OPPO F17 Pro Review: Gorgeous Design, Decent Performance, But Average Cameras

Phones in the OPPO F series are known for their attractive design and decent hardware specs. The OPPO F17 Pro is also a part of the series and features a sleek form factor. With a starting price of Rs. 22,990, the OPPO F17 Pro certainly faces lots of competition from Xiaomi, Realme, Samsung, and more. Let’s see if the handset is attractive enough to compete in the segment on our OPPO F17 Pro review. At the moment, the OPPO F17 Pro 2020 price in India starts at Rs. 21,490.

OPPO F17 Pro Review: Design

I really really like the slim form factor of the OPPO F17 Pro when holding the phone in my hands. Its frosted glass back panel also looks stunning with a two-tone shine. The handset has a thickness of only 7.48mm and a weight of 164g. In comparison, one of its competitors, the Redmi K20 Pro, has a thickness of 8.8 mm and weighs 191g. 

OPPO F17 Pro Review: Display

The F17 Pro features a 6.43” display with Full-HD+ (2,400 x 1,080p) resolution and a pixel density of 408ppi. OPPO uses a Super AMOLED panel on this phone with a 60Hz refresh rate. At a time where many other phone makers are using high refresh rate displays on their phones, this might make it less appealing to some users, especially those that love gaming.

Other than the regular refresh rate, the screen performs pretty well. With the Super AMOLED panel, it has a high brightness and excellent viewing angles. There wasn’t any color tingeing associated with AMOLED panels when I used the phone as well, or I was too minor for me to notice this. The pill-shaped punch-hole for dual selfie cameras bothered me a bit, but it is really up to users’ personal experience. None of my friends really care much about the punch-hole style.

The lack of Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support could be sad news for those who watch lots of movies on their phones. This is certainly a weak point of the Vivo V17 Pro as you can easily find phones under Rs. 18,000 with HDR support.

OPPO F17 Pro Review: Performance

Under the hood, the F17 Pro carries an Helio P95 along with 8GB RAM. Don’t underestimate the MediaTek chipset as this Helio P95 is on par with the Snapdragon 730G in terms of benchmark scores. In real-world usage, it also didn’t disappoint me. There were still some stutters when I switched between apps, especially during my game sessions. Yes, you will notice that the scrolling on this phone isn’t as fluid as one with a 90Hz and higher screen. 

As for gaming performance, the F17 Pro isn’t the best for its price point but is enough to handle Call of Duty: Mobile at high graphics settings. I was pretty surprised about the smooth gameplay I got as the phone’s GFXBench benchmark score was pretty low. Overall, you will be able to comfortably play popular games like COD Mobile, PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, and more. However, it will certainly not be comparable to the performance of high-end phones. The device does get quite warm when gaming for a while, but won’t get too hot either. When I shot some photos on sunny days, I could feel the phone get hot after a long photo session. 

OPPO F17 Pro Review: Cameras

OPPO is pretty well known for delivering great cameras on its phones, but it doesn’t seem to do a good job on the OPPO F17 Pro. The device gets a total of six cameras, two of which are on the front and the other four are placed at the back. The rear setup includes a 48MP main sensor, an 8MP ultra-wide lens, a 2MP portrait camera, and a 2MP macro camera. Meanwhile, the front setup consists of a 16MP main camera and a 2MP secondary lens. 

When taking photos in daylight, the results I got were pretty amazing. The photos have great details and the primary camera of the F17 Pro autofocused on the subjects pretty quickly. Those photos had natural colors and a good dynamic range. The wide-range camera also did its job well with slightly lower details. In addition, the cameras are capable of zooming up to 10X, but the outcomes were only acceptable as they looked pretty grainy.

Here are some of the camera samples:

OPPO F17 Pro Review: Battery

The device is packed with a 30W fast charger, supporting OPPO’s VOOC Flash Charge 4.0 technology. The charging speed is quite impressive as it is capable of charging the handset from 0 to 100 percent in just around one hour. Not just that, you can spend only around 25 minutes to refill its battery from 0 to 50 percent. The charging speed slows down as it gets closer to 100 percent. 

In terms of battery life, the device could last around 1.5 days for a regular user, obviously without gaming. If you spend 30 minutes on playing gaming, it will probably require 12 percent of battery. Therefore, if you usually spend several hours playing games a day, you will probably end up having to charge the phone at 10 percent or less at night. There are ‘Super Power Saving Mode’ and ‘Power Saving Mode’ in the Settings menu in case you wave to save battery.