[OPPO Find X5 Pro General] ankitgondalia:
SOFTWARE & PERFORMANCE

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OPPO has come a very long way when it comes to it's software. Over the years, OPPO has refined ColorOS with each version, making the user experience better.

Starting with the Android version, the Find X5 comes with Android 12 out of the box with OPPO's ColorOS 12.1 skin on top. ColorOS over the years has changed quite a lot. OPPO's objective with ColorOS 12 is to refine and simplify the whole UI making it cleaner and easier to use. All of its system apps have been updated to cleaner UI and are easier to use with one hand by placing important menus at the bottom.

There's a good amount of customisation option for the launcher that people will appreciate. From the option to change the icon shapes & sizes, grid layout, to the option to change transition while switching pages & more.

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customisation for icon, grid layout & page transition.​

OPPO also has introduced its own wallpaper-based theming similar to Google's theming which extracts colours from the wallpaper and applies them across the system and apps.

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Unfortunately, OPPO's theming is only limited to the system settings, notification panel, and its own apps, Google apps do not adapt to the theme.

Edit: The device received an update with March security patch. The update now supports theming for Google apps. Good to see OPPO making the user experience better.

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There are also tonnes of customisation options for Always-On Display where one can add custom patterns, text & images including system-provided clock & image options. Customisation also includes Font & display, Fingerprint animation, Edge lighting & more.

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portrait silhouette feature.​

There's a new Portrait silhouette feature that basically draws an outline around the face and lets you set it as the background of the always-on display.

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ColorOS 12.1 also includes all of the Android 12 features such as quick settings toggle to turn off Camera & Mic access to all the apps, option to give an approximate location instead of a precise location, privacy dashboard for checking what permissions were being used by the apps.

OPPO has also worked on animations on ColorOS 12 which they call "Quantum Animation Engine 3.0" adding more lifelike & seamless transitions.

There's an Icon pull-down gesture that can be used by swiping up alongside the edge of the display to bring down the icons close to your thumb and select an app to launch.

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icon pull-down gesture, flexible windows & smart sidebar.​

Another feature I really liked is Flexible window which has the ability to turn any app into a floating window for quick multitasking. Smart Sidebar was another handy feature to quickly access functions and apps.

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OPPO has done a great job in implementing haptics with the ColorOS. You can feel subtle vibrations across the system while dragging your finger or reaching the end of the page after scrolling. O-HAPTICS under settings lets you turn off system haptics, adjust the haptic intensity, and select a haptic style that has two options, Crisp and Gentle.

Talking about pre-installed apps, the phone did have a good amount of bloatware like Amazon, Facebook, and more. However, most of these can be easily uninstalled.

Another issue I want to address is that the folders do not adapt to the selected icon shape. This makes the home screen look a bit inconsistent.

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folder shape does not change to a circle.​

Performance was also quite solid even though it has the last year's chipset, Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. I did wish it had the latest 8 Gen 1 processor, though adding last year's Snapdragon 888 to cut costs without sacrificing performance makes sense after all Snapdragon 888 SOC is quite a capable chipset and can handle everything you throw at it.

During my usage, it performed exceptionally well. I did not face any stutters or major slowdowns. 8GB of RAM was sufficient for multitasking and keeping the apps running in the background. If 8GB of RAM isn't sufficient then one can expand the RAM through the RAM expansion feature which utilizes the phone's storage space.

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With a 120Hz refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling rate the phone felt quite smooth to use and apps and games opened very quickly.

I don't really play games on my phone but I did install some games like BGMI & Asphalt 8 to test out its peak performance and it ran those games quite well with high graphic settings. The phone did get a little warm after running the games for about an hour but did not get abnormally hot.

Software experience has been mostly positive with the Find X5. Even though not having the latest 8 Gen 1 processor, the performance of the phone was pretty solid.