Oppo F9 Pro Review: VOOC is the star, design merits praise for this 'selfie expert'

Oppo recently added a new member to its F-series family with much-needed upgrades, challenging the rivals in the budget premium segment. Oppo F9 Pro, priced at Rs 23,990, makes a compelling statement in the smartphone industry with several new features. The smartphone went on sale for the first time in India on Friday, and if you've been wondering whether or not this smartphone is your next pit stop, here's a complete review of the F9 Pro.

Oppo F9 Pro marks several firsts for the company and the F-series as well. It is a refreshing change that dives deep into the company's own features bank and picks some of the best ones there are. For starters, Oppo F9 Pro comes with VOOC fast charging, all-new water drop notch design and the dazzling 3D gradient finish makes the smartphone worth checking out.

Before we dive deeper into details of our F9 Pro review, let us get the basics out of the way.

Oppo F9 Pro is on sale on Flipkart, Amazon.in, Paytm Mall, and offline stores. The smartphone features a 6.3-inch Full HD+ display with 19:5:9 aspect ratio, 16MP+2MP rear dual cameras, and a 25MP front snapper for selfies. Under the hood, the F9 Pro comes with a MediaTek Helio P60 oct-core processor, 6GB RAM, 64GB expandable storage, Android 8.1 Oreo-based ColorOS 5.2 and 3,500mAh battery. The smartphone supports all the basic connectivity options, including 4G VoLTE, OTG, 3.5mm headphone jack and the rest.

Now that we've talked about the specs and the phone's availability, let's get to the point of why you should or should you not buy F9 Pro.

The good stuff

One of my favourite features in the Oppo F9 Pro is the VOOC fast charging. The closest match to VOOC is Dash Charge by OnePlus and the OnePlus 6 is priced well over Rs 30,000. So getting a VOOC-enabled smartphone for at least Rs 10,000 cheaper than only other smartphone that offers an equivalent alternative is quite a steal.

Oppo F9 Pro's fast charging is an absolutely ground-breaking tech in its price range. In just 30 minutes, the F9 Pro's battery goes from 20 to 70 percent, which is quite brilliant. While using the F9 Pro, I never felt obligated to think about putting my phone to charge as doing it last minute was never a hassle. After heavily using the F9 Pro the previous night, I would only plug the phone to charge in the morning and by the time I'm ready for work after a quick shower, the phone is charged to set me back for at least 6 hours.

For those who haven't experienced the magic of true fast charging, Oppo delivers it in an affordable package in the F9 Pro. The best part about VOOC is that I would be playing PUBG or catching up on my Netflix shows and none of it will affect the charging speeds. In case you are wondering, there was no heating issue at any given time.

Oppo F9 Pro's fast charging makes up for the decent battery life, courtesy of a 3,500mAh unit. With my average usage, which involved music, a lot of messaging on WhatsApp, social media browsing, emails and Slack, voice calls, the F9 Pro lasted a full day when I had to plug the phone in before the low power mode kicked in. When I added a few sessions of PUBG, the battery levels would drop sooner and I would end up charging the phone sooner than usual.

Overall, I did not have any complaints with the battery of the Oppo F9 Pro, but the VOOC charging at this price point is a boon to those who complain of short battery life on phones.

Moving on, the overall design of the phone will definitely drop jaws. The display is almost bezel-less, with a tiny notch at the top around the front camera and a slightly slim bezel at the base. The display resolution is quite bright and perfect for PUBG and binge-watching Netflix or Amazon Prime. The night mode, nighttime reading mode and black and white mode are perfect for watching in a dark room or simply catching up on your book online. The attention to such tiny details makes the F9 Pro really stand out from its peers.

Flip the phone over and you'll witness a dazzling gradient finish. Even though we've seen many phones with gradient finish, Oppo F9 Pro is unique for its diamond cut design. Even though we have been reviewing the Twilight Blue variant, the Starry Purple (not available yet) is the show-stopper. But the Sunrise Red and Twilight Blue are just as visually appealing.

The attention to detail is not only in the extra features that come with ColorOS 5.2, Oppo also made sure the design reflects it. The gradient finish is also seen on the sides, which is something not seen in other phones.

Oppo is a self-proclaimed "selfie expert" and I noticed some neat improvements to the cameras in the F9 Pro as compared to the predecessors. I wouldn't say the camera is absolutely brilliant, but it can get those selfies ready to share on Instagram with balanced colours and details. Some low-light shots really surprised me, but extremely dark areas would show heavy amounts of grains.

In broad daylight, I was thoroughly impressed by both the cameras. The colours are vivid and natural and the HDR mode adds more details to the images. We tested the portrait and it seemed surprisingly great with accurate outlining and effective blurring of the background. Even the slow-mo on the F9 Pro did a decent job, but it is not the best phone out there for video shooting. Sure, the vivid mode in the videos comes in handy at times, but at the cost of natural colours sometimes.

Take a look at the sample photos shot on the F9 Pro below:

These are the major features that really offer value for the buck, but the F9 Pro also has additional features like an efficient fingerprint scanner, 4G VoLTE-enabled dual SIM card functionality, a dedicated microSD card (which we did not feel the need to use during our one-week review), and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

If you noticed the 6GB RAM on the phone, it does a perfectly good job in keeping all the multi-tasking at ease. There's a sidebar that slides right out when swiped the top right of the display area from the corner (swipe right from the left corner of the display in landscape mode) and all your important apps appear right there. Multitasking couldn't be done easier as the feature came in really handy while watching movies or playing full-screen games.

Room for improvement

Oppo F9 Pro is a complete package but comes with its own sets of limitations. For instance, Oppo has partnered with PUBG for this phone and the game is set to Medium graphics by default, which I found surprising and disappointing. Playing PUBG under medium graphics was seamless, but not a visual treat for someone who likes crisp graphics after playing the same game on OnePlus 6 or Google Pixel 2 XL or even Huawei P20 Pro. So the greed for more graphics forced us to bump up the graphics, but the gameplay did not appear as smooth as in medium setting.

If you're not much into mobile gaming, Oppo F9 Pro shouldn't give you a reason to crib. But I found the low-light photos to be disappointing and Oppo F9 Pro, given its price range, could have done a better job.

Another area where the F9 Pro could have used some improvement is the custom skin on top of Android Oreo. The OS is light and works without any lags, but small things like two-step notification dismissal, confusing keyboard layout and some pre-loaded apps that Oppo could have done without in the F9 Pro could tick off some users. But it's not a deal breaker.

Verdict

Oppo F9 Pro would have easily earned recommendations if Xiaomi Poco F1 hadn't arrived at such a competitive price point. Even then, the phone's VOOC charging and classy design is something worth considering it over other rivals. At Rs 23,990, Oppo F9 Pro is not a bad choice at all, in fact, if your usage doesn't demand a lot of graphics-intense activities then it might be the phone for you. In case you are performance-driven, the Poco F1 is ideal and it also saves a few thousand bucks.

If we have to rate the phone's best features, we'd start with incredible fast charging, charming design, wonderful display, excellent portraits, reliable performance and abundant add-ons in the same order as they've been mentioned.