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