MANILA - The Oppo R17 Pro does not have the fancy pop up cameras of its more famous sibling, the Find X, but it makes up for the lack of design bling with cameras that challenge some of the best in its class.

The R17 Pro is not exactly the Chinese brand’s flagship. It uses the Snapdragon 710 chipset instead of the 845 that is found on Android flagships. But other than that, it ticks off a lot of checkboxes that qualify it as a powerhouse. And when it comes to camera performance, it can give Huawei, Samsung and Apple a run for their money.

DESIGN AND SPECS

Looks-wise, the R17 Pro doesn't really stand out among midrange and upper-range phones. It’s not bad looking, but it also uses a design that’s very similar to every other phone launched last year.

It has a curved glass and metal build, a gradient colored back, a 19:9 screen and a notch on the display. Oppo however has kept the notch on its 6.4 inch display to a very small “water drop” to provide more screen real estate.

The AMOLED screen has a 2340 x 1080 resolution. It’s very sharp, bright and has really nice contrast even in daylight. The fingerprint sensor is also built into the screen and is fairly fast. There's also a face unlock feature that worked well except in very dim light.

The phone has 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. It also uses two 1,850mAh batteries, which combine for 3,700mAh of juice. Oppo said splitting the battery in two results in faster charging, and they weren’t kidding. You could fully charge this beast in around 40 minutes. Ten minutes and you get from zero to around 40 percent.

The phone has a good solid, premium feel. On the left side are the volume keys, while on the right is the power/lock button. At the bottom is a USB-C port and the dual-SIM tray. It doesn’t support microSD cards, but the 128GB storage should be enough for most users.

There is no 3.5mm headphone jack, but Oppo was nice enough to include headphones that can plug into the USB-C port. If you want to plug in your high-end headphones, you will need a dongle for the R17 Pro.

CAMERA

What sets this phone apart is its camera system. It has 3 cameras at the back. One is a 12MP shooter that can change its aperture from F1.5 to F2.4 depending on the shooting conditions. A second, wide angle camera can capture 20MP images at F2.6.

A third camera can supposedly shoot 3D images. Dubbed as time of flight (TOF) 3D stereo camera, it supposedly could capture 3D images by circling the camera around an object or person. This feature was not available on the test unit, but other reviewers who have tried it said it was buggy and caused the camera to crash.

The two other cameras produced really good photos. Like a lot of phones today, the R17 Pro uses artificial intelligence to recognize subjects and makes adjustments to focus, white balance, color saturation and other imaging factors. It can recognize faces, people, group shots, food, indoor scenes.

Travel blogger Kara Santos used the R17 Pro during her winter trip to Sapporo, Japan and was surprised that it could even recognize snow. Its HDR mode is also better than a lot of other phones.

But the phone really excels in low-light situations. Night shots taken with the R17 Pro are brighter and show more detail than shots taken with other phones. While other smartphones will tend to have a halo around lights and wash out subjects in high contrast low-light environments, the R17 Pro retained features and details of scenes and subjects.

This can sometimes results in night photos looking more vibrant than normal, but if you like your photos to “pop” you will love this phone.

The default mode of the 25 MP front camera feels too near for a selfie. But you can put it in portrait mode that widens the background a bit. The selfie camera also has a smart beauty feature.

You can get good bokeh effects on both the front and back cameras, but like in many other smartphones, this feature can result in photos with backgrounds that look comically blurred and gimmicky.

Interestingly, you can change the setting after you take a pic, make it monochrome or change the type of light setting--natural, film light, etc.

The R17 Pro, which sells for P38,990 is a solid offering from Oppo. But it also faces pretty tough competition on this price range from the triple camera Huawei P20 Pro and quadruple camera Samsung Galaxy A9.