Oppo R9s review

OUR VERDICT

Offering a flagship feel at half the price of its competitors, the Oppo R9s is one of the best mid-range handsets on the market, though don’t expect stellar game performance.

Steadily climbing its way into the number one position among smartphone makers in China, Oppo has made a name for itself by offering customers premium-feeling handsets at half the price of the competition. With this strategy, it’s perhaps no surprise that the company owns 23 percent of the market share in its home country (by comparison, Apple currently holds a 6 percent market share in China). 

Now, its latest handset, the Oppo R9s, has just launched in Australia, and we got our hands on one for review.

Looking at the Oppo R9s in its naked form, it’d be easy to mistake it for an iPhone 7 – its thin, rounded aluminium body, slightly-protruding camera bump, matte finish and similarly-placed buttons seem clearly modelled after the Apple flagship (though its pill-shaped capacitive home button gives its Android status away), as does its new iOS-aping ColorOS 3.0 software. 

But what the phone may lack in design originality, it makes up for in sheer value. Though it has a retail price of AU$599 (around US$457 and £365), many of the hallmarks we’ve come to expect from a premium phone are present here. 

With the R9s, Oppo has produced its most polished phone to date. Though its success in China is a given, does the Oppo R9s have what it takes to become the king of mid-range phones in the western world? Though it’s only non-Asian market is Australia at present, its success here could open up wider avenues for Oppo in the future. And if it doesn’t happen, it won’t be for fault of this impressive handset.

So far, there’s no word on when the Oppo R9s will arrive in the US and UK, but we’ll keep you updated on any developments. However, it is currently available in Singapore at a price of S$679. 

Design

As was mentioned earlier, the iPhone 7 was a clear touchstone in the Oppo R9s’ design. Smooth and rounded, the only sharpness you’ll find here is in the screen’s edges, which aren’t quite as close to the handset as they are on Apple’s flagship. It is thinner, though – the Oppo R9s is 6.6mm thick, compared to the iPhone 7’s 7.1mm. It’s rather slippery in the hand, but thankfully, Oppo has included a clear silicone case and an already-applied screen protector with each handset.

Like the iPhone 7, the Oppo R9s has a capacitive touch home button which doubles as a fingerprint sensor, and while it doesn’t provide the faux ‘click’ sensation of Apple’s handset, it does offer a slight tremor when pressed. Where it does have Apple beat, however, is in its speed – the Oppo R9s offers one of the fastest sensors we’ve ever experienced, seemingly unlocking the phone instantly. It’s also got a hydrophobic membrane over it which helps the sensor register your prints, even when your digits are moist.

Whether this means the sensor offers less security than its rivals is unknown, though after numerous attempts, no one other than myself was able to unlock the handset. Joining the home button are two capacitive ‘recents’ and ‘back’ buttons, which are set in that order from left to right – Galaxy-style. Again, like the iPhone, the device’s power button sits on the right edge and two volume buttons on the left. 

A dual SIM tray offers space for (you guessed it) two nano-SIM cards, or one SIM card and a microSD card up to 256GB to join the device’s 64GB of onboard storage. On the bottom of the phone, you’ll find a speaker grille, a micro USB port and, thankfully, a 3.5mm headphone jack. 

At first glance, you might not notice the antenna lines across the R9s’s back. Though the R9s shares the iPhone 6’s antenna placement, its ultra-fine “six-string” antenna layout is almost invisible from certain angles, giving it more of an iPhone 7-like appearance.

Screen

Boasting an exceptionally bright and vibrant 1080p AMOLED display, the Oppo’s R9s is no slouch when it comes to delivering striking images. Admittedly, the screen’s colours err on the side of over-saturation, and aside from settings that turn down brightness or reduce blue light for the sake of your eyes, there’s not much that can be done about this. That said, I’d personally take over-saturated colours over drab, undersaturated ones. 

At 5.5 inches, the handset’s display puts the Oppo R9s directly in line with the iPhone 7 Plus, and while Apple’s phablet feels quite large in the hand, the R9s does not. This is due to the R9s’ thinner frame, as well as its almost non-existent side bezels and slightly smaller top and bottom bezels.

Performance and battery

Though it has a whopping 4GB of RAM and a rather powerful Octa-core processor, the Oppo R9s is held back slightly by its older Adreno 506 GPU. Based on GeekBench results, the performance of this one is about where you’d expect: halfway between a budget handset like Motorola’s Moto G4 Play and a flagship like the Galaxy S7 or Google Pixel.

That said, mid-range phones aren’t aimed at power users who are after extreme graphical performance, but rather at people who use their handsets to perform regular day-to-day tasks, like messaging, running apps, taking photos and browsing the internet. Because of this, the phone’s PCMark for Android results provide a more accurate representation of how the R9s will perform for its desired user base.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to gauge the accuracy of its PCMark benchmark results, as the Oppo R9s turned in a score that would make even the most high-end flagship handsets on the market kneel before it. Earning a mammoth score of 7001 in our ‘PCMark – Work 1.0’ benchmark test, the Oppo R9s seemingly annihilates the Google Pixel’s 4461 result and the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge’s score of 4713, which seems a little unlikely to us. 

If you’re after a handset that can game with the best of them, this isn’t it. However, for web browsing, video playback, writing and photo editing, this phone is more than capable of that.

Verdict

With the Oppo R9s, it’s clear why the company has been so successful in its home country. It has delivered a phone with a premium look and feel, terrific battery life and exceptional work performance at half the cost of a flagship phone from Apple or Samsung. 

We liked
It looks and feels like an iPhone 7, with a stylish (yet derivative) design that leaves most other mid-range handsets in its dust. At $599, this is level of craftsmanship is practically a steal.

It’s got a 12-hour plus lifespan, which is quite impressive in itself, but when combined with its ultra fast charging technology, you have a handset that’s unlikely to leave you in a tight spot. 

We disliked
Though its performs well in a work capacity, its weak GPU performance leaves something to be desired. 

Though it continues to improve with each iteration, Oppo’s ColorOS still needs some work, with its hard-to-reach notifications and lack of app drawer being particularly frustrating.

And, while the AMOLED 1080p screen offers striking images, its colours can be a little over-saturated.

Final verdict
For the price, the Oppo R9s is a remarkably stylish and sophisticated smartphone that offers a number of premium features. Though its OS still has some quirks, and its gaming performance is average, the R9s is a terrific phone that offers long battery life, good work performance and impressive photographic capability. With the R9s, Oppo practically has that ‘king of the mid-range’ crown in its much-deserved grasp. 

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