OPPO Find 5 Review

I like the OPPO Find 5. When I first got it, it was a frustrating, buggy mess of a phone, but over time the firmware has gotten more stable (with much more promising software options currently on the horizon), I’ve gotten used to the random quirks, and the good stuff - the performance, display, and overall quality of the design - have really endeared the phone to me. It’s a nice, solid handset and that’s truly an accomplishment for a relative unknown like OPPO. It’s found itself a decent community of followers with an active enthusiast forum, and the manufacturer support and development for the device seems to closely follow the advice and feedback from owners and testers. That’s pretty rare to see these days, especially the post-launch software support. Maybe I’m still a little bit skittish since my days with LG’s scarce and often extremely late software updates - the Optimus 4X HD, a flagship device in summer 2012, only got the Jelly Bean update three weeks ago - but it’s definitely valuable to note that the Find 5 isn’t a device that hits market and then gets abandoned by OPPO’s firmware engineers. 

As a loyal T-Mobile customer and someone who loathes the American network operator subsidy model, I’m a huge fan of this sales model. I’m a similarly huge fan of how Google is selling their cellular-enabled Nexus devices, and it’s nice to see it start to catch on. I think the next step in this is for handset prices to go down - $500 is still too much, I’d like to see the Find 5 drop by $50-100 to bring it closer to the Nexus 4 from a pricing standpoint. It’s admittedly cheaper than you’ll find the One, SGS4, or Xperia Z selling off-contract, though not by enough to really call the Oppo a low-cost alternative in the vein of the Nexus 4, which is still, eight months later, one of the best values on the smartphone market.

The Find 5 and the Nexus 4 have pretty similar internal hardware, as noted throughout the review. The main benefits you get with the OPPO over the Nexus are the display and the camera - both are solidly better, and the camera particularly is a definite Achilles heel for the Nexus 4. (Does Google have a rule to never ship a Nexus device with a competitive camera? It absolutely mystifies me why this is a knock against every single Nexus handset. But I digress.) The Nexus 4 display wasn’t bad though, it was one of the best 720p panels we saw last year, and overall it feels like a more complete, finished device. Nothing can touch the Nexus 4 from a software standpoint - it will always be the first to get updates and always a completely AOSP experience, plus it’s the easiest to find third party ROMs for. The OPPO on the other hand has some major flaws in the shipping software, and that really can’t be ignored, even if the development picture does look encouraging.

Even priced equally, I’d probably take a Nexus 4 over the Find 5 - let’s say 6 or 7 times out of 10. The camera experience of the Find 5 is way better than the Nexus, and that accounts for the other 3-4 times. Toss in the $150 price difference (though really it’s closer to $110 after you factor in tax and shipping from the Play Store), and the choice is clear. The Nexus is a thinner, lighter, easier to handle phone with similar silicon in addition to software that’s just miles ahead of where OPPO is right now. The price difference on top of that is almost like a bonus. This is obviously less of a factor in Europe and Asia, where the prices are more equivalent (the Nexus 4 is a phenomenal value in the US through the Google Play Store, but less so in the rest of the world), and at that point, it becomes a more interesting question. The OPPO is definitely a more unique device, not something you’ll come across with regularity, but that comes with things that are both good and bad. 

But let’s not take anything away from OPPO here. The hardware is honestly excellent, particularly considering the fact that it came from a small company with little previous awareness. I was very impressed with the design-level polish, and even if the industrial design was inspired by Nokia and Sony, at least OPPO did a good job integrating the various design touches into the Find 5’s design. The ergonomics are still a little questionable, but I’m willing to let it slide. The rest of the hardware package is great, with solid build quality and a top-notch display. From an imaging standpoint, this is basically as good as you’re going to get with a conventional high-resolution sensor. It’s not as premium feeling as devices like the One, Xperia Z, and iPhone 5, but it’s definitely a step above the Galaxy S4 and pretty much on par with the Lumia 920. When you think of hardware being on par with the best of what comes out of an elite design house like Nokia, you realize just how ambitious the Find 5 is from the standpoint of the engineering and development teams. It’s honestly a real accomplishment for the Find 5 to be even mentioned with those devices, and for that OPPO needs to be recognized. I’m excited to see where they can go with their next generation devices, particularly if they can get their software ducks in a row.