Chinese phone maker OPPO is now accepting pre-registrations for the R15 and R15 Plus, its latest Android devices set to be launched in the coming weeks. The company also shared a new promotional render of the upcoming smartphones which confirms their largely bezel-less design and an 18:9 display panel with a small notch housing their front-facing sensor array. As was the case in previous years, the new additions to OPPO’s R lineup are likely to be equipped to compete in the upper mid-range segment of the market, with recent rumors indicating the handsets will be equipped with either one of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600-series chips or the Helio P60, MediaTek’s 12nm offering officially announced last week at Barcelona, Spain-based Mobile World Congress.
The Snapdragon 700 series was previously rumored as being another candidate for powering the R15 family but that possibility now appears to be unlikely after Qualcomm confirmed it will only begin sampling the new chips in the first half of the current year, suggesting no flow production will take place before summer, whereas OPPO’s new smartphones are expected to debut no later than spring. Both handsets are also rumored to feature 6GB of RAM and at least 64GB of internal flash memory. With OPPO’s R-branded offerings traditionally placing a large focus on mobile photography, the R15 and R15 Plus are expected to do the same, particularly in the context of selfies as they should retain the Beauty mode of their predecessors.
The handsets should be powered by ColorOS 4.0 based on Android Oreo, with the presence of the latest major iteration of the operating system essentially guaranteeing support for Google’s Project Treble. The reworked framework of the mobile OS should help OPPO develop monthly security patches for the R15 and R15 Plus in a more timely manner. The devices are also set to join the growing list of notch-equipped Android phones which already contains the likes of the ASUS ZenFone 5 and Essential PH-1, whereas the successor to the LG G6 and OnePlus 6 are also said to be featuring the same design cue.