Oppo F17 Pro Review – Thin And Light, And In Your Budget
With F17 Pro, Oppo brings a super sleek device with 7.48mm thickness but that doesn’t mean there is any cost-cutting or lack of features in this device. The Oppo F17 Pro comes with 6 Cameras, yes! And 4000mAH battery along with a 6.4” AMOLED display. Oppo F17 Pro seems to be a balanced smartphone offering each user something they would like. We have been using the Oppo F17 Pro for a while now as our daily driver and this review will answer your question on how does the Oppo F17 Pro fare in everyday usage and whether you should buy it this festive season.
Watch our Unboxing of The Oppo F17 Pro
Design and Details
Taking design cues from Oppo’s premium Reno4 Pro smartphone, The F15 Pro comes across a good looking device. The Ultra Slim Design with 7.48mm thickness and lightweight (164gms) construction feels very premium in hand. We have multiple devices for review from flagship to budget segment and yet The Oppo F17 Pro’s slim and light design makes it stand out. The Build Quality hasn’t suffered due to the slim construction, the phone feels dense and well built overall.
Rear
The Rear of the F17 Pro is where it's at. Our review unit came in the Magic Blue Color, the back of the phone is finished in a dual-tone gradient of blue. This Satin finished back is amazing to touch and hold and throws up shades of purple when viewed from an angle.
That's, not all though, the squircle quad-camera setup at the back looks like a yet to be launched iPhone. Jokes apart though, this rear design of the Oppo F17 Pro is actually an ice breaker or a conversation starter for sure.
Front
Talking about the business end of the device - the front, The Front of the Oppo F17 Pro is a 6.43 inch FULL HD+ AMOLED display. AMOLED Displays are known for having punchy colors, low battery consumption and great viewing angles, The display here has all these qualities and it’s a treat to use and point to be noted here is that the screen can get really bright as well giving the F17 Pro proper daylight outdoor visibility. As far as front cameras are concerned you get a pill-shaped punch hole at the front, with a 16MP F2.4 sensor. Under Screen fingerprint scanner and face unlock is also available.
The Oppo f17 pro comes with a USB Type-C OI port along with a 3.5mm Jack, Sim Card tray supports two sim cards and a memory card if you want more storage. Bluetooth 5.1 with aptX HD is also available for some high-quality audio streaming.
Under the hood
The Oppo F17 Pro uses the Octa-Core Mediatek Helio P95 SOC (12nm) along with a PowerVR GM9446 GPU. Now Snapdragon’s are preferable but this SOC threw up NO red flags what-so-ever in our usage. With 8GB Ram and 128gb of UFS 2.1 storage, the Oppo F17 Pro had no problems with any applications, games, or multitasking. Even with multiple apps running in the background or heavy gaming the Oppo F17 Pro barely showed any signs of heating. Many GFX intensive games could be played at high graphics settings without any drop in frame rates or lag.
Battery
Even though The Oppo F17 Pro is super slim at 7.43mm it comes with a 4000mAH battery and while there is a lot of talk about Manufacturers like Apple not providing any Charger or cables with their phones in the future, Oppo gives you a 30Watt VOOC Fast charger inside the box. The F17 Pro charges super fast, no problems here, and also holds on the charge pretty well. We consistently ended our day with a 30-40% battery left when using the Oppo F17 Pro as a daily driver.
Network Reception, Call quality
Call Quality on the Oppo F17 Pro has been excellent using a JIO 4G LTE Simcard, The voice quality on both ends of the call has been consistently good, reception quality with JIO network has been reliable. The Wifi reception has been good too, certain parts of my house don’t get proper wifi signals from the router but the Oppo F17 Pro held on to wifi signals at such places. Using the F17 Pro as a hotspot with 3-4 devices connect was also a smooth experience, no heating issues or network slowdown was faced during this exercise. Video calls on WhatsApp, Google Duo, and Instagram worked well, in low light situations the front camera drops frames but the image remains bright although a little soft. Bluetooth 5.1 is available on the Oppo F17 Pro and using headsets and TWS (Oppo ENCO W51) that support aptX HD codec was a pleasurable experience with high-quality audio.
Camera
The Oppo F17 Pro comes with 6 cameras in total, 4 at the back, and 2 in the front, this looks good on paper but in reality, only 3 cameras are really relevant. At the back, you get a 2MP monochrome sensor and a 2MP depth sensor and in the front, you again get a 2MP depth sensor, apart from these three the main camera unit is a 48MP with f1.8 aperture and the other one is an 8MP ultra-wide sensor with f2.4. In the front, you get a 16MP Selfie shooter with F2.4 aperture.
Sample Image - Wide Angle
The main shooter here is very good and you get excellent photography in the daytime and in brightly lit conditions, the wide-angle sensor also captures some stunning pictures in well-lit environments. Both these sensors show a good amount of detail, a decent dynamic range, and neutral colors. In low light, the main sensor takes satisfactory shots but it requires steady hands. The ultra-wide sensor, on the other hand, suffers in low-light conditions and captures noise, resulting in average output.
Sample Images - Front Camera & Rear Camera
For selfie enthusiasts, the front camera works well in all lighting conditions. The second front “Camera” is a supplementary 2MP sensor and works boosting the camera performance in the portrait mode with the subject separation. Like the rear camera, the front camera supports color filters, too, and the dual-camera set-up works well to isolate the subject and the background.
Camera Sample
The 2MP Monochrome and Depth sensors at back come into play with the camera’s filters and bokeh effect in pictures and video. Among other filters, there is an ‘AI Color Portrait’, which retains the colors on the subject (human only) and turns the background into monochrome. The filters turn out to be a good value-addition in the OPPO F17 Pro imaging arsenal.
Android 11 on Oppo V17 Pro
ColorOS 7.2 and Android 11
The Oppo F17 Pro has already been updated to Android 11, a first among the bunch of phones we have for review. User experience is closer to stock android and snappy to use. A lot of optimization and customization options are available as well. Not much of bloatware except Oppo’s own apps which are very transparent about the permissions they require. ColorOS 7.2 is easy and user-friendly for a first-time user while for people who want more from their phones it offers ample customizations and features inside.
Rear Camera Sample, Indoor - Kia Sonet
Negatives
Should you buy it?
Well, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting much when I first unboxed The Oppo F17 Pro, the Slim design I thought would lead to some compromises here and there. But after using the F17 Pro for a while now, I can easily say its one of the few phones that tick all the right boxes. Besides that, the Squircle design quad-camera setup at the back catches a lot of eye balls.
Overall the Oppo F17 Pro is not a perfect smartphone but it works well on almost every parameter. If you are in the market for a Sleek looking smartphone that feels premium and comes with a ton of features, under INR 25K be sure to check out the Oppo F17 Pro during the upcoming festive sales.
