A smartphone with an attractive design, immersive screen without a notch, and a selfie camera that is hidden in the body but pops out when needed – sounds like features found in more expensive devices like the OPPO Find X but no, it’s actually from a mid-range phone that is priced well under PHP 20K. Check out our review of the OPPO F11 Pro.
Table of Contents
Design and Construction
The F11 Pro is the first in the F series to implement the pop-up camera, and since we get “Pro” in its name, this one sits in the upper mid-range section, so expect a slightly higher price. And with its good looks, it has our attention.
For my initial impressions, I can say that it’s a little bigger than your average-sized smartphone nowadays. But I like that since it gives more emphasis to that edge-to-edge glass front.
At the back, it looks pretty despite being made out of plastic. You get that nicely patterned gradient design, and this unit we have is in the Thunder Black color, which looks sophisticated. There’s also the Aurora Green variant if you want something more eye-catching. Add to that the metallic frame to make it feel premium.
Then, we have an OPPO logo with a “designed by OPPO” text under it. At the back, you get a dual rear camera setup, the LED flash. More on that later. Generally, I find that the back looks classy, but it’s still prone to a hell of a lot of smudges so hold on to that hard case included in the box.
On top are the pop-up 16MP front camera, noise-canceling microphone, and ambient light sensor.
Come to the bottom of the device, and we get a 3.5mm headphone jack (always nice to see that), a single loudspeaker, and a micro USB port. I know! It would have been better with a USB-C port.
On the right, you’ll see the power button and a hybrid dual-SIM card slot which you can use for a microSD card instead of a second SIM. While on the left, you get your volume rocker.
If I were to change things, I prefer all the buttons to be located on one side so you won’t accidentally hit them when watching videos horizontally. But, the buttons are clicky and easy to reach keeping in mind the size of this phone.
Upfront, when the selfie camera goes up, it reminds me of the Energizer phone that was released in MWC this year. Technically, the camera makes the phone look like a battery when it’s popped up. The camera automatically pops-up when taking selfies or using face-unlock. It’s also worth mentioning that you do get the option in the settings menu, to swipe-up first before the camera pops up.
So far that pop-up camera works quick. You can also force the camera back down, and it won’t malfunction, but I wouldn’t do it if I were you. Seriously!
The F11 Pro feels well-built although we noticed that the plastic back is easily scratched. Good thing OPPO included a protective case in the package, while the screen already has a screen protector pre-installed.
Display and Multimedia
For DISPLAY, you get a 6.53-inch full HD+ LCD display with a 2340 x 1080p resolution, a pixel density of 397ppi, plus, a large 90.9% screen-to-body ratio. It’s nice to see some super slim bezels and a small chin here.
Although it’s not as good as higher-end smartphones, it still looks great especially for playing games or watching movies. You do get great viewing angles, and the phone can get bright and clear, even under direct sunlight with maximum brightness.
For audio, try to avoid covering the single, bottom-firing speaker down there, and you should have enough volume to fill a room. There’s no Dolby Atmos support or anything, but once you plug in a headset, you can take advantage of the Headphones Monitor feature that allows you to have a real-time karaoke experience with just your headset.
Camera
Let’s talk about what OPPO is most known for, the cameras. Backed by AI, the F11 Pro has a 16MP f/2.0 front-facing camera and a dual 48MP main shooter plus a 5MP lens for sensing depth.
By default, the main rear camera is set to shoot images in 12MP, but you can change it into 48MP in the camera settings for better details when you zoom in. Do note though that if you do use the 48MP, you’ll lose some features like HDR, AI scene recognition, dazzle color, digital zoom, and filters.
Another top feature of the OPPO F11 Pro’s camera is its Ultra Night Mode for improved low light performance, which means you’ll get less noise and more highlights when shooting subjects at night or in dim environments. Check out the samples below:
Now let’s talk about that selfie pop-up camera quality. The F11 Pro has improved AI beauty mode that gives you more freedom to adjust your selfies manually. If you want a thinner or smaller face, bigger eyes, smaller nose, or even a quick retouch, it’s ready for that.
For the portrait mode, the F11 Pro didn’t impress that much as the cut-out around the hair isn’t perfect. We suggest shooting in bright environments with plenty of distance between the subject and the background for a better effect.
For videos, the F11 Pro can shoot up to 1080p at 30fps. Videos come out okay. We think that the colors look slightly washed-out and the image is a bit over-sharpened. You also don’t get any form of image stabilization so make sure your hands are steady.
OS, UI, and Apps
Now let’s talk about software. The OPPO F11 Pro runs on Android 9 Pie skinned with ColorOS 6.0, so it has an easy-to-use UI with convenience features such as the smart assistant dashboard, smart sidebar, Assistive ball, and a feature that allows you to press the power button for 0.5s to quickly access Google Assistant.
Quick gestures and motions are also on-board, like double tapping to turn the screen on, auto answer calls when the phone is near your ear, drawing a letter O while the phone is locked to quick-launch the camera, or even draw the pause sign to pause any playing music., which is cool.
What’s also great is that the software is specifically optimized to maximize the limits of the F11 Pro’s true full-screen display. You can choose if you want an app drawer or not plus ColorOS 6.0’s square icons in the notification bar look way-cleaner.
Other features include ORoaming so you can purchase data packages abroad, app clone, one-handed mode, smart driving, and Game Space which is OPPO’s gaming performance acceleration engine. So far, it works well with selected games such as PUBG and Arena of Valor. Although, note that most games will run smoothly mostly on medium settings.
Performance and Benchmarks
Powering the F11 Pro is an Helio P70 chipset together with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. If there’s anything we can say, it would be that this phone delivers reliable performance. We hardly experienced any hiccups, it doesn’t heat up too much, and the battery life is boosted considering it already has a 4000mAh capacity.
There won’t be any problems when doing basic tasks such as social media hopping, playing music, watching videos, calling, and messaging. Biometric security like the fingerprint scanner is quick and accurate. We’re also impressed with the face recognition as it can detect our face when I’m not facing the camera directly and even at an arm’s length.
For gaming, the F11 Pro can handle most heavy games even if you play every day like Mobile Legends and PUBG Mobile.
Take a look at the benchmark scores we got.
• AnTuTu v7 – 149,912
• Geekbench 4.3 – 1,560 (Single-Core), 6,038 (Multi-Core), 5,517 (RenderScript)
• 3D Mark – 1,295 (SSE – OpenGL ES 3.1), 1,263 (SSE – Vulkan)
• PC Mark – 8,039 (Work 2.0)
• AndroBench – 295.34 MB/s (Read), 203.55 MB/s (Write)
Connectivity and Battery Life
The F11 Pro has your usual connectivity features like dual-SIM but with a hybrid setup, 4G LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, and GPS. Performance has been great so far as we never had problems connecting to mobile data, making calls, and getting our location in navigation apps.
For the battery, the F11 Pro has an above-average 4,000mAh capacity with VOOC 3.0 fast charging. In our PC Mark battery test, we got 10 hours and 48 minutes of battery life. It’s quite short knowing that you can get mid-range devices with higher battery life.
In our video loop test which was playing a 1080p movie at 50% brightness, 50% volume, with earphones, and Airplane mode turned on, and we got a decent 16 hours and 40 minutes of playback. Surely, the F11 Pro can last you a whole day if you’re not a heavy user. For charging time, we got a full charge after an hour and a half.
Conclusion
Now considering all these highs and lows, let me start by saying that the F11 Pro doesn’t look cheap at all, believe me, it looks even better in person. You get an awesome edge-to-edge display, good battery, great cameras for photography, smooth security, and a balanced performing phone that can handle most of what you throw at it.
However, for a phone with a forward-looking design, it’s still a bit of a shame to see that micro USB port and the lack of any 4k video recording. Maybe they’ll improve this in the next upcoming smartphones. But so far, we still like this phone.
The OPPO F11 Pro has a price tag of PHP 18,990.
OPPO F11 Pro specs:
6.53-inch Full HD+ (2340 x 1080) display, 397ppi
MediaTek Helio P70 2.1GHz octa-core CPU
Mali-G72 MP3 GPU
6GB RAM
64GB internal storage
microSD up to 256GB (uses SIM 2 slot)
48MP F1.8 + 5MP F2.4 dual rear camera
16MP front camera (motorized elevating)
Dual-SIM (hybrid)
4G LTE
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 5.0
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
micro USB 2.0
FM Radio
Face Unlock
Fingerprint scanner (rear-mounted)
ColorOS 6.0 (Android 9.0 Pie)
4,000mAh battery w/ VOOC 3.0
161.3 x 76.1 x 8.8 mm
190 g
Thunder Black, Aurora Green
What I liked:
• Great design
• Nice display
• Cool pop-up front camera
• Good cameras
• Decent battery life
• Good performance
• VOOC 3.0 fast charge
What I didn’t:
• micro USB port
• No 4K video recording
With inputs and editing by Louie Diangson.
