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Oppo Reno 5G
CUTTING EDGE, FUTURE-READY AND RELATIVELY AFFORDABLE.EVER ONE FOR classy designs, Oppo’s latest
handset is truly stunning. The Reno 5G sports
an iridescent, yet predominantly matte finish
on its rear – a welcome aesthetic and tactile
change to all the high-gloss that arrived on
flagship phones with the introduction of glass
bodies. A clever addition to the phone’s back is
a small bump (dubbed the ‘O-Dot’) that
effectively raises your phone from a flat surface
to avoid damaging the cameras and sensors
that are flush with the handset’s rear.
Flip the phone over and you’ll immediately
notice how dazzling the display is as well.
Measuring 6.6-inches and fitting in an
impressive 2,340 x 1,080 pixels, this AMOLED
wonder offers plenty of vivid colours and
detail. While there is a tiny bezel that
surrounds all four edges (a slightly larger one
for the chin), the lack of notch or pinhole
camera makes for an impressively
uninterrupted viewing and gaming
experience, enabling it to achieve a stellar
93.1% screen-to-body ratio.
The reason this handset is able to maintain
such a sleek facade is due to its novel and
genius pop-up camera. Oppo isn’t new to this,
with the Find X first debuting this flavour of
wizardry, but the shark-fin design we see with
this generation of smartphones is certainly a
refinement on the feature. The selfie camera isquitea capableshooter,andpairedwith
portraitmodesandOppo’spenchantfor
beautification,it’llbemorethanenough.As
forthemainsnapper,thisversionofOppo’s
flagship has inherited its non-5G counterpart’s
star feature – 10x optical zoom – and when
paired with all the powerful shooting modes,
makes for a really deep and pretty camera.
Its powerful Snapdragon 855 and 8GB RAM
combo is more than capable of breezing
through the latest games and day-to-day tasks.
Thanks to Oppo’s VOOC technology, the
massive 4,065mAh battery charges up
incredibly fast and comfortably manages more
than a day’s worth of heavy usage. While
Oppo’s ColorOS isn’t necessarily as appealing
as some other major players’, it’s certainly
improved over the years and is more than
palatable by this stage.
While the 5G competition is thin at present,
this flagship from Oppo is the most affordable
5G-enabled device on the Australian market,
with its $1,499 asking price falling comfortably
below the $1,729 of the LG V50 ThinQ 5G and
the anticipated $2,000 ballpark for the
Samsung Galaxy S10 5G. At the time of
writing, 5G availability was rather patchy in
Sydney, and when trying to get coverage on
the fringe of the specified zones, the download
speeds were significantly worse than the 4Gspeedsgainedjusta fewstreetsover(around
50Mbpscomparedwith200Mbps).
Conversely,downloadspeedsofaround
400Mbpswerereachedclosertothecentre of
the coverage area.
Although having 5G capabilities might
prove itself useful over the course of the next
year, by that point the number of compatible
smartphones on the market will have also
increased. You could spend $300 less and get
an identical handset minus the 5G
functionality – a compelling proposition for
the majority of users – but if you’d like to ready
yourself for the future, the Oppo Reno 5G is
an excellent way to buy into all the latest
smartphone features at a discount.
[ HARRY DOMANSKI]OPPO RENO 5G
$1,499
oppo.com/au
CRITICAL SPECS
6.6-inch AMOLED display(2,340x 1,080);A 9;
Snapdragon 855; 8GBRAM;256GBstorage
(expandable by 256GBviamicroSD);4,065mAhbattery;
Pop-up shark-fin selfie camera (16MP); 10x optical zoom
rear camera array (48MP+8MP+13MP); In-display
fingerprint scanner; 162.0 x 77.2 x 9.3mm; 215g.41 / 2WINNERED’sCHOICE
AWA RDTESTBENCHRADARA oid 9