Review: OPPO F21 Pro, a budget friendly innovation

OPPO F21 Pro has an attractive design, distinctive camera features, with its triple camera module and microlens

Triple camera module, Microlens remain major highlights of new phone
OPPO successfully launched the new OPPO F21 Pro in Pakistan in early April 2022. The phone provides its users with an attractive design, distinctive camera features and a lot more. It is beautiful to look at and provides a premium hand feel. Its prominent exterior barely has any plastic involved, particularly the sunset orange variant that uses vegan leather.

Design and display 

The phone comes with a 6.43-inch FHD+ (2400 x 1080p) amoled display with a 90Hz refresh rate and a maximum touch sampling rate of 180Hz. It has a maximum brightness of 600 nits while the display carries corning glass 5 protection. A second layer of screen protection has also been pre-applied by the company. The device also boasts an in-display fingerprint scanner, which performs admirably. It is pertinent to mention that the phone has three dedicated slots, two for nano SIM cards and one for a microSD card.
The OPPO F21 Pro has the first fiber-glass leather design in the market, making it both durable and lightweight. With a water and wear-resistant design, it also possesses frameless battery cover. This finish is offered on the F21 Pro in the sunset orange color. In our experience, with this surface, it has barely picked up any fingerprints or scratches, indicating that it should be simple to keep clean. The soft gold finish on the frame and portion of the camera module compliments with the orange back.
In addition, there's a cosmic black model as well with an OPPO glow design. Both models have a flat-edge and carry an orbit light for alerts.
The OPPO F21 Pro is quite light and weighs only 175g. It is not too thick, despite the flattened design. Even with a little one-handed use, we found it to be very comfortable to play with. A headphone jack, speaker and USB type-C port are located at the bottom of the frame. There are no stereo speakers on this phone.

Camera

On the back of the phone is a triple-camera module, a main 64MP (f/1.7) camera, a 2MP 30x microscope camera (f/3.3), and a 2MP (f/2.4) macro camera with LED flash. It has a 32MP front camera (with a 1/2.74-inch Sony IMX709 sensor and f/2.4 aperture). The main 64-megapixel camera captures high quality pictures but there is no ultra-wide mode.
By incorporating the cutting-edge Sony IMX709 selfie sensor, the latest OPPO F21 Pro promises to deliver an amazing low-light, high-quality selfie experience. The Sony IMX709 improves cross-platform compatibility and picture processing efficiency by increasing light consumption without compromising on color information. With the IMX709 sensor along with selfie HDR, OPPO has significantly lifted the bar in low-light and backlit photography.
We expected the microlens camera to be a gimmick but it works wonderfully. It did a great job of capturing the minute details and brought to life the most boring objects with absolute clarity. Coming to the selfie camera, it provides a great bokeh effect, bright colors, good exposure and overall posh look. 

Performance and battery

As previously stated, the OPPO F21 Pro runs ColorOS 12.1, has 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage.
The smartphone contains a RAM expansion option that allows users to increase the memory space by another 5GB. This means that a device with 8GB RAM can be upgraded to 13GB if more storage is available. This will greatly improve the speed of day-to-day operations.
The phone has a 4,500mAh battery, which is more than enough for a day’s worth of heavy usage. A 33W SUPERVOOC charger is also available, which, according to the company, can fully charge a phone in just one hour. 
Similar to other OPPO phones, the OPPO F21 Pro also provides the Omoji feature alongside several special features like air gestures, kid space, simple mode and flexible windows. 

ColorOS 12

The OPPO F21 Pro is powered by OPPO's latest ColorOS version, v12.1, which is based on Android 12. ColorOS 12 was released in October of last year and is based on Android 12. The OPPO F21 Pro, to our surprise, came with ColorOS 12.1 out of the box. A new UI with new 3D style icons, better animations, localized text, improved multitasking, Omoji, privacy controls, power-saving qualities, wallpaper-based themes, and more are some of the features and highlights of ColorOS 12.

Price

The phone comes with an amazing yet budget friendly price tag of Rs52,999 in Pakistan. 
Verdict 
OPPO has been offering feature rich smartphones at a decent price range and the OPPO F21 Pro is surely an addition to the list. The phone not only sports a trend-setting design but also offers great camera performance and battery life. This phone is for those who simply want a good looking phone with good cameras and an exceptional user experience which is what the OPPO F series has always been about.