Oppo N1 hands-on: First look

Unboxing the Oppo N1

We got a chance to unbox the Oppo N1 on the spot - it's packed in a flat box that contains the charger, a microUSB cable, a one-piece headset (in-ear design) and the O-Click remote (this was a nice surprise). They are all bundled in separate little boxes, making the packaging look quite premium.

Unboxing the Oppo N1

Oppo N1 hands-on

The Oppo N1 is a phablet with a 5.9" screen, so it's not small by any means. Nevertheless, it's a complementary partner to the Find 5 like Samsung's Notes are to the Galaxy S phones.

The screen's large diagonal is offset by 1080p resolution, so the pixel density is still fairly high at 373ppi. Oppo is advertising the screen brightness at 450 nits, not all that much for an IPS LCD like the N1's. In comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S4 screen is at around 400 nits and it's an AMOLED.

The Oppo N1 has a massive 5.9" screen

Still, the screen looks pretty bright but it's a dark room here. Side viewing angles are excellent, it's a high-quality screen, no doubt about that. It works with gloves - there's a high-sensitivity mode.

The screen's digitizer is super-sensitive and can be used with gloves (good for cold climates).

The phone is crafted from aluminum in 14 arduous steps that take 20 days to complete. The back has been treated to have a soft touch finish.

The device is fairly large too, measuring 170.7 x 82.6 x 9mm and weighing 213g. For comparison a Galaxy Mega 6.3 measures 167.7 x 88 x 8mm and weighs 199g and that's with a bigger 6.3" screen. On the up side, the N1 packs a generous 3,610mAh battery.

The HTC One looks tiny in comparison to the Oppo N1

One of the most curious features of the Oppo N1 (besides the rotating camera) is O-Touch. That's a 40 x 30mm touch-sensitive area on the back of the phone that can be used to control the UI and apps. This really helps one-handed use as it gives you a handy shortcut for some things and you don't have to reach across the large screen, plus that way you don't cover the content on the screen with your fingers.

Various options of the O-Touch sensor and other gestures

The touchpad on the back is a small patch and you can actually see its borders from a certain angle - they are like printed on the back cover. (some Pantech VEGA phones have a touchpad on the back so it's not exclusive).

There are lots of gestures, for instance you can start the camera from pretty much any screen just by pinching with all three fingers. These multi-finger gestures are built-in and work throughout the UI.

There are also custom DRAWING gestures - for those you need to slide the launchpad open. It's accessible with a slide from the top - its icon is the leftmost in the upper left corner. The launchpad is more like a drawpad where you can draw a gesture with your fingers and it would activate an app of your choice.

On the right-hand side of the Oppo N1 there is a power key and a volume key. These are pretty inconspicuous but they are there. The left side houses the microSIM card slot.

SIM card slot on the right

On the bottom there is the speaker, microUSB with USB OTG support and 3.5mm audio jack.

Speaker, microUSB and 3.5mm audio jack on the bottom

The Oppo N1 is powered by a Snapdragon 600 APQ8064 chipset with four Krait 300 CPU cores clocked at 1.7GHz, 2GB RAM and an Adreno 320 GPU. There will be two versions in terms of storage, 16GB and 32GB, but there's no microSD card.

The Color OS is more like a skin on top, not really an OS of its own. There is the full set of the Google services. Not the Chinese version though. The Chinese version they are selling it on China Unicom and China Mobile. No international carriers yet.

The Color OS is just heavily skinned Android 4.2.2

For the international version they have plans of releasing it with an Easy Recovery that would allow flashing CyanogenMod. They are even thinking of supplying the CyanogenMod ROM files straight with the device. They are also thinking of making an exclusive CyanogenMod version.

The Oppo N1 features NFC connectivity and the company has partnered with two systems in China to provide wireless payment services.

Other connectivity options include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi Display, Bluetooth 4.0 LE and GPS.