Smartphone manufacturers are obsessed with thinness, although I would favor a handset with crawly battery life than a super slim chassis, and this tends to exist echoed by many others. After all, with more powerful processors and brighter, higher resolution displays, it's key to accept a large battery to brand certain your device lasts the whole twenty-four hour period.

But being the 'best at' this or 'well-nigh at' that still gives y'all bragging rights and that's what Chinese phone maker Oppo appears to exist after with the R5. Granted, it's not their master flagship smartphone, but it's what the company claims is the slimmest handset going around, at just 4.85mm thick. It is a pretty impressive course factor, coming in at more than 2mm thinner than the already graceful iPhone 6, but it'southward non without drawbacks and trade-offs.

For i, the internal battery in the Oppo R5 is but two,000 mAh, which is peculiarly small when you consider the brandish on this Android device is a standard 5.2-inch 1080p AMOLED. Oppo hasn't gone all out on the SoC side, including a modest Snapdragon 615 with 16 GB of storage that can't be expanded upon. The protruding photographic camera doesn't blow away its competitors either, at 13 megapixels without optical image stabilization.

The Oppo R5 is clearly designed to destroy its competitors in class factor, rather than specifications and hardware. So what does a super slim smartphone deliver? Is information technology actually worth using over a thicker device with, potentially, better hardware?

The first time I pulled the Oppo R5 out of its box, it did strike me merely how amazingly thin the handset is. The bulk of the trunk is just 5.2mm thick as measured by a micrometer, slightly larger than the figure Oppo quotes, simply impressive all the same. The simply part of the handset that balloons out larger than this is the camera, which protrudes from the back panel by ane.9mm to accommodate the xiii-megapixel sensor and its f/2.0 lens.

While the v.2-inch display and sizable top and botton bezels prevent the Oppo R5 from feeling like a compact handset, the slimness of the device is really something to behold. Simply put, the R5 is the slimmest smartphone I've always used and its reward over its competitors in this area is very noticeable. Thanks to its slimness, it feels great in your easily despite its large contour, and when in your pocket information technology feels like it's barely at that place.

Oppo has also used high quality materials for the construction of the R5. The slim edges of the handset, equally well as a significant portion of the dorsum panel, are made from aluminium, which non only looks bang-up thank you to a shiny matte finish, only also feels strong and dependable. The use of plain white rubberized plastic to complement the dorsum panel looks okay, simply the large slice of metallic really steals the show. And despite the thinness of the handset, the R5 is extremely solid, unlikely to bend or flex without meaning strength.

The front panel is white, protected entirely by Gorilla Glass three. This makes the whole display area and the bezels around it smooth and swooshable, and although the pattern isn't annihilation to write domicile about, the employ of merely one cloth here is simple and constructive. Above the display are the usual speaker, sensors and photographic camera, while below y'all'll find the capacitive navigation buttons. I don't like the inclusion of a legacy menu button, with virtually other manufacturers phasing it out in their new handsets in favour of on-screen buttons or the much more useful app switcher button.

Around the edges of the Oppo R5 you lot'll discover the volume and power buttons on the right side, both in ideal positions for like shooting fish in a barrel access. Thank you to their metallic construction they're also solid and satisfyingly clicky. Along the bottom is the microUSB port, while the acme is blank and the left side only features a micro-SIM card tray.

With Oppo opting to make the R5 as slim every bit possible, this has led to one major and incredibly inconvenient sacrifice, equally y'all might have noticed: in that location is no 3.5mm sound jack on this smartphone. That ways no listening to music via headphones equally with basically every other device out there. Its omission is annoying and limits the flexibility of the R5.

Oppo does provide a workaround to the lack of an audio jack through an adapter to microUSB that'southward included in the box. However this isn't an platonic solution, as it creates a bulky end to your headphone cable, and if y'all forget it or lose it yous'll be without headphone support for your device. There'due south also the option to use Bluetooth headphones (like with most other phones), but if y'all haven't purchased a pair already this is inappreciably a swell, or cheap, option.

And as you'll see on the post-obit pages, the lack of a 3.5mm audio jack isn't the merely sacrifice that has been fabricated for the sake of smartphone slimness.