MANILA - The front facing camera used to be seen as a smartphone’s secondary camera. But today, more and more smartphone brands are shifting the focus, literally, to the front.
Like many other brands, China's Oppo is betting on consumers who care more about great selfies than taking good snapshots.
On its mid-tier F7, Oppo packed the front camera with a huge 25 megapixel sensor and loaded it with AI features, which it says will ensure that users always get the best self portrait.
OPPO debuts F7, promises AI-enhanced selfies
DESIGN AND SPECS
The F7 is a pretty good looking phone. Like most new releases, the phone features a screen with a 19:9 ratio. The F7 also sports a notch at the top, which houses the phone’s selfie camera.
Unlike some midtier phones however, the F7’s body isn’t made of glass and metal but of coated plastic. Despite that, it can hold its own against other phones in this price range in terms of aesthetics.
Our black (diamond black according to Oppo) review unit looked almost as good as the glass-backed and metal-framed white Zenfone 5 we reviewed earlier. You wouldn’t know just by looking at it that the F7 was made of acrylic instead of polished glass.
That said, the shining shimmering back of the F7 is also an avid collector of fingerprints and smudges. Since it’s plastic, it’s also more susceptible to scratches, so you will definitely need a case or protector for this phone.
On the back is a 16MP camera with a bright f1.8 lens and the phone’s fingerprint sensor. Unlocking the phone with your index finger is easy and fast. The F7 also features “Facial Unlock” which I found to be equally fast even when the angle isn’t optimal.
With 4GB of RAM, you also won’t notice any lag with memory-hungry apps, and with 64GB of storage, you can pack the F7 with a lot of apps, photos, video, music and other files.
If you like playing demanding games like PUBG, this phone won’t let you down. The F7’s Mediatek Helio P60 chipset is more than capable of handling large apps and is a decent alternative to Qualcomm’s midrange offerings. The F7 also has a feature that accelerates games so
It would have been better though if the F7 came with a USB-Type C port which allows faster charging compared the older micro USB standard. Other midrange phones like the Zenfone 5 and the Huawei P20 Lite already use Type C connectors, after all.
CAMERAS
While other midrange smartphones like the P20 Lite and the Zenfone 5Q now feature dual cameras front and back (for a total of 4 cameras), Oppo has opted to keep it simple on the F7 by using just a single camera on each side.
Despite having just one camera up front, the F7 took pretty good selfies. As mentioned earlier, the Oppo F7’s front shooter packs 25MP under the hood, which so far is the biggest for any smartphone. The closest competitor would be the Vivo V9 released last year, which uses a 24MP sensor for selfies.
If you want a good profile pic but don't want to fiddle with image editing apps, you’ll be glad to know that Oppo put 6 levels of beautification on the F7’s selfie shooter.
But you can also just turn on its AI that lets algorithms determine how to make a user look his/her best. Video selfies also benefit from instant beautification if you want to go on video chats or do live feeds on social media.
The rear camera is no slouch either, at least for phones in this price range. Colors are more saturated than usual, which will probably appeal to a lot of millennials. But if you want even greater saturation, you can turn on the F7’s "Super Vivid" mode to really make the colors pop.
Be warned though that turning on Super Vivid will also cost you the finer details of your shot.
The Oppo F7 also takes good HDR photos. High contrast environments are not a problem for the phone. However, just like with the Super Vivid feature, details get lost in the image processing.
Which brings us to the the main issue with the F7’s rear camera. The pics look good on the phone, and even on an HD computer monitor. But zoom in 5x or so and you’ll see that it doesn’t capture a lot of the finer details.
But that’s probably asking too much for a phone in this price range, and which is obviously meant to cater to people who like taking photos of themselves. If you care about selfies more than anything else, this smartphone may just be the gadget you need.
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Home > Focus
Why is the Trump administration separating immigrant families?
Agence France-Presse
Posted at Jun 19 2018 06:16 PM
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Occupants at Casa Padre, an immigrant shelter for unaccompanied minors, in Brownsville, Texas, US, are seen in this photo provided by the US Department of Health and Human Services, June 14, 2018. Handout via Reuters
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump declared Monday that the US will not become a "migrant camp" as his administration faced a backlash for its practice of separating the children of illegal immigrants from their parents.
Trump says US not 'migrant camp' amid family separation crisis
While the Department of Homeland Security says it has no policy to separate families, such cases have skyrocketed since the administration began systematically arresting migrants for illegally crossing the border -- and separating children from their incarcerated parents.
Here is a look at the key facts and figures behind the crisis:
600,00 ASYLUM CLAIMS
Despite efforts to stifle it, illegal immigration into the United States remains at high levels.
From March to May this year, more than 50,000 people a month were apprehended for illegally crossing the border from Mexico. About 15 percent of those are arriving as families, and eight percent as unaccompanied children.
Mexican nationals can be pushed back into their country, but an increasing number are from violence-plagued countries of Central America -- Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. They are harder to send back.
Many, including almost all of the families and unaccompanied children arriving, request asylum, claiming a "credible fear" of persecution or torture if they return to their country.
Previously, asylum seekers registered their cases and then were released into the United States while the cases were reviewed.
Now, there is a backlog of some 600,000 cases, and many never show up for their hearings, instead disappearing into US society.
The Trump administration says that approach has become a magnet for anyone wanting to enter the United States.
An increasing number of migrants arrive with the help of human smugglers, well-coached to request "credible fear" asylum, and can't be turned back, according to administration officials.
FAMILY SEPARATION AS 'DETERRENCE'
Between October 2017 and April this year, about 700 children were taken from their parents, and held for weeks or sent on to other caretakers before they could be reunited again. But that failed to impact arrivals.
After Trump ordered tougher action, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a "zero tolerance" policy on May 7.
Under the measure, anyone who illegally crosses the border will be arrested on criminal charges. For those who come with families, their children are removed from them. Sessions said this policy aimed to deter others from arriving.
In the five weeks from the announcement, more than 2,300 children were taken from their parents and adult relatives.
It can take days or weeks for the adults to be tried on the charges.
Most are encouraged to plead guilty, at which point they are given a sentence of "time served." They are then released while their asylum claim is reviewed, but they have a criminal record -- a permanent strike against them.
IS IT POLICY OR LAW?
Trump says that a law he inherited from the previous Democratic administration forces him to separate immigrant families. But Sessions and others have referred to a policy of prosecuting adults for illegal border crossings.
In fact, no one is forcing the government to prosecute immigrants who are apprehended.
But that forces the separation. When the parents are arrested on criminal charges, they must be separated from their children, as is the case with domestic criminal cases. They cannot take their children to court.
"If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you," Sessions said. "If you are smuggling a child, we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law."
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE CHILDREN?
Once taken from their parents, the children are handed over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The children, who range in age from one to 18 years old, are placed in holding centers, some of which are tent-covered operations where they sleep on mats on concrete floors in units delineated by chain-link fences resembling cages.
ORR now has 12,000 illegal immigrant children in their care, 10,000 of whom crossed the border without their family.
ORR seeks to resettle the children with relatives already inside the United States, a process that can take many months.
For those separated from their parents, ORR has also sought to resettle some with relatives inside the United States.
The government says they can be reunited with their parents, though how fast and easily that can happen remains unclear.
