The Oppo N1 knows it will need to fulfill the promises made by the Oppo Find 5. The latter essentially placed the company on the international map but the newcomer does look like a much improved and mature product that will aim even higher. The Find 5 was designed to impress and had an amazing screen a solid foundation for the N1 to build on, and it does not fail. Prior to release, Oppo went over and beyond to promote the upcoming smart phone with regular YouTube teasers and sneak peeks, getting CyanogenMod's top man, Steve Kondik, on board. That collaboration will bear fruit in a limited edition Oppo N1 with a CyanogenMod ROM but the one we are about to have a closer look at runs the company's homebrewed Color OS.
Android manufacturers are keen to have their own take on Android Phone.They have seen Meizu's Flyme OS on a few occasions, Huawei's got Emotion UI and Xiaomi has the MiUi. This is our second encounter with Oppo's Color OS, and it has improved quite a lot from what we remember on the Find 5. A rotating camera design scores big on exclusivity in the current smart phone game, although we cannot discount Nokia's early efforts in the field with the 3250 and N90.
The main focus is undoubtedly on the display and camera but Oppo did well to fill in the details there is an immense battery, ample 2GB of RAM and a solid connectivity set. It is the Snapdragon 600 chipset that looks a bit out of place. Not that you should worry about general speed and responsiveness, but it just does not provide as much in terms of future-proofing as the Snapdragon 800. And it cannot manage 4K video recording, which is a potential eyebrow-raiser in a package that bets so heavily on imaging.