OPPO spent the better part of 2016 preaching the camera Gospel to users of budget smartphones whom it sought to court with its F1 series of devices. As far as we know from our interaction with one of those, it delivered, bigly.
So, what about this year? It looks like we will get to find out in a week’s time.
The company has an event next Monday at Mobile World Congress (MWC) where it is set to announce some breakthrough imaging technology that we may as well be seeing on its devices this year. An invitation to members of the tech press simply cites “5x smartphone photography technology that will give users unprecedented ability to capture highly detailed images” while leaving the rest to our imagination.
OPPO shipped 85 million smartphone units last year according to Gartner. The company surprised many by overtaking Huawei in the Chinese market thanks to strong sales of its R9 smartphone. According to yet another research firm, Canalys, OPPO faired well in another big smartphone market, India. “OPPO was the best-performing vendor in the top five, shipping 2.6 million units, up from 150,000 a year ago, and a 150% increase from the previous quarter.”
OPPO has quite a chequered history when it comes to pushing the boundaries of smartphone photography going all the way back to the N1 and its rotating camera to last year’s impressive midrange F1s. We can’t wait to see what it has been cooking all year long. A smartphone with 5x [optical] zoom capability?
