Oppo F19 review – Can the smartphone keep pace with its competition in India’s sub-20K segment?
The Oppo F19 arrived last month as the third smartphone in the F19 series, following the launch of the Oppo F19 Pro (Review) and F19 Pro+ (Review). The vanilla F19 debuted in India’s sub-20K market, which is one of the most competitive in India. The Oppo F19 comes in a single 6GB/128GB variant with a price tag of Rs 18,990. But how does the Oppo F19 fare in a market that is rifled with competition?
In terms of design, the Oppo F19 picks up where its “Pro” counterparts left off. The phone has a sleek design weighing 175 grams and measuring around 7.38mm thick. The F19 opts for a punch-hole camera cutout on the front and a rectangular camera module on the back. The design language is pretty much the same as that of the Oppo F19 Pro. The phone has a plastic back and frame, but the screen is protected by glass.
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The Oppo F19 features a glossy, semi-reflective finish on the back and is offered in Midnight Blue and Prism Black colour options. We received the Midnight Blue option, which was prone to smudges. The finish was a bit of a letdown, considering the phone’s sleek design. Apart from the sleek design, the F19 follows the standard smartphone blueprint, with volume buttons and a SIM tray on the left and a power button on the right. On the bottom, you get a USB Type-C port, a headphone jack, and a speaker grille. The Oppo F19 looks and feels pretty good, but I did have a gripe with this finish. It is worth noting that you also get a pair of earphones in the box, which was a nice addition.
For the display, the Oppo F19 opts for a 6.43-inch FHD+ AMOLED panel. The screen gets quite bright and pumps out vibrant colours, but the refresh rate is limited to 60Hz. The touch response is ramped up to 180Hz in Game Mode, but apart from that, the overall navigation experience feels kind of sluggish. For a sub-20K smartphone, the display is pretty much in line with the competition, unless you compare it to the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max (Review).
When it comes to performance, the Oppo F19 packs a Snapdragon 662 SoC paired with 6GB of RAM. The phone also gets 128GB of internal storage, which is expandable via a microSD card slot. The Oppo F19 managed a single-core score of 309 points and a multi-core score of 1330 points. The Oppo F19 had no issues running Call of Duty: Mobile, although settings had to be toned down to ‘Medium’. Most games run well enough, but not up to the mark. The vanilla F19 certainly fails to deliver in terms of performance, especially considering most of the competition here offers faster MediaTek and Qualcomm processing power.
The Oppo F19 gets a 48 MP primary sensor, a 2 MP depth sensor, and a 2 MP macro unit. On the front, you get a 16 MP selfie camera, which is similar to the one on the F19 Pro and Pro+. Straight off the bat, there are two big disappointments about the camera setup here, first of which is the lack of an ultrawide camera and second, video resolution is limited to 1080p at 30fps.
The main 48 MP camera does a pretty solid job in daylight. The dynamic range, colour accuracy, and saturation are on point. However, the AI mode can be a hit and a miss, resulting in oversaturation of images in some instances. Overall, I was pretty pleased with daytime photography, although there are better options.
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he main 48 MP sensor does tend to struggle in low light, although night mode significantly improves image quality. It does a good job handling noise and maintaining details in stills, although you’ll need at least some external light source for usable results. Here’s a look at some samples.
Additionally, the 16 MP selfie camera on the front does tend to take good selfies in well-lit scenes. While colours looked accurate for the most part, images did seem to appear over sharpened and over exposed at times. While the F19 doesn’t always get edge detection right, portrait shots did retain good colours with deep background blur. I also found it quite hard to get good results on the phone’s 2 MP macro camera. Overall, the Oppo F19’s main camera is quite versatile for getting good shots during the day and night, but the setup does seem to be lacking in the video and ultrawide departments.
Another impressive part of the F19, apart from its sleek design, is the fact that it packs a massive 5,000 mAh battery in this thin and light form factor. The battery can easily deliver a full day of heavy use, while still leaving a bit of battery to take into Day 2. And even if you run out of battery, Oppo has included a 33W fast charging adapter in the box, which can power the phone in a little over an hour.
The Oppo F19 runs on Android 11 with the ColorOS 11 skin on top. ColorOS is not the cleanest of software skins, there’s a fair bit of pre-installed in-house and third-party apps, some of which can be uninstalled. There’s a ton of customisation options, a game mode, and more. Sure, ColorOS can do with some cleaning up, but the user experience is excellent to the point where it can be rated as one of the top third-party software skins for Android.
With a starting price of Rs 18,990, the Oppo F19 is bang on average. The phone looks stunning on the outside, but there’s not a lot going on here on the inside. The camera is pretty good in most scenarios for a sub-20K phone, but the lack of an ultrawide is a major drawback here. Then there’s the chipset, which is getting the job done but cannot keep pace with some of the competition. Battery life is quite impressive, while the display and software are well-above average.
If I had to sum up the Oppo F19 in one statement, I’d say, “The Oppo F19 looks great on the outside but is bang on average on the inside.” When compared with the specs of some other sub-20K phones, the Oppo F19 does tend to come up short. If you are looking for a well-designed phone with average performance and solid battery life, then the Oppo F19 should suffice.
