The Oppo N1 Mini is a well built phone that looks premium and feels durable. Our mint coloured unit looked interesting due to its unique colour.
The phone may have a smaller form factor compared to Oppo N1, but it is by no means a compact device. Other than the smaller foot print, the phone looks just like Oppo N1.
It looks sleek but at 151gram, it is not the lightest or slimmest phone around.
Oppo N1 Mini sports a brushed steel frame that wraps the entire edge of the body, while the front and back panels, in plastic, feature a matte finish.
The way the bezel fits into the front panel, without any gaps or tapering, is remarkable.
The swivel camera earpiece is placed above the display, while the three capacitive touch navigation buttons sit below it. The right edge features the volume rocker key and the sim tray while the left one sports the power key. The keys are a little thin compared to other devices but offer decent tactile feedback.
The 3.5mm headset jack, micro-USB port and the speaker grill sit at the bottom edge of the phone.
The key highlight of Oppo N1 Mini is its swivel camera (13MP) features a singe-LED flash and can be easily rotated by 206 degrees. The swivel camera can be rotated easily and at times we ended up accidentally moving it while taking the phone out of the pocket. As with other devices with moving components, we're concerned about the durability of the swivel mount but in our use we felt that it was pretty well built and would be able to withstand rough handling.
The back of the phone is slightly rounded and features a soft, porcelain-like, matte finish. It feels extremely good to hold and at the same time, offers a good grip.
Overall, we love the build quality of the phone and have no qualms in grouping it with some of the best designed phones.
Display
The front of the phone is dominated by its 5-inch 720p screen. Compared to N1's full-HD display, N1 Mini's HD display is not as crisp and sharp. Having said that, it does offers good viewing angles and looks really bright and vivid. Sunlight legibility was also good. The screen was very responsive to touch.
Software
Just like the Oppo Find 7, the N1 Mini runs Color OS which is based on Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean). The company is currently testing the Android 4.4-based build and plans to release it in the near future.
The OS is essentially a heavily customized version of Android that offers support for themes, an app launcher and lock screen widgets.
Unlike UI skins from Gionee and Lenovo, Oppo's Color OS features a separate app launcher and is closer to stock Android in terms of navigation, home screens and lock screen widgets. However, the company has replaced the stock apps with its own and has skinned menus and notifications panel. Some apps, such as Music, look really good due to Oppo's nice little touches.
Oppo has also incorporated support for gestures, including 'double tap to unlock,' three finger swipe for screenshots, and pinch-to-launch camera app. The app switcher can be launched by long pressing the Home button.
If you swipe top to bottom from the left side you'll see a gestures panel where you can draw pre-defined gestures to launch a specific app or do a particular task. Swiping down from the right side reveals the notifications panel.
While Oppo has customized the OS to a great deal, people familiar with Android will feel at home while using the phone. The Color OS is good to look at and functional at the same time.
Camera
The key highlight of Oppo N1 Mini is its swivel camera (13MP) featuring a singe-LED flash. It can be easily rotated by 206 degrees. The camera features a 1/3.2 Sony sensor with a 6-piece lens arrangement and an f/2.0 aperture.
The camera's Ultra HD mode is capable of capturing 24MP photographs by picking out the best parts of six successive pictures and combining them.
The camera app is pretty simple and doesn't feature a large number of toggles for granular settings. It's easy to switch between shooting modes and change major settings.
Shot in Super HD mode
The quality of images captured outdoors, in daylight was impressive with good level of detail, accurate colour reproduction, little noise and good contrast.
Low-light shots also came out well, but had more noise, especially under 100% zoom. Details were good and the camera doesn't over-process images except in the Night mode.
The Ultra-HD mode shoots 24MP images by combining six good images and offers better detail. It's useful for large prints.
The rotating camera can also be used for taking wide-angled selfies and the app features a Beautify mode to enhance facial features. As a result, you look much better in your selfies.
The camera app also offers slow shutter for creating motion blur and light trail images, an audio photo mode and GIF picture mode.
Overall, the camera is the high point of the Oppo N1 Mini.
Performance
Oppo N1 Mini is powered by a 1.6GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, Adreno 305 GPU and 2GB RAM. The phone comes with 32GB internal storage out of which about 12GB is available to the user. Unfortunately, the phone doesn't come with a microSD card slot. So, you'll have to make do with the limited storage or use a USB on-the-go compatible device (or a regular USB drive with an adapter) to store additional media.
We did not encounter any lag or stutter while launching and switching between apps, browsing the web, clicking pictures, watching high definition videos or playing graphics-heavy games.
In terms of synthetic benchmarks, it scored 11,112 in Quadrant Standard, 20,656 in AnTuTu and 58.3 in NenaMark 2. The benchmark scores are higher than Panasonic Eluga U and Motorola Moto G but almost at par with HTC Desire 816. But we'd not recommend a phone based solely on benchmarks as real world performance is different at times.
We were able to play videos of popular file formats without any hiccups. Additional file formats can be played through third party video player apps.
Call quality was very good and the phone works well even in weak signal areas.
The phone comes with GPS and A-GPS for navigation and maps and was easily able to lock a signal. It has NFC connectivity as well and we were able to transfer files via Android Beam without any hiccups.
Oppo N1 Mini has a 2,140mAh battery and we were satisfied with the battery backup delivered by the phone. With moderate to high usage, including about one to two hours of making calls, playing games, clicking some pictures, listening to music and browsing the web, the phone will last you a full working day even if you put the screen brightness at the maximum level and keep 3G turned on.
Gaming
We played games like Subway Surfers, Riptide GP2 and Asphalt 8 (with Visual Quality set to High and Engine at 100%) without encountering frame drops or freezes on Oppo N1 Mini.
O-Click
We also got a chance to use the O-Click Bluetooth accessory with our N1 Mini review unit. The optional accessory is essentially a fob that acts as a camera shutter button, a device to locate the phone and an alarm that triggers whenever the phone is moved away (more than 5metres). It looks really sleek although we had a tough time opening its back cover to place the button cell battery that comes with it (in order to power the device).
It is easy to setup O-Click. You just need to pair it with the N1 Mini. A pre-loaded O-Click app lets you enable or disable features associated with it.
We found the remote shutter button to be the best feature of the O-Click as it makes taking group selfies really simple. The O-Click is available for Rs 1,800 and is an interesting accessory albeit with limited functionality.
The phone may have a smaller form factor compared to Oppo N1, but it is by no means a compact device. Other than the smaller foot print, the phone looks just like Oppo N1.
It looks sleek but at 151gram, it is not the lightest or slimmest phone around.
Oppo N1 Mini sports a brushed steel frame that wraps the entire edge of the body, while the front and back panels, in plastic, feature a matte finish.
The way the bezel fits into the front panel, without any gaps or tapering, is remarkable.
The swivel camera earpiece is placed above the display, while the three capacitive touch navigation buttons sit below it. The right edge features the volume rocker key and the sim tray while the left one sports the power key. The keys are a little thin compared to other devices but offer decent tactile feedback.
The 3.5mm headset jack, micro-USB port and the speaker grill sit at the bottom edge of the phone.
The key highlight of Oppo N1 Mini is its swivel camera (13MP) features a singe-LED flash and can be easily rotated by 206 degrees. The swivel camera can be rotated easily and at times we ended up accidentally moving it while taking the phone out of the pocket. As with other devices with moving components, we're concerned about the durability of the swivel mount but in our use we felt that it was pretty well built and would be able to withstand rough handling.
The back of the phone is slightly rounded and features a soft, porcelain-like, matte finish. It feels extremely good to hold and at the same time, offers a good grip.
Overall, we love the build quality of the phone and have no qualms in grouping it with some of the best designed phones.
Display
The front of the phone is dominated by its 5-inch 720p screen. Compared to N1's full-HD display, N1 Mini's HD display is not as crisp and sharp. Having said that, it does offers good viewing angles and looks really bright and vivid. Sunlight legibility was also good. The screen was very responsive to touch.
Software
Just like the Oppo Find 7, the N1 Mini runs Color OS which is based on Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean). The company is currently testing the Android 4.4-based build and plans to release it in the near future.
The OS is essentially a heavily customized version of Android that offers support for themes, an app launcher and lock screen widgets.
Unlike UI skins from Gionee and Lenovo, Oppo's Color OS features a separate app launcher and is closer to stock Android in terms of navigation, home screens and lock screen widgets. However, the company has replaced the stock apps with its own and has skinned menus and notifications panel. Some apps, such as Music, look really good due to Oppo's nice little touches.
Oppo has also incorporated support for gestures, including 'double tap to unlock,' three finger swipe for screenshots, and pinch-to-launch camera app. The app switcher can be launched by long pressing the Home button.
If you swipe top to bottom from the left side you'll see a gestures panel where you can draw pre-defined gestures to launch a specific app or do a particular task. Swiping down from the right side reveals the notifications panel.
While Oppo has customized the OS to a great deal, people familiar with Android will feel at home while using the phone. The Color OS is good to look at and functional at the same time.
Camera
The key highlight of Oppo N1 Mini is its swivel camera (13MP) featuring a singe-LED flash. It can be easily rotated by 206 degrees. The camera features a 1/3.2 Sony sensor with a 6-piece lens arrangement and an f/2.0 aperture.
The camera's Ultra HD mode is capable of capturing 24MP photographs by picking out the best parts of six successive pictures and combining them.
The camera app is pretty simple and doesn't feature a large number of toggles for granular settings. It's easy to switch between shooting modes and change major settings.
Shot in Super HD mode
The quality of images captured outdoors, in daylight was impressive with good level of detail, accurate colour reproduction, little noise and good contrast.
Low-light shots also came out well, but had more noise, especially under 100% zoom. Details were good and the camera doesn't over-process images except in the Night mode.
The Ultra-HD mode shoots 24MP images by combining six good images and offers better detail. It's useful for large prints.
The rotating camera can also be used for taking wide-angled selfies and the app features a Beautify mode to enhance facial features. As a result, you look much better in your selfies.
The camera app also offers slow shutter for creating motion blur and light trail images, an audio photo mode and GIF picture mode.
Overall, the camera is the high point of the Oppo N1 Mini.
Performance
Oppo N1 Mini is powered by a 1.6GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, Adreno 305 GPU and 2GB RAM. The phone comes with 32GB internal storage out of which about 12GB is available to the user. Unfortunately, the phone doesn't come with a microSD card slot. So, you'll have to make do with the limited storage or use a USB on-the-go compatible device (or a regular USB drive with an adapter) to store additional media.
We did not encounter any lag or stutter while launching and switching between apps, browsing the web, clicking pictures, watching high definition videos or playing graphics-heavy games.
In terms of synthetic benchmarks, it scored 11,112 in Quadrant Standard, 20,656 in AnTuTu and 58.3 in NenaMark 2. The benchmark scores are higher than Panasonic Eluga U and Motorola Moto G but almost at par with HTC Desire 816. But we'd not recommend a phone based solely on benchmarks as real world performance is different at times.
We were able to play videos of popular file formats without any hiccups. Additional file formats can be played through third party video player apps.
Call quality was very good and the phone works well even in weak signal areas.
The phone comes with GPS and A-GPS for navigation and maps and was easily able to lock a signal. It has NFC connectivity as well and we were able to transfer files via Android Beam without any hiccups.
Oppo N1 Mini has a 2,140mAh battery and we were satisfied with the battery backup delivered by the phone. With moderate to high usage, including about one to two hours of making calls, playing games, clicking some pictures, listening to music and browsing the web, the phone will last you a full working day even if you put the screen brightness at the maximum level and keep 3G turned on.
Gaming
We played games like Subway Surfers, Riptide GP2 and Asphalt 8 (with Visual Quality set to High and Engine at 100%) without encountering frame drops or freezes on Oppo N1 Mini.
O-Click
We also got a chance to use the O-Click Bluetooth accessory with our N1 Mini review unit. The optional accessory is essentially a fob that acts as a camera shutter button, a device to locate the phone and an alarm that triggers whenever the phone is moved away (more than 5metres). It looks really sleek although we had a tough time opening its back cover to place the button cell battery that comes with it (in order to power the device).
It is easy to setup O-Click. You just need to pair it with the N1 Mini. A pre-loaded O-Click app lets you enable or disable features associated with it.
We found the remote shutter button to be the best feature of the O-Click as it makes taking group selfies really simple. The O-Click is available for Rs 1,800 and is an interesting accessory albeit with limited functionality.
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