If you’re in the market for a smartphone, odds are you’re looking at an Android phone. If you’re looking at an Android phone, odds are you’re looking at Samsung, and if you’re exotic, you may be looking at a Nexus, HTC, LG, or maybe even Sony. Few of you will be considering Oppo. I, however, did.
Oppo is a small Chinese manufacturer of DVD and Blu-Ray players, which has kind of made a name of itself as a producer of high-quality equipment, with a price tag to boot – north of a thousand dollars. They recently entered the smartphone business as well, and the Oppo Find 5 is their latest offering, unveiled earlier this year. It’s been getting very positive reviews, it’s a few hundred euros cheaper than the competition, and it looks amazing – so I took the plunge.
Hardware
I’m not exactly a specification junkie – as long as the damn thing works, I’m happy – but the Find 5 does not disappoint in this department. It’s got the quad-core 1.5Ghz kajiggers with 2GB of RAM, all the wireless stuff, all the sensors, and everything else a modern smartphone has these days. On top of that, it has something my previous phones haven’t had in a while: a customisable notification light, capable of illumination in several different colours. A small detail that I really miss on many other modern smartphones.
There’s also a few things it doesn’t have. These are things that do not bother me, but I know from reading the comments at OSAlert and other sites that they do bother many of you: there’s no removable battery, no micro SD slot, and it doesn’t support LTE. So, if you run out of juice, you can’t swap in a fresh battery, and your storage will be limited to either 16GB or 32GB, depending on the model you choose to buy. Lack of LTE is mostly an issue for Americans. In any case, keep these limitations in mind.
The Find 5 really has three very good arguments going for it. Three aspects of the device that make it stand out from the pack: design, build quality, and the display. These three combined create a device that many would never associate with a small Chinese manufacturer, since prejudice is abound whenever you talk about Chinese companies.
Let’s start with design. Unlike many other cheaper phones from China, Oppo is not copying anyone, nor is it trying to invoke feelings of similarity with other brands like Apple or Samsung. The design of the Find 5 stands on its own, and is very restrained, elegant, and, for the lack of a better term, sharp. You can get the phone in both white and black, but I would definitely suggest going for the white one as the subtle design touches – like the narrow chin or the black side buttons – go unnoticed on the black one.
The glass of the display is true edge-to-edge – in fact, there’s a third edge since it stretches all the way to the top of the device. The bezels on the two sides are very thin, further adding to the edge-to-edge feeling, and makes the phone feel smaller than it actually is. The bottom of the glass also contains the three hardware keys for Android, which I personally very much prefer to the more recent on-screen buttons which eat up a chunk of you screen.
There is a weird issue with the capacitive keys, though, that I hope CyanogenMod (more on that later) will be able to resolve. If move your finger from the screen into the capacitive button area, and then release, the capacitive button will activate. This is quite annoying when you’re, say, scrolling through a list and your finger moves onto the back or home button, after which it’ll activate. I’m hoping this is solvable through the Android ROM itself, because it can be rather annoying.
The second core aspect of the Find 5 that sets it apart from the rest is build quality and feel. I have rarely had the pleasure of holding a device that feels as solid, sturdy, and resilient as this one. There is no flex, there are no gaps or joints where dust can gather, none of that stuff – it really does feel like one solid block of phone.
The Find 5 consists of three major structural parts: a steel frame, the glass display, and the plastic outer shell. The steel and glass give the device its ridiculous stiffness, but also make it quite heavy compared to Samsung’s plastic or the HTC One’s and iPhone’s aluminium. This takes a little bit of getting used to, but it does instil confidence about the device’s durability.
Plastic on a phone is always hit and miss, but the Find 5’s is good – it doesn’t feel like plastic. It’s hard to explain, but even though the plastic looks smooth, it’s been sanded down ever so slightly to improve grip, giving it a very faint rough texture, not even visible. Again – you can press on the plastic all you want, but there’s no bending or flexing.
This is a far cry from the slithery plastic used by Samsung.
This is one solid phone, and much like the iPhone 5, it’s hard to appreciate just how good it feels to hold without actually holding it. This is iPhone 5 and HTC One territory, and far outpaces whatever plastic crap Samsung is still peddling (to great success, though). This has absolutely nothing to do with the general perception of Chinese phones being cheap and crappy.
The third and final core aspect I want to address is the star of the show, the centrepiece, the feature that everyone who plays with a Find 5 will want to talk about: the display. It’s a 5″ 1080×1920 AH-IPS display, which comes down to an insane 443ppi. Pixel density isn’t everything, but luckily, the other characteristics of the display are just as good as its density. Viewing angles are excellent, and colour reproduction and display calibration are good too. In fact, AnandTech found that the Find 5’s display belongs to the very top of the current crop of smartphones displays.
The display really stands out when you choose a pure black wallpaper – you can’t see where the display ends and the thin black bezel begins. It looks quite stunning, and everyone who gets his or her hands on this phone mentions just how impressed they are by the display. Like build quality, it’s really one of those things you have to see for yourself.
Combine the three aspects of design, build quality, and display, and you arrive at a phone with its own identity, that stands apart from the rest; yet, it doesn’t go nuts with features or whacky design flourishes. It’s elegant, understated, and minimalistic, yet doesn’t feel like dime a dozen like so many phones out there. For a small company, Oppo seems to have a very good eye for detail and quality, and the Find 5 is proof of that.
Unofficial Nexus device
Software-wise, the Find 5 is a bit of a different story. By default, it ships with Android 4.1.1, but sadly, Oppo does not ship stock – it uses its own skin, which is, quite frankly, absolutely horrible. I’m not going to waste any more words on it. Virtually every Android user here will flash something other than Oppo’s version of Android on it, and weirdly enough, this is a crucial reason as to why the Find 5 caught my eye to begin with.
Unlike HTC, Samsung, and many of the other larger Android OEMs, Oppo actively supports the modding and ROM community. Oppo provides ways to root the Find 5, and lists officially supported alternative ROMs on the Find 5 product page. Currently, Oppo supports CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android, Pac Rom, and an AOSP ROM. On top of that, Oppo provides developers of these ROMs with phones to ensure they work properly. The end result is that there is a very active community at the Oppo forums for support and instructions.
I prefer CyanogenMod, so I’m running the CM10.1 nightlies on my Find 5. Everything works, and all aspects of the device are properly supported. CM10.1 absolutely flies on this beast of a machine, and it feels a lot faster than Oppo’s own ROM. Battery life is excellent; after a day of regular usage, I’m still left with about 50% battery.
There’s not much else to say about Android 4.2.2 and CM10.1 – you’re all familiar with it anyway. I’m coming from Windows Phone, and the flexibility of Android and the quality of the applications compared to the meagre offerings on Microsoft’s mobile operating system are a breath of fresh air.
Anywho, all this makes the Find 5 somewhat of an unofficial Nexus device. It’d be great if Google could look beyond the larger OEMs and give the next Nexus assignment to a smaller OEM, to make it clear that the company cares about more than just the big boys. An Oppo Nexus phone would be a well-deserved reward for the work Oppo is doing here.
Conclusion
Probably the biggest point in its favour is its price – it’s ^a‘not399 (no contract), compared to its competitors which will set you back ^a‘not600-^a‘not700 without a contract, and much more with a contract (those monthly payments add up). In other words, it’s roughly the same price as a Nexus 4, has better specifications, looks better (in my view), and is as close to a Nexus device as it can be.
Still, it has its shortcomings, which include the lack of an SD card slot and removable battery, and for people used to being fooled into thinking phones are cheap, the upfront cost of ^a‘not399 is more than they think they’re paying for their iPhone or Galaxy S4. On top of that, no carrier or regular store will sell it to you – you have to order it online.
The Find 5 ranks among the very best of smartphones out right now, but with a more attractive price tag and a community-friendly company which actively supports modding and ROMs. The choice seems simple to me.
But isn’t the Nexus 4 $390 including shipping and all? This is $110 dollars more (I don’t know if they have taxes, N4 does).
Edited 2013-07-24 01:36 UTC
Yes, the N4 is marginally cheaper than the 16G version. The Oppo seems to have a full HD screen (N4 has WXGA), a 13MP camera (N4 has 8MP), 2500mA battery (N4 has 2100mA) neither have SD slots, or removable batteries. The N4 has an active developer community, while the Oppo’s manufacturer also supports a good developer community.
I think that the Oppo is priced right, and should do well as long as people hear about it.
(disclaimer-I am a Nexus 4 user, and quite like it)
I agree it has better specs than the N4, which is more or less expected on a newer phone. My comments was because it is 28% more expensive than the N4 (again, I’m not considering shipping and taxes while I do consider them for the N4 price), and that is not “roughly the same price as a Nexus 4”, at least not for me. That said, when time comes to change my N4, I would surely look into the Oppo 5 or it’s successor.
Edited 2013-07-24 14:37 UTC
The N4 and Oppo Find 5 are both ^a‘not400 in The Netherlands.
Well, in usa the N4 ends up with taxes and shipping ($15!) at U$ 390. On the website linked on the article, the Oppo 5 is U$ 499.
Well I’m European, so I don’t really know whatever the situation is like the US, especially with the complicated federal/state taxes thing.
They’re the same price here in The Netherlands :/.
Well, I’m South American, but I get my phones from USA, so I’m just telling you the situation there.
well, well, well.
Taxes aren’t that complicated when it comes to sales tax. There is not a federal sales tax. There is only state and local sales taxes.
Most people use the price as listed and specify when the price is after tax. They would say something like, “The phone is $310, after sales tax,” or “It’s $299, $310 after tax.” US consumers are accustomed to having sales tax added at checkout, so they’re used to a slight bump at the checkout.
More to the point, the European price does not equal the price in the US, for a variety of reasons that companies don’t explain. A straight conversion of currencies doesn’t work. It’s an interesting exercise, but it’s not guaranteed to be accurate unless the company says so.
Does the Oppo support the ROMs.
Or do the ROM developers support the Oppo? ..
Oppo support communities around ROM’s
So its Oppo support ROM’s.
specs sound good other than the lack of a micro SD memory slot, but then again I’m using a galaxy nexus so I can’t knock it too much for that, and so long as it’s not extremely hard to take apart to swap the battery I can live with that too. My main sticking point is the cost for the device. maybe I can try one out in a year or two after the prices have dropped.
til then I guess I will stick with my current phone.
in china
"i?yen2300-3199 yuan
http://detail.zol.com.cn/333/332882/param.shtml
Edited 2013-07-24 03:41 UTC
People may be surprised to know that China was traditionally considered to make the highest quality luxury goods available.
In Europe during the 18th-19th centuries a whole industry revolved around copying Chinese goods such as porcelain. [eg Wedgewood Willow Pattern].
Every country has had periods of time where their products were considered crap or awesome sauce.
Yes, and they also have Panda Bears.
Unfortunately, they have problems because of copy protection.
Isn’t most of all problems human existance?
Bill Gates (foundation? whatever) has posted on their facebook group about how much of the yearly growth of the planet is consumed by humans and how much.. was it space or resources? Are used up by humans, animals kept by humans vs wild animals.
It’s a damn dicease. I assume Pandas would and have copied themself very well as long as they had forests/high growing grasslands(?
) and no humans around.
Been using another Chinese made phone – Xiaomi MI2S. It is beautiful (MIUI v5). All I can say is, people who can send things/people to space can surely build a mean phone.
My next phone will probably be a YotaPhone or the X-Phone.
Great review!
Edited 2013-07-24 04:45 UTC
Yeah. Seriously. Describe it from corner to corner, edge to edge, front to back, and no freaking picture? Come on. Yea, we can find it, we know about it, still, seriously?
I loved the idea of the 3rd party device with vanilla Android on it. However, since I read about the Ubuntu Edge campaign, my “want” receptors have been all fixed on it instead…
“The Find 5 ranks among the very best of smartphones out right now”
come on thom.
I have an Acer Liquid E2 Duo for about two months, and I’m pretty happy with it. It has a 1.2GHz quad core and 1GB of RAM, does have an SD card slot, and costs a little more than half of the Oppo. Everyone spending more than 250 EUR on a phone is crazy
I have a telegraph and it’s enough to speak with my parents. Come on, we don’t really care about your ugly Acer Liquid E2 Duo.
For one, I find it quite appealing, not ugly. Secondly, what I was saying, is that you don’t need to spend 400 euros to get a decent phone.
To be honest, you said “Everyone spending more than 250 EUR on a phone is crazy.” That does come off as kind of elitist of you and I do not agree with your assessment. If you are happy with such a phone then it’s all good and well, but trying to present something like that as the perfect solution for everyone is just ignorant.
You are completely right, that’ll teach me to leave out imhos (although I *did* add a smiley for good measure).
Everyone spending more than 75 EUR on a phone is crazy
To be honest, after some serious soul-searching, research and God-given insight into human matters I’ve come to the conclusion that anyone spending less than 600^a‘not on a phone is crazy. And because they’re crazy they’ll go and call other people crazy.
Crazy or poor!
I think we can distill this to “everyone who has a phone is crazy”.
Haha, damn right! My previous one was a 15 EUR feature phone. However, I decided I no longer could resist the allure of having a multi-purpose mini computer in my pocket. I’m weak!
I agree
And I would place that tag at 60$ …
Right now you can buy smartphone below 100$ so why bother with conventional phone for more than 60$?
I have a Nexus 4, and it’s too delicate and too big.
Make me one with the same performance but with
* 4.3″ 720p screen – Gorilla glass
* Water proof body
* 32gig
and I’ll gladly pay $399 to $450 for it.
And seriously guys, if you are willing to support Cyanogenmod on it, why not ship it with stock Android + custom launcher.
Why do I need to root it and waste my time to make it better?
Sony Xperia Acro
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_acro_s-4781.php
Or the Sony Xperia V.
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_v-4958.php
Not satisfactory. I want something with Nexus 4 or Oppo 5 performance.
* This one has a Sony skin. I want stock Android. I don’t want to have to root it and lose warranty
* Only has 1GB RAM vs Nexus 4’s 2GB
* Only dual-core Snapdragon S3 vs the Nexus 4’s quad Core S4
Basically it is an older & slower phone. Waterproofing & size are nice but not at the cost of performance.
Well then you have to go for the latest model, the Xperia Z. But then you are back at a big territory, as it comes with a 5″ screen. Seems like the development goes in the direction of bigger screen. Don’ like it much myself either(Those paddles are rather impractical, but then again the Sony can actually be used as one:-) )
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z-5204.php
For the Sony skin, it seem actually quite nice for the little testing I have done. Better than the HTC stuff anyway. Personally I don’t find the stock Android to be that good either(It is, compared to HTCs, but that’s about the worst one).
Besides I think Sony supports rooting, so you may not void the warranty.
Oppo Find 5 seems to have Corning Gorilla glass, Thom just failed to mention it.
WRONG. A phone under $500 is FREE by 2-year contract. Except for Nexus 4, which is reported everywhere but sold nowhere and you can find no contract bound with it, ever.
Oh, the ignorance. The phone isn’t free, the bill is just spread over 2 years. For a $500 phone that makes about $20/month that’s added to your regular bill.
Where do you live?? Here the $500 is totally for 3G/call bill. You just have to pay them first at once, then you won’t need to pay anything in about one year.
Edited 2013-07-26 14:51 UTC
You’re not making sense here. First you’re talking about 2-year contracts and now you suddenly jump to 1-year contracts.
oh you misunderstand. Let me explain the details:
2-year contracts cost about $1,000 ($40 * 24), and it allows you to get a phone for free up to $500 – if you choose cheaper phones it’s your loss. What it requires is for you to pre-pay the same amount of phone bills as the cost of phone itself first. So you pay $500 which equals to about 12 months of phone bills, and then you don’t have pay phone bills until the accumulated sum of them exceed $500 (=> about a year later).
The $500 / 12 = ~ $40 covers unlimited 3G and totally free calls as long as caller/callee use the same MNO (it’s our dominating MNO). Basically it guarantees a fixed amount of phone bills every month, no matter how many calls you make or how much you use Internet.
It’s what we have here in Taiwan. I always thought the policy is the same everywhere in the world.
And what do that $40 contract give you?
My subscription cost 18 SEK = 2.8 USD / month but of course I get no phone with that.
If I want a phone I’d get a subscription which cost more because I would also be paying off the phone.
Then everything I said still stands: you’re not getting the phone for free, you’re still paying for it but its price is covered by the regular bills.
Nope. Almost every country have their own style. Like e.g. here in Finland you can just get a number without a phone and in such a case you don’t have to sign a contract, but if you also take a phone with it you usually end up signing a 2-year contract and the price of the phone is just rolled up in the monthly bills. You do not pay anything up-front, you just pay the bill once a month and that’s it. I am paying about $22/month for a similar plan as you, but mine doesn’t include the cost of the phone. If I wanted a phone to go with it it’d be something around $40/month.
Unlike the U.S., though, even the phones sold here on contract do not come SIM-locked. Atleast on most carriers, I’m not sure about Telia-Sonera anymore.
Oh, and that’s one of the worst markup I’ve seen in a site. The whole page is just images, even the text! And incomplete alt-text. Very, very poor accessibility!
It does indeed reek badly of “WCAG, what’s that?!?”
Though entirely what I’ve come to expect from designers using inaccessible trash like grid960, endless pointless javascript for **** only knows what, presentational use of CSS, and the steaming pile of manure known as HTML 5. (not a fan)
You’d almost think it was Prestashop with some rubbish off the shelf template from templateMonster or ThemeForest, that some halfwit “designer” just slapped images into any old way.
I never quite understood why people dislike on-screen keys. I find them a good idea.
First off: the chunk of the screen you loose is disposable! In portrait mode there’s no usage pattern I know of in which the extra height is needed. In landscape mode, the argument of lost screen surface sometimes makes sense, but really, the screen was plenty wide to begin with. I have had a Nexus 4 for many months now and never ever missed the “lost” screen.
The big advantage they bring: flexibility. One example: Many applications still use the “settings” or “triple bar” button, which does not exist in the new Android key layout. This is also encouraged by the fact that many manufacturers kept the settings button on recent hardware (Bad Samsung, BAD!). Having on-screen buttons gives those applications a way to elegantly expose a fourth button if they need it.
Is there nobody else who thinks on-screen buttons are a good idea?
I’m undecided on that, myself. I do understand the flexibility they bring and all that, but at the same time I cannot help but remember that they do not offer tactile feedback; you can’t just slide your finger on them without ever even looking at the screen and still know which one you’re touching.
I am quite sure I could get by either way, I just don’t find one inherently superior to the other.
Not me. I like having a 5″ screen that i can use. If i wanted a smaller screen i would have bought a different phone, and i have certainly never wished the screen was smaller, at least not while it is out of my pocket
Keeping the cost of the phone down is the only argument i can see in favor of the on-screen buttons. I think they are extra silly on a phone like the nexus 4 where there are plenty of room for “external” buttons, and that was in fact the main reason that i didn’t buy one and opted to wait for the S4 instead. Alone having to locate the power button to unlock it instead of having a convenient button on the front would drive me crazy, when i tested the N4 i found it annoying to unlock with just one hand, would have to move it around in the hand to press the button. Also with the physical home button i have an easy reference point to feel if the phone is orientated the right way without having to look at it.
I personally prefer real physical buttons instead of capacitive ones. If i had a ^a‘not for each time i have hit the back button by accident on my S4, well, i would have a big pile of change ready for my next trip to the euro zone.
17 comments already, and nobody has mentioned the Ubuntu Edge yet?
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge
It has very little hope of actually being built due to a lack of interest from potential customers.
The hardware isn’t particularly amazing. Other companies will be offering similar hardware within a year.
Sapphire is HARD not tough. It is actually far more brittle than toughened glass and totally unsuitable for phone screens.
The Edge business plans totally sucks because the developers have absolutely no idea how Formula One teams operate. They are primarily marketing platforms for major vehicle makers such as Mercedes and Renault. They are not independent technology developers or ‘skunk works’. F1 technology takes decades before it is ever gets transferred to mainstream road cars. [Monocoque chassis, disc brakes, fuel injection, carbon fibre composites etc were all developed by aircraft makers 10-20 years before they were used in F1.)
Edited 2013-07-25 03:30 UTC
I personally am appalled by the fact that the Edge only sports a 3.5mm stereo connector and an MHL-connector, no docking capabilities at all; if it’s to be advertised and sold as a device that can even be used as a regular PC then how the hell are you going to attach printers, scanners or something like that without any sort of a dock? I’m not sold on MHL, either — I have a whole bunch of displays at home, but only one of them has HDMI-in and that’s the 42″ TV.
It will be even more of a continuous work in progress than any other Android phone if Ubuntu is anything to go by.
That is why I’d never buy a phone with anything from Canonical on it. They seem (IMHO) to start a whole lot of project in all sorts of areas but how many really get finished or at least into a state whereby they can be compared to the competition? AFAIK, not very many.
You know you can still buy GS3, I bought mine when the GS4 was out, and at the time it cost me 380^a‘not.
Now, I have some complaints about the phone: sometimes not responsive and not very readable outdoors on bright day, but it has a major advantage: applications work well on it (as it is quite widespread, developers test their app on it).
I have seen a few websites compare this phone to the nexus 4, but the cheapest version of the oppo is $500 while the nexus is $300. That seems like a large difference in price to be comparing the phones.
I mentioned the same on the first post. But to be fair, the 16GB N4 is 350+taxes+shipping=390.
I bought one.
Total Oppo Find 5 style…
I know you’re a big fan of this phone, so I had a look just now on YouTube to see it in action. I really like it actually. You’ve mentioned to me that it has a flashing LED that you can change the colour of depending on the app or person messaging you…and being a bit of a girly girl that appeals to me GREATLY.
I hate how shallow I am sometimes!
That being said, I’m a broke hobo and when i am a little less broke I will buy the Nexus 4 unless the HTC One Mini ends up being a similar price in which case that will be a serious contendor for me.
If I were not a broke hobo, I’d definitely seriously consider the Oppo Find 5
You should try xiaomi. I bet you’ll find it awesome too
. http://www.xiaomi.com (use google translate to navigate).
Edited 2013-07-25 10:55 UTC