OPPO F5: When your selfies get smarter and more real

Artificial intelligence (AI) seems like a buzzword we’ve heard countless of times these days but it has been encroaching on a lot of parts of our lives. And it seems this time, it’s coming to our smartphone cameras, too. Chinese tech company OPPO is bringing it to one of its most popular features: the selfie camera. Yes, even our smartphone cameras are getting “smarter” so to speak.

The OPPO F5 is introducing AI capabilities into its front-facing camera, making sure that it “captures the real you” as the brand’s tagline for the F5 goes. What the AI Beauty Recognition technology does is it examines your photos to make sure you get the best selfies possible. One that clears your skin of blemishes and pimples but doesn’t get rid of your beauty marks. With 200 facial recognition points, the F5 studies your face particularly well. OPPO studied millions of faces from its global image database to help you take your best possible selfie. It recognizes everything from your skin tone and type to your gender and age to make sure the beautification enhancement it does is tailored specifically for you. You can see the sample of that below:

OPPO claims it works under difficult lighting conditions and will help you out with things like teeth whitening and the removal of dark circles under your eyes. The company paid particularly close attention to three areas on your face—eyes, lips, and hairlines—for the best possible selfies. What’s pretty cool is OPPO extends this personalized beautification feature to groups. So if you take photos with your friends, you won’t be subjected to just one type of beautification. We had OPPO’s PR Manager Eason de Guzman Jr. summarize the AI features of the F5 in the video below:

For those concerned about security risks of AI, OPPO assures us the updates for the AI Beauty Recognition Technology are sent over-the-air. They’ve used machine learning to study faces and keeps that information on your device.

To get these impressive photos, the F5 has a 20-megapixel front shooter with an f/2.0 aperture and a 16-megapixel rear camera with f/1.8 aperture. The cameras come equipped with bokeh effect for those portrait-like shots as well as front HDR to help handle over-exposure issues.

AI for selfies isn’t the only thing the F5 has going for it, though. OPPO joins the full-screen 18:9 aspect ratio bandwagon with the F5 and it looks pretty good on the 6-inch Full HD+ display with 2,160 x 1,080 resolution. And the F5 is such a sleek device. Thin and light with just a bit of heft to it. It curves slightly to the edges seamlessly, making it comfortable to use in hand.

Another first for the brand with the F5 is the introduction of Facial Unlock, which should make it easier to unlock your device. But we need to take the F5 for a spin first to confirm this. The phone does also have a fingerprint scanner, if you’re more comfortable using that.

As for the other specs, the F5 packs in a MediaTek MT6763 2.5GHz octa-core processor, Mali-G71 GPU, 4GB of RAM, 32GB expandable storage, 4G LTE connectivity, dual SIM support, and a 3,200mAh battery. The F5 runs on Android 7.1.1 Nougat. It retails for P15,990. It’s now available for pre-order until November 3, 2017. Those who pre-order the F5 get an Olike Bluetooth Speaker priced at P2,990. The phone officially goes on sale on November 4, 2017.