Oppo R11 preview: First look

Software

Oppo R11 3 runs ColorOS 3.1, based on Android 7.1.1 Nougat. The level of customization runs deep within the ROM, making it rather far off from the standard Google-developed mobile experience. Units sold outside of China still come with the full Google suite, which means plenty of doubled apps provided by both Oppo and Google.

The user interface is the familiar mash-up of Android in functionality and Apple's iOS in looks. There's no app drawer on the default launcher. Instead, every app you install gets dumped onto the homescreen.

The homescreen • no app drawer • the task switcher • settings

The Lockscreen features a constantly changing slideshow of images. The notification shade features only notifications and nothing else. The toggles, brightness bar, music controls, Oppo Quick Share, and various app shortcuts are all placed in a Control Center-like second shade, which you pull up from the bottom. Yes, iOS through and through.

The lockscreen • the lockscreen • notification shade • the control center • Phone Manager

Unlike iOS, however, the UI here is theme-able and there are various themes you can download from the Oppo's Theme store.

Finally, there is a Phone Manager quite similar to what Huawei and Xiaomi have with the same name. It has memory cleaner functions, handles the app permissions and encryption, virus scan, among other things.

Performance

Oppo R11 is the first smartphone to feature the Snapdragon 660 chipset. The new chip by Qualcomm offers a powerful octa-core processor housing the company's custom Kryo 260 cores - four of those cores are ticking at 2.2GHz and the other four at 1.8GHz. Oppo says the new CPU will offer 20% performance bump over the Snapdragon 653 found inside the Oppo F3 Plus.

There is a new Adreno 512 GPU which should offer 30% performance increase over the 510 GPU inside the Snapdragon 653 platform.

Oppo R11 has 4 gigabytes of RAM, while its Plus version will pack 6 gigs.

Indeed, Geekbenching the Oppo R11 revealed a noticeable performance increase when processor tasks are concerned, both multi-core and single-core. It did better than the F3 Plus featuring the previous S653 chip and it even wan't that far from the results by the flagship Snapdragon 835 inside the Mi 6.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 6
  6719
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  6656
• Oppo R11
  5777
• Oppo F3 Plus
  4695
• Oppo F3
  2798

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S8
  1991
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  1929
• Oppo R11
  1596
• Oppo F3 Plus
  1438
• Oppo F3
  764

There is at least 30% jump in the graphics performance as promised, and the Adreno 512 easily takes the spot of our favorite GPU for the upper mid-range class.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 6
  41
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  36
• Sony Xperia XZs
  32
• Huawei P10
  22
• Oppo R11
  15
• Oppo F3 Plus
  10
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  9.1
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  6.2
• Oppo F3
  4.5

GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 6
  25
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  25
• Sony Xperia XZs
  20
• Huawei P10
  14
• Oppo R11
  8.6
• Oppo F3 Plus
  6
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  3.4
• Oppo F3
  2.4

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S8
  42370
• Huawei P10
  39433
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  38541
• Sony Xperia XZs
  33815
• Oppo R11
  20350
• Oppo F3 Plus
  16695
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  14732
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  10446
• Oppo F3
  6148

Finally, the compound tests are usually the most important tells of a smartphone's performance and here the Oppo R11 is behaving close to a flagship-grade. Sure, it isn't as good as the latest Galaxies and Mi 6 with the Snapdragon 835, but it's very close to the still flagship-grade S820 platform and that's quite an achievement for a mid-ranger.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 6
  3547
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  3376
• Huawei P10
  2910
• Oppo R11
  2386
• Sony Xperia XZs (S820)
  2386
• Oppo F3 Plus
  1890
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  1537
• Oppo F3
  1085
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  1050

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 6
  177326
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  174435
• Sony Xperia XZs (S820)
  133574
• Huawei P10
  126629
• Oppo R11
  118677
• Oppo F3 Plus
  91458
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  75051
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  61616
• Oppo F3
  53008

Oppo R11 and its Snapdragon 660 are easily leading the upper mid-range class in terms of performance. Qualcomm did a wonderful job with the 660 chip, while Oppo did the smart thing of adopting it first. This gives Oppo a big edge over the current crop of mid-rangers and makes the R11 an easy pick when performance is concerned.

The S660 is manufactured at the 14nm process and is quite energy-efficient. We are yet to perform our battery life test on the R11, but we can already appreciate how cool the R11 remains on the outside after going through various benchmarks for the better part of an hour.