Oppo F17 Pro sports a quad-camera setup at the back.
Oppo F17 Pro was recently launched in India, as the company's tries to target the youth market with flashy design and quad camera to go along with it. With this, Oppo is also hitting the premium budget smartphone space, which has mostly been left empty in the country.
In order to satisfy the needs of the younger generation, it comes with a massive 4,000mAh battery, a punch-hole display and a quad-camera setup. So should you pick one up? Let’s find out in this review.
Oppo F17 Pro Review: Specifications
Oppo F17 Pro sports a 6.4-inch FullHD+ Super AMOLED display with an aspect ratio of 20:9. It is powered by the MediaTek Helio P95 processor paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage. The storage is further expandable using a dedicated microSD card slot. It runs on Android 10 based ColorOS 7.2 out of the box. All of this is backed by a 4,000mAh battery.
On the optics front, the F17 Pro features a quad rear camera setup including a 48MP primary camera, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens and two 2MP monochrome sensors. Upfront, there is a 16MP selfie snapper along with a 2 megapixel depth sensor.
Oppo F17 Pro Review: Design and Display
Oppo F17 Pro looks quite unique when compared to the other devices in the market. However, you can see the design clues taken from Oppo smartphones of the past. It has a quad-camera setup that sits on a plastic back panel with a dual-tone finish. It has a matte finish that also gives a premium feel to it. It also sports a punch hole on the top left corner of the display. The rear individual camera sensor bumps resemble the Oppo Reno 4 Pro, with the sensors sitting in a grid orientation instead of a vertical one.
On the front, the F17 Pro sports a 6.4-inch panel with a punch-hole display. It has thin bezels offering a great experience apart from a noticeably fat chin, which is a design element far too common in this price range. The punch hole display is a great replacement for the notch, which I am glad that the company decided to go with. However, the dual front camera meant a bigger more noticeable punch hole.
As for the placements, F17 Pro sports a USB Type-C port on the bottom edge surrounded by the 3.5mm headphone jack, speaker grille and the primary microphone. The right edge houses the power button. On the left edge, there is a SIM tray that can accept two SIM cards and a microSD card along with individual volume up and down buttons. The top edge of the phone packs only a secondary microphone. The phone also has an in-display fingerprint sensor for faster unlocking along with face unlock.
Oppo F17 Pro features a USB-Type C port and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Coming back to the display, it is a 6.4-inch IPS Super AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2400x1080 pixels. The AMOLED panel offers deep blacks and more colour accuracy, which offers great experience especially if you consume a lot of content on your smartphone. However, the exclusion of a high refresh rate display is something that you can notice while gaming or if you are coming from another high refresh rate display. Personally I would prefer at least a 90Hz display, as it offers a much smoother user experience.
Oppo F17 Pro Review: Performance, Software and UI
Oppo F17 Pro is powered by the MediaTek Helio P95 processor paired with 8GB of RAM. With the phone being priced upwards of Rs. 20,000, the Meditek Helio P95 is not a decent processor. During the review period, I installed multiple social media apps on the phone and did not notice much of the performance issues. During long gaming sessions or heavy gaming even for a short while, one can notice some lag. If you don’t play games regularly, then it shouldn’t be an issue for you.
It features a dual-camera punch-hole design.
While it performs decently in most of the tasks, if you are hungry for more performance or you like gaming at good graphics, then you might want to look elsewhere. One can consider something like the Poco X2 and the Realme X2, both of which provide way better performance at a relatively cheaper price tag.
The F17 Pro runs on Android 10 based ColorOS 7.2 out of the box. The user interface doesn't feel laggy. It does offer some useful features including a system-wide dark mode, a themes store and much more. Overall, the software experience is decent. The one thing I noticed was the system regularly lagging a bit in scrolling apps like Reddit or Instagram. This was probably due to the pre-production software on the review unit and it should easily be fixed with an OTA update.
Oppo F17 Pro Review: Cameras
Oppo F17 Pro sports a quad-camera setup at the back. The setup comprises a 48-megapixel primary camera, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera and two 2-megapixel monochrome sensors. The smartphone also gets Portrait Mode, Night Mode, Time-Lapse, Slo-Mo and other features.
This might remind you of the Apple iPhone 11 series.
During our tests, the F17 Pro managed to click some decent shots. Under good lighting conditions, the phone managed to lock focus quickly and pictures were sharp. The detail was good enough, and the colours were a bit vivid, but it looks good. Under low light, the camera does struggle a bit, but pictures come out without any major disturbance. Photos were slightly overexposed in direct sunlight but it’s barely noticeable.
The selfies are good, nothing special but nothing bad either. There is also a beauty mode to make yourself look less fat and smoothen your skin color and tone. It cannot be toned down to zero, in reality. The presence of the depth sensor is noticeable when clicking portrait selfie shots. The edge detection is bad, but the depth detail is better than not having a depth sensor. The small 2-megapixel sensor is responsible for better but not quite impressive depth detail on selfie shots.
Oppo F17 Pro Review: Battery
The battery segment is where the F17 Pro manages to excel. The handset comes with a massive 4,000mAh battery. During my time with the device, light to medium usage got me around 1.5 days of usage. Even with heavy usage, the phone lasted around a day.
Also, the addition of a 30W VOOC charging is a super welcome change. It manages to charge the phone to 100 in less than a hour, which is impressive, especially for people who are always on the move.
Oppo F17 Pro Review: Verdict
The dual-tone finish looks good.
The Oppo F17 Pro costs Rs 22,990 for the sole 8GB/128GB storage variant. The device packs a decent camera offers a great battery life and has an impressive design for the price The dual-tone shiny matt finish, especially the Magic Blue of our review unit looks incredibly good. However, it lacks a bit in the performance department.
At that price point, if you are looking for a phone which you can use for your gaming needs, you should be looking at something like the Poco X2. However, if you do not play games a lot and require a reliable smartphone that has a great battery life, great display and good camera, or media consumption is your priority, you cannot go wrong with the Oppo F17 Pro.
