The OPPO F7 has been around in the market for a month now and many reviews have been published since then. So I’m thinking maybe I should just focus on the camera aspect of the OPPO F7 leave the rest to the others. So if you ha”ve questions about the OPPO F7’s camera, here’s the review for you.

OPPO F7 Specs

“Top Notch” Design

Looking through the specs, there are a few notable upgrades from the old OPPO F5. The most apparent change is no other than the full view display at the front with a notch. The screen size is slightly adjusted to 19:9 aspect ratio with 1080 x 2280 pixel resolution – extra 120 pixels for the top corners. I hate to say this but for some reason, the “top-notch” display has been growing in me and regular 18:9 displays just seem boring to me now.

Besides, the light reflection on the glass back looks way sexier than the OPPO F5’s metal chassis. Maybe it is just a coincidence that OPPO also decides to have a glass back after Apple introduces iPhone 8 with glass back.

The Selfie Phone

OPPO bumped up the front camera from F5’s 20 MP sensor to 25 MP. Now 5 MP may seem a significant increment (25%), but frankly speaking, it is not.

20MP = 5164 x 3873

25MP = 5774 x 4330

I personally think it is just a marketing gimmick that bigger always better. For online sharing purposes, even a good 8 MP sensor is more than enough on a smartphone. Unless you’re into cropping game & meme creation, 25 MP should be great for you to crop out a certain guy’s face and memefy it.

For selfie lovers, you will appreciate the camera’s algorithm that always prioritises facial exposure. Let’s take the shot above as the example, the background is clearly way brighter than my face, yet the camera metering is clever enough to understand the scene and make sure my face is well exposed instead of making me look like having a bad face. This is especially useful for those users who don’t understand how light meter works on a camera.

Some would say, “that photo is over-exposed”. By all means, I won’t deny that but you won’t believe how many users out there would rather have an over-exposed photo instead of a dark face. Photography is an art, I guess.

If I were to complain about the front camera, it would be the lack of autofocus function and f/2.0 aperture. It makes me wonder if OPPO is really serious about making the best selfie phone or not.

Rear Camera

The rear camera remained the same 16 MP sensor with f/1.8 aperture from OPPO F5. Maybe OPPO is not trying to fix something that’s not broken. Or perhaps the upgrade emphasis is on the front camera instead of the rear.

As for the rear camera, it comes with all the basic features like Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF). Despite having lower pixel count, the photos often look better in terms of colour and ISO noise. Combined with the slick camera app, taking photos on the OPPO F7 feels smooth and non-laggy. It seems OPPO also fixed the tendency to under-expose the rear camera photos which bug the OPPO F5.

Even in the low-light situation, the rear camera is capable of producing reasonably good-looking photographs as seen from the samples above.

Close up shots is a bit on the difficult side as the autofocus would tend to misfocus. So, not the best PDAF out there.

But still, despite the camera is designed for those non-tech-savvy users out there, OPPO still gladly includes the Expert mode in the camera app for those users who are willing to take up the challenge. Thumbs up for the app.

Final Words

So is the OPPO F7 worth for its camera? My answer would be yes and no. YES, if you don’t want to think how the camera works and just want a good camera phone that takes Insta-worthy selfies. On top of that, the design of the phone is good looking at the same time. NO, because at RM 1399, that is RM 100 more expensive than the OPPO F5. Indeed RM 1.4K is still a lot cheaper than other flagship smartphones, but do take note that there are many reasonably good smartphones with selfie focus features priced lower.