OPPO launches F3 Plus ‘Group Selfie’ smartphone

By Chandeepa Wettasinghe 
in New Delhi
OPPO, the Chinese mobile phone manufacturer that specializes in ‘selfies’ recently launched its F3 Plus ‘Group Selfie’ smartphone which has a dedicated front camera for group photos, on the way making the ubiquitous selfie sticks redundant.
“With F3 Plus there’s no need to buy a selfie stick and no need to bother someone to take your group photo anymore,” OPPO India Product Manager Aakash Gabhrani said last week during the launch at the Hyatt Andhaz hotel in New Delhi.
The F3 Plus has a 16 megapixel camera in the front for high quality selfies, and an 8 megapixel, 120 degree wide-angle lens with f/2.0 apeture and 1/3 inch sensor on its revolutionary front camera for group selfies, according to Gabhrani.
“Previously you had to stretch arms out, get into awkward poses, not get the background or have some missing arms or faces. So I’m thoroughly impressed with the F3 Plus,” Celebrity Photographer Dabboo Ratnani said.
According to a study conducted by Nielsen India across 10 cities in India, 26 percent of the 1,000 respondents said that they would prefer a phone which had the capacity to capture more people in a selfie, while 21 percent had also said that they would prefer for the subjects in the selfie to be clear.
Further, 47 percent of the respondents had said that it was difficult to include a beautiful background in the picture when including a large group. The study had also found that 6 out of 10 selfies were group selfies.
“Around 66 percent said that it’s difficult to get more people into a frame, so I think it’s a right time to upgrade to a selfie expert,” OPPO India Brand Director Will Yang said.
The F3 Plus includes OPPO’s Beautify 4.0 feature, which allows a user to insert various effects into photographs.
The rear camera, developed jointly with Sony, has 16 megapixels, with a 1/2.8 inch IMX398 with dual phase detection autofocus, which allows a user to focus the lens 40 percent faster, even during low light, with a large f/1.7 aperture, resulting in clearer images.
The F3 Plus includes the ability to unlock the phone within 0.2 seconds through fingerprint recognition and fingerprint activated calling and app launching.
The F3 Plus has a metal body, a 6 inch 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 5 screen, 4 gigabytes of RAM, 64 gigabytes of internal storage with an option to expand up to 256 gigabytes with a microSD card, a Qualcomm MSM8976 Pro processor and 4G supported dual nano-SIM, amongst a host of other features.
“We have not only a beautifully designed phone, but a big battery with a 4,000 mAh battery with VOOC flash charging,” Gabhrani added.
Yang said that by focusing on its Selfie Expert product range, OPPO has managed to become leading mobile phone manufacturer in China with a 16.8 percent market share, and the second largest mobile phone supplier in India with an 11.5 percent market share.
He said that OPPO is also the second largest mobile phone supplier in South Asia.
According to independent research unit IDC, OPPO had sold around 100 million smartphones in 2016, growing more than 133 percent from 2015.
OPPO Global Vice President Sky Li and OPPO’s new Brand Ambassador Deepika Padukone were also present at the launch.
The OPPO F3, which comes in Black and Gold colours can be purchased island-wide starting this April in the Gold variant for Rs.69,990, while the Black variant will be available later.