Oppo Find 7a hands-on

Announced last month, the Oppo Find 7a is the lesser spec’d brother of the Find 7. The two models are identical, but for the screen, which only has 1080p resolution on the Find7a as opposed to QuadHD.

We are happy to have the Find 7a here in our office and before we set off writing the proper review, we’d like to give you a quick glimpse of the device.

Oppo’s Color OS is based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean but comes with lots of custom features. The top-of-the-line Snapdragon 801 chipset takes care of running everything smoothly.

Here’s a quick video demoing the Oppo Find 7a.

The Oppo Find 7a comes in an intriguing box with a definite high-end feel. The retail package is not especially rich, there is no O-Click remote, for instance. Inside the box there is a headset with some extra earbuds, a regular microUSB cable and Oppo’s new rapid charger. The charger supplies several Amps of power to the phone and it is said to take the 2,800mAh battery up to 75% charge after a 30-minute charging session, which is impressive.

The Find 7a is by no means a compact device but the thin side screen bezels keep the width down to a minimum. The thickness of 9.2mm is not something to write home about these days but you gotta remember it’s the same as the HTC One (M8) for instance. The Find 7a however trumps the One (M8) not only with a memory card slot, but also with the extra convenience of having an exchangeable battery.

The back cover is released using a cleverly concealed latch mechanism, but the downside is that you have to use an extra tool to open it. A pen tip might also do for this purpose.

The screen looks nice and it looks equally sharp to any other 5-inch 1080p smartphone – the smaller fonts are actually easier to read on the bigger 5.5-inch display. The IPS tech does a good job of preventing color shifting and contrast degradation when you view the display at an angle. There is a Gorilla Glass 3 layer on top and you can operate the touchscreen with your gloves on or with wet fingers.

Below the screen is a cleverly concealed glowing notification light, which adds to the premium looks. Above the screen there is a 5MP f/2.0 front snapper.

The Oppo Find 7a back is made of grippy plastic, which feels a lot like the one on the Find 5. The overall shape of the device however is much closer to the HTC One (M8).

The 13MP camera on the back of the Oppo Find 7a has an f/2.0 aperture and uses a Sony Exmor BSI sensor. It allows for insanely long exposures but it can also produce impressive interpolated 50MP shots. The Find 7a camera can also shoot 4K videos with HDR effect, 1080p videos at 60fps and slow-mo 720p videos.

We are looking forward to putting the Oppo Find 7a through its paces in the days ahead, so let us know if you would like to know anything in particular about it.