Oppo R5 Review: The Dark Side Of The Slimness

Faster, higher, further – superlatives don’t only exist when it comes to cars, buildings or airplanes, but also when it comes to entertainment electronics. With regards to phones the trend is now going towards very slim devices. Oppo pushed that to the top and is offering the world’s second-slimmest handset with the R5, which I’ve put to the test for you guys. Now Oppo is one company I connect with something special. The Oppo Find 5 did open my eyes back a long while ago, as it was my very first Chinese phone. The amazing build quality, the great full HD screen and the comparably low price did surprise and fascinate me at the same time. Ever since I owned this device I spent lots of time catching up with the latest tech news from China, which in the end led to me writing for GizChina and ChinaMobileMag. Now the Oppo R5 attracted me because of its outstanding design and slimness, so let’s see if design is the only thing the R5 does deliver.

Oppo R5 Review: Unboxing

Oppo devices usually come in high quality boxes, and the Oppo R5 is no difference. The box is looking the same as back with the Oppo Find 7 or Oppo N1 and the only difference this time is a wrapper made from recycled paper around the box. Inside, Oppo is playing the R5, a VOOC charger with 5A, a special micro USB cable to use the VOOC feature and the standard Oppo In-Ear headphones which sound similar to the OnePlus Silver Bullets. There also is a plastic bumper protecting the handsets rear and a user manual. The phone also has a protective film applied to the screen out of the box.

Oppo R5 Review: Design

And here we already hit the most important part of the Oppo R5: The design. At only 4.85mm of thickness, the R5 is one of the thinnest phones on the global market right now. The only phone which is even thinner is the Vivo X5 Max at 4.75mm. Just to make one thing clear right from the beginning: The talks about the Oppo R5 being 5.15mm thick in reality are nonsense. This increased thickness is caused by the protective film on the screen. After removing it we were measuring exactly 4.85mm. The device is looking very beautiful and the slimness is making it one real eye-catching device.

The 5.2-inch panel is being held in place by a white frame. The bezels of the screen are pretty slim, but not as thin as with other phones, for example the Meizu MX4. Above the display there is a speaker for phone calls which this time also acts as a media speaker for space reasons. On the right of this speaker the sensors have been placed as well as the front camera. Below the screen the touch buttons are placed with the layout we know from many Android phones. Those have a metallic look to them but unfortunately aren’t back illuminated. There also is no notification LED, which is something I really missed while using the phone on a daily basis. This is just something you get used to with time.

The rear reminds me of the iPhone 5, but I wouldn’t call it a clone as there are very minor similarities. For the most part the rear is made from metal with a glossy Oppo logo on it. Above and below this metal area are some white covers, which unlike the screen aren’t made from Gorilla Glass 3 but polycarbonate instead. On the upper area of the rear the camera has been placed which is standing out appr. 2mm. Next to it the LED flash and camera microphone are placed.

The frame is again made from metal and I believe is made from one piece of metal together with the chassis. On the left side Oppo didn’t place any buttons or ports, but the SIM slot instead. The necessary buttons are located on the right. The lower side is housing a micro USB port, which is also acting as a 3.5mm headphone jack with an adaptor that comes with the phone.

Something that did surprise me is how nice the Oppo R5 is feeling inside my hands. Initially I thought it would be difficult to handle and might slip out of the hands easily because of the slim dimensions, but that’s surprisingly not the case. Also the build quality is excellent with nothing to complain about.

Oppo R5 Review: Display

The Oppo R5 features a 5.2-inch Super AMOLED display operating at full HD resolution. I probably don’t have to tell anyone of you that AMOLED displays are simply stunning. They feature incredibly intense colors and perfect black levels combined with excellent brightness and outdoor readability, all while cutting down on power consumption. I personally love the screen of the R5, but it might not be everyone’s cup of tea because of the rich colors it does offer.

There’s one thing to complain about though. I am not exactly sure if all units of the Oppo R5 have this issue or if it was just my review sample, but when operating the screen at the lowest brightness level one half of the screen is having a different color temperature than the other half. This makes white look kinda greyish on one half, which is looking really strange. It is something I can live with though, as it only happens at the lowest brightness level.

Else, I was really satisfied with the screen and in my opinion 5.2-inches are just perfect as it’s quite a large yet still portable size.

Oppo R5 Review: Performance

The R5 is the first Oppo smartphone based on a 64-bit SoC as you probably know. In addition it also is one of the first phones that feature the Snapdragon 615 SoC. This chipset is based on 8 ARM Cortex A53 cores, of which four are clocked at 1.7GHz and the other four at 1GHz. The GPU used inside is the Adreno 405. On the paper this SoC doesn’t seem to be much different from the MT6752, which is its direct competitor, yet paper and reality often are a totally different thing.

The Snapdragon 615 isn’t only behind the Mediatek MT6752 when it comes to benchmarks, but also during daily use which came as quite a big surprise. With the most recent system update the performance has been improved a lot, but still it can’t come anywhere close Mediatek’s current 64-bit SoCs. Even the MT6732 is performing better than the Snapdragon 615. This really is a pity but is showing once more how huge the steps are Mediatek have taken recently. Especially when doing multitasking or playing 3D games you quickly notice how bad the Snapdragon 615 is performing. The whole system sometimes feels like some of these MT6582 phones with 1GB of RAM during multitasking and even older games like N.O.V.A 3 aren’t running smooth.

Oppo R5 Review: Media & Wireless

Video playback through the YouTube app is absolutely nothing that would cause issues, even at full HD resolution. Well, after that is something you can expect even from low-cost devices these days and even more so from a device that is priced at $499 internationally. Something surprising was audio quality of the internal speaker. Even though there is only one speaker used for phone calls and music, it does sound quite good with a decent volume and some nice bass playback. I also couldn’t notice any distortion, which definitely is a pro.

The audio through headphones is quite good as well, but I personally was missing some internal equalizer the user can adjust himself. Oppo is supporting Dirac HD, but this technology is only usable within the Oppo music player and no external applications like Spotify and the likes. Something strange is that you need to use an adaptor that comes with the phone to plug in headphones. This transforms the micro USB port into a 3.5mm jack. You ask why it is strange? Simply because it wouldn’t have been magic to build a 3.5mm jack right into the phone itself, as Vivo demonstrated with the X5 Max, which is 0.10mm thinner than the Oppo R5 yet does feature headphone support without any additional accessories.

Switching over to wireless there’s nothing unusual (in a bad way) to report. Something that blew me away is how well the GPS works. Being outside you will have a fix almost immediately after enabling GPS, which equals the performance I experienced with the Meizu MX4 and the MT6595 SoC by Mediatek. Even inside a closed room it is able to locate the position within 20 seconds with 19 fixes. Wi-Fi and 3G reception quality is outstanding as well with absolutely nothing to complain about here. The Oppo R5 had a signal in places where other phones ceased to operate.

Oppo R5 Review: Camera

There isn’t much to report about the camera to be honest. Oppo equipped the R5 with a 13 mega pixel sensor on the rear and a 8 mega pixel shooter on the front. The rear camera is generating average results. having issues with low light conditions and colors being not intense enough from time to time. In the end it isn’t a bad camera, but can for sure not keep up with those phones advertising a high quality camera. But well, the Oppo R5 doesn’t want to be a camera phone, so that’s totally fine with me. Something that did impress me was the brightness of the LED flash, which easily is able to light up even large rooms.

Oppo R5 Review: Battery

The Oppo R5 does only feature a 2,000mAh battery which isn’t all that surprising considering how thin the phone is once again. Unfortunately that’s not only a sad fact but at the same time the biggest “dislike” I found on this phone. It is almost impossible to get over the day with one single charge even if the energy-saving mode is activated. Without the energy-saving mode the battery is empty after just half a day, which is a pretty bad joke in my opinion. Usually the battery lasts until 7:00PM for me, which isn’t enough by far. The only pro is that you can charge the battery very fast thanks to VOOC, even faster than with the Oppo Find 7. It only takes 30 minutes to be back at 70% and after one hour the battery is full re-charged.

VOOC Power Bank

I did purchase my Oppo R5 through OppoStyle, who are currently including a free VOOC power bank with every order of the R5. This is quite a useful gadget, especially when considering the bad battery life of the phone. It features a capacity of 6,000mAh which is enough for two charging cycles of the R5. Of course the power bank does support fast charging, so the phone is charged equally fast as with the wall charger. In addition the power bank itself can also be re-charged using the VOOC technology. The power bank is displaying the current battery level through a LED ring which does light up in either green, yellow or red. You don’t even need an external USB cable, as the power bank has one VOOC charging cable integrated.

Oppo R5 Review: Final Conclusion

The Oppo R5 is one pretty impressive handset as far as design goes. It’s incredibly thin appearance is often attracting other people who want to know which phone this is. But in the end this device isn’t really worth its price tag of €399 in the EU or $499 internationally. The performance sucks, the battery life sucks and the camera also isn’t able to cover those flaws. In the end the only pros left are the gorgeous OLED panel, the design and the good reception quality.

If you are someone only after design you might like it, but everyone else should stay away.

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