OPPO N3 Preview and First Impressions

A successor to the Oppo N1, the Oppo N3 was announced last year in October during an event in Singapore which upgrades mainly focusing on the camera elements as well the chipset and processor. 2GB of RAM remains the same while the storage option gets limited to 32 GB in N3.

Supporting 5.5″ IPS display the resolution of Oppo N3 is 1080p (Full HD 1920 x 1080 pixels) with the pixel density of 403 PPI along with the Gorilla Glass 3. Other features of the N3 smartphone include 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 Quad-Core (MSM8974AA), Adreno 330 GPU, 2 GB of RAM, 32 GB (expandable up to 128GB microSD card).

The fingerprint sensor is also a prominent feature which is introduced in the Oppo N3. Other sensors include Distance sensor, Light sensor, G-sensor, 4D Gyroscope, Touch access.

I recently got a chance to see how Oppo has designed the N3 and how does it differ from N1 in the outfit. The very first impression was for the motorized camera module on the top.

Motorized Rotating Camera Module

It’s however a very nice feature and Oppo has implemented it well with automatic motor that can be programmed in the apps. One out-of-the-box example is the Panorama mode in camera which allows the camera module to rotate automatically to capture images for the panorama. You will not have to move the the whole phone as you usually do to capture panoramas.

As we only had a quick interaction with this device for now. We’ll see how does the 16 megapixels camera on it work perform in detailed review later. As far the specifications say, it can rotate up to 206° and can shoot in several modes including Normal, Ultra-HD, Colorful Night, Beautify, HDR, Panorama, Audio Photo, GIF mode, Double Exposure, Auto Panorama, Super Macro, After Focus, Raw and record 1080p video @ 30 fps, 1080p Slow Motion video recording@ 60 fps.

Selfies on the other hand have a good option to be shot with high resolution camera as the camera rotates to front to work as front-facing camera.

Fingerprint Reader

The fingerprint sensor in Oppo N3 is also an additional feature which now a days keeps coming in mostly high-end Android smartphones. Oppo N3 serves this feature at the back panel of the device. It’s up to you where do you prefer it to be in you smartphone while mostly it’s present in the main home button in various devices.

We have yet to see which things it can perform in N3 and how much protective this feature is.

Skyline Notifications

We have seen notification lights or a little led bulbs on Android smartphone to indicate for incoming notifications. But we have always seen them on the front which goes unusable when you put your phone upside down. In Oppo N3 we have little bit differently.

Oppo refers this thing as the Skyline notifications 2.0 which lightens for the purpose on the inside of hanger-type curved strip hollowed out at the bottom of the device.

Wrap-up

Let me add one more thing here. Oppo N3 has dual-SIM support but one is micro-SIM slot and the other one is nano-SIM slot. I have seen such combination in various other devices anyway.

Oppo N3 runs on Android 4.4 KitKat with their own Color OS on it. We also have not yet tried in depth with the software features so we’ll reserve our opinion here but in quick it looks improved.

I am telling it at last but I don’t want to hide anything. I mostly use to pick my phone up from the desk handling it from top to bottom with my index finger and the thumb. It just slipped away when I picked the Oppo N3 up for the very first time from the desk. If you can’t guess how, gripping from top, camera module rotates very easily when you try to pick it up while from the bottom it gets pushed ahead.

By seeing at the outfits and design, Oppo N3 looks good as well as it feels odd with the curve on the bottom. I’ll wait for a review unit to have it tried as a primary smartphone to see how does it help in real usage for a real good time. You really should come back for this.