Oppo F15: Solid phone with hefty battery life

The Oppo F15 is a phone that ticks a lot of boxes in the specifications department, but does it live up to expectations?

Let's dive deeper.

Released in early 2020 in the South East Asian market, the F15 certainly tries to give users a solid set of specs with an AMOLED screen, a 48 MP snapper and a 4025 mAh battery for around Tk26,000.

Body

The phone is light at 172 grams and despite the 6.4-inch screen, it's decently usable with one hand.

But the plastic back is a fingerprint magnet and also prone to scratches. But, the back does have a shiny metallic finish that reflects light beautifully to give it a more premium look.

The back also houses four cameras including the 48 MP wide-angle lens along with a flash, but there is a discernible hump because of the camera-module. Using the phone without a case will certainly cause it to wobble if placed on its back.

Connectivity

The phone has a 3.5 mm jack for those who are wondering if the mid-range market is still offering something audiophiles will look forward to with high-end phones doing away with the port.

It has a Type-C charging port and that has fast charging, up to 20W, meaning it can charge up to 50 percent in 30 minutes; Oppo brands it as VOOC 3.0 charging.

The phone also has Bluetooth 4.2 with A2DP support, meaning the latest Bluetooth headsets will be able to provide you with the highest-end audio output.

It has FM radio, another feature that has been left out of most flagship phones in recent years, but stays in the mid-range market.

Display and battery

The 6.4-inch display has a 1080x2400 resolution with a 408 PPI density and an 85.5 percent screen-to-body ratio. These are all respectable numbers – but in real life, it is not such a beauty.

The screen has too much of colour shifting, a rarity for AMOLED panels and colours end up being inaccurate.

The brightness, though, is pretty impressive and even under direct sunlight, usability should not be an issue.

The phone has a notch housing the front-facing camera – but a teardrop notch which does not really get in the way of things and can be disabled too if you still hate it.

The battery is another area where the phone shines brightly as the phone easily lasted 2 days on moderate usage and gave around 7-9 hours of screen-on-time, with 4G connectivity on.

The fast charging is also another perk and overall takes around an hour-and-a-half to fully charge.

Performance

The phone comes loaded with Android 9.0 Pie and ColorOS 6.1 powered by a Mediatek Helio P70 chipset. It is an octa-core 12nm processor which is not exactly the most powerful one but multitasking and gaming hardly takes a hit here.
 
The processor is accompanied by a Mali-G72 GPU which once again is an upper-mid-range chip that can play the latest games smoothly, but not always on the highest settings.

The 8 gigs of ram and 128 gigs of storage mean you are never going to have to worry about space or multitasking.

The software of the phone is also pretty simple but intuitive. But scrolling through menus is a bit choppy, and hopefully, future updates can fix that issue.

There is a smart assistant that pops up from the right side of the screen, which is a pretty useful feature.

Camera and Audio

The four cameras at the back generally help produce good pictures under good sunlight and well, lit conditions.

But things are not so great under artificial light or low light with a lot of noise and graininess coming into the pictures.

Video, however, is a total letdown as it does only 1080p at 30fps whereas there are phones that do 4k at 60 fps.

Perhaps, that is down to the chipset not being the most powerful one in the market but it is a feature that is missing. The video quality is, however, pretty decent, and the gyro stabiliser makes sure shaky hands don't ruin your videos.

The audio quality of the phone is a pretty standard affair as it gives you a pretty decent audio quality over headphones, but not iPhone grade. The mids in the audio aren't as punchy but the loudness is pretty impressive and you'll hardly ever have to use the phone with the volume all the way up.

The loudspeaker is also pretty impressive giving loud and punchy music without getting distorted.

Final thoughts

The Oppo F15 is a pretty good device but it will face a tough competition as the mid-range market is dominated mostly by Xiaomi and Samsung. In the same price, you can also avail other phones, but if you are a person who needs battery life more than anything with a decent design and moderate camera options, F15 can be a great choice.

Right now, we have to rate it a 6.5 out of 10.