Following on from their debut in France with the Find X, OPPO have today announced that their R series flagship product, the R17 Pro (also called RX17 Pro), will be arriving in European markets on November 16th. Pricing is €599, which is around £523, but expect to see it for around £559 in the UK or above.
OPPO tell me that the R17 Pro “focuses on natural creation” with the design. It features a “waterdrop screen” with a gradient colour design which does look rather lovely indeed. It gives the glass surface a matte texture whilst “bringing a hazy sense of light passing through fog” according to OPPO. Basically, it looks pretty when you waggle it around a bit.
Around the back, there’s a two cameras arranged in a row and OPPO tell us that it’ll make the phone a “perfect night shooting handset”. It has an “Ultra Night Mode” featuring an f/1.5 12 megapixel and f/2.4 20 megapixel smart aperture camera setup. The main camera uses the Sony IMX362 sensor with 12 million “dual-core pixels”. There’s OIS (optical image stabilization), an AI camera engine and a smart aperture system. An LED flash is also there should you need it. The rear camera setup also has TOF 3D camera technology.
Here’s an example photo taken with the phone ..
For selfie-fans there’s a 25 megapixel shooter up front.
In terms of specs, this has a massive 6.4″ 19.5:9 AMOLED “Waterdrop” 2340×1080 pixel screen with a 91.5% screen-to-body ratio. It’s covered in Corning Gorilla Glass 6.
Available in either Emerald Green or Radiant Mist, it runs ColorOS 5.2, which is based on Android 8.1. The CPU is a Snapdragon 710 mid-range CPU with an Adreno 616 GPU and either 6GB or 8GB or RAM depending on the model. Inside, 128GB of storage but no microSD.
Interestingly, the battery arrangement seems to be two 1850 mAh units, which means a total of 3700mAh. This is the same setup as the Find X, with the OPPO “SuperVOOC flash charge technology”. The clever tech means that you’ll get a 40% charge in just 10 minutes.
NFC, GPS, dual-band Wi-Fi and .. wait a minute.. an on-screen fingerprint unlock system…
Didn’t we see a Screen Unlock on the OnePlus 6T?
Yes people, the OPPO R17 Pro and the OnePlus 6T are brothers from other mothers. It looks like both handsets share a lot of tech. Both get on-screen fingerprint unlock, both have the same screens, similar storage and RAM (depending on the variant) and designs. However, the camera tech and the CPU is different from what we can make out. The CEO of OnePlus is Pete Lau, who was a vice president at OPPO and worked there for quite some time. He created the OnePlus brand and there’s no doubt that some knowledge / tech / production-line sharing is going on here.
Recently OPPO became the first to connect a regular smartphone to a 5G connection and will be among the first manufacturers to launch 5G phones in 2019.
More on availability when we get it.