Oppo R7s review: Filling the gaps

Introduction

There was a Plus, there was a Lite, and now there's an S - the Oppo R7s. Next in Oppo's line of premium built mid-rangers, the R7s borrows both the looks and the substance, and brings the so-far-missing 5.5-inch-screen phone size to bridge the distance between the R7 and the R7 Plus.

You'd have to be a true Oppo connoisseur to tell the R7s apart from its brethren, and that's more of a good thing, really. The R7s has the same sleek metal unibody, the gentle arcs towards its display edges, the exquisite fit and finish - an overall aura of superiority.

Beneath the surface little has changed. The only headline-worthy bump in the specsheet is the 4GB of RAM - it's still a pretty exclusive club and its members are mostly true flagships.

Aside from that, it's the tried and true Snapdragon 615 running the show, and we know how Oppo is capable of extracting the best out of it. The 13MP camera setup with phase detection autofocus is also familiar from the R7, as is the 8MP front-facer.

The increase in screen diagonal comes with a due growth of battery capacity, and you can top up the 3070mAh power pack blazing fast thanks to Oppo's home-engineered VOOC charging.

Oppo R7s key features

• Magnesium-aluminum alloy unibody construction
• Dual-SIM dual-standby capability
• 5.5" 1080p AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 401ppi, Gorilla Glass 4
• Octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU (4x 1.5GHz plus 4x 1.21GHz), 4GB of RAM, Adreno 405 GPU; Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset
• 32GB of built-in storage
• ColorOS 2.1 on top of Android 5.1.1 Lollipop
• 13MP phase detection autofocus camera, f/2.2 lens, single-LED flash; HDR, Expert, RAW, Panorama, Long exposure (up to 16s), Double exposure, 50MP UltraHD modes
• 1080@30fps, 2x-10x speed timelapse, 1/4x speed slow motion 720x480px resolution
• 8MP front camera, 1080p video recording
• Cat. 4 LTE (150/50Mbps); dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, hotspot, Wi-Fi direct; Bluetooth 4.0; GPS/GLONASS; microUSB
• 3,070mAh battery capacity; VOOC fast charging
• 3.5mm headphone jack, active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic

Main disadvantages

• Midrange chipset in a premium price handset
• Sealed battery, microSD slot shared with second SIM
• No NFC or FM radio
• No fingerprint sensor
• Pricey

If you were to check back on the R7 Plus' review, you'd notice that we've listed the same disadvantages, with the lack of a fingerprint sensor the only addition here. Some of them are clashes of concepts - the gorgeous unibody and fast charging tech come at the expense of a non-removable battery. The chosen chip has reserved the R7s in the midrange, so Oppo has headroom for its proper flagship from the Find series, and the less than affordable price is par for the course in the R7 lineup.

Press images

Now, it's a whole different matter why Oppo keeps omitting the NFC antenna and the FM radio receiver. It's also odd to skip on a fingerprint reader - they are becoming mainstream in the midrange, the Plus has one, and the R7s is large enough for it to make perfect sense on the back.

Whatever the reasoning, it is what it is. We'll examine the Oppo R7s starting on the next page with unboxing and hardware overview.