After nearly a month of rumors and leaks, OPPO has finally unveiled the new OPPO R9 and R9 Plus flagships in China. The company announced these two devices at its special conference in Beijing a few minutes back.
Given that we still have no word on the OPPO Find 7, the R series seems to be driving the company’s flagship lineup. Hence, both the devices are pretty important for the company.
The OPPO R9 and the R9 Plus feature a similar design, with the R9 sporting a larger display. Both the devices are made out of a metal body. In fact, the company claims that up to 98.02% of the phone’s body is made out of metal. The phone features smooth curves around the edges and the body is subjected to zircon sanding to give it a premium look. The company decided to put the fingerprint sensor up front, so that the remained smooth and flawless.
Coming to the front, the OPPO R9 and R9 Plus both come with a fingerprint sensor embedded into the home button. As revealed in one of its earlier teasers, the R9 will come with narrow 1.66mm borders around the display. This makes sure that the display covers a major portion of the front.
The OPPO R9 measures 151.8 x 74.3 x 6.5mm. Yes, it that slim! As for the R9, it comes with the measurements 163 x 80.8 x 7.4mm. Now, compared to the R9, you might feel that this is thick, however, let me inform you that there’s a large 4120mAh battery under its hood, which is pretty impressive. As for the R9, it comes with a 2850mAh battery. This coupled with the company’s super fast VOOC charging will ensure that you don’t have to worry about the charging the device during the day.
Coming to the specs, the OPPO R9 sports a 5.5-inch FHD 1080p display while the Plus variant features a 6-inch 1080p display. The R9 comes with the Mediatek Helio P10 processor while the R9 Plus has the Snapdragon 652 chipset under the hood. Both chips are clocked at 2GHz. There will be 4GB RAM + 64GB storage on both the models, with an option to upgrade to 128GB.
Coming to the camera department, the R9 comes with a 16MP 1/3 inch sensor up front, with the company’s independently developed “self perfection technology”. The company explains that this improves sensitivity and tolerance to light and noise to a great extent. Further, you get the new beauty 4.0 software to enhance your selfies. If you think this isn’t impressive, the R9 series phones now come with panorama mode up front. The phone can automatically capture and stitch together three different photos to create a wide angle image. So, if you think getting everyone in one shot for a groufie is tough, OPPO R9 has got your back.
Up front, the OPPO R9 features a 13MP sensor with 1/3.06 inch CMOS sensor. The setup comes with a dual drive hybrid AF system which includes traditional focus as well as a contrast phase focusing. Further, it features anti-shake 2.0 to capture blur free images.
Coming to the R9 Plus, the phone features 16MP cameras on both the back and the front. This is Sony IMX298 1/2.8 sensor with f/2.0 aperture. At the moment, it seems like the phone doesn’t come with OIS. But there’s EIS i.e. Electronic Image Stabilization to help reduce camera shake.
As for software, the phone comes with the company’s own Color OS 3.0 on top of Android 5.1.1. As mentioned above, you also get a fingerprint sensor up front, which can unlock the device in just 0.2 seconds. The fingerprint sensor improves with time and also supports mobile payments.
Now, coming to the most important part of today’s launch, i.e. the pricing. Both the phones are a bit cheaper than expected. The OPPO R9 will retail for a price tag of 2799 Yuan ($430) while the R9 Plus will be priced at 3299 Yuan ($507).
The OPPO R9 goes on sale on March 24 in China, while the R9 Plus will be available on April 12. There will be two color options available, gold and rose gold. We still have no idea about international availability but hopefully, the company will reveal more details pretty soon.
