In a world where Samsung and Apple dominate the smartphone sphere, and multi-billion dollar companies like Sony, LG, and Motorola struggle to maintain single-digit market share, it's rather easy to convince yourself that real innovation and excellence costs lots of money. And, as an extension of that thought process, that there's little reason to look outside the current crop of popular phone makers.
But you'd be wrong.
Known mostly in the United States for its Blu-ray players (yes, really), Oppo is a Chinese electronics maker that is easily ignored. I hadn't even heard of their Blu-ray players until last week (and only because I looked them up on Wikipedia).
I knew Oppo for a phone it released last year - the Finder. At the time, it was quite impressive (on paper). But as often happens with phones from smaller manufacturers, I forgot about it almost as soon as I'd heard of it. Sadly, that's just kind of the way the rapidly-evolving smartphone industry works. If you aren't making waves on a quarterly basis, it's difficult to stay relevant.
The Find 5 is their newest phone, and while Oppo has aspirations of international availability, I doubt you'll be seeing too many of these outside of Asia. And, frankly, it's easy to see why - no LTE, no brand recognition, and no carrier distribution agreements (at least in the US). The Find 5 is also rather clearly designed first and foremost with the Chinese market in mind, and hey, that makes sense.
If anything, though, the Find 5 is yet another reason to pay attention to what's happening with smartphones in China, where they're not just displacing old Nokias, but laptops and computers in general.
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