Dubai: After dual rear cameras became the standard for flagship cameras, it is time for selfie cameras to double as well.
Chinese manufacturer and world’s fourth-largest smartphone vendor Oppo became the second to launch dual front cameras on F3 globally after its sister company Vivo launched dual lenses in January this year.
The selfie-focused F3 has a 5.5-inch Full HD display with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The device is powered by an octa-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm processor and backed by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, which can be expanded up to 128GB via microSD card slot. The device runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with company’s ColorUI 3.0 running on top of it.
The front houses the 16MP camera and an 8MP with 120-degree wide-angle view while it has a 13MP shooter on the rear.
Mohammad Naoufel Madih, marketing manager for Oppo Middle East, told Gulf News that in an online research conducted by Nielsen in 10 cities in February 2017, 66 per cent of the respondents said that they cannot take perfect selfies.
“Some of the friends cannot fit into the selfie or the wide angle camera is too small. That is how we came to the idea of dual front cameras,” he said.
He said that selfies and group selfies reflect how people, especially the younger generation, are socialising and sharing their lives on social media.
“The group selfie and distortion-minimising features introduced in the earlier F3 Plus model have made it a popular hit among the consumers across Southeast Asia and South Asia,” he said.
The vendor is betting big on phone camera technology and at Barcelona Mobile World Congress, it showcased a periscope-style dual-camera technology for smartphones which offers 5x optical zoom capability on a smartphone with the same clarity as the 2x zoom available on most cameras today.
Oppo became the fourth-largest smartphone manufacturer in 2016 globally, in China and in the first quarter of this year with 29.8 per cent year-on-year growth while Samsung and Apple had zero per cent and 0.8 per cent year-on-year growth respectively.
Oppo shipped 25.6 million units globally and has a market share of 7.4 per cent, up from 19.7 million units and 5.9 per cent market share during a year ago.
Anthony Scarsella, research manager at International Data Corp, said that Oppo’s mid-range, camera-focused R9s was a crucial model in China that helped it to see strong shipments in the market.
“Oppo’s growth has in fact been stronger outside of China with nearly a quarter of shipments from international markets. In the rest of Asia and to a smaller degree in the Middle East and Africa regions, its strong retail presence has helped it to grow further in its business,” he said.
It has been aggressive in both above-the-line and below-the-line activities in India, and stepped up with its after-sales service efforts in several Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia by increasing its number of service centres, he added.
Priced at Dh1,199, the F3 will be sold on May 12 in the UAE and May 13 in India, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar. The pre-bookings to start from Friday until Thursday.
