This 3rd and 4th Quarter, international brands OPPO and Huawei dropped two mid-range products that made the headlines of top tech blogs in the Philippines. Both products were well received by consumers, but a lot have not yet made their decision on which smartphone to buy.
Today, we’re pitting 2 products on This or That, to help buyers choose the right gadget for their need. For us at Gadget Pilipinas, we don’t want you to have any feeling of remorse when you purchase something.
OPPO F5 or Huawei Nova 2i
Design and Screen Quality
Both devices sport almost similar materials. OPPO F5’s coating though somewhat protects the phone from light scratches than Nova 2i’s. I do feel that the latter looks more premium than the OPPO F5.
OPPO F5 is the first device from OPPO to have a screen with an 18:9 aspect ratio with 2160 x 1080 resolution. Icons and images look sharp and vibrant, and the texts are sharp to look at by our standards.
Huawei Nova 2i’s screen, which sports the same aspect ratio and resolution, is equally outstanding. I, however, find the Nova 2i’s screen brighter than OPPO F5’s especially when Eye Comfort is disabled on the former. With brightness at the lowest level, Nova 2i’s screen is slightly more lit than OPPO F5’s. This is good, but there’s one drawback though – battery life.
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- OPPO F5 vs Huawei Nova 2i 13
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- OPPO F5 vs Huawei Nova 2i 14
Read our full review of OPPO F5 here.
Performance
OPPO F5 is faster by a few notches on most of the benchmarking utilities I used. Real life tests indicate similar results as well. This, however, does not mean that Nova 2i is dramatically inferior to the OPPO F5. Everything boils down to efficiency or how its processor manages its output at light and heavy loads. Mediatek has mastered the latter and its relevance to energy management. Also, given the fact that the OPPO F5’s processor has higher frequency clock than Nova 2i, its victory is clear as day.
Check our full review of Huawei Nova 2i here.
Photography
Bokeh and Image Noise: OPPO F5 clears this round as the blur on F5 is much softer without sacrificing quality with obvious noise. This can evidently be seen on the photos below. One issue that I encountered with the OPPO F5 though is the difficulty I had with focusing on my subject.
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Color Saturation and Vibrance: This is a hit and miss on both devices. The quality of photos I took are inconsistent as evidenced by sample photos below. Colors, which are usually muted, don’t get the right amount of saturation all the time when I took photos using both devices. The same goes of output for vibrance.
Now, this is where picture format comes into play. Huawei Nova 2i can take photos with RAW format. This gives mobile photographes more creative freedom to tweak the photos they took during post.
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Contrast: Contrast plays a vital part in photography. In varying states, the flatter the whites and blacks on your photos, the better your photos are. OPPO F5’s sensor is able to capture and produce photos with better contrast. Again, Nova 2i’s RAW shooting capability can definitely help tweak the contrast of photos but at the expense of
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Selfie: I am not pogi, so having a beauty mode on my phone is a plus factor. I thought that the Nova 2i did a great job with its own Beauty Mode, but there’s much tweaking to be done to retain photo color and saturation fidelity. Nova 2i is great at producing the right amount of contrast though at the expense of sharpness. OPPO F5’s contrast level is way low at default, but with a good amount of sharpness.
About beauty mode, Nova 2i has 10 steps while OPPO F5 only has 6 steps. Each step corresponds to a particular adjustment. The advantage of Nova 2i is flexibility as the user has 10 steps to play around. When you turn up the switch to maximum level on both devices, the photo produced by OPPO F5 look more natural. This is probably because of its front camera A.I. feature.
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Low Light: This one’s a little tricky. When taking photos at dark environments, it’s either you turn up the ISO level way too high at the expense of noise, or your bring increase the aperture level. The aperture level on both phones are fixed so the latter is definitely not an option. So, I just had to rely on how its sensors will take photos – in this case – at auto mode.
The photos I took at auto mode at both devices yielded good results. There are some things I’d like to point out though.
At auto, OPPO F5 is good at taking photos at dark environments. It is a little noisy though, unlike the photo I took at auto mode using Nova 2i. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. There will be times when you’ll be needing a photo, which OPPO F5 produces; while there will be moments when you’ll want a photo, which Nova 2i takes.
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Verdict
Let me get this straight. OPPO F5 wins in the camera and performance department. These are the things that matter for Filipino consumers, and if you’re in the market, I suggest that you pick the OPPO F5 over the Nova 2i.
This, however, does not mean that the Nova 2i isn’t a bad choice at all. If you picked this over the OPPO F5, you shouldn’t have any feeling of remorse or whatsoever. It isn’t a perfect device, but it has the right features needed to make it as a daily driver. For what it’s worth, by my standards, it looks prettier than the OPPO F5. If you fancy a phone that rocks a dual camera, the Nova 2i has it and the OPPO F5 lacks.
Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.
