Oppo U3: optical zoom and a super-slim body

Even though CES 2015 is ravaging in Las Vegas, other manufacturers who aren’t headliners at the show are still working their way up on the technology scale. Oppo is supposedly working on a new device, the Oppo U3 which should end up being even more revolutionary than the Oppo N3 and Oppo R5.

The Oppo U3 has shown up in TENAA’s certification records today, and mind you, this handset aims to be yet another industry-leader, much like the thinnest phone in the world, the Oppo R5. The Oppo U3 will supposedly be the thinnest phone in the world outfitted with a camera capable of 4x optical zoom. Optical zoom on a smartphone is not often seen and has lately made a comeback on the Asus ZenFone Zoom, which looks a lot like a Lumia 1020 flagship.

The Oppo U3 is still at an unconfirmed stage, but as you all know by now, we love rumors and love speculating upon what kind of devices will be launched in the future. Even though some of our predictions are amiss, we do get it right most of the time. According to the TENAA certification, as well as a good round of rumors circulating around the camera-centered smartphone, the Oppo U3 will be innovative.

TENAA listings are usually reliable, since they portray phones that have been approved for commercialization in China. According to the listing, we will be dealing with a massive phablet that has a 5.9 inch display similar to the one seen on the Motorola Nexus 6 aka Shamu. Although as big, it won’t have the same resolution, instead opting for a 1920*1080 resolution that will make for a decent display.

Oppo U3 specs include an octa-core processor backed by 2 GB RAM and 16 GB internal storage expandable through a microSD card. Much like the Asus ZenFone Zoom, the camera on the behemoth will be a 13 MP one outfitted with optical image stabilization and 4x optical zoom. That’s even a bit better than the ZenFone Zoom, which only features 3x optical zoom, so yay. It will also feature a 5 MP front camera for those selfies you love s much.

Since I’ve mentioned that the handset will be the thinnest that sports optical zoom, you should know that it will measure just 8 mm in thickness. While that doesn’t sound like very thin, think of the ZenFone Zoom which is almost 12 mm in thickness and the Lumia 1020 which is even thicker.Moving on to other innovative technologies embedded within the Oppo U3, we should mention that the handset should come with an Asahi Kaseo AK4961 32-bit advanced audio codec and will go great with the upcoming Oppo PM-3 headset.

From the pictures provided by TENAA, we can clearly see a big design difference between the Oppo U3 and other phones that feature high-performance cameras. In the photos, the handset doesn’t have a large protruding camera as seen on the Lumia 1020 or ZenFone Zoom, which makes us believe that maybe this phone won’t be as good of a photographer as the aforementioned ones. We will have to wait and see, until an undetermined date, since we don’t know when this phone will hit stores. Stay tuned!