Introduction

Oppo is perhaps better known for its Blu-Ray players, but if the Find 5 fails to place it on the map as a phone maker, we don't know what will. The 5" 1080p screen will sure have plenty of eyeballs on it and its 441ppi density will certainly impress most, but the Find 5 has flagship specs almost all the way through - and we mean 2013 flagships.



Oppo Find 5 official images

The Oppo Find 5 is one of a series of Android phones we'll see this year to pack a 5" screen of 1080p resolution. Just like them, it has a powerful quad-core processor and a robust GPU - and neither is this a whim but a necessity (every frame on the screen has more than double the number of pixels of a 720p screen).

Oppo has taken a page from the Sony playbook and equipped the Find 5 with a 13MP camera capable of HDR video. The camera also jumps on the HFR bandwagon with a 120fps mode (though only at VGA resolution).

The Find 5 is certainly an ambitious project and on paper it's pretty well executed - there's skill and character aplenty, though not without a few issues.

Key features

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support

3G with HSPA

5" 16M-color 1080p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with 441ppi pixel density

Android OS v4.1.1 Jelly Bean with custom UI

Quad-core 1.5 GHz Krait CPU, 2 GB RAM, Adreno 320 GPU; Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset

13 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geo-tagging, HDR

1080p video recording @ 30fps with HDR mode, continuous autofocus and stereo sound; 120fps HFR mode

1.9 MP front-facing camera, 720p video recording

Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA; Wireless TV out

GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS

16/32GB of built-in storage

MHL-enabled microUSB port

Bluetooth v4.0

NFC; two NFC stickers in the box

Standard 3.5 mm audio jack; Dolby Mobile sound enhancement

Voice dialing

Accelerometer and proximity sensor

Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic

2,500mAh battery

Main disadvantage

Dead pixels on some early units

No LTE

No microSD card slot

Non user-replaceable battery

13MP camera hardly any better than competitors' 8MP units

The missing LTE is not quite the deal-breaker just yet, but it's a part of the future-proofing of a 2013 flagship. Non-expandable storage is another issue for a phone boasting a massive Full-HD screen and Dolby Mobile. If you get the 16GB version, you risk running short and quite quickly at that.

On the up side, Oppo has done a very good job of the design - the Find 5 looks like it belongs to the Xperia NXT line (we mean that in a good way) and the steel frame gives the phone a sturdy feel. It is fairly thin at 8.9mm and the curved back makes it feel thinner still. It's got proper battery backup too - 2,500mAh is more than what many direct rivals typically have.



Oppo Find 5 at our office

It may have come out of left field, but the Oppo Find 5 looks quite the player. Head over to the next page where the new signing is in for a physical.