Innovation in smartphones has stopped. Most of the manufacturers are just upgrading the specs of thier phones for the sake of it. Every year, smartphones have become slightly faster with slightly larger screens, slightly better camera and get slight design changes. Oppo, the high-end manufacturer best known for its bluray players stayed away from the trend and unveiled 'Oppo N1' , the first smartphone from their new N-Lens flagship series.
Oppo N1 is a new phablet running on Android 4.2.2 with notable innovations. The N1 features a 5.9-inch 1080p HD display, a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor, and a 13-megapixel camera. The phone, which comes in 16GB or 32GB storage capacities, also has support for quad-band GSM and pentaband HSPA+ support. Currently there's no LTE in sight but the manufacturer may produce LTE version of the N1 focusing on the US market in the near future. The device is 9 mm thick and weighs at around 213 g, making it over 40g heavier than the Galaxy Note 3, which does have a slightly smaller 5.7" display. It is also 20mm taller and 3mm wider than the Note 3, which does mean most people will find it difficult to use the device one handed.
Display
The Oppo N1 features a 5.9 inch full HD IPS display (manufactured by JDI) with a very high pixel density at 377 ppi. The screen features Gorilla Glass 2. According to Oppo the screen brightness of the N1 is 450 nits which is very bright and will be very handy while using the phone in direct sunlight. Side viewing angles are excellent, and just like the Find 5's display it's a high-quality screen, no doubt about that. The screen's digitizer is super-sensitive and can be used with gloves (good for cold regions) and also with pens.
Hardware
The N1 packs a generous 3,610mAh battery which should easily get you though the day on a single charge. The phone has capacitive navigation keys
On the right side there is a power key and a volume key. The left side houses the microSIM card slot. On the bottom there is the speaker, microUSB with USB OTG support and 3.5mm audio jack. There's a touch pad on the back of the phone (more on that later).
The Oppo N1 is powered by a Snapdragon 600 APQ8064 chipset with four Krait 300 CPU cores clocked at 1.7GHz, 2GB RAM and an Adreno 320 GPU. The Snapdragon 600 wasn’t the chip many of us had hoped, and it isn’t as meaty as the 8-core Samsung Exynos in the Samsung Galaxy S4 or Snapdragon 800 in the LG G2, but it is still plenty powerful. There will be two versions in terms of storage, 16GB and 32GB, but there's no microSD card. The Oppo N1 features NFC connectivity and the company has partnered with two systems in China to provide wireless payment services. Other connectivity options include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi Display, Bluetooth 4.0 LE and GPS.
Beautiful Design
Oppo puts a strong focus on design. "Beauty above everything else," made the Find 5 definitely a looker. The Oppo N1 has a more rounded design than that, with the company calling it "Restricted art".
More than a year of work and over 20 different designs ultimately led to the simple brilliance of the OPPO N1 and the small but intricate camera, tested to last through 100,000 rotations. Its full metal aluminum alloy frame is produced over a 20-day period, during which it undergoes a 14 step polishing process involving more than a dozen suppliers. Strengthening the core of the phone, the frame adds an air of solidity and style to the OPPO N1. The OPPO N1 phone body is made with a smooth, ceramic-like material designed to keep your device free of fingerprints and smooth to the touch. This makes the phone look and feel very premium.
Rear Touch Panel (O-Touch)
To make one handed operation of the N1, Oppo has introduced rear panel touchpad on it which they call O-Touch. Oh yes. It's barely visible on the rear except for the subtlest of outlines that catches the light occasionally. It covers a 12cm square panel on the back and can be used to control various actions - whether a press and hold to take a shot using the camera, a swipe to move between shots in a gallery or scrolling through pages. It will be very handy (literally!) and natural for taking selfies.
It's a big idea and it's got a lot of potential. But it seems like we need a bit of practise to get used to it as we ended up doing most things by accident rather than intentionally, such as swiping through screens without meaning to. Individual actions or the whole touchpad control can be switched off from within the menus, but we have a feeling that this is all about sticking with it; learning to adapt to the new control mechanism to get the most out of it. If you have the patience.
Color ROM
The Oppo N1 ships with Color OS, a revamped version of the overlay present on the Find 5. Oppo claims it added 410 “design improvements” to Color OS, compared to stock Android 4.2.2. The company claims it took 43 patents and plenty of user case studies to get Color OS where it is today. One of the most interesting features is the possibility to launch applications by drawing gestures on the screen. For instance, drawing a circle will open the camera and drawing a V shape will open the flashlight app, and you can assign your own gestures to specific actions.
There are lots of gestures, for instance you can start the camera from pretty much any screen just by pinching with all three fingers. The best part about it is that the gestures work even when the screen is off. The gestures aspect revolves around drawing known symbols to begin an action. A single vertical line, a circle, triangle and so forth each have their own actions.
Camera
One of the most innovative features in the N1 is it's rotating camera. To the top of the device is a 13-megapixel camera, the same Sony-made sensor as found in the Xperia Z. But rather than being fixed into the rear of the unit, it can be rotated through 206-degrees for front-facing selfies or more traditional outward-facing shots. The camera will securely lock at any angle. You can even get playful and rotate the lens to face at 90-degrees for over-the-head shots.
To help you capture breathtaking and vividly realistic images, OPPO N1 comes with Pure Image, a hardware and software photography solution. Pure Image on OPPO N1 features six physical lenses, an upgraded 1/3.06 imaging module and f/2.0 wide aperture. Oppo says this is the first Android camera with a 6-lens design. More importantly it matches the Nokia Lumia 1020, which also has a 6-element lens. Furthermore, OPPO partnered with leading optics companies to tailor make an image-processing solution for improved white balance, exposure and focus.
The Oppo N1 uses a custom image processor co-developed by Oppo and Fujitsu. Oppo is promising it has solved common camera problems like pink spots and purple fringing.There are two flashes - one is a bright LED for regular shots (when the camera is pointed back), but when you turn the camera beyond a certain angle, the phone uses automatically the diffused one so your selfies turn out with a more pleasing skin tone. Self-portraits seem to be a big thing in Asia, according to their research. The camera app itself has been updated and does the skin and eye whitening and Beauty Plus effects we saw on the Oppo Find 5. There are are number of scene modes built-in also including norma, panorama, high-speed, rewind, beauty, and slow shutter. Easily accessible, the OPPO N1 camera will boot from a sleeping screen in just 0.6 seconds via a simple 120° rotation. The OPPO N1 camera also supports long exposure photography of up to 8 seconds.
Rotating camera brings a big question, Will the rotating mechanism holds up to the stresses of time? Oppo has put it through tough tests and promises it can live through 100,000 full rotations
Custom ROMs
Oppo has been very supportive of open source community. It encouraged it's customers to use custom roms like CyanogenMod, PAC ROM, Paranoid Android in the past and continues to do so. International versions of the N1 come with Color, and also the ability to flash CyanogenMod directly from stock recovery (without rooting it, of course). A limited OPPO N1 CyanogenMod Edition will ship with CyanogenMod preinstalled, the first CyanogenMod hardware product in the world. But the CM build for N1 is apparently not available yet.
The Oppo N1 will also get support from other custom roms makers like the Find 5. AOKP, PAC, Paranoid Android , etc ROMs will be available for the N1 owners to flash in thier N1. Ubuntu Touch ports may also be available in the future.
O-Click Control
Oppo also showed the O-Click dongle which is basically an HTC Fetch but much prettier. The O-Click is fully configurable on the host device, so the beeping feature (it will beep loudly if your phone goes more than 5 meters from it, and your phone will do the same) can be disabled and tweaked to your liking. The O-Click can also take photos as a remote shutter, and with the camera app launched, Oppo estimates the latency to be around .15 seconds.
If you misplace your device, you can find it by setting off an alarm on the phone. O-Click fits on your keychain and supports a range of up to 50 meters, staying connected to your OPPO N1 via Bluetooth (BLE). You can make your N1 ring the O-click which will help to find your keys.
The O-Click remote will ship in the Oppo N1 box, so you don't have to purchase it separately. How cool is that!
Price
The N1 will go on sale in China for 3500 Yuan which is about $570 and will include a O-click remote, in-ear earphones and a charger. The phone will be available in White color (there's talk about Black version too) and is expected to go on sale on November.
Final Thoughts
I was completely blown away by the N1. For years i have been cursing the phone manufactures for thier lack of innovation and now finally Oppo has listened. In my opinion, the Oppo N1 deserves the spotlight. It packs a lot of innovative features with an impressive hardware. Those of you who want to buy a new android phone should definately consider the Oppo N1.
Oppo is trying to push the boundaries little further than simply bumping the specs of the phone. It’s clear, Oppo’s goals are to extend their reach beyond China and into pockets everywhere.
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