Oppo F17 Pro Review: Sleek, lightweight and powerful enough for your everyday use

Smartphones these days tend to come loaded with top-of-the-line specifications in order to grab the attention of the consumers. Though most of them are relatively-light on your wallet, they do feel heavy when in hand or in your pocket.

While we are getting used to holding sub-200 gram plastic and glass slabs, there is a niche audience out there that prefers a thin, lightweight smartphone with some compromises here and there. For such an audience, one of the options is the Oppo F17 Pro.

Oppo F17 Pro’s bet is its thin and light form factor. The phone does not have top specs that competitors provide, but during our time with the device, it felt just more than enough. The phone weighs just 164 grams, which is the same as the Oppo Reno4 Pro (first impressions). It is also only 7.48mm thin, which Oppo claims is the “sleekest phone of 2020”.

But a thin and light form factor should not be the only deciding factor for making your purchase decision as performance too is an important parameter to judge the user experience. We have used the smartphone for nearly a week, and before we get into our Oppo F17 Pro review, let’s take a look at its price and specifications.

Oppo F17 Pro price and specifications:

Oppo F17 review

Design and display

We are going to start straight with the USP of the Oppo F17 Pro - thin and lightweight. Oppo has managed to keep the F17 Pro’s thickness limited to 7.48mm and weight at just 164 grams. That, coupled with a curved plastic back, has aided in offering a firm grip. 

The rear panel of our Magic Blue Oppo F17 Pro review unit provided by the company has a mix of matte and glossy texture, which Oppo calls the "Shiny Matte" finish. While the matte texture helps keep fingerprints at bay, the shiny coating throws different shades of Blue and Purple when you look at the phone from different angles.

At the front, Oppo F17 Pro has a 6.43-inch Full HD+ display with a 20:9 aspect ratio. At 800 nits of peak brightness, the display is bright and we did not face any issues even in outdoor conditions during our Oppo F17 Pro review period. The colours on the AMOLED screen are vibrant and we did not notice any major off-axis colour shift either.

The use of an AMOLED screen also allows the Oppo F17 Pro to sport an in-display fingerprint scanner. In our testing, we found the in-display fingerprint scanner to be fairly accurate in detecting the fingerprint and unlocking the device. It is not as fast as any of the side-mounted fingerprint scanners though. There's also the choice of using face unlock as a faster but less-secure alternative.

In case you are wondering, Oppo F17 Pro does not have a high refresh rate display. 

If you are looking for a smartphone with an AMOLED high refresh rate display, consider reading our OnePlus Nord Review. You can also read our Poco X2 review. The smartphone offers a 120Hz refresh rate LCD.

Performance 

Oppo F17 Pro features a MediaTek Helio P95 processor, which may not be the most powerful processor in the segment but is powerful enough to get the job done. Our day-to-day tasks these days involved scrolling through social media feeds, attending webinars, playing some games and streaming content.

Performing basic tasks on the Oppo F17 Pro is easy-peasy. While playing the now-banned game PUBG for our Oppo F17 Pro First Impressions, we did come across some lag once during our gameplay session. After the ban, we then switched to other games like Call of Duty Mobile and Asphalt 8. To our surprise, there was no lag and we had a smooth gaming experience. However, if you are a gamer, consider reading our Realme X3 SuperZoom review or Redmi K20 Pro Review. Both the smartphones feature Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 series chipsets that offer a much better gaming experience.

With Color OS 7.2’s App Lock feature, apps too can be locked and stopped from freezing/ shutting down in the background. Not that we experienced something like that, as the 8GB RAM is more than enough buffer memory to keep apps open in the background. The Android 10-based skin from Oppo comes loaded with minimum yet some popular bloatware apps like Amazon, Facebook, etc. that are widely used by many.

When it comes to battery life, Oppo F17 Pro’s 4,000 mAh battery can easily last a day. The company has bundled a 30W fast charger that charges the device completely within an hour. Oppo has included a bunch of battery charging safety features like overnight charging mode that optimises its battery charging at night, so it can reach 100 percent of battery exactly in the morning at your wake time.

When it comes to the audio experience, the mono speaker at the bottom edge is not the loudest and we would recommend using 3.5mm earphones or wireless earbuds for playing games. If you consume a lot of content on your smartphone and if the combination of an AMOLED display plus stereo speakers is your priority, consider reading our Realme 7 Pro review. The smartphone under Rs 20,000 also offers a faster 65W Super DART fast charging solution, which is based on Oppo’s SuperVOOC Flash charge tech.

Camera

Oppo F17 Pro features a total of six camera sensors - four on the back and two inside the punch-hole cutout on the display. The square-shaped rear camera module houses a 48MP lens, an 8MP ultrawide camera and two 2MP sensors.

The camera UI is quite simple and easy to use. You get various modes like Photo, Video, Night, Portrait mode, etc above the shutter mode. Above the viewfinder are options for HDR, Dazzle Mode, 48MP mode, etc.

You might have noticed that there is no macro or telephoto lens. For a smartphone carrying a Rs 22,990 price tag, we would have expected it to carry either lens if not both. 

The 48MP main camera shoots 12MP pixel-binned shots that are quite detailed. Colours are not oversaturated and the dynamic range too is pretty good. Even the contrast levels were maintained as the highlights and shadows were well exposed in daylight shots.

It is during the night when the camera disappoints. Oppo F17 Pro has a dedicated night mode that takes a couple of seconds to shoot and 3-4 seconds more to process an image. The Night mode photos increase the exposure but also introduces a lot of noise.

The 8MP ultra-wide camera takes decent photos and maintains the same colour temperature as the main camera. Although not as detailed and sharp, the ultrawide images are well saturated and can be used for social media uploads.

For selfies, you get a 16MP front camera and a 2MP depth sensor. The camera does smoothen the skin a bit, even when the beauty mode is turned off. You also get a slightly fairer skin tone. The judgement on this can be subjective as some people prefer beauty mode photos and do not mind a smooth skin selfie. Edge detection for portrait mode is quite accurate in most cases and the bokeh doesn’t look artificial either. However, there is room for improvement as the software does tend to blur out the ears or strands of hair at times.

Click on the link below and take a look at these sample photos clicked on our Oppo F17 Pro review unit.

Verdict

Coming to the main question - Should you buy Oppo F17 Pro for Rs 22,990? As mentioned earlier, the USP of Oppo F17 Pro is its thin and light form factor. So if you are on a lookout for such a phone, go ahead with the Oppo F17 Pro. The smartphone may not pack the best of specifications that others offer in its segment but is more than capable enough to get the job done without breaking a sweat. 

The negatives here include the camera’s low-light performance and the mono-speaker. We recommend considering the Realme 7 Pro (review) if you want an AMOLED display and a stereo-speaker setup. For an overall better camera and gaming experience, consider reading our Redmi K20 Pro review, the more-expensive Realme X3 SuperZoom review, or the Poco X2 (review).

The Oppo F17 Pro is, by no means, a bad phone. It may not be the best of smartphones in its segment, but it is the only smartphone that offers a great in-hand experience with its light featherweight design.