,990 is still a very good choice.
The OPPO F19 Pro+ 5G is priced at Rs. 25,990 and is available on Amazon.