Chinese phone manufacturer Oppo has released the successor of the Oppo F10 from last year. Named the F9 Pro in some markets, the F9 introduced the teardrop notch design to the Kenyan market before OnePlus 6T, and later devices popularized the smaller screen cutout design.
The new devices are the F11 and F11 Pro, which went live a couple of hours ago. We were expecting to see the phones during the staging of MWC 2019, but we think the show was too packed with interesting devices that could have swept the F11 under the carpet.
Nevertheless, the handhelds are here, and we are positive they will make it to the Kenyan market as F-series are the most high-end Oppo phones that sell locally, save for the limited edition Find X that wowed us with its motorized pop-up camera setup.
The F11 and F11 Pro are mainly the same phones save for the positioning of their selfie cameras. The normal F11 has a teardrop notch, whereas the F11 Pro has an all-screen display with a pop-up mechanism for the selfie.
The rest of the technical specifications are the same: both have a 6.53-inch display, both have a 16 MP selfie camera (regardless of the position) and a dual cam setup at the back – a 48 MP main sensor that we have seen in the likes of the Redmi Note 7, as well as depth-sensing 5 MP module. They also have rear fingerprint readers.
Oppo says that it has upped the camera’s night-shooting capabilities, a new trend that we have seen from other manufacturers such as Huawei. The cameras are also packed with a bevy of AI tricks because, why not.
The batteries have also been sized up to 4000 mAh, and can be juiced up with the OEM’s VOOC 3.0 charging technology. Oppo adds the cells can be charged from 0 to 100 in under 80 minutes. Unfortunately, the F11 and F11 Po still use micro USB 2.0 in a market where even the budget devices from HMD Global are retailing with USB Type-C.
On the processing side of things is an MTK P70 12 nm SOC that powers the show. Lastly, there are two memory options: 4/64 GB and 6/128 GB.
Local availability has no calendar (the phones usually start selling in India before the rest of the world gets hold of them). However, we will update the post as soon as we learn more. Also, expect the price to be under KES 40,000.