OPPO Find 7a initial impressions

OPPO Philippines launched the Find 7a in the country back in April. With a suggested retail price of Php22,990, it’s one of the most affordable Snapdragon handset around (based on SRP, could be lower with street price).

There are two versions of the Oppo Find 7 — the flagship, over-the-top version with a QHD 2560×1440 pixel resolution (581ppi) and Snapdragon 801 and the Find 7a with a full HD display and Snapdragon 800 chip.

The latter is the one we have for review. The unit comes in a premium packaging — an all-metal anodized aluminum with polycarbonate compartments for the accessories.

The large white power brick which looks like it’s as big as a laptop charger is the fast charger — the VOOC fast charging can do up to 4x faster than conventional chargers — up to 30% battery in 5 minutes and zero to 70% battery life in 30 minutes.

The device itself looks really nice, slim and sleek and, despite the 5.5-inch display, is still comfortable to hold with one hand. The body tapers towards the edges and the screen-to-area ratio is very high, allowing the display to take up much of the available space in the front panel.

The power button is placed in the left side (seemed awkward at first but you get used to it) and the volume controls are on the right side.

The 3.5mm audio port is on top while the microUSB charging port is at the bottom. The 13MP rear camera at the back is flanked by the noise-cancelling mic and the dual-LED flash with the small OPPO logo just below them.

Perhaps, the most challenging of all is removing the back cover to insert the battery, microSIM and microSD card. There’s a tiny pinhole or socket that needs to be pushed down so that the cover is released from its locked and ready to be pried open.

With a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, the 5.-5-inch display looked very nice, crisp and clear. Colors are warm and viewing angles are very wide. The capacitive buttons (Settings, Home, Back) sits below the active display.

The Skyline Notification is just below it — a curved LED light that glows bright blue and alerts when there are notifications and breathes when charging.

The 13-megapixel camera at the back i also pretty interesting as it is able to generate a 50-megapixel shot using the Ultra HD mode. \

The idea behind Oppo Find 7’s 50-megapixel images is that you take a photo of a still object for a few seconds. What the sensor does is take 10 photos and digitally stitch them altogether to achieve 50MP shots. While it may not have much practical daily use, Oppo claims you can use the shots to print a tarpuline about 10 square meters in area with these resolution.

Here’s a quick video demo we took from the launch:

We’ll be doing some sample shots of 4K footages and 120fps videos in the final review story.

The Color OS is based on Android 4.3 Jellybean and adds a lot of really useful and practical use like gesture commands and shortcuts. The UI looks more polished and does not depart that far from Android’s native skin.

The Oppo Find 7a has got a lot of great things going to it and with a suggested retail price of Php22,990,

OPPO Find 7a specs:
5.5-inch IPS display @ 1920 x 1080 resolution, 401ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 3
2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor
Adreno 330 GPU
2GB RAM
16GB storage (expandable to 128GB via microSD)
HSPA+/LTE 100Mbps
13MP Sony Exmor IMX214 CMOS f/2.0 rear camera
5MP front camera
4K/720 at 120fps video recording
LTE
NFC, WiFi, Bluetooth
MaxxAudio
2,800mAh battery with Rapid Charge technology
ColorOS 1.2 on top of Android 4.3

So far, we’re very satisfied with the device — fast and responsive, really nice display, really good camera and impressive battery technology. Check back with us for the full review in a week.