Japan often gets cool tech gadgets first, but not
this time – it just got its first phone with an in-display fingerprint reader
and it’s late to that particular party. The phone itself is quite interesting –
the Oppo R17 Neo.
It's a version of the Oppo K1 and R15X, which are
partially based on the Oppo R17. That means a 6.4” AMOLED display with a
teardrop notch and 1080p+ resolution, which houses the fingerprint reader in
question. The back is painted in two new gradient colors.
The computational power of the phone took a bit of a
hit. The Oppo R17 Neo has a Snapdragon 660 chipset (down from S670) with 4GB of
RAM (down from 6-8GB). The storage remains at 128GB and the microSD card slot
is still here.
The camera changed too – the main module on the back
still has a 16MP sensor, but the depth sensor is now at 2MP (down from 5MP).
Not a huge loss, but note the different design. The selfie camera remains a
25MP shooter.
This could be a mistake but the Neo is much lighter
than the vanilla R17 – 156g vs. 182g. That’s even though it has a slightly
larger battery, 3,600mAh. It could be a mistake on the seller’s page, otherwise
it would mean that Oppo changed the phone’s construction (which seems
unlikely).
The Oppo R17 Neo is available on contract for JPY
3,218 a month or JPY 38,988 total (US$ 345/€ 305).
