Oppo F1s review: A second take

Contacts and telephony, messaging

The Oppo F1s and ColorOS V3.0.0i offer a very straight-forward approach to telephony. You get a single app that incorporates the dialer and contacts directory on two separate pages.

The former is about as clean as they come. There is nothing fancy to play around with and even the few options that are available for the interface are in their own sub-menu inside the phone settings. Still, we never found anything vital missing from the app. There is even smart dial out of the box.

The contacts segment of the app follows the same minimalist ideology. Still, available fields and customization options per contact are plentiful, and again, nothing is missing, it just looks slick and clean.

Dialer and contacts

Pretty much the same goes for the Messages app. Even the attachment options look kind of bare-bone.

Messaging

The loudspeaker of the Oppo F1s won't blow you away, but it does appear to be refined. It might not be a major leap forward, but the F1s did manage to pass narrowly into the "Good" grade window.

Still, other company offers like the R7 Plus have proven the Chinese OEM can do even better.

App package

As for pre-loaded apps, we already mentioned that the Oppo F1s comes with all Google apps already on board. The company also brings you a few notable Oppo apps as well. You get a fully-featured file browser, including FTP. There is also a calculator, a sound recorder and a compass, all done with the same minimalistic approach.

File manager • Calculator • Sound recorder • Compass

The Calendar, Clock, and Weather apps all stick to the "less is more" philosophy as well.

Calendar • Clock • Weather

WPS office is also pre-loaded to handle all your document needs.

WPS office

For browsing the web, there is a default browser courtesy of Oppo. It bears a striking visual and functional resemblance to Opera for Android and even has a "Powered by Opera" loading screen. It not only works great but also has the benefit of Opera's signature data-saving technology.

Oppo browser could be Opera in disguise

And, of course, there are default apps for handling video and audio playback as well, but more on that in the multimedia section.