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Oppo's 1080p Find 5 is its best-built phone yet

Oppo's 1080p Find 5 is its best-built phone yet

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Oppo is one of a few companies with a 5-inch 1080p Android smartphone at CES this year. Announced back in December, the Find 5 is the Chinese manufacturer's shot at competing with the just-announced Sony Xperia Z, Huawei's Ascend D2, and ZTE's Grand S, as well as the already-available HTC Droid DNA. It's a very sleek device; measuring 8.8mm thick and finished in sturdy matte white plastic, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Sony's Xperia Ion, although its huge display means it has a slightly larger footprint. Build quality, especially when compared to older Oppo models, seems impeccable, but its 5-inch 1080p display wasn't the best. Viewed head-on it's virtually indistinguishable from that of the Droid DNA, but vertical viewing angles were very poor and the colors don't pop as they do on HTC's phone.

Oppo Find 5 hands-on pictures

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While the hardware is a definite improvement, Oppo hasn't done such a good job on software. It runs Android 4.1 with an extremely ugly skin that seems to take the worst from other custom Android software and mash it together into an unholy mess. Virtually every app has been modified, and none of them for the better. There are no hardware Android buttons, but unlike other manufacturers, Oppo has decided to omit labels for the buttons at all. Instead, there's a black bar that runs the bottom of the phone with no indication as to where you need to press. The company promises the Find 5 will launch in Asia and selected European territories including the UK. It'll cost $499 for a version with 16GB of storage or $569 for the 32GB model.