Chinese smartphone brand Oppo, known for its quirky and unusual smartphone designs, has announced the R5, and it has snatched the title of world’s thinnest smartphone from the Gionee Elife S5.1. It’s an astonishing 4.85mm thick, and weighs 155 grams thanks to its aluminum alloy chassis.
Unlike Gionee’s phone, the R5 has a large, 5.2-inch touchscreen with a 1080p resolution. It’s an AMOLED panel, with a wide 180-degree viewing angle, and a total pixel density of 423ppi. Also making the R5 standout is its processor. Oppo has chosen Qualcomm’s 64-bit, octa-core Snapdragon 615 chip, and paired it with 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage memory.
When a phone is this thin, there has to be a compromise in battery capacity. Oppo has managed to squeeze a 2000mAh cell inside the wafer thin frame, and equipped it with a rapid charge facility, where 75-percent capacity is reached after being plugged in for just 30 minutes.
On the rear of the R5 is a 13-megapixel, Sony produced camera. Oppo’s Ultra Image 2.0 software pack is installed, which includes a panorama and slow motion mode, plus HDR, and 4K video recording. In Oppo’s official images of the R5, it’s obvious the rear camera stands proud of the phone’s body, an issue Gionee also faced with the Elife S5.5. The front-facing selfie cam has 5 megapixels.
The phone runs Oppo’s Color OS 2.0, which is based on Android 4.4, and has other features including GPS, Bluetooth, W-Fi Direct, and 4G LTE connectivity. Oppo is also producing the O-Music, a Bluetooth remote control for the phone’s music player, because the R5 doesn’t have a 3.5mm headphone socket built in. For those who don’t pick up the O-Music, a USB-3.5mm adaptor is supplied. The O-Music controller acts as a shutter release key for the camera too.
Oppo will put the R5 on sale for $500 without a contract, but a final release date hasn’t been confirmed.