Oppo R11s: The iClone you know and love, but not quite the one you deserve
Pros
- Better display than base R11
- Great performance for the money
Cons
- Face unlock is weaker than competition
- Looks dated when compared to iPhone X
Bottom Line
As an alternative to the iPhone 8, the R11s is easy to recommend - the performance is good, the camera rig is nice, it’s got a compelling build quality and slick feel-factor.
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Price
$ 659.00 (AUD)
Design
While incremental refreshes like the R11s are a pretty common staple of Oppo’s product line-up, the company doesn’t usually tinker with the form-factor side of things too much. This isn’t the case with the R11s. Sure, at a glance, it does take a few cues from its predecessor. The exterior of the phone is still a slick metallic unibody with a gentle matte finish. However, beyond that, the front-side of the device has undergone a pretty drastic rework.
The R11s sees Oppo make the same leap that much of their competition did in 2017: the leap to the 18:9 aspect ratio. This isn’t a hugely surprisingly one. Still, it does serve to see the R11s break from tradition in a way that might not exactly thrill the company’s core audience.
Though the reasons behind it are sound, the absence of any sort of notch at the top of the screen makes the R11s feel much closer to an Android device than the brand’s usual aspirations. Regardless, in practice, the display is both a delight to look at, and to use.
Flipping focus over to the other side, the other major difference between this and the R11 becomes apparent. Where the R11 featured a fingerprint sensor at the bottom of the front-facing display, the taller display on the R11s has seen the fingerprint sensor relocated to the backside of the device. Despite the slightly inconvenient location (your mileage may vary here, but I’ve always found rear-mounted fingerprint sensors frustratingly finicky even in their best implementations), this sensor works fine enough and - as per Oppo’s usual strengths in this area - provides a quick and easy way to unlock the device.
Alternatively, you can also log in using facial identification - another addition to the Oppo formula stolen right from the iPhone X’s arsenal. In practice, Oppo’s take on facial-recognition unlocking works but doesn’t quite feel confident enough to recommend over the other options just yet. It’s not as secure as Apple’s FaceID system, nor, in our experience, did it feel as fast and responsive as the facial identification found in the Samsung Note 8 or LG V30+. It’s also less reliable in low-light situations than you’d like.
The only other things to note about the design of the R11s are the less-noticeable, under the hood, improvements it makes over last year’s R11. It’s got the same processor and memory, but features a slightly bigger battery.
Unlike Apple’s latest, the R11s does see the headphone jack continue to endure - which is sure to thrill wireless holdouts. Unfortunately, there's no waterproofing or durability ratings - which have become increasingly common in the mid-tier market in recent months.
Performance
In terms of performance, the Oppo R11s delivers more-or-less what you’d expect from an Oppo phone. For the uninitiated, this means fast-boot times, responsive multitasking and just all-around snappy performance. For Oppo, this isn’t too tall of a feat - what you’re getting here is well in line with what you generally get out of Android phones above the $600 mark.
It isn’t the cleanest flavor of Android around but the ColorOS skin does a good job of hiding the seams and making for a consistently smooth experience that fans of Apple’s iOS will probably find it to be a good fit. Unfortunately, if prefer a little bit more tinkering and access to some of new features in Android Oreo, you might come away a little bit disappointed with the software side of the R11s. Like the R11, it’s still running Nougat - which means you can’t use the extra screen space afforded by the 18:9 aspect-ratio display to run compatible apps in split-screen mode.
Updated 19th February: After several more weeks with the R11s, there are two other bothersome pain points to note when it comes to the performance of the R11s. the autocorrect capabilities of ColorOS fall short of where they should be. A frustrating amount of the time, it's either inaccurate or just plain unhelpful. The other issue I've encountered with further use is the audio output of the speaker when watching video content on the R11s. With the Youtube app specifically, It constantly fell of sync with what was on the screen, resulting in a very off-putting experience.
In terms of benchmarks, the R11s held its own across most fronts. Most users are probably going to be perfectly satisfied with the level of performance here. However, as seen below, the Snapdragon 660 in the device just can’t quite keep up with the rest of the flagship crowd.
Next Page: Camera, Battery Life and The Bottom Line
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