OPPO launched the OPPO Mirror 3 in India and it is available on-line as well as offline. It’s a pretty good smartphone and one of best smartphone when it comes to camera quality. I’m sharing a review based on the usage of 1 month.
Look and feel
The OPPO Mirror 3 doesn’t offers premium feel at a price tag of Rs. 16,999. The rear is curved so slightly that it makes more comfortable to hold it in one hand.
It has dimensions of 137.7 x 68.8 x 8.9 mm and weighs 130 grams. The body of the smartphone is made up of plastic and the power button & volume rocker button on the right side are made up of cheap plastic. The micro-USB port and a microphone are on the bottom side of the phone. At the top it houses 3.5mm audio jack, another microphone for recording sound during video capture and an infrared emitter.
Below the screen there are capacitive buttons and the earpiece, ambient light sensor & front-camera are above the screen. The rear-cover has a textured look with glossy finish and feels smooth while touching the phone. The camera and flash have metallic rings around and there are seven machine-drilled holes at the bottom for the speaker. Removing the back panel gives you access to battery, two micro-SIM card slots and microSD card slot.
Specifications and software
The OPPO Mirror 3 features 4.7-inch IPS LCD display which has a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels and it results in pixel density of 312ppi. It is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on top of it and display is bring which is adequately saturated with colours. The viewing angles are pretty good and you can read text under direct sunlight. When compared to other smartphones in the same price segment OPPO has below average display specifications.
The OPPO Mirror 3 powered by 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 SoC which is paired with Adreno 306 GPU. Apart from this, there is 1GB of RAM and 8GB in-built memory which I feel it is the disappointing feature, although you can expand the memory up to 128GB by using microSD card.
The OPPO Mirror 3 features 8-megapixel rear-camera with f/2.0 aperture, 5P leans and Blue Light Filter. There is also 5-megapixel front-facing camera for selfie & video-calling.
It has dual-SIM support and out of which only one SIM card can be used to connect to 3G network. Other connectivity features include Infrared, Bluetooth 4.0, and Wi-Fi a/b/g/n.
It runs on Android 4.4.4 KitKat with Color OS 2.0 on top of it and this is one of the negative point as it does not runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop. Although the Color OS 2.0 is clean, light and there are few tweaks & tricks that add some value. The good thing is that, you can monitor the speed of 3G connection in the status bar and the gesture & motions tricks work well for most part. OPPO allows users to tweak themes according to their preferences.
It packs 2,000mAh battery.
The phone works smoothly and running multiple apps is bliss & there is no lag. While running high-end games there is no problem and gaming experience is pretty decent.
Camera
The camera is pretty good and comes with different modes & different modes can be added or removed depending on your preferences. Camera features such as HDR, Panorama, Expert mode are already as you find in other smartphones. In OPPO Mirror 3 there are more exciting unique features such as Colourful Night, Double Exposure & GIF. Colourful Night mode enhances colours and photos look richer in low-light situations. Double Exposure offers you to shoot two images & superimpose them on top of the other to create an artistic effect. GIF mode is for those who have been living under rock, it creates a moving picture. The BSI sensor works pretty well in low light situations and there is little bit of noise but it is not as bad as other smartphone cameras.
There is also a 5-megapixel front-facing camera which does a pretty good job in capturing selfies even without applying Beautify effect.
Performance
Performance-wise I didn’t find any problems in it and it does the basic tasks pretty well but struggles when you play high-end games like Asphalt 8. There is no problem in playing videos and speaker is adequately loud. Above all the bundled earphones offer decent sound. The phone call is pretty good and I didn’t find any call drop problem while using it.
Battery
The Oppo Mirror 3 packs 2,000mAh battery and it lasts to 8 hours in a video test, which is pretty decent for a phone with such a capacity. It comes with Fast Charge Technology and it takes only 90 minutes to charge the device fully.
Verdict
The Oppo Mirror 3 costs Rs. 16,990, which is highly priced when it comes to specifications and looking at other competitor smartphones. It is a dual-SIM smartphone which prove quite useful in these days. The primary camera shoots great low-light shots and fast charging technology is the selling point of the device.
