Shortly after its initial launch in India, the F11 Pro is now shipping around across Asia. As the successor to the F9 from seven months ago, the F11 Pro has to fill in the shoes of a relatively young phone. The Chinese company, like any other phone manufacturer, has been updating their models twice a year.

Are the new features and updates enough to convince fans to upgrade? That’s what we try to find out in this hands-on.

It’s got a notch-less 6.5-inch Full HD+ display

OPPO claims a 90.9 percent screen-to-body ratio

There’s a hidden “Rising Camera” module

It houses the selfie camera

On top are the secondary mic and ambient light sensor

The pop-up camera is here, too

The power button on the right has a color accent

Unfortunately, the card tray is now hybrid

On the left is the volume rocker

The contour of the back glass is visible from here

The micro-USB port is still haunting the F-series

At least “jack” is still here

The Thunder Black model has a triple-color gradient design

A first from OPPO and it looks sophisticated

The F11 Pro has a symmetrical camera hump unlike the V15 Pro

Everything is at the center including the fingerprint reader

Best-looking OPPO F-series phone

The OPPO F1 from 2016 looked premium but utilitarian in design. Since then, OPPO has been transforming their F-series phones. It came to a point wherein it copied the iPhone (check out the OPPO F1 Plus and F3), but thankfully, they were able to move past that. The shiny design choices started with the OPPO F7 and it continued to get more refined. With a bit of inspiration from its R17 Pro cousin, the F11 Pro now looks like a mature piece of hardware.

The unit I have here is the Thunder Black, OPPO’s special triple-color gradient design. The phone will also come in Aurora Green which blends two colors, mainly blue and green. While the F11 Pro is pleasing to the eyes, OPPO still manufactures it using plastic materials — at least on the outside. It’s made of high-quality polycarbonate, but the cold touch of metal is nowhere to be felt.

Overall, the design of the F11 Pro deserves two thumbs up. Some might find it to be quite big and hefty, but the curved back makes it feel slimmer and easy on the hands. I just wish OPPO used more premium materials like real glass for the back and aluminum for the frame.

It’s not much faster

The F11 Pro comes in just seven months after the F9. Of course, OPPO has to upgrade the processor to give users a reason to upgrade. From a Helio P60, the F11 Pro now has the Helio P70. It’s a newer and faster chip, but the improvement is not that substantial. So if you think the F11 Pro will give you the performance boost you’ve been wanting, you’ll have to look elsewhere for now.

This doesn’t mean that the F11 Pro is a slouch, though; it comes with Android Pie out of the box with all the latest features. Just like the budget-friendly Realme 3, ColorOS 6 runs the show on top of Android Pie. The customization by ColorOS is starting to look a bit like stock Android, although the overall feel is still iOS-like. Nevertheless, ColorOS 6 is moving in the right direction and it looks really clean, too.

When it comes to gaming, there’s not much to say since the F11 Pro practically has a similar processor with its predecessor. Good thing the Helio P70 (even the P60) is generally okay for gaming, plus ColorOS’ Game Space app helps in maintaining smooth performance. Popular games like PUBG Mobile and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang are optimized for the phone.

What’s really fast about the F11 Pro is its charging speeds. VOOC Flash Charge was first introduced to the series with the F9 and the F11 Pro now has the VOOC Flash Charge 3.0. Using the bundled charger, the F11 Pro’s 4000mAh battery goes from zero to 20 percent in just 15 minutes based on our test.

Shifting the focus to the rear

OPPO has been known to be a selfie expert. They’ve been successful at that, so it’s now time to shift gears. Like its more expensive cousin, the R17 Pro, the F11 Pro is now an impressive low-light shooter.

Equipped with a main 48-megapixel sensor, the F11 Pro is part of the growing group of high-resolution mobile cameras. To make the picture quality better, the lens of the camera has an f/1.8 aperture, while the software uses pixel binning to produce sharper 12-megapixel stills.

Check out these samples:

Those who are fond of taking photos at night will love the new Night mode feature. It’s pretty much like Google’s Night Sight or Huawei’s own Night mode. Multi-frame noise reduction allows users to take brighter and sharper photos in the dark without the need for a tripod.

It’s better to show it in action, so here are a few samples:

Of course, OPPO didn’t forget about selfies. The levitating 16-megapixel front-facing camera captures selfies like it was taken by a primary camera. Also, the beautification feature has been upgraded. You can now manually adjust the effects to your liking, instead of relying on AI.

Aside from the usual AI scene detection, the revamped camera launcher of ColorOS 6 also features Expert mode for manual settings on photos, plus Time-lapse and Slo-mo for video.

Is this your GadgetMatch?

If you have the OPPO F9, the F11 Pro is not a worthy upgrade — unless you really like to have a motorized pop-up selfie camera and the new design. But, if you want to upgrade from a budget phone and still stick with OPPO, the F11 Pro is both a beautiful and capable handset. Those coming from outside the OPPO-sphere might not be convinced, especially because the F11 Pro doesn’t offer a big performance leap.

The focus of the F11 Pro is to offer a good-looking phone with a capable camera. We have some reservations with the phone’s camera performance (it can still be improved through future software updates), but it’s indeed an eye-catching device.

With an asking price of INR 24,990 in India or roughly US$ 355, OPPO could have offered a faster chipset. The motorized pop-up camera might have cost too much, but at least it looks awesome.

SEE ALSO: Vivo V15 Pro hands-on: A mini NEX?