Oppo R17 Pro is an All-Round Premium Device [Review]

Oppo just recently launched a new phone in their R-series here in Pakistan, the R17 Pro.
We have already unboxed the R17 Pro so now it’s time to review the feature packed phone.

Does it justify its price tag of Rs. 1,09,000/- with a processor that is found in sub-Rs. 50,000 phones? Does the camera hold up to the claims of “Seizing the Night”?
Let’s find out.

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Design and Display

The thing that stands out the most about the R17 Pro is its design. It reminded us of the Find X since that is the only other phone by Oppo that feels this premium.
The front and back both feature glass while it also gets an additional layer of protection thanks to Corning Gorilla Glass 6.
Sandwiched between the two layers of glass is metal and combining all these 3 layers together gives the R17 Pro a great feel in your hands and it also has a nice weight to it.
On the bottom, you have a USB Type C port, loudspeaker, and SIM slot. The right side has the power button while you’ll find the volume rocker on the left side of the phone. Unfortunately, there’s no 3.5mm headphone jack available.
As for the display of the phone, there’s a 6.4-inch AMOLED panel with a Full HD+ resolution (1080 x 2340).
With a waterdrop notch on top, the aspect ratio comes in at 19.5:9. The display is plenty bright and the screen is easily visible in direct sunlight.
Being an AMOLED panel, the colors are vibrant and saturated with deep blacks.

Performance

The Oppo R17 Pro comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 processor backed by 8GB of RAM and 128GB internal storage. Although benchmarks put it below other smartphones with the same processor, the R17 Pro still performed great.
Opening and closing applications was a breeze on this phone and so was moving through the UI. The loading time of applications was decent as well and their overall performance was satisfactory.
The gaming performance on the R17 Pro also did not disappoint. Heavy and demanding titles like Asphalt 9, PUBG also ran great and the FPS were high as well.
The 8 GB RAM on board also made sure that multitasking was a breeze, although much of it was used by Color OS itself. You can open up multiple applications in the background and you’ll be able to switch between them without them shutting down or reloading from the start.

Cameras

Moving on to the cameras, there’s 3 of them on the back. Following in the footsteps of another amazing smartphone, we also get to see variable aperture of f/1.5-f/2.4 on the R17 Pro.
The sensor with the variable aperture is actually 12MP and also has PDAF and OIS. The secondary camera is a 20MP sensor with a fixed aperture of f/2.6.
The third camera on top of these two is a TOF 3D stereo camera. For this review, it serves no purpose to us since its functionality is not available to us on our review unit so we’ll leave this one out for now.
The camera results from the R17 Pro were great. Images in daylight conditions were sharp with not much in terms of noise. The dynamic range was also not bad in bright conditions, such as being outside in direct sunlight, R17 Pro managed to capture both the shadows and managed to preserve the highlights in a balanced way.
Move into low light conditions and this is where the R17 Pro really shines. The camera managed to capture some really great shots with great clarity and detail. This is usually what differentiates flagship grade cameras with other cheaper phones.
The front facing camera is a 25MP sensor and it performs more or less the same as the rear cameras. In good lighting conditions, you can get some decent shots out of the camera with enough detail.
Even in low light conditions, the R17 Pro actually did a pretty great job of getting the exposure right and taking the best selfie. However, noise does start to creep in when in some extremely dark conditions.

Camera Samples

Under Display Fingerprint Scanner

Another main attraction of the R17 Pro is its under-display fingerprint scanner. The best part is that it actually works as expected.
Under display fingerprint scanners are generally slower than the regular ones we have grown used to but among under display fingerprint scanners, this one is probably the fastest.
Registering your fingerprint was easy as well as actually unlocking the phone. You can place your finger over the designated area on the screen even when the screen is off and it will recognize it and unlock the device.

Battery

Probably one of the best features of the R17 Pro is its 3,700 mAh battery. It actually comes with two 1,850 mAh cells that are charged separately with Oppo’s Super VOOC fast charging tech.
The fast charging is pretty amazing on this thing, getting from 0 to above 90% in just half an hour. Combine that with a decent battery life and you have yourself a contender for one of the best phones in the world.

Verdict

OPPO R17 Pro has a lot going for it especially when it’s coming in at a price tag of Rs. 1,09,000. However, with that price, it’s competing with the flagships while its targeting the premium midrange segment.
The camera is good in all conditions, fingerprint scanner works great, the display is amazing, the battery is large enough to last a day and even if you run out of charge somehow, Super VOOC charging is present to help you out.
The one thing that is out of place is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 processor. Even though it is plenty capable to run anything, this isn’t the chipset one expects to see when you are paying such a premium on a device.