OPPO R9 from the perspective of its frame: An Android phone reshaping the iPhone

In an era of highly homogenized smartphone hardware and design, bezels have become one of the few areas where mobile phone manufacturers can continue to be "serious".

There are now roughly four design ideas for borders.

The first is the borderless ID, which means the border is "hidden" with a black screen. Unfortunately, this can only achieve the ideal effect when the screen is turned off or displayed in a dark color.

The second is to use the refraction effect of thicker screen glass to achieve a visual borderless appearance. Currently, Sharp and domestic Nubia have corresponding products, but this makes the entire phone body thicker and heavier.

Other manufacturers are trying curved screens. Samsung was the first to bend a phone using an OLED screen. However, apart from looking unique, Samsung itself seems to have not figured out how to make use of this new screen area. The domestic manufacturer vivo that followed suit also focused only on changing the shape of the phone. A prompt light that can only be seen when the phone is face down has greatly increased the manufacturing and after-sales costs of the phone, which seems not worth the cost.

The OPPO R9 we are going to talk about today, although its idea of ​​making the border as narrow as possible seems to be relatively unoriginal, it may be the most suitable border solution at present, and it also presents a product that can almost be called a "slim version of iPhone" in front of us.

Just as many ordinary users feel when they see OPPO R9 for the first time, with the HOME button on the front, this phone looks very much like an iPhone. Some people also say it looks more like a Meizu PRO 5. Of course, we do not deny that the Meizu PRO 5 looks very much like an iPhone.

Fortunately, the 1.66mm narrow bezel has a very obvious improvement on the visual effect. In addition, the 1.66mm bezel of OPPO R9 includes the black border inside the screen, which even gives the phone a front-facing look that is almost visually borderless. After all, a mobile phone like Nubia Z9 that focuses on visual borderlessness is also based on an ultra-narrow screen bezel.

The narrow bezel controls the thickness of the body, while the shorter forehead and oval home mark shorten the length of the machine, making the OPPO R9 a whole circle smaller than the iPhone 6 Plus with the same 5.5-inch screen.

One of the main reasons why OPPO R9 achieves such a narrow bezel is that it uses a self-developed U-track spray glue process. Looking from the side of the phone, there is an obvious step between the screen glass and the metal side. However, the overall thickness of OPPO R9 is still very well controlled. At 6.6mm, it also beats all of Apple's iPhones.

OPPO R9 is very similar to iPhone. One of the main reasons is the color matching. OPPO R9 only uses the most recognizable gold and rose gold colors on the current iPhone. From the actual comparison of the gold version in our hands, it can be seen that unlike the previous OPPO R7 which was almost exactly the same color as the iPhone, the gold of OPPO R9 can be said to be between the gold and rose gold of the iPhone, and the rose gold version should also be darker than the color of the iPhone.

The much-criticized protruding camera on the iPhone has also been photographed, but the OPPO R9 does not have a dual-color temperature flash, which is a bit regrettable for a product that excels in photography. As for the almost inevitable white band of the antenna on a full-metal mobile phone, the OPPO R9 is thinner than the iPhone's white band, and the color is not pure white, but has made a certain approach to the body color. Whether it looks suitable or not is a matter of personal preference.

Talking about narrow bezels, one can't help but think of Apple's optimized design for accidental touches on narrow-bezel devices when the iPad mini was first launched. Unfortunately, OPPO R9 did not take such considerations into account in the version of the system we experienced. On the phone desktop, when the palm presses the edge of the screen, it is inevitable that the icons on the screen will shift and jump.

Therefore, when it comes to mobile phones, in addition to excellent design, excellent system design is also very important. OPPO R9 is equipped with the new ColorOS 3.0 developed based on Android 5.1. In addition to the emphasis on making Color OS lighter and faster at the press conference, the biggest feature of this system may be that it is close to Apple's iOS, just like the appearance of the phone.

Without the desktop icons and secondary menu of the Android system, the OPPO R9 lights up the screen with rounded rectangular icons, which is almost the same as the experience of using an iPhone. The multitasking interface also has a strong iOS 9 system style, but the operating logic of the Android system is still very different from that of iOS. For example, OPPO R9 calls out multitasking by directly touching the multitasking item on the bottom left of the screen instead of double-clicking the HOME button. In addition, Color OS 3.0 adds a one-click function to clear the background and lock common tasks such as WeChat and QQ in the multitasking interface.

The camera interface of OPPO R9 is very similar to that of iPhone. Some people say that this time OPPO only replaced the three circles of the iPhone camera filter chart with five circles. OPPO R9 has a front 16-megapixel and rear 13-megapixel camera combination, with the more powerful Beauty 4.0 function, which reflects the setting that is more inclined towards girls' selfies. The only thing that needs to be complained is that although OPPO R9 provides a wealth of setting options in the camera, the text cannot rotate with the screen direction, which is a bit like treating cervical spondylosis when using it.

In terms of special features, VOOC flash charging is naturally the most noteworthy item of OPPO mobile phones. OPPO R9 has reduced the flash charging voltage to a more standard 5V specification, but the flash charging performance is still powerful. It can be charged by 10% in 5 minutes and 75% in 35 minutes. It can be fully charged in a little over an hour. Moreover, the battery capacity of 2850mAh is by no means small.

OPPO R9 is OPPO's first mobile phone to adopt front fingerprint recognition. The recognition speed of 0.2s is an excellent experience. There is no animation in the unlocking process. Pressing the HOME button instantly unlocks the phone, which makes novice users feel that the phone is not encrypted. I believe this has a lot to do with the zircon ceramic cover on the HOME button.

Parameter configuration has never been an emphasis of OPPO products. The fact that OPPO R9 has an MT6755 octa-core processor naturally means that it parted ways with Xiaomi's target users. The memory combination of 4G RAM + 64G ROM is still very generous. You can copy a lot of videos of Li Yifeng, Yang Mi and the dung boy into it.

From another perspective, the performance of current mobile phone processors is generally in excess. It is almost as difficult to tell the difference between Snapdragon 820 and MediaTek X10 as it is to tell the difference between 1080P and 2K screens on current mobile phones below 6 inches. The only time OPPO R9 falters during our experience is when more than 5 apps are installed in the app store at the same time. If we don't look at the running points, MT6577 will not bring any performance shortcomings.

For OPPO R9, it is indisputable that Apple thinking accounts for a large proportion in this flagship product. The price of 2,799 yuan, which is not so cost-effective, does make OPPO R9 better than Apple in some aspects such as bezels and antenna white strips.

However, from the Find series that pursues ultimate parameter performance to the N series with rotating lens, in the past two years, OPPO has been leading the way with the R series, and its unique products seem to be getting fewer and fewer. OPPO R9 certainly continues the most important aspects of the OPPO brand that consumers value, such as outstanding craftsmanship, photography and VOOC flash charging, but it obviously lacks some geek elements. In other words, when OPPO's once imaginative products will return may be something more worth looking forward to in the rest of this year.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.