Oppo Find 7 review: Dark horse

Display

Like we touched on earlier, when it comes to the Find 7, the killer feature is obviously the display. It's a 5.5-inch IPS panel of 1440 x 2560px, resulting in around 534ppi. Viewing angles are great, and you can also use the screen with gloves if you turn on the respective setting in the settings menu.

Oppo Find 7 screen

The pixel arrangement is standard RGB with an equal amount of green, red and blue pixels in a line. It's the same pattern that you'll see on the QHD toting LG G3 as well.

The screen contrast is very good - better than what we saw on the G3 - and not too far behind the majority of 1080p flagships like the HTC One (M8) and Sony Xperia Z2.

Sunlight legibility is another story, unfortunately. We saw even worse numbers here than on the Find 7a, and 1.691 rating is poorer than the G3 was able to muster - which were already low to begin with. The factory-installed screen protector may have played a role here, as it's quite the finger-print magnet and reduces sunlight legibility due to its reflectivity. We didn't try to remove it on our review unit, but we would have without a doubt done so if it was a personally purchased device. The Gorilla Glass 3 layer on top should be enough to keep the screen in top shape even without a screen protector film.

Sunlight contrast ratio

• Nokia 808 PureView
  4.698
• Apple iPhone 5
  3.997
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3
  3.997
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  3.549
• Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III
  3.419
• Nokia Lumia 925
  3.402
• Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4
  3.352
• Samsung Omnia W
  3.301
• Samsung Galaxy S
  3.155
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  3.127
• Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom
  3.118
• Nokia N9
  3.069
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  2.970
• Sony Xperia Z1
  2.950
• HTC One S
  2.901
• BlackBerry Q10
  2.856
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  2.832
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  2.801
• BlackBerry Z30
  2.790
• Huawei Ascend P1
  2.655
• Sony Xperia ZR
  2.672
• Nokia Lumia 900
  2.562
• HTC One Max
  2.537
• Nokia Lumia 720
  2.512
• HTC One
  2.504
• Sony Xperia Z
  2.462
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  2.422
• HTC One (M8)
  2.371
• Motorola RAZR i
  2.366
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2.307
• Oppo Find 7a
  2.279
• Apple iPhone 4S
  2.269
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  2.262
• LG Nexus 5
  2.228
• HTC One X
  2.158
• Nokia N8
  2.144
• Oppo Find 5
  2.088
• BlackBerry Z10
  2.051
• Apple iPhone 4
  2.016
• HTC One mini
  2.003
• LG G2
  1.976
• Sony Ericsson Xperia ray
  1.955
• Sony Xperia Z2
  1.944
• Samsung Galaxy Camera
  1.938
• LG G Pro 2
  1.922
• HTC Butterfly
  1.873
• Huawei Ascend P6
  1.865
• LG G3
  1.820
• Sony Xperia V
  1.792
• Sony Xperia U
  1.758
• Meizu MX3
  1.754
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  1.740
• Oppo Find 7
  1.691
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1.691
• HTC One V
  1.685
• BlackBerry Q5
  1.682
• LG Optimus Vu
  1.680
• LG Optimus GJ
  1.666
• HTC Desire V
  1.646
• Samsung Galaxy Ace 3
  1.622
• Sony Xperia Z Ultra
  1.578
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  1.563
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1.552
• LG Optimus 3D
  1.542
• Samsung Galaxy Core LTE
  1.542
• Nokia Asha 302
  1.537
• Sony Xperia M
  1.473
• Nokia Lumia 610
  1.432
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo
  1.393
• Gigabyte GSmart G1355
  1.361
• Samsung Galaxy Grand
  1.321
• HTC Desire C
  1.300
• Nokia Asha 501
  1.270
• LG Optimus L7
  1.269
• LG Optimus L9
  1.227
• Meizu MX
  1.221
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1.203
• Samsung Galaxy Pocket
  1.180
• Sony Xperia tipo
  1.166
• Samsung Galaxy mini 2
  1.114

Battery life

Oppo has bumped the battery on the Find 7 to 3,000mAh, which is a step above the 2,800mAh unit found on the Find 7a. It's a logical step as it's expected that the higher-res screen will need more juice - an expectation that proved to be all too true.

Like the on the LG G3, QHD screens apparently take a lot of power to run, and activities performed with the screen on - like web browsing and watching videos - took a serious toll. 3G talk time and an ample ultimately salvaged the score to be a somewhat acceptable 44 hours, but that's only with one hour of talking, surfing, and watching videos per day.

The Find 7's 4.5Amp charger can fully charge the battery in about an hour, which is a plus. If in a hurry, a few minutes on the charger will give the Find 7 enough juice to last a couple of hours, and a 30 minute charge is enough bring it to 75%. These are officially supplied numbers from Oppo but we found them to hold true in our own testing as well.

For a more detailed breakdown of the Oppo Find 7 battery performance check out our blogpost.

Our proprietary score also includes a standby battery draw test, which is not featured in our battery test scorecard but is calculated in the total endurance rating.

Our battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you want to learn more about it.

Complete connectivity package

The Oppo Find 7 comes jam-packed with connectivity features. It has quad-band GSM, penta-band HSPA and quad-band LTE Cat.4. There's dual-band Wi-Fi b/g/n, DLNA and Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, microUSB 2.0 with USB On-the-go support.

One useful app here is the System update app, which helps you update the phone's software over the air or from a local file (a ZIP saved in the internal memory). The latter is one of the easiest software upgrade utilities we've seen.

There's a Data monitor app preloaded on the Oppo Find 7, which keeps track of data used over Wi-Fi and the carrier network. The app can set limits and also break down the used data by apps.