Oppo, a Chinese electronics manufacturer that focuses on the production of media players and mobile devices, officially debuted the R7s on the opening day, Oct. 18, of the 35th GITEX (Gulf Information Technology Exhibition) held at the Dubai World Trade Center.
The R7s is Oppo's latest addition to its R7 offerings. The company previously released R7 and R7 Plus, which were commended for their long battery life, rapid charging capabilities, metal unibody, precise finger scanner and expandable memory.
Based on its listed technical specifications, the R7s clearly takes after its older brothers. While its 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display is smaller than the R7 Plus and bigger than the R7, it shares the same 2.5D arc edge screen and 1080p native resolution with both of its predecessors. The specified SoC is a Qualcomm MSM8939 Octa-core (Snapdragon 615), the same one which the earlier offerings were fitted with. It should be more than capable of supporting Oppo's proprietary OS, ColorOS 2.1, that runs atop Android 5.1.
The expandable storage can support microSD cards up to 32GB. The memory card slot doubles as a Nano SIM card slot that will allow users to insert one Nano SIM card together with the main Micro SIM card — a feature that other R7 devices also enjoy. Of course, the main SIM slot, along with the expansion, will support 4G LTE connectivity.
The latest Oppo phablet features an 8 MP front-facing camera while the main camera will be 13 MP, supporting HDR and having an anti-shake optimization. The whole package is enclosed in an aircraft-grade magnesium aluminum alloy unibody.
However, it does have some notable differences from the rest of the family. The R7s has 4GB of RAM compared to the 3GB on both the R7 and the R7 Plus. The Li-Po battery packs also differ. The R7s has 3,070 mAh, which sits in the middle of the R7's 2,320 mAh and R7 Plus' 4,100 mAh. Nonetheless, the R7s still supports Oppo's VOOC Flash Charging which facilitates 75 percent of the maximum battery capacity to be filled in just 30 minutes. Five minutes of charging will yield two hours of talk time.
Oppo's latest R7 device will be released to South-East Asian and Australian markets in November while releases for the U.S. and Europe will be in December 2015.
