Oppo Find 5 Review: Not Perfect, But You Should Probably Pay Attention To It Anyway

• Hardware
• Design and build quality
• Display
• Battery life
• Storage, wireless, and call quality
• Audio
• Camera
• Software
• Performance and stability
• UI and UX
• Conclusion

In a world where Samsung and Apple dominate the smartphone sphere, and multi-billion dollar companies like Sony, LG, and Motorola struggle to maintain single-digit market share, it's rather easy to convince yourself that real innovation and excellence costs lots of money. And, as an extension of that thought process, that there's little reason to look outside the current crop of popular phone makers.

But you'd be wrong.

Known mostly in the United States for its Blu-ray players (yes, really), Oppo is a Chinese electronics maker that is easily ignored. I hadn't even heard of their Blu-ray players until last week (and only because I looked them up on Wikipedia).

I knew Oppo for a phone it released last year - the Finder. At the time, it was quite impressive (on paper). But as often happens with phones from smaller manufacturers, I forgot about it almost as soon as I'd heard of it. Sadly, that's just kind of the way the rapidly-evolving smartphone industry works. If you aren't making waves on a quarterly basis, it's difficult to stay relevant.

The Find 5 is their newest phone, and while Oppo has aspirations of international availability, I doubt you'll be seeing too many of these outside of Asia. And, frankly, it's easy to see why - no LTE, no brand recognition, and no carrier distribution agreements (at least in the US). The Find 5 is also rather clearly designed first and foremost with the Chinese market in mind, and hey, that makes sense.

If anything, though, the Find 5 is yet another reason to pay attention to what's happening with smartphones in China, where they're not just displacing old Nokias, but laptops and computers in general.

Oppo Find 5

• Price: Varies by market
• Processor: Quad-core, 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064
• GPU: Adreno 320
• Network compatibility: 3G HSPA+ 21Mbps (quad-band)
• Operating system: Android 4.1.1
• Display: 5.0" IPS LCD 1920x1080 (441 DPI)
• Memory: 2GB RAM / 16GB storage (12GB usable, 32GB model available)
• Cameras: 13MP rear, 1.9MP front
• Battery: 2500mAh, non-removable
• NFC: Yes
• Ports / expandable storage: microUSB / none
• Thickness: 8.9mm
• Weight: 165g

The Good

• Design and build: The Find 5 feels very solid and tightly assembled, if a little on the heavy side. It's also rather nice to look at. It's not rewriting the smartphone design 'book,' but I think it's legitimately sleek and stylish.
• Display: The 1080p display is a winner. Good colors, decent brightness, and of course, eye-melting sharpness.
• Battery life: Generally, battery life was pretty good - the Find 5 got me through the day. If you use your phone a lot, though, your mileage may vary significantly.
• Software tweaks: Oppo has 'borrowed' a lot of the good software features that Samsung and other OEMs have come up with, and the result is a pretty robust set of built-in extras.

The Not So Good

• Fit and finish: While the Find 5 feels very tight and solid, there's some pretty obvious corner-cutting going on. The power / volume buttons are very hard to press, and sit very loosely. The screen scratches rather easily. The phone is also unusually heavy.
• Software issues: The Find 5's software, while feature-rich, just doesn't feel well thought out at times. The iOS-style icon backgrounds are cheesy, look terrible, and cause visual clutter. Apps sometimes crash. Things like battery history are just plain missing. The default lockscreen gesture is nearly unusable.
• Call quality: I have never experienced call quality so awful. I couldn't hear through the earpiece speaker to save my life.
• Signal problems: The Find 5 suffers from a severe case of 'death grip' - hold it wrong (or sometimes, at all), and your bars will drop faster than you can say 'iPhone 4.'
• Battery drain under load: If you're using the phone a lot, the Find 5's battery life quickly goes from 'adequate' to 'where's my charger?' Lax power management and poorly optimized software seem to be the most likely culprits.

Hardware

Design and build quality

To my eyes, the Find 5 looks oddly like something from the old Sony-Ericsson Xperia line. It is extremely minimalistic, with large, sweeping curves and a small contrasting "chin" on an otherwise uniform black glass face. And that's not a bad thing at all - the Find 5 is easily the best-looking smartphone I've seen come out of China. While its design is certainly evocative of the old SE Xperia look, it doesn't feel like a copycat, and has plenty of character of its own to spare. The issue with the design of many phones I've seen from other Chinese manufacturers (Huawei, ZTE, Meizu) is not so much that they are ugly, but that they're extremely boring and generic. The software adds to the Oppo's aesthetic distinctness, as well, though we'll get to that later.