Oppo R5 Is the Slimmest Smartphone Yet, But Not for Long

At 4.85mm thick, Oppo R5 is the official record holder for the world’s slimmest smartphone. Rumor has it that this record will be broken again very soon by another Chinese company that wants to blow everyone’s minds with a 4mm-thick device.

There is a limit smartphone and tablet manufacturers won’t be able to cross, though, as it’s impossible for such devices to get paper-thin. Considering the components that need to be crammed in there, it’s very unlikely that the smartphones will get slimmer than say 3mm. Batteries and chips can only be that thin, after all! For the time being, Oppo R5 takes home the title of the world’s thinnest phone, and as though that wasn’t enough, it is also the company’s first 64-bit device.

Topping the scale at 155 grams, the R5 measures 148.9 x 74.5 x 4.85mm, and all of this in a 3D-welded aluminum alloy frame. Its technical specs are great, but not exactly revolutionary, as the smartphone only comes with an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU clocked at 1.5GHz, along with an Adreno 405 GPU and 2GB RAM. While not mindblowing, these specs make sure you’ll be able to run any app flawlessly on the 5.2″ FullHD AMOLED touschreen display.

Unlike the N3, which comes with a single motorized camera that switches from back to front in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, the R5 sports two of them. The one for selfies has 5MP, while the rear-facing camera sports a 13MP Sony IMX214 sensor and an f/2.0 aperture. The back camera is fairly potent, being able to record 2160p video at 30fps and 1080p@60fps, as well as a 120fps slow-motion mode (at 720p).

As far as the battery is concerned, the Oppo R5 comes with a 2,000mAh Li-Polymer one that’ll charge rapidly thanks to the VOOC mini rapid charge tech support. In terms of connectivity, the world’s slimmest smartphone packs everything, up to LTE. The only thing it’s missing is a 3.5mm jack, since this would’ve made the device bulkier, so you’ll have to stick to Bluetooth headphones.

Here’s a video showing a timeline of the world’s slimmest phones, from Motorola V3 Razr to Oppo R5. The only problem I have with this clip is that it has been uploaded in glorious 340p, a resolution that should have been dead, buried and forgotten by now.

As mentioned before, some other Chinese company (namely VIVO) is rumored to launch a 4mm smartphone in the near future, so Oppo’s record won’t stand for too long.

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