OPPO R17 Pro First Impressions

OPPO R17 Pro brings an eye-catchy design, capable camera hardware and blazing fast charging speeds.

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OPPO R17 Pro, a smartphone that has been making news from a while now has finally been unveiled in the Indian market. Priced at Rs. 45,990 OPPO R17 Pro is a flagship handset from Chinese smartphone manufacturer that has many firsts in the Indian market. It is the first smartphone with SuperVOOC Flash charge technology. It is also the first commercial smartphone with TOF 3D camera and the first mobile phone running on Qualcomm's latest snapdragon 710 chipset in India.

 
OPPO R17 Pro First Impressions

Besides these industry' firsts, OPPO R17 Pro brings flaunts an eye-catchy design, capable camera hardware, in-display fingerprint scanner and a big AMOLD display with a waterdrop notch. We used the OPPO R17 Pro for a day to understand how the new smartphone works as a daily driver. Let's find out more about the new handset in our first impressions.

Colors like no one
 

Colors like no one

I have seen and tested a number of smartphones with gradient colour patterns in the last one year but OPPO R17 Pro clearly stands out from the rest. It flaunts the most colorful rear panel in the market, which makes it quite a head turner. The phone is an instant conversation starter as the rear panel of the handset boasts a unique gradient shade of blue and purple. The company says that the R17 Pro's design is inspired by the natural flow of water and light. The gradient pattern at the back panel is fused over 3D fog glass that feels good in hands but takes smudges and fingerprints easily.

Combined with the teardrop notch at the front and a vivid AMOLED display, the R17 Pro comes out as the most colorful smartphone that can find a good audience in the Indian market. If you also have the confidence to flaunt such colours, the R17 Pro is an interesting buy. But if you like to play safe, this is certainly not the handset for you. OPPO R17 Pro will also be available in Emerald Green which offers slightly subtle look and feel.

As far as other important design characteristics are concerned, the smartphone is quite comfortable to hold, thanks to the gentle curves at the back panel. The camera module protrudes out quite a lot and sits vertically in the center to maintain the overall symmetry. The design is quite minimal and practical. The power button is positioned on the right side and the volume rockers are placed on the left edge. The bottom of the phone houses the Type C charging port, hybrid SIM card slot, a microphone and one down-firing speaker unit.

 

Vibrant 6.4-inch AMOLED display

Vibrant 6.4-inch AMOLED display

As mentioned, the R17 Pro sports a big 6.4-inches AMOLED display with a tiny teardrop notch at the top. The display offers a screen resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels that accounts to a pixel density of 402 ppi. The display comes in 19.5:9 aspect ratio and makes up for a good 85.9 % screen-to-body ratio. The vivid AMOLED panel is excellent for playing games and to stream videos. For display protection, you get the latest Corning Gorilla Glass 6.

SuperVOOC Flash Charge is crazy fast

SuperVOOC Flash Charge is crazy fast

OPPO's SuperVOOC Flash Charge is certainly the highlight of the smartphone. It offers crazy charging speeds and is easily the fastest fast charging I have used till date. It is faster than the OnePlus's Dash charge and even surpasses the charging speeds offered by recently launched Huawei's 40 W fast charging adapter. The 3,700 mAh battery unit powering the R17 Pro refueled from 10 percent to 97 percent in just 30 min, which is simply insane. The OPPO's SuperVOOC Flash Charge technology is going to be a game-changer in the industry.

Capable triple-lens camera setup

Capable triple-lens camera setup

In addition to a vivid screen, fastest fast charging and a striking design, the R17 Pro also boasts an interesting camera setup. It features a triple-lens camera module at the back panel that consists of a 12 MP sensor working on a dual aperture- f/1.5-2.4. This particular sensor has 1.4µm size and comes with Dual Pixel PDAF and OIS. Then you will find a 20 MP AF sensor with f/2.6 aperture value. What's interesting here is the massive TOF 3D sensor at the top that can be used for some really cool real-world applications by applying 3D sensing technology. We couldn't test the feature as OPPO hasn't rolled out the OTA update to make the 3D sensor functional. For now we can tell you that the third sensor in OPPO R17 Pro will be used for 3D mapping of objects to create 3D images of real-world objects and even humans. The TOF 3D camera will be able to capture high-precision 3D depth information by emitting infrared light rays onto targeted objects. The same could be used for a variety of real-world applications in photography, automotive, 3D printing, gaming, etc. It will be interesting to see how OPPO will utilize the tech to make R17 Pro an interesting proposition for end-users.

As far as standard camera output from other two cameras is concerned, it is quite impressive. The images have very good detailing and show natural colors. As the camera operates on dual aperture technology and also has OIS, the low-light images also come out really good. The noise levels in low-light images are very well controlled, thanks to the mult-frame noise reduction capability offered by the underlying Snapdragon 710 chipset. The 2X optical zoom is also very helpful in taking crisp shots of moderately distant objects.

 

25MP Selfie camera

25MP Selfie camera

OPPO has been making selfie cameras from a while now and has equipped the R17 Pro with a massive 25MP front-facing shooter. The camera captures crisp shots and offers a number of software features to further enhance the camera output. There's AI mode, stickers, portrait mode, filters and many other features to keep you occupied and turn you into a Superstar on social networking apps like Instagram and Snapchat.

Snapdragon 710 octa-core CPU with 8GB of RAM

Snapdragon 710 octa-core CPU with 8GB of RAM

OPPO R17 Pro is backed by Snapdragon 710, the chipset from Qualcomm's latest 700-series procesors. It sits somewhere in between the Snapdragon 600 series SoCs and the flagship Snapdragon 845 CPU in terms of processing speed and efficiency. It is the Snapdragon 710 that gives OPPO R17 Pro its AI and AR capabilities. The CPU is paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal memory. OPPO R17 Pro runs on ColorOS 5.2 based on Android Oreo.

No microSD card slot and no 3.5mm headphone jack

No microSD card slot and no 3.5mm headphone jack

Now when you have read so many good things about the handset, let's talk about some pain-points. OPPO R17 Pro skips the 3.5mm headphone jack and also the micros card slot. So you have to compromise with the available internal storage and you can also not use your regular 3.5mm jack headphones with this handset. Thankfully, OPPO is proving a Type C to 3.5mm adaptor and even Type-C earphones in the box.

No IP rating for protection from water and dust

No IP rating for protection from water and dust

The team at OPPO hasn't officially declared any IP rating for the R17 Pro; however the handset can withstand some occasional water splashes. Still we would recommend you to refrain from experimenting with this phone as any water damage will not be entertained by the OPPO service support.

Verdict

Verdict

OPPO R17 Pro is an interesting smartphone. It offers some never before seen features that will get the handset some definite attention from technology enthusiasts. However it's price-point makes it a direct rival of widely popular OnePlus 6T which offers faster Snapdragon 845 CPU and much better Oxygen OS. We will stress test the handset in coming days to find out its overall performance as a daily driver. Stay tuned for a comprehensive review of OPPO R17 Pro at Gizbot.com.

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