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10 things you must know about the world's thinnest smartphone

By Himanshu Juneja
November 04, 2014 11:22 IST
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The Oppo R5 has bagged the title of the world's thinnest smartphone. We list 10 features that will help you decide if the R5 is meant for you! 

Oppo R5

Measuring just 4.85mm for its thickness, there are little reasons for any doubts either. Earlier this title was claimed by Gionee's Elife S5.1, which is 5.1mm thick.

The new offering from Oppo isn't just claiming a super slim profile. It sports an elegant design and comes with plenty of features as well. Just to put the record straight, the Oppo R5 is far thinner than the 6.9mm-thick iPhone 6 easily as well.

1. The phone weighs pretty light at 155g, and is 4.85mm or 0.19 inches thick in all.

The phone has a macro-arc frame, as Oppo prefers to call it, and has been made up of alloy. Its full dimensions are 148.9 x 74.5 x 4.85mm.

The design is impressive as the chamfered and manually polished frame exudes a premium look and feel. The metal frame has been given angular corners, and the camera module too carries similar styling.

The phone provides a comfortable grip when held.

2. Taking stock of trend from the word go, Oppo's R5 phone comes sporting a AMOLED 5.2-inch screen. It is a full HD 1080p resolution display and with a rich pixel density of 423 ppi, it seems like Oppo wasn't trying to cut corners here.

Oppo promises accurate colours and low reflectivity as well here.

3. The phone is powered by Qualcomm's 64-bit Snapdragon 615 processor. It offers octa-core performance, with a mix of four high and four low power cores, clocked at 2.1-GHz and 1.5-GHz respectively. The phone comes with 2GB of RAM onboard.

4. R5 runs ColorOS 2.0 on top of Android 4.4. It basically carries on from where the ColorOS previously left off. The skin by Oppo has added some more useful features and has tweaking the skin in general to iron out few flaws.

The users can now toggle between gesture panels by swiping it up from the Home button.

Another interesting feature is that as set by default, users can simply draw a 'V' in order to turn the flashlight on. Similarly, drawing a circle launches the camera, and drawing a 'W' launches WeChat.

The ColorOS 2.0 has a better laid out menu, and will provide theming options as well. Both these developments are bound to evoke interest. A better and customised user interface is always looked forward to.

Oppo probably is on the right path, but going by the previous experience, the skinned interface might still not be close to being as powerful or well populated with options as regular Android OS generally is.

5. Phase shifting technology for cooling

Much similar to what the modern PC motherboards come with, Oppo's R5 features a special cooling system by making use of phase shifting materials.

These absorb heat and keep the phone thermally efficient.

Company claims these to be made of metal, resin and other composite materials.

6. The R5 phone comes equipped with a 13-megapixel rear camera. The slim design does creates the limitation and hence the phone isn't able to house the entire camera module, and one finds the camera lens jutting out of the rear panel.

Oppo R5

Thankfully Oppo claims that they have made the outer glass of the lens scratch resistant.

The phone will cause the awkward issue of wobbling when placed on a flat surface.

The camera has been touted to be capable of taking 50MP photos through image stitching. Then there is the feature to alter the focus of the image already taken as well.

The users get a shot at customising the phone by installing the desired plug-ins like Slow Shutter, Professional, HD Picture, Super Macro, GIF mode, Beautify etc.

The phone also comes with a secondary cam in the form of 5MP front facing camera. Expect this one to be taking more than decent selfies.

7. No 3.5mm earphone jack

Going in with an extremely slim profile means that the design doesn't leave room for the standard 3.5mm headphone jack. The users will have to use the bundled micro-USB adapter, or go along with the favourite Bluetooth earphones.

8. In terms of storage, Oppo definitely has disappointed. Bringing only 16GB onboard storage and with no microSD card slot is going to be a buzzkill for many.

As is the general knowledge, the operating system itself takes quite a decent chunk of memory and hence a model with 32GB should have been released as well.

With few apps and games installed here and there, dumping of favourite songs and video files, expect the memory to get filled up pretty soon.

And we haven't even begun talking about captured photographs and videos here.

9. The phone comes with a 2,000mAh battery. While on paper it seems to be decent, it will be strongly advised to carry a charger or a power bank for a heavy user or somebody who likes his fix of mobile gaming.

But as a huge relief, the phone comes with VOOC charging. This allows users to charge up to 75 per cent of battery in just 30 minutes.

Oppo R5

10. Oppo is yet to declare the official date for phone's release, but it is set for a global launch. Owing to different LTE bands, Oppo has decided to release three different models for USA, China and for the rest of the world.

The R5 will be available in three colours: Silver, Grey and Gold.

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Himanshu Juneja
Related News: Oppo, VOOC, LTE, USA, RAM