Thinnest smartphone around, stylish design, octa-core processor, decent cameras
No expandable memory, no radio, no headphone slot
This week's thinnest phone is the Oppo R5 from China. It's certainly slim, but how thin can you get without sacrificing build quality and battery life?
At first glance the Oppo R5 bears comparison with other relatively slimline phones, but when you pick it up you realise just how wafer-like it is. At 4.85mm it's noticeably slimmer than the Kazam Tornado 348's 5.15mm. It's always good if your phone can keep a lower profile in your pocket but there is a slight cheat involved -- the camera lens juts out by a conspicuous millimetre or so.
The metal body feels sturdy enough and overall it's a very elegant design, fairly lightweight too at 155g but shockingly, there's no room for a headphone jack -- so you'll need to use Bluetooth headphones if you want to listen in private, which you'll probably want to do as the rather tinny loudspeaker doesn't impress.
Screen & chassis
The 5.2-inch AMOLED screen offers a full HD resolution of 1,920x1,080 pixels (423ppi) and looks gorgeous, with rich contrast and vibrant colours, though there is an unfortunately large black bezel between the display and the edge of the screen.
It's running Android 4.4.4 KitKat, so only just behind the very latest 5.0 Lollipop. Oppo has put its own user interface on top which at first glance looks a little like Lollipop styling. There's no apps tray however -- they all live on the various home screens -- and unusually, there's no FM radio.
Software & Processor
The phone is powered by an octa-core 1.5GHz processor backed by 2GB RAM, which sounds pretty impressive and in practise it mostly delivered. Apps started up quickly enough and it was able to multi-task without any obvious sluggishness. HD games like Real Racing 3 played smoothly too. However, it did seem to run uncomfortably hot with extended use, which could be an effect of the thinness of the casing. Our AnTuTu benchmark test gave it 26,943 and frankly we'd have expected a bit better from a device at this price point -- it's way down on the Google Nexus 6's 53,346 for instance.
Photography
The 13-megapixel camera includes autofocus and an LED flash, as well as a Sony Exmor BSI sensor for improved pics in lower light.
It's the first time we've seen one of these on anything but a Sony camera and picture quality is pretty decent overall. The 5-megapixel camera on the front shows an appreciation of the selfie and it comes with a wide angle lens so you can squeeze in more people or background.
There's 16GB of memory on board but unfortunately that's your lot, as there's no option to add a microSD card.
There's no room for a big battery, but the 2,000mAh model they've squeezed in managed a reasonable performance -- or at least it would have, if we hadn't had to rely on Bluetooth for our music listening. Still, you can expect a day's use out of it, just about.
Conclusion
The Oppo R5 may be the current record holder for slimmest smartphone, but fortunately it's also a pretty impressive performer, with a fast octa-core processor, a decent camera too.
The battery could be a little better, though it's not quite a disgrace, however it is a shame there's no expandable memory or headphone slot.
Software: Android 4.4.2 KitKat
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
