Oppo R17 Pro: First impressions of the new OnePlus 6T competitor

Oppo R17 Pro has three rear cameras, in-screen fingerprint sensor, and a beautiful Radiant Mist casing on the back. Is this the new flagship killer?

Oppo R17 Pro features a 6.4-inch Full HD+ display with Corning Gorilla Glass 6 protection. (HT Photo)

Oppo R17 Pro is the latest premium phone in the town. Considered to be the reference device for OnePlus 6T, Oppo R17 Pro easily beats the popular affordable premium phone in India in terms of design, at least.

Featuring a beautiful radiant back, Radiant Mist casing in Oppo's speak, Oppo R17 Pro oozes with premiumness - something which very few smartphones have been able to achieve. Huawei's Mate 20 Pro is another premium phone that comes with such impressive look and feel.

Major trade-off with glass-like finish phones is that they are usually slippery and prone to smudges. Oppo R17 Pro is no exception. During our usage, we needed to regularly wipe the back panel.

Priced at ₹45,990, Oppo R17 Pro comes with a notch and just like many modern Android phones it does not solve any major purpose. The phone does support facial recognition, but so do budget phones nowadays. It's nowhere close to the advanced technology used in Face ID on Apple's iPhone X and above phones. A waterdrop or dewdrop notch on the front does help achieve higher screen aspect ratio.

The 6.4-inch full HD+ display is vivid and bright enough for your regular multimedia consumption. Extra resolution, however, could have given an edge over the likes of Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and other premium devices which thrive on modern screen technologies like Super AMOLED and Retina Display.

We will quickly skip to the sweetest deal you get with Oppo R17 Pro - a triple rear camera setup that consists of 12-megapixel sensor with f/1.5-2.4 aperture, 20-megapixel sensor with f/2.6 aperture, and a 3D DOF depth sensor. During our brief usage, the camera seemed quite impressive. Especially if you're taking some portrait shots, you'll like the built-in modes. 

There's also a night mode. Similar to OnePlus 6T's night mode, it takes own sweet time to collate a high quality result. We took a test shot indoors.

 

The 25-megapixel selfie camera is quite alright. The portrait mode for selfies isn't really accurate at blurring the background. In one of our test shots, it simply washed off the background.  

There's also SuperVooc charging technology that is claimed to charge up to 40% in roughly 10 minutes. Oppo uses unique dual-battery system -- 1850 mAh / 14.24Wh (Typ) plus 1800 mAh / 13.86Wh (Min) - to deliver an optimised battery life. The review unit with us didn't have the India-compatible plug, so we will reserve our comments on that.

Just like OnePlus 6T, it does not have a dedicated slot for fingerprint sensor. Instead, the sensor has been embedded under the display. And unfortunately, just like OnePlus 6T, it's slow and quite inconsistent. But we will investigate this further in our detailed review.

Oppo R17 Pro looks like a promising smartphone. With Snapdragon 710 processor onboard, the phone shouldn't be a slouch.