The Oppo F21 Pro is one of Oppo’s recent mid-range offerings. The smartphone was launched back in April at a price of Rs 22,999 onwards. The Oppo F21 Pro comes with a 6.4-inch Full-HD+ AMOLED display with a 9Hz refresh rate. The smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 chipset, meaning it comes with 4G connectivity, paired with 8GB of RAM. There is a 4,500mAh battery on the Oppo F21 Pro paired with 33W fast charging. In terms of optics, the Oppo F21 Pro comes with a triple rear camera that is headlined by a 64-megapixel primary shooter, and two 2-megapixel shooters.
From the moment you set eyes on the Oppo F21 Pro, you will see the difference in design. The Oppo F21 Pro has this faux leather back panel that comes in two colours – black and orange. For our review, we got the orange colour which looks quite good and striking. Even the camera module has been given a two-tone colour with combination of black and silver, which adds to the smartphone’s overall character and distinct look. On the front, things are rather simple with a hole punch panel, and the front camera is placed in the top left corner of the screen.
In terms of performance, the Oppo F21 Pro performs like any other mid-range Android device. It has a Snapdragon 680 processor which is built on a 6nm process, and comes with an Adreno 610 GPU. The smartphone, during our brief usage, showed no signs of slowing down or app crashes. While the smartphone is not sluggish or slow by any definition, at times, the Oppo F21 Pro does lag slightly while doing things in the UI like resetting the wallpaper, or resetting display settings.
One thing that further hinders the overall experience is ColorOS, Oppo’s proprietary Android skin. The Oppo F21 Pro runs on ColorOS 12.1, which is similar to other Android skins with several bloatware apps and a long list of permissions that one has to give in order to access apps or services on the Oppo F21 Pro.
In terms of camera, the smartphone performed decently. The camera is pretty decent, but still not the best in this segment. Pictures clicked in the “extra HD” mode are very good quality, but otherwise, the photos clicked are just average unless clicked in a bright environment with ample light. The Oppo F21 Pro’s camera, however, has a microscope feature that is one of the coolest and quirkiest features on any smartphone in this range. One of the two 2-megapixel lenses on the Oppo F21 Pro 4G can turn the smartphone into a handheld microscope, and the results are pretty neat. It shows a lot of micro details that you can’t see with your naked eye and is quite an addictive feature to play around with.
Oppo F21 Pro Review verdict
The Oppo F21 Pro is all about the style and looks of the smartphone offering decent hardware capabilities that gets the job done. For the price of Rs 22,999, many may complain about the fact that it’s a 4G-enabled smartphone and not 5G. But given the uncertainty about the availability of 5G in India, this shouldn’t be a problem as you will most likely change your smartphone by the time 5G goes mainstream in India.
