Oppo presents its first smartphones with notch
The Chinese manufacturer Oppo has presented the R15 and R15 DME. The devices are the first from the smartphone maker with a notch, a cutout at the top of the screen. The devices have a glass back.
Both devices have a 6.28″ OLED screen with a resolution of 2280×1080 pixels and an aspect ratio of 19:9. The screen is as wide as a 16:9 display with a diagonal of 5.5″. The R15 and R15 DME have a glass back and a dual rear camera, although the setups differ. DME stands for Dream Mirror Edition.
In the recess above the screen are the front camera and other sensors, such as the proximity sensor and light sensor. The Oppo phones have the same ‘Face Unlock’ feature as previous models and it works with the front camera. Sister company OnePlus has also put that function in the OnePlus 5T, which came out at the end of last year.
Oppo is by no means the first manufacturer with a cutout in the screen. Essential was the first to present such a device in the middle of last year, after which Apple announced the iPhone X with a notch. In recent weeks, models from Huawei, Asus and Wiko were added. The notch is one of the ways to reduce bezels on smartphones. Oppo is one of the largest smartphone makers in the world.
The regular R15 has a MediaTek Helio P60 soc on board, with four Cortex A73 cores at a maximum of 2.0GHz and four smaller Cortex A53 cores, assisted by a Mali G72MP3 GPU. Oppo has added 6GB of memory and a storage with a capacity of 128GB. The DME version has a Snapdragon 660, with four Kryo 260 cores at 2.2GHz and four A53 cores at 1.8GHz, with an Adreno 512 GPU. The battery of the regular version is 3450mAh, that of the DME variant has a capacity of 3400mAh. The devices run on Android 8.1 with Color OS 5.0. Color OS is Oppo’s Android release.
The regular R15 has a secondary 5MP camera on the back for depth measurement, while the DME version has a 20MP camera for better lowlight performance. In both cases, the primary camera is a Sony IMX519, a 1/2.6″ sensor with 1.22 micrometer pixels and a lens with an f/1.7 aperture. Both models will go on sale April 1 in China. The R15 costs 2999 yuan, currently approximately EUR 384. The R15 DME has a suggested retail price of EUR 422.