OPPO Mirror 5 Unboxing and Hands-On Review

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Right now OPPO has some fantastic smartphones that feature something unique regarding design, specifications, and capabilities. OPPO Mirror 5 is a smartphone that gives you feel of having a premium quality phone by being less heavy on your pocket.

Let’s check out what does this latest affordable smartphone from OPPO have to offer.

Build & Design

Feast your eyes on its unique back exterior; designed with individual cut-glass sections and different reflective tendencies, all crafted using a sophisticated ultraviolet embossing technique. Shiny plastic back and front screen protection glass are the fingerprint magnet and gives you a hard time to keep the phone clean.

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Looking at the device, power button, and volume rocker can be found to the right and left of the bezel, respectively. Buttons are placed within easy reach, and all the buttons offer a good amount of tactile feedback.

The micro-USB port is at the bottom, and the head has a port to plug in earphones and an IR blaster. The primary camera is located on the top left corner of the back, and on the same side, towards the bottom, is the speaker grill. Up front, there is a notification LED above the display to the right, and below the display is the three capacitive back, home, and recent apps keys.

To my surprise, back shell is removable and made of plastic.

The phone’s plastic body is 143.40 mm high, 71.20 mm wide, and has a depth of 7.65 mm. With a weight of 160 grams, it’s somewhat heavier than average for a smartphone of this size. This device’s battery is larger than typical for its size, which also gives it some extra weight.

To my surprise, back shell is removable and made of plastic. Though, earlier it looked like made of metal with a mirror finish and not removable.

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Under the hood, you can see a non-removable battery and Dual-SIM affair with one Micro-SIM and one Nano-SIM slot, I mean what’s this? Why create so much of confusion? Also, a microSD card slot is also there which supports expansion up to 128 GB. It’s a relief when the phone is having only 16GB of internal storage.

OPPO Mirror 5: Display

In my opinion resolution is shockingly low and feels dull for a display on a phone from 2015.

Mirror 5 comes with a 5-inch IPS LCD with a 960 x 540 resolution, resulting in a pixel density of 220 PPI. Again, I mean why Oppo? It’s 2015, even a Rs. 5,000 entry level smartphone features at least 720p display resolution!

In my opinion resolution is shockingly low and feels dull for a display on a phone from 2015. 720p should have been there if not 1080p Full HD!

Processor & Performance

Under the hood, Oppo Mirror 5 packs a 1.2GHZ 64-bit quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chip, backed by the Adreno 306 GPU and 2GB of RAM.

No doubt it is relatively low-end processor package but seeing the day to day performance, the device performs ok. That means no lag felt while running apps but as soon you go for multitasking it gets heat up quickly and yes awful performance lag was observed while switching between multiple apps simultaneously.

OPPO Mirror 5: Camera

The OPPO Mirror 5 comes with an 8 MP rear camera with an LED flash, which is no doubt gives excellent shots in almost every condition. Camera app resembled a bit to that of iOS and flooded with lots of shooting mode and with a rotating camera setup that is still very distinctive and individual to OPPO.

Apart from normal shooting mode you get ultra-HD, Colorful night, and beautify feature that eliminates the need for image editing, and you get filter options as well you can choose among these: obviously a panorama mode, HDR, GIF feature, and Double exposure. It is something that attracted me a lot. Double exposure let you merge two clicked pictures into one picture. Last, not the least, it has an expert mode that gives you full control of the camera settings.

Camera Samples

If you’re someone who is interested in photography, the expert mode will make you happy!

The 5 MP front camera comes with Beautify 3.0 technology, leaving you to focus on capturing beautiful and natural selfies to share with friends and family.

Software & UI

Moving to software, the Oppo Mirror 5 runs Color OS 2.1, based on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. The best part of the latest Color OS iteration is the various gestures it has baked in, including few off-screen gestures like double tap to wake up, quickly open the camera by drawing O or control music when the screen is off simply by drawing such gestures. You can also add app-specific custom gestures as well.

Also few on-screen gestures like pinch with multiple fingers to activate the camera, a swipe with two fingers to adjust the volume, and swipe with three fingers to take a screenshot, there is also a one-handed mode, swipe in through left or right, and the screen would be adjusted for one handed use.

If the opened app is idle for more than a minute, clearing process of memory garbage will be initiated, and it will be pushed automatically in the background to save the battery.

Also has on-boarded eye protection display as well which filters out the blue light to create a soothing screen display that is gentle on the eyes. This is especially useful if you are browsing in bed before sleep with the lights on/off.

If the opened app is idle for more than a minute, clearing process of memory garbage will be initiated, and it will be pushed automatically in the background to save the battery.

And by double tapping on recent app button you can explore options of widgets, wallpapers, themes, and effects of displaying homepage.

I found a lot of Material Design elements in this user interface, with everything, including the settings menu, the recent apps screen, and the lock screen being different from the stock Android experience.

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The audio quality is very good for the headphones and speaker. The speaker is mono but is quite loud and clear. The volume and clarity are really good through headphones as well.

OPPO Mirror 5 Battery

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If we talk about the battery, a 2,420 mAh non-removable battery offers decent charge and stay juiced up longer than 12 hours on moderate usage. Which is not exceptional, Power users may have to struggle a bit to get a full day battery charge

On the connectivity front, it has loaded all the necessities like standard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, IR Blaster, and MicroUSB 2.0. The Mirror 5 is a dual SIM device that supports 3G. There is no 4G LTE support that is quite surprising considering the premium price that Oppo is charging for it. One SIM can be used on 3G at once while the other remains in 2G mode.

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In the box

  • Mirror 5 Phone Unit
  • Literature bundle with Quick Start Guide
  • 1Amp USB Charger
  • White MicroUSB cable
  • Standard 3.5 mm Earphones with Mic

Pros

  • Beautiful Design
  • Good sound quality
  • Amazing camera performance and options
  • Pleasant software experience

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Cons

  • Poor display, even no 720p!
  • No 4G LTE Support
  • Heating Issues
  • Performance lag observed while multitasking
  • Cheap quality of bundled earphones.
  • There is also no display protection like Gorilla or Dragon Glass
  • It’s not Water resistant like Moto G 3rd Gen.
  • Overpriced
  • Shiny plastic back and front screen protection glass are the fingerprint magnet and gives you a hard time to keep the phone clean.

OPPO Mirror 5 Price in India

The OPPO Mirror 5 was priced around at Rs. 15,990 in markets when launched but you can get it now at Rs. 13,500 with color options being white and blue.

Oppo Mirror 5 Picture Gallery

The Verdict

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The mid-range smartphone market is flooded with many affordable options with great specs like Xiaomi Mi 4, Motorola Moto G Third Generation, and Lenovo K3 Note. With all of the above devices holding an advantage over the Mirror 5 pricing and specifications.

Even though the device stands along with its strong points, especially when it comes to the design and the software experience but, painfully low display resolution and relatively low-end processor package makes it hard to justify the price. Hence, Mirror 5 Pricing according to its Specifications doesn’t make it a good fit.

Oppo Mirror 5 Video Review

About the author

Nitin Agarwal

Nitin started PC-Tablet because of his keen interest in space research, technology, and gadgets. He is an avid reader, technology enthusiast, and like to explore new places. His passion for knowledge keeps him running all the time.