Oppo’s announcement for their newest flagship device, the N1, was exciting and a bit of a let down at the same time. Earlier this month we heard some exciting rumors that Oppo might be including a user-swappable camera lens on the N1, something that’s never been done before. Alas that rumor turned out not to be true, at least for this phone, but something almost equally exciting was announced in regard to the Oppo N1’s camera today; a 206-degree rotatable 13 megapixel camera. The rest of the specs on the phone are nothing to sneeze at of course, but we’ve already covered that during the unveiling today. To properly show off their new camera, Oppo has released a couple sample images that show off just how good their new optics are, and these images are quite impressive if they aren’t doctored at all. Take a look for yourself!
What’s so impressive about these shots isn’t even the resolution or the composition of them, but the complete lack of artifacting and traditional smartphone “haze.” A lot of the time when you take pictures with your smartphone, no matter how good it is, you tend to get a haze that takes over the parts of the photo that have brighter lighting. This was more or less fixed when HDR made its way to phones and became popularized by nearly every flagship device in the last 2 years, however HDR generally takes a few seconds to take and compute, which can really take away from the picture taking experience. Now Oppo doesn’t explain exactly how it got these shots or how long it took, but given that they are touting the N1 to have the fastest camera on the market, we’re expecting the N1 to live up to the hype presented here. Other than some possible hardware tricks that Oppo has up its sleeve, they’ve really spent some time on making the optics of the camera itself super impressive.
First off is the 6 element lens, which is a rarity among smartphones which often feature 5 elements or less, and provides the N1 with better image distortion protection than many lenses out there. Next up is the sensor size itself, which at 1/3.06 rivals that of the HTC One in terms of size, but is still a ways away from something like a Nokia Lumia 1020 which is 2/3. That makes it bigger than the Galaxy S4 and the iPhone 5 for comparison’s sake, and right about on par with the iPhone 5s’s sensor size. Then of course there’s the aperture, which lets in more light and gives a wider angle for the picture. Oppo’s N1 is right up there with the HTC One yet again, with a F/2.0 aperture, which is better than most phones out there which are F/2.2-2.4, allowing the Oppo N1 to take in more light in low-light conditions. This not only helps with pictures taken at night, but also reducing blur and other problems normally associated with smartphone cameras. Take all this and combine it with the fact that the N1 has a 13MP resolution and you’ll start to understand just how good the pictures coming from this phone can be.
Let’s of course not forget about the dual LED flash, which is another rarity among smartphones these days. The above shots show a comparison between single LED and dual LED flash on the N1. Then there’s also the ability to take up to an 8 second exposure shot, which will let you do all sorts of cool effects, particularly with night shots. Hardware is only as good as the software that utilizes it, and as we’ve seen from the Moto X, even decent hardware can be held back by sub-par software. Here’s hoping these shots are less than doctored and we can get our hands on the N1 soon enough to give you some real comparison shots.