OPPO Find 5 Review
by Vivek Gowri on May 29, 2013 6:55 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Qualcomm
- Mobile
- APQ8064
- OPPO Find 5
Obviously, battery life is a huge concern for any high-end Android phone. We’ve been at the point where handsets have to be charged daily unless you’re willing to turn off a lot of things - my father has been running his Galaxy S3 on EDGE just to squeeze two days of runtime out of it and while that’s an extreme case, that’s just where phones are right now. The main difference seems to be that sometimes, you end up with phones that don’t actually get a full day out of the battery. The OPPO is one of those phones.
The Find 5 has a 2500 mAh li-poly battery that has a nominal voltage of 3.8V, giving it a 9.5 watt-hour capacity. That’s pretty much what we’re seeing in high-end handsets these days, slotting in right between the 9.88Wh SGS4 and the 8.74Wh HTC One. Runtime slots in between the Nexus 4 and the Droid DNA, nearly exactly where the Galaxy S3 was and not far off the S4, but well behind the comparatively stellar battery life of the One.
That’s not too bad, but it’s important to note that the battery life has improved significantly with newer firmware revisions. My first battery life tests with the Find 5 were in the 3.5-4 hour range, numbers that I honestly didn’t even think were possible. My first reaction was that I had set up the test wrong or that the phone had shut off partway through the test with battery still remaining. Subsequent revisions have improved that, and the ~6 hours of battery life we’re seeing now is much more in line with what I had originally expected. In the process, I had the Find 5 die on me during the day more often than almost any phone that I can remember. It’s more reasonable now, but battery life still isn’t something I would call good. Tolerable, more like.
OPPO ships the Find 5 with a 5V, 1A charger that’s pretty small for a device with a battery this large. It takes 5:31 to charge fully, and I really think that the output of OEM charging bricks needs to increase to match the near-doubling in battery capacity over the last three years. I’ve been charging my phones with more powerful tablet power bricks for as long as I can remember, because that’s the only way to get reasonable charging times with the devices that have 10Wh of battery capacity onboard.
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Zandros - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
*side, dammit. Couldn't we edit these things before? :pjabber - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
Yes I'm left handed to write (but actually right handed for many other things) so for me having the phone in my right hand whilst I'm writing stuff down means the power button is perfect for my thumb.Having the button on the right side of the phone is perfect for lefties IMO.
Or maybe I just grew up in a working age when we used to make a lot of handwritten notes while talking on the phone.
Reikon - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
I'm right handed and almost always use my phone in my left hand to free up my right hand. It's also easier for one handed use since the menu/back button is usually on the top left, which I can easily press with my left thumb instead of stretching to reach it if held in my right hand.Panzerknacker - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Strange, your findings in the review are quite different from other reviews:http://tweakers.net/reviews/3017/4/oppo-find-5-sch...
This is a review from the most reliable source that I know, they say the display is the best of all phones on the market today, they get completely different numbers than you guys.
As far as the button layout, I'm left handed and this phone has the best layout I have ever seen, just perfect. Also imo the looks are the best of any phone.
VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Just based on the numbers, their panel looks slightly better than mine, but overall - good contrast ratio, neutral colour temperature, decently calibrated - how is that any different from what I said?mayankleoboy1 - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Cant see any benchmarks on the CPU benchmarks page.tipoo - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Which he explains on the CPU benchmarks page.VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Oh, no, I just straight up forgot to put them there - that was a big miss by me, sorry guys.VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Wait, no I didn't, they're there. Why aren't you seeing the benchmarks?tipoo - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
Huh, now I see them. I assumed since you said they were so similar you just didn't post them.