OPPO Reno5 F preview; unboxing and first look

OPPO Reno5 F is gradually gaining popularity and currently penetrating from countries to countries. Gladly, this is first OPPO device to officially debut first in an African country. Beginning from Kenya, the Reno5 F was first introduced on the 22nd of February, but as at this article, the device has made it to few other countries, with Nigeria being the most recent of them.

The Reno5 F has been mentioned in a handful of articles on DroidAfrica, and going beyond just spec listing or news coverage, today we are taking a closer look on the Reno5 F. In the preview, we’ll be unboxing the Reno 5F, and running through a quick rundown hands and initial impression of the device. There is also a less than perfect unboxing video we just uploaded on YouTube, and if you wish to watch and listen instead of reading, you can preview the video below.

Now for those who watch the above video, or if you’ve been following this site for a while, you would sure know that our videos are still work in progress. If you noticed, the video above was my first live recorded video (that is a video without a separate script, and even though the video was still terrible, I was still able to record, edit and publish it under 24-hours. Videos with separate scripts usually take me minimum of three days. So for now, I’ll be focusing more on live recording as it requires less time and effort than the other way round.

OPPO Reno5 F box content

As for the Reno5 F, the images above pretty much summarizes all the content in the box, aside from the paper works of course. The box content includes:

• The Reno5 F
• 30W VOOC fast charger
• USB Type-C
• TPU Silicon case
• wired earpiece
• SIM ejector pin
• The paper works

Now, let picture speaks

That is the Reno5 and it 6.43-inches Full-HD+ screen with a 32MP selfie camera housed in the notch upfront. The thin bezels on the top and the left and right hand-side make the device feels even more compact and the AMOLED panel is very sharp and bright with almost flagship level color saturation. Using the device under direct sunlight is not a problem as well because the brightness can go as high as 800 nit, but to the detriment of the battery power.

The device has a well separated right and left button. Most Android phones has their power button and volume rockers on the right hand side. The Reno5 F only maintains the power button on the right side, separating the volume rocker to the left side of the device, just below the card slots.

The card slot can house dual Nano-SIM along with a dedicated SD-card up to 256GB.

Nothing is on the head of the phone except the secondary microphone. But in the basement, there is a 3.5mm audio jack, the main micro phone, USB-C port and the loud speaker grill.

A bulging camera module seat on the rear, and this has 4 sensors comprising of a 48MP lens with  f/1.7 aperture; 8MP ultra wide with 119° FoV, and a dual 2MP depth and macro lens with f/2.4 aperture each. Check camera samples of the Reno5 F below.

OPPO Reno5 F camera Samples

Since this is a quick unboxing and review, most of the images above were taken in-house and in-doors. I’ll try out outdoor camera performance in the full review.

My initial impression of the Reno5 F

The Reno5 F is around N130,000 in Nigeria, Ksh. 31,999 in Kenya and around $300 Dollars. At this price, you are getting 8GB RAM, 128GB ROM and Helio P95 CPU from MediaTek. This combination made the device to run very smooth, at least SO FAR!.

The bulging camera module and the glossy finger magnetic body isn’t impressive to me, but the overall design language and the OS that power this guys is. Talking about OS, the Reno5 F is running Android 11 with OPPO’s ColorOS v11.1. This OS in combination with the above CPU hardware help the device to attain respectable stats on benchmark apps. See the performance of the Reno 5F on Antutu and GeekBench in the images below.

To be sincere, this is not the best score I’ve seen in a smartphone of this price point lately, but as most of you knows, benchmarking result does not always translate to real life performance, sometimes, real life performance could be better than benchmark results, and other times, it could be worse, and the major determinant for this OS craftmanship and optimizations. But we shall find out this and many more in our full review of OPPO Reno5 F coming up soon. If you are reading this, please do let us know what you want to see in the full review.