Oppo N1 phablet: Style meets substance

| Updated: Feb 20 2014, 11:52 IST

The Oppo N1 screams style right from the packaging itself.

SummaryThe Oppo N1 screams style right from the packaging itself.

The personal technology market, especially smartphones, has become so lucrative that everyone wants to have its piece of the pie. Everyday, we hear about some new company joining the fray. One such is the Chinese firm Oppo, which recently launched their flagship product, the Oppo N1 phablet, in India with much glamour and blitz.

The Oppo N1 screams style right from the packaging itself. The handset comes inside a white jewellery box-like casing, which doesn�t feel flashy but extremely stylish. Everything inside the box, right from quality of the USB cable and in-ear headphones (angled to fit perfectly with excellent sound quality) to the way they have been packaged, makes the device look like a piece of art.

The 5.9-inch phablet, in matte white with metallic silver bordering, looks fantastic. Inspite of its huge size and 213 gm weight, it felt light in hand. Since I am not a fan of phablets as I find them too bulky for a proper hand-held experience, the N1 did feel wobbly while operating with one hand. So for an average user, this could feel too chunky. But for those who like it big, this could well be device.

With a 1080p full-HD IPS display (1920 x 1080 pixels, 377 ppi), the N1 gives an excellent viewing experience. Colours look sharp and crisp and viewing angles are also good. To put things in perspective, the iPhone 5S offers a 326 ppi display and the Samsung Note 3 has 386 ppi. The screen is made up of Gorilla Glass 3, which should provide respite from ordinary scratches.

The N1 is powered by a 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor with Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB RAM. Obviously with such raw power, the device gave butter-smooth user experience. Continuous multitasking with Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Chrome and a few games like Subway Surfer and Temple Run did not give any lags whatsoever. I could play a space-guzzler like Asphalt 8 without any glitch. Watching videos were also great, with stunning picture quality.

Oppo claims the N1 is the first smartphone with a rotating camera. So irrespective of whether you use the

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