LG G5 rumoured to have twin displays and rear camera lense

Rob Attrell

December 31, 2015 7:44am

With another year going into the history books, it's finally time for leaks and unconfirmed reports for the smartphones coming in 2016. While we've already heard a lot of noise about upcoming phones like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the next generation iPhone, information about other manufacturers' flagships has been pretty scarce, up until now.

This week, a report from VentureBeat by Evan Blass (the prolific @evleaks) gave us a few things to expect about the yet unannounced LG G5 flagship when the phone is officially unveiled in the "first quarter of 2016." First up, the secondary display from the LG V10 will be making its way to other phones in LG's lineup, including the G5. The small ticker display running along the top of the phone helps preserve battery power when showing notifications, and you can read a little more about it on the V10 here.

The G5's screen is reportedly going to be 5.3-inches, slightly smaller than the G4, while maintaining a 1440 x 2560 resolution. The battery will also be just slightly smaller, by about seven percent. The leaked camera setup on the G5 might be the most interesting thing about the new device, with a 16 MP dual-lens setup that can take regular pictures and 135-degree wide angle shots. The camera will also sport a dual-LED flash and two different laser assisted autofocus elements.

Finally, the G5 is reportedly going to come with an intriguing hardware feature called the "Magic Slot". The mysterious connector will allegedly enable the ability to link additional hardware, like external camera lenses, an audio amplifier, or a physical keyboard. Very few details were given about this slot, so we will just have to wait to find out more.

As mentioned above, the timeframe for the phone's release remains vague, but the LG G4 was released in April of last year.

Source: LG G5 rumoured to have twin displays and rear camera lense

Smartphone cameras explained: everything you need to know about the snapper in your smartphone

Cameras aren't just for snapping. You can use them for augmented reality and translation apps too. / © ANDROIDPIT Smartphone cameras explained: the basics

Every smartphone camera is different, but they all have the same things in common. They all have a lens, which enables them to see things; they all have a sensor, which takes what the lens sees and turns it into digital data; and they all have software, which analyzes the data and turns it into an image file that you can do something with.

It's the combination of those things that decides how good (or bad!) your image will be, and the following terms are used to give you an idea of what the camera can do.

If your camera's really bad you could always stick an external one on instead. / © Sony Megapixels

Megapixels, or MP for short, are the measurements of how many pixels a camera's image will contain. One megapixel is one million pixels – 1,000 x 1,000 – so a 20 MP image will have 20 million pixels.

Generally speaking, the more pixels you have the better. You can zoom in or crop the image without worrying it'll get all blocky. However, there's more to the quality of the photos than mere numbers, and it's perfectly possible to get a better photo from a 12 MP phone camera than from a 20 MP one.

The lens quality is more important than the number of megapixels. / © XperiaBlog Sensor size

The bigger the sensor, the more it can see and the better the photos it should take. The size of a typical smartphone sensor is around one-third of an inch, but, in some phones, the sensor can be as big as an inch.

The bigger the sensor the bigger the pixels, so in theory at least if you have two phones with the same megapixel count but one has a bigger sensor, that one will produce the better shots.

CCD and CMOS

Smartphone sensors usually come in one of two forms: CCD (Charge Coupled Device) and CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor). Early smartphones used CCD sensors, but most modern phones use the more complex, and until recently more expensive, CMOS sensors.

There are differences between the sensors in different devices, however, so it's important to read reviews and check out device comparisons to discover how well each firm's sensors perform.

Here's an example of a cameraphone sensor, in this case a Samsung one. The sensor here is a 20 MP one. / © SAMSUNG Aperture

Aperture is how much light a lens lets in, and it's expressed in f-stops: f/2.0, f/2.8 and so on. The smaller the number the bigger the aperture and the more light gets in, so if you want really great low-light performance without a flash, for example, you want the lowest aperture you can.

Smaller aperture numbers also indicate that you'll get interesting depth of field effects, where the foreground is clear but the background is blurry.

Aperture: the smaller the number, the better the low light performance. / © Enchanting Kerala ISO and shutter speed

Aperture is part of a trio that affect your photos, and the other two parts are ISO and shutter speed. Shutter speed is how long the camera keeps the lens open to take a picture, and ISO is how sensitive your camera is to the available light. Many camera apps allow you to adjust both of these things.

The bigger the ISO number the more sensitive your camera is to light, so for example, if you're shooting at ISO 100 the camera needs one second to capture the image, while at ISO 800 it only needs 0.125 seconds. That extra sensitivity comes at a cost, though, and that's noise: if you're shooting at really high ISOs you'll see a lot of noise, which manifests itself as a grainy effect. Different cameras handle noise in different ways, but as a rule of thumb, if you're using big numbers noise is inevitable, so you really want to use the lowest ISO possible.

The other thing you can often change is the shutter speed. The longer your shutter is open the more light it'll capture, but it'll also make your camera more vulnerable to shakes and blurred movement. For action shots you want fast shutter speeds; for shooting in low light or trying to take pictures of lightning or fireworks, a long shutter will produce the best results.

Larger ISO numbers mean more noise, which you can see in the right-hand image. / © ANDROIDPIT Image stabilization

There are two kinds of image stabilization: digital image stabilization, which uses software to compensate for slight shakes and to keep the image stable, and optical image stabilization, which uses mechanical means to keep the lens still.

Optical is usually better than digital stabilization, especially in low light. Unless the software is really, really good – and it often isn't – it can't compete with the shake-free footage you get from a lens that moves when the camera does

HD and 4K

HD and 4K are measurements of resolution, just like megapixels, but they're used to describe video. HD means high definition, which is 1,920 pixels x 1,080 lines, and 4K or UltraHD is double that: 3,840 x 2,160 lines. Eventually, we'll get 8K, which is twice the resolution of 4K.

The main advantage of 4K is that you can zoom in dramatically and still be left with an HD recording, which keeps your creative options open. The downside is that 4K recording takes up twice the space of HD, so it's not great for smartphones with limited storage.

Many phones can record 4K video, but hardly any can display the clips in 4K. / © ANDROIDPIT RAW format

Most smartphone images are saved as JPEG image formats, but some high-end devices can also record in RAW. RAW is better for professional photographers because it records nothing other than what the camera sensor saw; JPEG images are optimized and compressed to save space. RAW also understands more levels of brightness, and it's easier to correct a RAW image than a JPEG.

Don't like your camera app? Try an alternative such as Google Camera. / © AndroidPIT Software and apps

The lens is great, the image is stabilized and the sensor is enormous, but bad software can snatch digital defeat from the jaws of victory. Poor JPEG optimization, bad image processing algorithms and overzealous color correction can make a huge horse's arse of your carefully considered photos.

The good news is that you can try an alternative camera app – we quite like Google Camera, and there are stacks of really good third-party camera apps in the Play Store too. But prevention is better than cure, so we'd definitely recommend checking out the camera sections of our in-depth smartphone reviews to help you avoid the duffers.

How important is a good smartphone camera to you? Do you use an alternative camera app? Let us know below.

Source: Smartphone cameras explained: everything you need to know about the snapper in your smartphone

How to Use Your Phone to Detect Hidden Surveillance Cameras at Home

If you have reason to be suspicious of a partner or employer, or they have reason (good or bad) to be suspicious of you, and you fear they might be filming you with a hidden surveillance camera, what can you do about it, other than use some futuristic, James Bond-style camera detection device?

Well, you could use a modern day, smartphone-style camera detection device.

You Are Being Watched

Someone is watching you. This is pretty much irrefutable in the post-Snowden era. But digital surveillance of emails and telephone records is a little less hair-raising than someone actually observing your movements via a hidden surveillance camera.

It's unlikely that you have never been filmed out in public, either on CCTV or in the distance on a TV news report, and as a society we've become more accepting of closed circuit cameras, security cameras, and so on (rightly or wrongly).

But what about closer to home? What about in the office, development room, bathrooms and dressing rooms, or any number of places where you wouldn't normally expect to find a camera watching your every move?

Without being made aware of such surveillance in advance, you could find yourself being recorded, your movements and actions tracked, judged, no doubt misinterpreted. This intrusion might be performed using professionally manufactured security cameras, or custom built ones, perhaps using a webcam with an old PC, or a Raspberry Pi.

It might even be an old smartphone or tablet, re-purposed for hidden observation.

What can you do about this?

Smartphones Can Detect Hidden Surveillance Cameras!

While it might seem like something straight out of a James Bond movie, it is possible to use your smartphone to detect hidden cameras, as well as other 007 devices. In general, two common methods are used to achieve this.

The first is by using the smartphone hardware to detect electromagnetic fields. With the installation of a single app, you can move your phone around the area you suspect a camera to be hidden, and if a strong field is detected, you can be sure there is a camera secreted within the wall or object.

Another way that smartphones can be used is by detecting light reflecting from a lens. While this method isn't quite as reliable, it is still worth having such an app, if only to find small objects dropped on a carpet!

Using Android or iOS to Find a Hidden Camera

You'll find apps for both major smartphone platforms available in the respective app stores. For iPhone, the $4.99 Hidden Camera Detector is the best option, while Android users should spend some time looking at Hidden Camera Detector. You can also check out Glint Finder for visible lens detection.

Remember that other options are available. If you have access to an infrared camera, for instance, this should detect a hidden camera, while low-cost devices using wireless networking may well appear in the list of nearby Wi-Fi devices in your home.

If you're particularly concerned, you might also consider a $130 piece of RF detection hardware, capable of reading the signals broadcast by traditional wireless cameras, as demonstrated here:

Use Android to Find a Hidden Surveillance Camera

Hidden Camera Detector for Android is a well-regarded app, and is free to download and install. With the app running on your device, finding the hidden camera should be straightforward, thanks to the radiation detection. This algorithm is constructed to reduce noise from other electromagnetic radiation, such as from cellphone towers, non-camera hardware, and even the Earth itself.

Ready to use when you load the app, the detector software will display a red glow when the smartphone is in the proximity of a camera. However, it will also glow when near other types of hardware, so keep an eye on the number displayed in the middle of the screen, as this will exceed 100 when a camera is detected.

For added camera detection magic, Hidden Camera Detector also features an IR mode (limited to portrait orientation) with which you can find cameras that have so far eluded you. This is done by pointing the smartphone at an area where a camera might be hidden and looking for a bright white disc. The disc indicates the presence of a hidden camera.

What to Do When You Find a Hidden Camera

It's all very well knowing that a hidden surveillance camera is watching you, supposedly without your knowledge. But what should you do about it? Well, you could always take it to a higher authority, but in the meantime, you might wish to take action.

Note, however, that the problem with this is as soon as you do this, you may well alert the observer to your realization.

However, if you're determined to be seen, you should employ things like masking tape or adhesive putty to cover the lens, or conduct affairs beyond the camera's viewing angle. For cameras possibly hidden high up, in lightbulbs or smoke detectors, staying out of sight can be difficult.

Do you suspect unauthorized surveillance of your movements? Have you been filmed without your knowledge? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Image credits: alice-photo via Shutterstock.com

Source: How to Use Your Phone to Detect Hidden Surveillance Cameras at Home

12 awesome iPhone camera tricks anyone can do

Face it, you take 99 percent of your photos with your iPhone. Make them the best they can be.

An iPhone is capable of taking some astonishing photos—look no further than Apple's "Shot with iPhone" campaign for proof—but as always, understanding your tools is the first step to creating great things with them. Of course you'll know how to take snaps with your iPhone, but there are all sorts of oft-forgotten little features that you can use which unlock a whole range of tricks for getting photos that are more accomplished, more creative, or just plain more fun.

We're going to assume you know the basics of opening the camera app and taking a shot, and that you know you there are great apps such as Instagram, VSCO, Pixelmator and Waterlogue that can apply filters or do desktop-style image editing to make your photos really shine. What we're interested in here is the pro stuff—some of which, to be sure, will be limited to more recent models, but most will be applicable to most iPhones still in use. Ready? Say cheese!

Set focus and exposure—and apply exposure compensation

You probably know that you can tap somewhere on the screen when you're in the Camera app to tell your iPhone specifically where to focus (even if it has recognized faces in the scene and decided to prioritize them) but this also sets the exposure, that is, how bright or dark the image is.

So for example if you're photographing someone inside a room with their back to a window, by default the iPhone's automatic exposure will likely turn them into a silhouette (as it tries to balance the bright backlight and the dark subject) but if you tap on them, it knows what you want to prioritize, so it makes the scene brighter. The view out the window will get "blown out"—that is, made too bright and so detail will be lost—but at least your subject won't look like they're in a witness protection program.

Traditional (and now of course digital) photography has a concept called exposure compensation, the idea that you let the camera decide how best to expose the scene, but then you give it a nudge—expressed usually in thirds of a "stop"—brighter or darker, to better reflect the shot you want to take. You can do this on an iPhone too, but it's much less technical; tap on your subject, then drag the little brightness (sunburst) symbol next to the focus square up to make the picture brighter, or down to make it darker.

Lock focus and exposure

Usually the iPhone will focus and expose a shot fresh each time, since that is indeed what you usually want, but there are times, usually for creative reasons, that you want to lock the focus and exposure.

To do this, tap and hold on the screen; you'll see a series of contracting rectangles around your finger which is your cue that the exposure and focus are now locked even if you move the camera a little or to a completely different part of the scene. Tap anywhere on the image to unlock them again.

Use a hardware shutter

You can use the physical volume buttons on the side of your iPhone to take the shot rather than the big onscreen button—handy if you're holding the phone at an awkward angle—but this also extends to headphones (including the bundled ones) that have inline volume controls on the cable.

Christopher Phin

Pro photographers would use something like this with big fancy SLRs especially as a way of reducing camera shake; the act of pressing a real or on-screen button can shake the camera at the very instant you want it to be still, so by triggering a shot using a button which is on a cable, usually with the camera held in a tripod, you're removing that shake completely.

You can go one better: there are remote controls that connect over Bluetooth (whisper it: selfie sticks), but if you have Bluetooth headphones with volume controls already, they should work too as a completely wireless shutter trigger.

Using your Watch as a viewfinder and trigger

If you have an Apple Watch, remember that you can use it to see what your iPhone's camera is seeing—useful in surprising situations, such as when checking the tops of cupboards for lost items or contorting yourself down the back of the TV trying to take a shot of its serial number—and for triggering a shot.

As a remote shutter, you can either have it take a shot immediately or after a short delay—you can imagine setting up for a group shot, sauntering into the scene yourself, checking the composition on your Watch, hitting the three-second delay timer then putting your hands in your pockets and a grin on your face.

The self-timer

There's a self-timer on the iPhone as well, either a two-second one—more on this below—and a 10-second one which is great for those press-the-shutter-run-back-into-shot-then-hold-a-grimace-way-past-the-point-you-think-it-should-have-triggered shots. You might be able to prop your iPhone up against something for these, but consider a tripod for more control and better results if the shot is important. (See the last section for more on tripods.)

Reduce camera shake

Although things have improved dramatically, the iPhone can still struggle in low light, such as at dusk or indoors. To compensate for the low light it will often take longer exposures, and so if you're not holding your iPhone completely still the scene will get a bit smeared. (The 6 Plus and 6s Plus have optical image stabilization to help mitigate this.)

Christopher Phin

You can reduce camera shake with some old-fashioned techniques that literally stop your hands from moving as much: pushing the side of your body against a vertical surface to steady it, resting your elbows on a low wall, or even simply bracing your iPhone by holding it in both hands and tucking your elbows into your body.

Or you can use the two-second self-timer. With this, so you're not actually pressing a shutter when you're taking a shot and so shaking the camera with the simple act of doing so, you enable the timer, press the shutter, then in the two seconds before the camera actually takes the shot, brace yourself and hold the iPhone firmly.

Use Burst mode

One of the reasons pros are able to get such great portrait shots for magazine covers is because some take many dozens or hundreds of shots and just pick the one that captures a fleeting expression or a moment of delight or seriousness. You can do the same with your iPhone, and it's great for getting the perfect shot of your kid grinning or your dog's guilty look when you discover him tearing up a cushion.

All you do is hold the shutter down (whichever shutter you use) and let the camera just keep shooting. Of course this uses up loads of space on your device, but once you get a quiet moment go to that burst of shots in your Camera Roll and tap Select. Now scrub through all the shots, tap the ones you like then tap Done; you'll be given the choice of saving everything or just the ones you selected, and in the latter case all the other, rubbish shots get deleted.

Quickly jump to a specific shooting mode with 3D Touch

If you have an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, press hard on the icon for the Camera app on your Home screen and you'll get the option of jumping straight to slo-mo, video, selfie, or regular photo mode. (It's worth reinstating the Camera app back to your first screen of apps if you'd previously banished it because of the Control Center button for launching it, partly for this direct-mode-launch feature but also because Touch ID is so fast on the 6s-generation devices that you never get the chance to see Control Center from the Lock screen!)

Add a macro mode to your iPhone

This is the only time we'll recommend a third-party app here, and although it does have filters (such as the dramatic, lovely Clarity Pro), we're not strictly recommending this app for that. No, one of Camera+'s best shooting features is that it can lock the lens elements in your iPhone so that it can take photos much closer to its subjects than the built-in app can. The focal range is small so you have to have a steady hand and a compliant subject, but the results can be terrific—and it has a 3D Touch Quick-Launch menu like the regular Camera app, including an option to go straight to macro mode.

Turn on the Rule of Thirds grid

Though shots can look great with their subject dead center, you can usually make your shots look better, more dynamic and flat-out more professional if instead you embrace the "Rule of Thirds"—and you can easily do this if you switch on the grid in Settings > Photos & Camera. Now, use those lines as a guide, positioning a horizon along the bottom horizontal line, lining up a standing subject with one of the verticals, or the eyes of a close-up portrait at one of the upper points where the guide lines cross, say.

Take shots in HDR—but keep the original too

Even if you have a tiny-capacity iPhone, if it's capable of taking HDR shots, turn that feature on (or leave on Auto so the iPhone decides when to use it) but also turn on the option in Settings > Photos & Camera to save the original shot too.

This way you can take advantage of High Dynamic Range photos—which mix together three different exposures of a scene so that you still see detail in very bright and very dark areas—but also have the regular, non-HDR version as well, since HDR shots can look either a bit flat or a bit peculiar. Basically, this way you have options.

Go nuts with filters

You might think that the filters you can apply when you're taking photos—look for the three-overlapping-circles icon at the bottom right—mean that the effect is permanently "baked into" your shot, but that's no so. Even though the filter looks like it's applied when you view your photo in your Camera Roll, actually what your iPhone has done is save the unfiltered photo along with an invisible tag that says "shove the filter in front of this image when displaying it."

Tap Edit and you can change the filter or remove it completely. This goes for the Light, Color, and B&W controls you can tweak too.

Add accessories—but be choosy

There is a dizzying array of additional bits of hardware you can buy to take your iPhoneography—blast, thought we'd get to the end without using that word—further, but a great deal of it is frankly a bit, well, novelty. Here's some genuinely great buys that we both like a lot and use a lot:

Christopher Phin

The Glif adapter works with any smartphone, and lets you mount it on a standard tripod thread.

The lenses from Olloclip can be easily slipped onto your iPhone, and give you creative options such as macro, telephoto and wide angle. But although they're not as easy to slip on and off, we really love the lenses from Moment; really bright, clear glass, and the camera case (above) and accompanying app are useful too.

Manfrotto SMT LED light is a rechargeable, three-level LED lamp. It's never gonna replace proper pro lighting rigs, but it gives a nice little boost, especially when you're shooting video. The tripod mount lets you position it where you like.

The Mophie spacestation comes in especially handy when you're taking photos with your iPhone on vacation, say. Not only is it a 6,000mAh battery to keep you shooting for longer, but it comes in 32 or 64GB capacities, so you can offload photos and videos to it so you won't run out of space on your iPhone.

What are your favorite tips for taking photos with your iPhone? Share them in the comments below!

Source: 12 awesome iPhone camera tricks anyone can do

Man, distracted by electronic device, dies after falling from cliff in San Diego

While distracted by either his phone or a camera, a man fell over the edge of a cliff in San Diego and plummeted 60 feet to his death on Christmas Day, officials said Saturday.

"Witnesses stated seeing someone distracted by an electronic device and he just fell over the edge," San Diego Lifeguard Bill Bender told KNBC. "(He) wasn't watching where he was walking, he was looking down at the device in his hands."

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According to a report from KFMB-TV, the man, in his 30s, visited Sunset Cliffs with one other person. He had a hard time finding a parking spot and got out of his vehicle to try to find one when he fell.

Bystanders climbed down the cliff and attempted to resuscitate the man, without success. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene, KFMB-TV reported.

The device that distracted the man was not immediately recovered.

"Just like driving and using a cell phone, you don't want to be walking and using a cell phone or be distracted or anything," Bender said told KNBC.

Source: Man, distracted by electronic device, dies after falling from cliff in San Diego

Man 'walks off cliff and plummets 60 feet to his death on Christmas Day while distracted by his cell phone'

The victim was at Sunset Cliffs when he plummeted 60 feet 

He was declared dead at the scene  

Bill Bender with San Diego Lifeguards said 'He was looking down at the device in his hands' 

By Zoe Szathmary For Dailymail.com

Published: 01:10 EST, 26 December 2015 | Updated: 02:55 EST, 26 December 2015

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A man fell off a cliff to his death on Christmas day while apparently distracted by his cell phone.

Bill Bender with San Diego Lifeguards at Sunset Cliffs told NBC San Diego: 'Witnesses stated seeing someone distracted by an electronic device and he just fell over the edge.

'(He) wasn't watching where he was walking, he was looking down at the device in his hands.'

He was declared dead at the scene, the television station reported.

Scroll down for video

Bill Bender with San Diego Lifeguards told NBC San Diego : 'Witnesses stated seeing someone distracted by an electronic device and he just fell over the edge'

NBC San Diego reported the victim was in his thirties and plummeted 60 feet. 

Bender told the NBC affiliate station, referring to three people who tried to assist: 'They acted quickly, they found a way to get down the cliff.

'They put themselves at jeopardy... They administered CPR to the person in attempt to save a life.'

The man's device was possibly a phone or camera, according to NBC San Diego. 

The victim was in his thirties and plummeted 60 feet, according to local media 

It's been reported that the man's device was possibly a phone or camera. Sunset Cliffs is seen in this file photo

 

Source: Man 'walks off cliff and plummets 60 feet to his death on Christmas Day while distracted by his cell phone'

Oppo R7 Lite review: Great battery life and a good design, but competition is stiff

Oppo released its R7 Plus and R7 Lite smartphones earlier this year. While the Oppo R7 Plus is the flagship phone in the lineup, the R7 Lite carries on the tradition of having a 'mini' sidekick accompanying flagship phones. The price point of R7 Lite puts it in a very fierce segment which is not only dominated by incumbents but also a lot of upcoming players. So let us see how this phone performs.

Build and Design: 8/10

Oppo R7 Lite sports an elegant metal unibody design. It makes use of a magnesium aluminum alloy in the metal. The phone measures just 6.3mm thick but the camera module on the rear side protrudes out a slight bit. The 147g weight gives the phone a nice heft and the weight is well balanced across the phone.

The left hand side has the power/standby button whereas the the volume rocker button is present on the right hand edge. Right handed users will take some getting used to this arrangement. The buttons are also metallic in nature and have a good feedback. The SIM card slot is present just above the volume rocker button. The 3.5mm audio jack is present on the top and the microUSB charging and data transfer port is located at the base.  

On the display of the Oppo R7 Lite, you have a 2.5D curved arc glass which merges seamlessly with the edges on the phone, which are slightly raised. On the rear side, you have the camera module in the top left hand corner, and the speaker grille is located on the bottom right hand corner. In terms of aesthetics, the Oppo R7 Lite ticks off all the right boxes.

Features: 7/10

Oppo R7 Lite was launched alongside its elder sibling – the Oppo R7 Plus. So it has a more mid-range feature set. Under the hood, you have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC which has an octa-core processor along with Adreno 405GPU. It comes with 2GB of RAM and there is 16GB internal storage space out of which around 10.1GB is available to the user. You do get the chance to expand the storage if you so wish.

It comes with a 5-inch HD AMOLED display and there is a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. On the camera front, you get a 13MP rear camera and an 8MP front-camera. The phone comes with a Hybrid dual SIM card solution and supports 4G LTE. You get Wi-fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, OTG and more.

Oppo R7 Lite runs on Android 5.1 OS with the ColorOS 2.1 skin atop it. We will get into detail about the ColorOS 2.1 in the Software section. It is powered by a modest 2,320mAh non-removable Li-Polymer battery.

Software: 7/10

Oppo R7 Lite comes with Android 5.1 Lollipop OS with its proprietary ColorOS 2.1 skin on top. This OS does not have an app drawer and comes with its own set of proprietary apps such as O-Cloud, Lock Now, Security Center, Theme Store and so on. The File Explorer app is neatly divided into categories such as Music, Videos, Pictures, Documents, APK and ZIP. You can even select the Storage tab on top, to get the file directory tree structure. It has a folder called Tools which houses apps such as Sound Recorder, Flashlight, Compass, Download Manager, Kingsoft Office, System Update and Clear Memory. Opening up a folder makes the apps within it appear on a translucent background which blurs the screen behind it. The left most home screen is the music player. Security Center takes care of memory cleanup, data monitoring, privacy permissions and so on.

The Settings app has three tabs at the top: General, Sound and Display; with each tab highlighting the settings pertinent to these sections. It also supports gestures to quickly open apps, to prevent misoperations, to interact with incoming calls, air gestures and so on. Pulling down the notification drawer shows around 15 quick settings on the top followed by the Notifications section below. 

Display: 7.5/10

The Oppo R7 Lite comes with a 5-inch 1280×720 pixel display which gives a 294ppi pixel density. When compared to full HD display sporting phones, it may not sound like much, but the Oppo R7 Lite is able to give out a sharp display. Pixillation is visible only on extremely close observation and holding it at an arms length ensures that you are able to see crisp text. Being an AMOLED display, it manages to control the yellow tinging well. Watching movies and playing games on this display is a pleasure. Black levels are decently good.

Performance: 7/10

Oppo phones generally have a good call quality and the R7 Lite is no different. The earpiece speaker is sufficiently loud.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC paired with 2GB of RAM ensures that the phone runs fine for most operations. The ColorOS 2.1 skin causes there to be a slight bit of delay when opening folders and certain apps such as camera. The default keyboard is quite responsive. Despite having a metal build, the Oppo R7 Lite manages to keep the heat under check. We noted a surface temperature of around 34 degrees C on the rear side of the phone while heavy gaming.

In terms of benchmarks, the scores obtained with the Oppo R7 Lite are in line with other Snapdragon 615 SoC sporting phones. The Moto X Play scores still outshine that obtained from the Oppo R7 Lite though.

Camera: 7/10

The Oppo R7 Lite sports a 13MP rear camera with an f/2.2 aperture whereas an 8MP front-facing camera with an f/2.4 aperture. The rear camera comes with phase-detect autofocus technology. The camera interface is simple up front, but if you want more control you can head to the function icon located just beside the camera shutter button. You get functions such as UltraHD mode which shoots an ultra high resolution image by stitching multiple images; Beautify mode for selfie enthusiasts; Panorama mode; GIF mode; HDR and Slow shutter mode. You can head to More Functions and install more features such as RAW mode, Expert mode and so on.

The image quality was good in daylight situations. The focus acquisition speed is also quick. However, at 100% viewing, the finer aspects of the scene such as leaves in landscapes, fine designs tend to show some dithering around the edges. The low light photographs are a tad bit noisy, and the focus acquisition speed takes a hit. While using the HDR mode in low light photography, we noticed that the image processor tended to over compensate for shadows and highlights thereby giving a rather flat image. UltraHD mode works well and gives a high res photograph, but you need to be really still while using UltraHD mode. Great for landscape shots and not so much for street shots. The video mode lets you shoot casual 1080p videos. 

PS: Image samples have been resized here. To check the full resolution, please click on the images 

Battery Life: 8/10

The R7 Lite comes with a 2,320 mAh battery and supports Qualcomm QuickCharge feature which paired with Oppo's VOOC charging mechanism offers you speedy phone charging. The Oppo R7 Lite comes with Super Power Saving mode which keeps only Clock, Contacts, Calls and messages functions available while disabling data networks. You can even set when to activate this mode. With PC Mark for Android we got an on screen time of 8 hours 21 mins. 

Verdict and Price in India

Oppo R7 Lite is a good phone with decent performance and design. The battery life is surprisingly good on this phone. Camera performance could have been better in low light situations. And the ColorOS 2.1 skin, may be liked by some, may not by others. Many may not like the fact that it has an HD display, but that really helps in conserving the battery life. The VOOC charging further helps speed up the charging process. 

At Rs 17,999, the Oppo R7 Lite has a really stiff competitor in the form of Moto X Play which is priced at just Rs 500 more and offers a stock Android OS, better battery life and camera performance. The only way we can recommend this phone is if the pricing of the R7 Lite drops closer to Rs 15,000 – Rs 16,000.

Tags: Oppo R7 Lite, Oppo R7 Lite camera, Oppo R7 Lite India price, Oppo R7 Lite performance, Oppo R7 Lite specs

Source: Oppo R7 Lite review: Great battery life and a good design, but competition is stiff