Chinese manufacturer Oppo has launched two new upper mid-range models which put a lot of emphasis on the front camera. Both the new R9 and the larger R9 Plus come with a 16MP Samsung ISOCELL sensor in the front camera. It is coupled with a fast F2.0 aperture and offers a 78.1 degree capture angle. Of course, beauty and selfie-panorama modes are on board as well. 

Both new models feature a shell made from sandblasted aluminium with a fingerprint reader at the front and very thin display bezels, keeping the overall dimensions at bay. There is a dual-SIM tray, with one of the slots also accepting microSD memory cards.

Display, chipset and main camera are where the two new models differ. The R9 comes with a 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED screen, a MediaTek 2GHz octa-core Helio P10 chipset, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. Power is provided by a 2,850mAh battery and the main camera offers a 13MP sensor and F2.2 aperture, making the R9 one of the very few phones with a higher pixel count on the front camera than on the rear unit.

The R9 Plus comes with a bigger 6-inch screen but the same resolution and AMOLED technology. It is powered by a Qualcomm 1.8GHz octa-core Snapdragon 652 chipset and 4GB of RAM and offers 64GB of built-in storage. At 4,120mAh the battery is quite a bit larger than on the standard R9 and the main camera ups the resolution to 16MP, using a Sony IMX298 sensor and an F2.0 aperture. There is no word on image stabilization but by the looks of it Oppo's new sensor-based IS has not yet made it into the R9 series.

Both new models will launch in China within the next few weeks but there is no information on availability in other regions yet. The R9 will set you back approximately $430, the Plus model is $80 more expensive. 

Source: Oppo