The Oppo R5: A Beautiful but Flawed Smartphone

Looking at this battery you're taking a 2,000 Milah hour battery and in 2014 this is considered an extremely small battery. Earlier I mentioned that Oppo made a very conscious decision to go with form over function and the battery life really takes a hit because of this. This is the first phone that I've used in a very long time where I can literally describe the battery life as being terrible, I mean it is awful battery life. I'm getting between 10 to 12 hours off the charger and only 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours of screen on time, maybe 2 and 1/2 hours if I'm lucky. Don't get me wrong, I love the thin and Sleek design of the R5, it's beautiful. But I would not have minded if the phone was just a little bit thicker with a slightly larger battery. I don't know about but battery life is not something that I'd be willing to sacrifice just so I could have a thinner phone.

The Oppo R5 supports oppo's vuk rapid charging technology, meaning you can get a 75% charge in 30 minutes time. But I wasn't able to take advantage of it due to the charging brick not being a US charger. Considering it's only a 2,000 mAh battery, I was still able to get a pretty fast charge by using a 1.5 to 2 amp charger.

The R5 is running on Android 4.4 Kit Kat with oppo's own color OS, its color oos version 2.0. For the most part, it hasn't changed much in terms of Aesthetics from previous versions. It's still very colorful as the name suggests, but the settings menu has now taken on a much darker look with colored icons and the gesture panel which used to be accessible with a swipe down on the top left corner of the screen is now at the bottom. I personally like the move to the bottom because it's much easier to get to and I don't have to worry about accidentally swiping it down every time I reach for the notification shade.

The gesture panel still works just like before with some pre-made gestures for apps like the camera and Flash, and you can also create your own gestures for any application you want. You can even trigger these gestures with the screen off so you can access your apps much quicker. Oppo has also built in tap to wake and while the power button is already really easy to reach, the tap to wake is still a handy feature to have especially when it's just sitting on a table and you just want to quickly check the time.

There's also some very Samsung S features built in like air gestures so you can wave your hand over the phone to scroll through home screens and photos in your gallery but I found it to be extremely sensitive so sensitive that even if I were to just tilt the phone the wrong way it would scroll. So, I just kept it turned off.

The theme app is probably one of my favorite features in color OSS. It allows you to change the look of the icons folders wallpaper and lock screen so if you don't like the way color OS looks by default, you can change that. It's a very well fleshed out app and there's a lot of themes to pick from so you should be able to find at least a few that suits your taste.

As of this video, Oppo hasn't announced a release date just yet but once it does come out, it'll be available for $500. However, Oppo doesn't release their phones in the US so if you're inside the US and you want to pick one up, you'll have to import it through sites like eBay.

The R5 does have 3G and LTE connectivity but according to Oppo site, there's a couple of different versions with different band supports so you'll want to make sure to grab the one that works best with your carrier.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what is going on guys law here from Android authority and apparently the race for the thinnest smartphone in the world is still a thing for some companies but how thin is too thin well this is the Oppo R5 and we're going to find out if it strikes a perfect balance between Form and Function or if it Sleek looks isn't without sacrifices Oppo doesn't have a huge presence in the US but they've certainly been making headlines the last couple of years by pushing boundaries when it comes to smartphone design they're also known for making phones with some awesome build quality and the R5 is no exception with the design of the R5 you're looking at a phone made of very premium materials the front is entirely made of glass the sides are wrapped in a metal frame and the back is also metal with the exception of the plastic inserts on the top and bottom which are most likely there to improve reception in the hand the R5 feels extremely sleek and the metal body gives it that really nice cold feel when you first pick it up in the morning it's also not slippery to hold which you might think it would be because of how much metal there is but because the sides are flat it's really easy to hold on to the biggest story about the R5's design though is how thin it is the R5 comes in at an insanely thin 4.85 mm making it one of the thinnest smartphones if not the thinnest in the world in fact the R5 is so thin the camera protrudes quite a bit from the body this could potentially cause concern with durability for some people because of how exposed it is but so far I haven't had any problems also if you like texting with your phone flat on a table you might be annoyed by how it rocks back and forth taking a tour around the R5 you'll find the power and volume keys on the right which are also made of metal and they're very nice and clicky and perfectly placed where my thumb can easily reach them so no problems there on the bottom is a micro USB port with a microphone and along the top you'll find nothing it's completely blank same story goes with the left side of the phone it's almost entirely blank with the exception of your SIM card slot towards the bottom at this point you're probably wondering where's the 3.5 mm headset Jack and where's the dedicated speaker well the truth is with the R5 being so thin there simply wasn't room to fit a 3.5 M headset Jack or a dedicated speaker this is clearly a conscious decision by Oppo to go with form over function but that doesn't mean listening to audio is not possible if you want listen to music using earbuds you can still do so but you'll have to use the proprietary earbuds included in the Box these proprietary earbuds plug directly into the micro USB port and they work and sound just as if it was plugged into a 3.5 mm headset Jack the biggest downside to this is obviously the fact that you can't use your own earbuds or headphones and while these earbuds aren't going to give you the best audio experience it's still better than nothing at all if you'd like to listen to audio without earbuds you can still do that too because the ear piece on the R5 actually doubles as an external speaker the quality is pretty average and sounds about the same as any other phone with a single speaker but I did find it to be a little on the quiet side on the front of the R5 you're looking at a 5.2 in AMOLED display coming in at 1080 P resolution and the display looks just as good as the rest of the phone we know at this point that Quad HD is the future of smartphone displays but you won't find much to complain about with the R5's display colors are vibrant and saturated viewing angles are great whites look perfectly white and since this is an AMOLED display you're going to get those really deep blacks that you just can't get with an LCD the display is capable of getting really bright which is great for outdoor visibility but I noticed it also gets pretty dim so you don't have to strain your eyes when trying to read at night inside of the Oppo R5 you're going to find a Snapdragon 615 and 2 gigs of RAM if you're not familiar with the Snapdragon 615 this is an octacore 64-bit processor but don't be fooled by the number of cores this is a mid-tier processor from Qualcomm and the R5 is still running on 32-bit software so it's not taking full advantage of the processor at least not yet regardless to that it's still a great performance former apps open quickly animations are smooth and high-end games run fine without any lag or drop frames multitasking is fine too but it is a little slow due to the fact that you have to long press the menu button every time you want to switch between apps but this really has more to do with poor implementation than actual performance the only real problem I've had with the performance is the keyboard if you want to use any other keyboard besides the default keyboard you can't and if you try to switch keyboards it causes the R5 to soft boot every single time this can most likely be fixed with a software update so I won't be too harsh on it but it's still annoying nonetheless taking a closer look at the camera we have a 13 megapix Sony sensor with an LED flash and starting with the camera interface you'll find that it's a very simple clean and intuitive interface there isn't much in terms of manual controls outside of expert mode so taking photos and videos is relatively straightforward the camera settings are tucked away in the bottom left corner and there's a slide out panel on the right for all your different shooting modes with an option to download more than what comes pre-installed with that being said the app can be a little bit cumbersome to use at least when shooting in landscape because not everything rotates to landscape orientation the camera settings for example stay locked in portrait so every time I wanted to change something in the settings I either had to deal with reading everything sideways or flipping the phone back to Portrait the same thing can be said with the beautify mode you'll notice that none of the faces or text rotates the landscape and it just creates for a very inconsistent and frustrating experience when you have to constantly flip the phone back and forth between portrait and landscape on the plus side the camera does have a pretty fast shutter so it's really easy to rapidly fire off some shots in succession but the picture quality isn't so impressive with 13 megapixels the camera is capable of capturing plenty of detail but it has a tendency to over exposed resulting in a lot of overblown highlights indoors is certainly better and you will get a little more color and detail but it definitely takes some practice to get exactly what you're looking for shooting in normal mode will also result in some poor looking low- likee shots with an increase in noise levels and softer details which is very surprising for a lens with an f2.0 aperture but Oppo has included a slow shutter mode that keeps the shutter open a lot longer to pull in more light and it actually works quite well photos are brighter and sharper with a lot less noise but you want to be careful with this feature because if you don't have a steady hand it will result in a blurry photo Ultra HD mode which has been a staple feature for Oppo for a while now also makes a return here on the R5 allowing you to take 50 megapixel photos it's really just a neat software trick that stitches a series of images together but it does work the images definitely are sharper and more detailed than the default 13 megapix photos so it is worth using but I wouldn't recommend using it on anything other than still objects because it does take a little bit of time for the camera camera to process the image the 50 megapixel shots also weigh in at around 10 MB a piece and with only 16 GB on board and no micro SD card expansion you could run out of space before you know it moving on to the battery you're looking at a 2,000 Milah hour battery and in 2014 this is considered an extremely small battery and earlier I mentioned that Oppo made a very conscious decision to go with form over function and the battery life really takes a hit because of this uh this is the first phone that I've used in a very long time where I can literally describe the battery life as being terrible I mean it is awful battery life I'm getting between 10 to 12 hours off the charger and only 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours of screen on time uh maybe 2 and 1/2 hours if I'm lucky uh and don't get me wrong I love the thin and Sleek design of the R5 it's beautiful uh but I would not have minded if the phone was just a little bit thicker with a slightly larger battery uh because I don't know about but battery life is not something that I'd be willing to sacrifice just so I could have a thinner phone the good news is the R5 supports oppo's vuk rapid charging technology meaning you can get a 75% charge in 30 minutes time but I wasn't able to take advantage of it due to the charging brick not being a US charger but considering it's only a 2,000 mAh battery I was still able to get a pretty fast charge by using a 1.5 to 2 amp charger in terms of software the R5 is is running on Android 4.4 Kit Kat with oppo's own color OS it's color oos version 2.0 to be specific and for the most part it hasn't changed much in terms of Aesthetics from previous versions it's still very colorful as the name suggests but the settings menu has now taken on a much darker look with colored icons and the gesture panel which used to be accessible with a swipe down on the top left corner of the screen is now at the bottom I personally like the move to the bottom because it's much easier to get to and I don't have to worry about accidentally swiping it down every time I reach for the notification shade the gesture panel still works just like before with some pre-made gestures for apps like the camera and Flash and you can also create your own gestures for any application you want you can even trigger these gestures with the screen off so you can access your apps much quicker Oppo has also built in tap to wake and while the power button is already really easy to reach the tap to wake is still a handy feature to have especially when it's just sitting on a table and you just want to quickly check the time there's also some very Samsung S features built in like air gestures so you can wave your hand over the phone to scroll through home screens and photos in your gallery but I found it to be extremely sensitive so sensitive that even if I were to just tilt the phone the wrong way it would scroll so I just kept it turned off the theme app is probably one of my favorite features in color OSS it allows you to change the look of the icons folders wallpaper and lock screen so if you don't like the way color OS looks by default you can change that it's a very well fleshed out app and there's a lot of themes to pick from so you should be able to find at least a few that suits your taste as of this video Oppo hasn't announced a release date just yet but once it does come out it'll be available for $500 uh just keep in mind that Oppo doesn't release their phones in the US so if you're inside the US and you want to pick one up uh you'll have to import it through sites like eBay it does have 3G and LTE connectivity but according to Oppo site there's a couple of different versions with different band supports so you'll want to make sure to grab the one that works best with your carrier and that is going to do it for the Oppo R5 the R5 is beautiful very wellmade and one of the thinnest smartphones in the world but having a phone this thin isn't without its compromises and if you're willing to live with those compromises like a lack of a 3.5 mm headset Jack a dedicated speaker and less than desirable battery life then you will love the R5 but for me personally the compromises are just too great for the R5's good looks to overcome as always guys thank you so much for watching this review if you did enjoy it please give it a thumbs up down below and also subscribe to the channel which is also down below if you haven't already and don't forget to check out our website for more in-depth coverage you already know what it is androidauthority.com because we are your source for all things Android nhey what is going on guys law here from Android authority and apparently the race for the thinnest smartphone in the world is still a thing for some companies but how thin is too thin well this is the Oppo R5 and we're going to find out if it strikes a perfect balance between Form and Function or if it Sleek looks isn't without sacrifices Oppo doesn't have a huge presence in the US but they've certainly been making headlines the last couple of years by pushing boundaries when it comes to smartphone design they're also known for making phones with some awesome build quality and the R5 is no exception with the design of the R5 you're looking at a phone made of very premium materials the front is entirely made of glass the sides are wrapped in a metal frame and the back is also metal with the exception of the plastic inserts on the top and bottom which are most likely there to improve reception in the hand the R5 feels extremely sleek and the metal body gives it that really nice cold feel when you first pick it up in the morning it's also not slippery to hold which you might think it would be because of how much metal there is but because the sides are flat it's really easy to hold on to the biggest story about the R5's design though is how thin it is the R5 comes in at an insanely thin 4.85 mm making it one of the thinnest smartphones if not the thinnest in the world in fact the R5 is so thin the camera protrudes quite a bit from the body this could potentially cause concern with durability for some people because of how exposed it is but so far I haven't had any problems also if you like texting with your phone flat on a table you might be annoyed by how it rocks back and forth taking a tour around the R5 you'll find the power and volume keys on the right which are also made of metal and they're very nice and clicky and perfectly placed where my thumb can easily reach them so no problems there on the bottom is a micro USB port with a microphone and along the top you'll find nothing it's completely blank same story goes with the left side of the phone it's almost entirely blank with the exception of your SIM card slot towards the bottom at this point you're probably wondering where's the 3.5 mm headset Jack and where's the dedicated speaker well the truth is with the R5 being so thin there simply wasn't room to fit a 3.5 M headset Jack or a dedicated speaker this is clearly a conscious decision by Oppo to go with form over function but that doesn't mean listening to audio is not possible if you want listen to music using earbuds you can still do so but you'll have to use the proprietary earbuds included in the Box these proprietary earbuds plug directly into the micro USB port and they work and sound just as if it was plugged into a 3.5 mm headset Jack the biggest downside to this is obviously the fact that you can't use your own earbuds or headphones and while these earbuds aren't going to give you the best audio experience it's still better than nothing at all if you'd like to listen to audio without earbuds you can still do that too because the ear piece on the R5 actually doubles as an external speaker the quality is pretty average and sounds about the same as any other phone with a single speaker but I did find it to be a little on the quiet side on the front of the R5 you're looking at a 5.2 in AMOLED display coming in at 1080 P resolution and the display looks just as good as the rest of the phone we know at this point that Quad HD is the future of smartphone displays but you won't find much to complain about with the R5's display colors are vibrant and saturated viewing angles are great whites look perfectly white and since this is an AMOLED display you're going to get those really deep blacks that you just can't get with an LCD the display is capable of getting really bright which is great for outdoor visibility but I noticed it also gets pretty dim so you don't have to strain your eyes when trying to read at night inside of the Oppo R5 you're going to find a Snapdragon 615 and 2 gigs of RAM if you're not familiar with the Snapdragon 615 this is an octacore 64-bit processor but don't be fooled by the number of cores this is a mid-tier processor from Qualcomm and the R5 is still running on 32-bit software so it's not taking full advantage of the processor at least not yet regardless to that it's still a great performance former apps open quickly animations are smooth and high-end games run fine without any lag or drop frames multitasking is fine too but it is a little slow due to the fact that you have to long press the menu button every time you want to switch between apps but this really has more to do with poor implementation than actual performance the only real problem I've had with the performance is the keyboard if you want to use any other keyboard besides the default keyboard you can't and if you try to switch keyboards it causes the R5 to soft boot every single time this can most likely be fixed with a software update so I won't be too harsh on it but it's still annoying nonetheless taking a closer look at the camera we have a 13 megapix Sony sensor with an LED flash and starting with the camera interface you'll find that it's a very simple clean and intuitive interface there isn't much in terms of manual controls outside of expert mode so taking photos and videos is relatively straightforward the camera settings are tucked away in the bottom left corner and there's a slide out panel on the right for all your different shooting modes with an option to download more than what comes pre-installed with that being said the app can be a little bit cumbersome to use at least when shooting in landscape because not everything rotates to landscape orientation the camera settings for example stay locked in portrait so every time I wanted to change something in the settings I either had to deal with reading everything sideways or flipping the phone back to Portrait the same thing can be said with the beautify mode you'll notice that none of the faces or text rotates the landscape and it just creates for a very inconsistent and frustrating experience when you have to constantly flip the phone back and forth between portrait and landscape on the plus side the camera does have a pretty fast shutter so it's really easy to rapidly fire off some shots in succession but the picture quality isn't so impressive with 13 megapixels the camera is capable of capturing plenty of detail but it has a tendency to over exposed resulting in a lot of overblown highlights indoors is certainly better and you will get a little more color and detail but it definitely takes some practice to get exactly what you're looking for shooting in normal mode will also result in some poor looking low- likee shots with an increase in noise levels and softer details which is very surprising for a lens with an f2.0 aperture but Oppo has included a slow shutter mode that keeps the shutter open a lot longer to pull in more light and it actually works quite well photos are brighter and sharper with a lot less noise but you want to be careful with this feature because if you don't have a steady hand it will result in a blurry photo Ultra HD mode which has been a staple feature for Oppo for a while now also makes a return here on the R5 allowing you to take 50 megapixel photos it's really just a neat software trick that stitches a series of images together but it does work the images definitely are sharper and more detailed than the default 13 megapix photos so it is worth using but I wouldn't recommend using it on anything other than still objects because it does take a little bit of time for the camera camera to process the image the 50 megapixel shots also weigh in at around 10 MB a piece and with only 16 GB on board and no micro SD card expansion you could run out of space before you know it moving on to the battery you're looking at a 2,000 Milah hour battery and in 2014 this is considered an extremely small battery and earlier I mentioned that Oppo made a very conscious decision to go with form over function and the battery life really takes a hit because of this uh this is the first phone that I've used in a very long time where I can literally describe the battery life as being terrible I mean it is awful battery life I'm getting between 10 to 12 hours off the charger and only 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours of screen on time uh maybe 2 and 1/2 hours if I'm lucky uh and don't get me wrong I love the thin and Sleek design of the R5 it's beautiful uh but I would not have minded if the phone was just a little bit thicker with a slightly larger battery uh because I don't know about but battery life is not something that I'd be willing to sacrifice just so I could have a thinner phone the good news is the R5 supports oppo's vuk rapid charging technology meaning you can get a 75% charge in 30 minutes time but I wasn't able to take advantage of it due to the charging brick not being a US charger but considering it's only a 2,000 mAh battery I was still able to get a pretty fast charge by using a 1.5 to 2 amp charger in terms of software the R5 is is running on Android 4.4 Kit Kat with oppo's own color OS it's color oos version 2.0 to be specific and for the most part it hasn't changed much in terms of Aesthetics from previous versions it's still very colorful as the name suggests but the settings menu has now taken on a much darker look with colored icons and the gesture panel which used to be accessible with a swipe down on the top left corner of the screen is now at the bottom I personally like the move to the bottom because it's much easier to get to and I don't have to worry about accidentally swiping it down every time I reach for the notification shade the gesture panel still works just like before with some pre-made gestures for apps like the camera and Flash and you can also create your own gestures for any application you want you can even trigger these gestures with the screen off so you can access your apps much quicker Oppo has also built in tap to wake and while the power button is already really easy to reach the tap to wake is still a handy feature to have especially when it's just sitting on a table and you just want to quickly check the time there's also some very Samsung S features built in like air gestures so you can wave your hand over the phone to scroll through home screens and photos in your gallery but I found it to be extremely sensitive so sensitive that even if I were to just tilt the phone the wrong way it would scroll so I just kept it turned off the theme app is probably one of my favorite features in color OSS it allows you to change the look of the icons folders wallpaper and lock screen so if you don't like the way color OS looks by default you can change that it's a very well fleshed out app and there's a lot of themes to pick from so you should be able to find at least a few that suits your taste as of this video Oppo hasn't announced a release date just yet but once it does come out it'll be available for $500 uh just keep in mind that Oppo doesn't release their phones in the US so if you're inside the US and you want to pick one up uh you'll have to import it through sites like eBay it does have 3G and LTE connectivity but according to Oppo site there's a couple of different versions with different band supports so you'll want to make sure to grab the one that works best with your carrier and that is going to do it for the Oppo R5 the R5 is beautiful very wellmade and one of the thinnest smartphones in the world but having a phone this thin isn't without its compromises and if you're willing to live with those compromises like a lack of a 3.5 mm headset Jack a dedicated speaker and less than desirable battery life then you will love the R5 but for me personally the compromises are just too great for the R5's good looks to overcome as always guys thank you so much for watching this review if you did enjoy it please give it a thumbs up down below and also subscribe to the channel which is also down below if you haven't already and don't forget to check out our website for more in-depth coverage you already know what it is androidauthority.com because we are your source for all things Android n\n"