Oppo F19 review: Keeping things simple

Oppo recently expanded its F-series and the F19 is the more affordable choice of the lot. The vanilla F19 was launched alongside F19 Pro and F19 Pro+ in April and its affordable pricing makes it an attractive option. Priced under Rs 20,000 in the Indian market, the F19 goes up against some popular choices. So is the F19 cut out for the competition? Let's find out.

Oppo F19 is priced at Rs 18,990 for 6GB RAM and 128GB storage model, and consumers get two colour choices — Prism Black and Midnight Blue. If the F19 is still on your wishlist or you're in the market looking for a sub-20K phone, this review might help you narrow down you choices.

Camera

Oppo F19 features a triple camera setup on the back, which combines a 48MP primary snapper, 2MP depth and 2MP macro sensors, which is a humble setup. The front camera has a 16MP snapper, which should fulfil your selfie needs. Putting different lenses and modes to test, here's our take on the F19 smartphone.

Let's start with the primary lens, which manages to capture good pictures with crisp details in daylight. The colours are rich, but with AI beautification, you may feel the saturation is cranked up. Moving to low light settings, the primary lens does a fair job even without night mode. However, in order to bring in more light, the F19 allows more noise in shots taken using night mode.

The lack of ultra-wide lens is rather unexpected, but how often do you really need it anyway? Oppo F19 goes with a macro lens instead, which helps in certain cases and lets you explore some fresh perspectives. The macro mode captures good amount of details and lets you get really close to your subjects, be it your finger or an insect. You can also use flash to get close-up shots in the dark.

The dedicated 2MP depth sensor also seems to be doing its work. The bokeh effect in portrait shots in well-lit areas turned out to be accurate with good amount of details and natural colours in the foreground. The background is blurred naturally at 60 percent bokeh, but you can always adjust it from the viewfinder. AI Beauty is something we felt took away the natural factor, but its a personal choice and not forced on all users.

There are other modes as well, including Sticker and Text Scanner, of which we found the latter useful in certain cases. The Stickers are not as accurate as you'd find on iPhone and it's something you are better off without. The selfies are good and you can try with different modes to get ideal results in good lighting. In low-light, the quality takes a dip.

Except for the primary lens in ideal settings and some good portraits and macros, you don't really see much going for the F19 in terms of the camera.

Performance

Oppo F19 is powered by Snapdragon 662 processor, which is paired with 6GB RAM, which came in handy while multi tasking. It's not the ideal performing phone, so gamers might want to consider the Pro models or the likes of OnePlus. The F19 is more suitable for day-to-day tasks, a little bit of gaming, streaming your favourite shows and browse the internet and perform offline tasks. It can handle most of the tasks with ease, but you won't be able to push its limits in the gaming arena, especially when games like Call of Duty are involved. If you don't mind a bit of compromise by choosing Medium graphics for CoD, which by the way is default, you will still be able to play but keep your expectations in check.

The software on the phone is ColorOS based on Android 11, which is a simple UI flooded with bloatware. Most of the apps can be uninstalled, but there are few apps immune to the Uninstall function. The things going for the ColorOS are its gestures, which once you get used to, can save some unwanted navigations. But otherwise, the software is lag-free and works smoothly even for a 60Hz display.

Battery

Oppo F19 bags a huge 5,000mAh battery, something you won't be able to guess just by holding to phone, so good job on the engineering. With moderate to heavy use, the phone can last a whole day and then require you to plug in the charger. But with a lot of gaming or video streaming, you can expect those bars to drop sooner.

In the box is a 33W fast charger, which takes about 90 minutes to fully power up the phone. It's still something given the size of the battery.

Design and display

Our take on the design and display of the phone remains unchanged from our previous take. The sleek and light design is a refreshing change, the only reason why the plastic build gets our approval. Also, it's more durable than glass. The phone's smooth back panel is slippery, so a silicone case is recommended. Oppo F19 borrows the strong design element from Oppo's stable, a gift for a smartphone even in the sub-Rs 20,000 price range.

As for the display, the 6.43-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display is good, bright and rich, but the 60Hz refresh rate is hard to go back to after seeing phones with smooth 90Hz and 120Hz panels.

Verdict

The design element of the phone is still Oppo F19's strong suit. If you don't demand much out of your phone, like hardcore gaming or professional level photography, the F19 can meet all your other expectations. What makes this a tough choice is a fact that it competes against the likes of Redmi Note 10 Pro Max, Samsung Galaxy M51, Mi 10i among others.