“Blessed with premium look and feel… is there anything more to OPPO Mirror 5 than meets the eye?”
As various Chinese smartphone brands continue to penetrate our shores, they seem to share a common approach – offer powerful devices at affordable price points. But not all Chinese makers think along the same lines. Meet OPPO…a company known for two things – launching well-designed devices, and pricing them slightly higher than the brand’s counterparts. It recently unveiled the OPPO Mirror 5 as its latest design-centric smartphone offering. And since the phone comes with a price tag of Rs 15,990, it definitely raises our expectations quite a bit. Let’s take a closer look at this new offering from OPPO.
The box comes enclosed in a cardboard sleeve, with a picture of the device on the front. Removing this we see a pure white box with the brand name OPPO written at the centre and on the left side. On opening the case, we find the smartphone wrapped in thin plastic. Under the tray it lies on, you’ll see the user guides, a power adapter, a micro-USB cable and a pair of bundled earphones. As is evident, white is the surely the dominant colour here.
Coming to the handset, the front panel hosts the 5-inch qHD screen in the middle… on top of which lie the 5-megapixel secondary camera, earpiece and the sensors. At the bottom there is a row of non-backlit capacitive buttons. On the back we have an 8-megapixel camera along with the LED flash on top. Beneath it is the OPPO Logo and at the bottom lies a loudspeaker. On the top lies a 3.5mm headphone jack along with an infrared transmitter. The micro-USB port finds place at the bottom, while the power button and volume rocker are respectively placed on right and left side of the device.
If we talk about the design, the shape looks similar to the older iPhones – a rectangular phone with rounded edges and metallic borders. To look more premium the smartphone comes with a metallic spine, which runs along its sides. The removable back is made of plastic, and features a 3D crystal-like pattern on it. Beneath the back cover lie the microSD card slot and dual-SIM slots. The lack of 4G at this price point is definitely a downer.
When you look at the display for the first time, you can’t help but notice some pixelation due to the poor resolution of 540 x 960 pixels. Also, the phone though thin, surely feels a little heavy when held. Overall the design seems nice with the metal rim adding some character to the smartphone.
Unlocking the device you once again get a hint of the iPhone with OPPO’s forked version of Android dubbed ColorOS. Mirror 5 comes with ColorOS 2.1 which is based on Android Lollipop (5.1.1). The device is powered by a 64-bit, 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 410 processor which is snappy enough to handle most tasks with ease. However, the software animations tend to slightly slow down the whole user experience. Also, at this price, an octa-core would have felt more fulfilling. The 2GB RAM allows some room for multitasking. The phone comes bundled with some useful apps like Kingston Office, OPPO’s O-Cloud and even a system maintenance app called Security Centre, among others.
The smartphone also boasts of a variety of software features. It comes with an Eye Protection display mode which tones the screen brightness down for a healthier viewing. Also present are customisable gestures and motion controls. ColorOS also allows you to control software notifications on a per app basis. The remote control app present in the device gives you the ability to control various household appliances directly from your phone via the infrared transmitter.
Coming to the camera, the UI is minimal with advanced features accessible with one tap. Apart from standard features like HDR, beautification mode and panorama, you can also create GIFs. OPPO’s UtraHD mode that generates 24 megapixel images by stitching multiple shots can also be accessed in this menu. The battery life on the phone seems decent on paper, considering a 2,420mAh battery is used to power a 5-inch qHD display.
Overall the phone is surely an eye candy but is priced a little on the higher side considering the specs it has to offer. Also, there are devices around and even below this, which in terms of sheer specifications can give the Mirror 5 a run for its money.
