Oppo F17 Review: Great design & battery but average cameras

Oppo F17 was recently launched alongside its Pro variant with the hopes to make a dent in the mid-range smartphone space. The F17 is priced at Rs 17,990, sailing in a highly competitive category, but it looks like Oppo is aware of what it's doing. For higher 8GB RAM instead of 6GB, buyers can shell out Rs 19,990. The focus may be on the styling, but it sure bags worth in other aspects as well. We explore it all in this review.

Oppo F17: Key specs

• Display: 6.44-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass 3
• Camera: 16MP+8MP+2MP+2MP quad cameras with EIS
• Selfies: 16MP front camera
• CPU: Snapdragon 662
• RAM: 6GB/8GB
• ROM: 128GB
• OS: ColorOS 7.2 based on Android 10
• Battery: 4,015mAh with 30W VOOC 4.0 Flash Charge
• Add-ons: In-display fingerprint scanner, Face Unlock, dual SIM, 4G VoLTE

Oppo F17: Review

If first impressions matter, you cannot go wrong with Oppo F17. The leather-like finish on the back paired with a sleek unibody design makes a compelling case. We received the Dynamic Orange shade for review, which we thought would be too flashy for our taste, but turned out to be quite an eye-candy. The Classic Silver and Navy Blue and other colour choices, but the orange is the one that makes a lasting impression.

The F17 sports a square camera module with four lenses inside, which gives a sense of uniformity and the LED flash is placed right alongside the cameras. Oppo's logo sits at the bottom right in a shiny aluminium plate. Every detail about this phone is designed to impress. The flat sides and rounded corners add to the overall aesthetics in a soothing fashion.

Oppo F17 is not only sleek but also light, extremely light. Single hand use is not a challenge at all and the weight distribution is done just right. The volume controls, power button are placed on separate sides with good reachability and feedback. The USB Type-C port along with stereo speaker sits at the usual spot at the bottom. There's also a 3.5mm headphone jack if you're still into wired earphones.

Complimenting the overall design is the 20:9 aspect ratio 6.44-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display, delivering deep blacks and it gets bright enough to use under direct sunlight. Sadly, the phone still uses a notch for the front camera instead of the new punch-hole idea. With the right wallpaper and dark mode, you'll rarely feel it dropping down.

One element that truly stands out in the phone's design is the rear camera setup. The choice of sensors may be so so, and the results are just as expected. We got decent shots during the day under ideal light settings, not so good under low-light. We'd reserve wide-angle shots to daylight, rather than dim-lit scenes. Portraits are decent, and edge detection in some cases could be improved. A little patience could go a long way there.

The details are often lost when you look closely and the colours appear washed out, especially in the cases of bright colours such as red and yellow. A software update could fix it if Oppo sees fit.

Oppo's selfie game is strong and the F17 lives up to the expectation. There's artificial beautification which does not match our taste, but it's widely popular among other users so you might find it useful. Again, a good selfie is under outdoor lighting and the screen flash does only so much in low-light situations. Not the best camera phone by Oppo yet and there are other options in the same price range to consider. Few samples embedded below:

Moving on, Oppo F17's performance works in its favour, almost. We didn't experience any lags or issues during our review. Most apps worked fine, handling social media from the phone to maintaining constant communication with other team members on a busy day didn't render any problems. Multi-tasking with a lot of apps can delay app load times as we noticed.

Gaming is whole another area. With PUBG Mobile gone, we set out to test the performance with other games like Call of Duty: Mobile and Ludo. Both worked fine. The processor might feel underclocked for high-end games (Oppo should have gone with SD700 series), but with medium graphics, you won't face any major issues. Casual gamers won't face any issues as well. For your day-to-day tasks, the SD662 will not let you down.

But it is the software that makes it a huge difference. ColorOS7.2 (Android 10) is snappy and works like a charm. The Dark Mode is one of the best out there, deep blacks everywhere and all. There's screen recording, Doc Vault, gestures, privacy protection and features like that as an added bonus.

There's also an in-display fingerprint scanner and face unlock. It was mostly a race between the two to unlock the phone and face unlock won most of the times. But the fingerprint scanner was surprisingly good and accurate.

Now, to the final part: battery. The 4,000mAh battery is sufficient in most cases for average users. It's the same case with Oppo F17. You can go a full day without having to plug the charger in if you're not spending a lot of time gaming or streaming. The average screen on time was around 5 hours or little over that. But what makes up for the average battery is the not-so-average fast charging. The F17 has 30W VOOC 4.0 Flash Charge, which can fully charge the device in less than one hour.

Verdict

Let us keep it simple really. The Oppo F17 has both pros and cons. The design is incredible, both look and feel is fantastic, the display is also great, and battery along with its 30W fast charging is one of the strongest features. But the features that aren't working in the F17's favour are the cameras and the specs if you're out comparing with rivals in the sub-Rs 20,000 category.

Oppo F17 is not a bad phone overall, it's just overshadowed in few aspects by competition considering the price range it caters to. If you can live without great cameras, Oppo F17 will get you by the day, handle your tasks with ease and throw in some games as well if you'd like.