Oppo Find 5 Android phone

You've probably never heard of Oppo. The Guangdong-based company is best known for its high-end Blu-ray and Hi-Fi systems. However, Oppo is now attempting to make an impact in the smartphone market with the Find 5. It's a high-end Android phone with an excellent display and solid build quality, but it's let down by questionable ergonomics, a lack of 4G, some odd software quirks and poor battery life.

Update, 22 Aug 2014: Oppo has announced it is launching in the Australian market.

Built like a tank, superb screen

The Oppo Find 5 has a straightforward but solid design. It has a very thin 3.25mm bezel, a black, stainless steel front frame and a 8.9mm thick squared case. We like the fact there's no branding on the front though we wish the phone used on-screen shortcut keys instead of the capacitive menu, home and back keys that sit below the display.

Your first impression of the Find 5 is likely to be something along the lines of "this thing is heavy". At 165g, it's one of the heaviest smartphones on the market. The weight isn't quite as substantial as Nokia's Lumia 920, but it's hefty enough to immediately notice. While the weight gives the Find 5 a solid feel, it also makes the phone top heavy. When using the device single-handedly, we found the Find 5 threatened to slip out of our grasp on more than one occasion.

The Oppo Find 5 feels like a well constructed device overall, but there are a few small issues. The corners of the phone sharpy dig into your fingers, making it uncomfortable to hold. The plastic casing on the back creaks when pressure is applied and feels a little hollow in the centre. The left-sided power/lock screen buttons and the right-sided volume rocker both feel loose and aren't raised enough, so they require a real firm press to activate. They are also positioned a little too high on the sides, so it can be a stretch to touch them when you're holding the phone with one hand.

We do like the chrome plate that surrounds the rear camera and dual-LED flash and the Find 5's speaker is also a positive. While lacking bass during music playback, it produces loud enough volume to ensure you shouldn't miss any notifications. On top you'll find a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and there's a micro-USB port for charging and a microphone on the bottom, both positioned towards the right side. There's also micro-SIM card slot on the left side that needs to be opened with a supplied SIM-eject tool, but there's no room for a microSD card slot to expand the 16GB of internal memory.

The standout feature of the Oppo Find 5 is definitely its 5in screen. The full HD 1080p IPS panel is one of the best displays on the market. It is extremely bright and clear, has excellent viewing angles and displays very crisp text. The full HD resolution of 1080x1920 gives it a huge 441ppi pixel density, one of the highest on the market. There's very little to fault here as this is a high quality screen that will match any other smartphone from more renowned manufacturers.

Android with an Oppo twist

The Oppo Find 5 runs Google's Android 4.1 'Jelly Bean' operating system but is skinned with an Oppo UI overlay. The company has made plenty of changes to the stock Android interface. Some are welcome inclusions but unfortunately not all of them make sense.

The Find 5's UI skin uses very large and colourful icons, but it's not a very attractive look overall. We particularly dislike the clear, square box that's automatically applied to all non-Google apps. While it keeps most icons the same size (a common complaint with stock Android), it detracts from the overall look and feel.

There's plenty of other annoyances, too, though many of them are aesthetic and can therefore be changed by using a third-party launcher. The default lock screen can only be swiped left or right to unlock, there's no way to automatically sort icons in the app drawer, and Oppo's range of widgets use odd shapes that aren't very attractive. If you download a lot of apps, the Find 5's app drawer will quickly become a cluttered mess, though you can at least create folders within the drawer.

There are a few positive touches to the Find 5's software. The notification panel has been shaded in light grey and there's a range of scrollable, customisable quick toggles at the top. We also like the revamped settings menu, which has been grouped into four seperate tabs, even if it's not immediately apparent which settings are in each tab.

There's also a schedule setting that will turn the phone on and off automatically at a set time, a feature that can password protect selected apps, and the ability to double tap the top of the phone to move to the top of the screen in apps like settings, contacts, browser, and the Play Store. The latter is an excellent feature, but there is a slight delay when tapping and we wish it worked in third party apps, too.

Thankfully, the Oppo Find 5 is generally a smooth and fast smartphone. We didn't experience any performance issues during basic use, or even when playing the latest, graphically intense games like Need for Speed Most Wanted or Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour. Scrolling is smooth and apps open and close without any apparent lag or slowdown, so the 1.5GHz Qualcomm APQ8064 quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM is enough to keep things ticking over nicely.

Solid camera, poor battery life

The Oppo Find 5 has a 13-megapixel rear camera with an f/2.2 aperture and a front-facing 1.9-megapixel camera. The camera app has a very straightforward interface and takes reasonably good quality photos. We were impressed with the sharpness and the amount of detail in the images we captured. However, excessive image noise is a prevalent issue and the camera also tends to oversaturate colours, especially outdoors. Overall, still photos aren't significantly better than many other flagship devices on the market.

At the time of its release earlier this year, Oppo claimed that the Find 5 was the world’s first smartphone with hardware supported HDR video recording. While this has since made its way into a number of handsets, including Sony's Xperia Z, it's still an impressive feature. Detail in recorded videos is excellent though there's limited settings available.

The Oppo Find 5 isn't a 4G device, but works on all Australian 3G networks and supports HSPA+ dual channel speeds used Down Under by Telstra. It also comes with NFC connectivity and Oppo sells a range of optional NFC SmartTags with preset actions. The Find 5 doesn't come with a HDMI-out port, but it supports Wi-Fi Display and DLNA technology.

The Oppo Find 5 has a 2500mAh, non-removable, lithium-ion battery but it's performance is less than stellar. Given this isn't a 4G smartphone, we at least expected the battery to last a full day. However, we regularly topped out at between 12 and 14 hours per day off a full charge, most of the time not enough to go a full day without a power injection.

The Oppo Find 5 hasn't officially launched in Australia but can be purchased from online store MobiCity.