Oppo A3s Review

The focus in today’s smartphone market is on the mid-range segment. However, the budget category is also a strong market, especially for developing countries or for people who are looking for a no-frills phone.

In general, we often see smartphones with dual cameras in mid-range and high-end smartphones, but now, OPPO brings dual cameras to an entry-level device that is worthwhile. We are talking about the OPPO A3s, which comes with a pair of 13 + 2-megapixel camera. It supports portrait mode, and it comes with 4,230 mAh battery for full entertainment with a 6.2″ HD+ display.

Specs:

Dimensions: 156.2 x 75.6 x 8.2 mm (6.15 x 2.98 x 0.32 in)

Weight: 168 g

Chipset : Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 (14nm architecture)

CPU: Octa-core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A53

GPU: Adreno 506

Operating System: Color OS 5.1, based on Android 8.1

Memory: 2GB RAM

Storage: 16GB ROM

Expandable storage: microSD, up to 256 GB (dedicated slot)

Display type: IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors

Display size: 6.2 inches, 95.9 cm2 (~81.2% screen-to-body ratio)

Screen resolution: 720 x 1520 pixels, 19:9 ratio (~271 ppi density)

Mobile network support: GSM / HSPA / LTE

Wi-Fi support : Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, WiFi Direct, hotspot

Bluetooth support : 4.2, A2DP, LE

GPS support : Yes, with A-GPS

USB : microUSB 2.0, USB On-The-Go

Rear camera:

a. 13 MP, f/2.2, AF

b. 2 MP, f/2.4, depth sensor

Front camera : 8 MP, f/2.2

Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 4230 mAh battery

Color: Red, Dark Purple

The first thing that strikes you about the Oppo A3s is its notched display, which is very interesting to see in the budget segment. So far, we have been used to seeing phones with the notch in the mid-range and higher segments. The A3s and the new Honor 9N are currently the cheapest phones in India with a notch. What this means is that the phone comes with an edge-to-edge display with minimal bezels all around the display and just a little forehead on top and a chin below. From a distance, this makes the A3s look like a high-end 2018 smartphone, only it isn't so.

Oppo has a tendency to make its affordable phones look premium by adding a glossy sheen to the rear panel. The Oppo A3s does well to look attractive from afar and it doesn't feel too bad up close as well. The glossy plastic on the back doesn't feel cheap when you touch it and Oppo has also added a silver accent around the rear camera to up the appeal. That being said, the rear panel smudges quite easily and is a fingerprint magnet, forcing you to wipe it clean multiple times during the day. With time, the back will see some scratches and bruises as well.

The power and volume buttons on the sides have a nice tactile feel to it and are placed near the center which makes it easy to reach. The bottom sees a singler speaker grille, a microUSB port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The speaker sounds decent but there's nothing exceptional about it. I'm not a big fan of its position as your palm will cover the speaker when playing games or watching a video in landscape mode. The SIM tray on the left comes with three slots - two for nano SIM cards which support 4G VoLTE, and one for a microSD card.

The Oppo A3s brings a 6.2-inch HD+ display which has good brightness levels and shouldn't be a problem the view under harsh sunlight. Colours on screen look washed out and don't pop as much as one would like. The 720p resolution also doesn't give sharp and detailed pictures when watching videos or playing games. Things were a little different with the Realme 1 where I found the 1080p display to be vibrant but ultimately underwhelming due to poor brightness levels.

Whether you like it or not, notched phones are growing in number, and it won't be long before you might own on. That is, of course, if you're a fan of the notch. I've had a pretty middling experience with notched phones and I assume what will bother users the most is if things are not optimised well enough. The OnePlus 6 has a notch, but you often don't realise it as most apps spread a black bar across the top so the notch isn't visible and this makes you feel you're using a standard 18:9 display.

Powering the Oppo A3s is a Snapdragon 450 chipset, which is the same chipset found inside the Redmi 5 and the Moto G6. It's a pretty decent processor that manages to handle basic day-to-day activities with ease and is also impressive in how it handles graphic intensive games. But paired with only 2GB of RAM and Oppo's heavy ColorOS 5.1 software, the SD450 chip leaves you wanting more.

There's quite a bit of stuttering and lags and things don't quite move as fluidly as you would hope. Again, this is not so much because of the SD450 chipset as it is Oppo's ColorOS skin, which tends to slow things down a bit because there's a lot that's been crammed into the software. Historically, ColorOS hasn't received the most favourable response as it has been criticised for being quite buggy and iOS-like. There are a bunch of pre-loaded apps like Oppo's App Store, Clone Phone, Theme Store, Game Space, Face and Amazon among others.

ColorOS comes with a lot of customisations as well which runs deep through the UI. While it's great to see the A3s ship with Android 8.1 Oreo, you won't get to feel that Android experience. ColorOS is pretty layered which takes a while getting used to. There are some things that may annoy you like the app icons not being uniformly round or square, multitasking tray which only shows icons rather than a snapshot of the app, and perhaps the most annoying tick of all, the inability to swipe to remove notifications. You're forced to swipe left on a notification and tap the delete option every time you want to clear your notifications, which is quite time consuming.

That being said, ColorOS 5.1 has toned down some of the obvious iOS traits. It also comes with some useful features like fast facial recognition and Game Space which, kicks in when you're playing games. It's a noteworthy feature as it enhances the graphics and offloads some memory so that you have a smooth gaming experience, which I found to be true while playing Asphalt 8 and PUBG. With such graphic intensive games, I barely noticed any lags or stuttering and this is also partly thanks to the SD450 and a capable Adreno 506 GPU. A few drops in frame rate can be expected because a phone with 2GB of RAM can only offer so much.

The budget phone from Oppo follows the general industry trend and brings a dual camera setup on the back. This includes a 13-megapixel primary sensor and a 2-megapixel secondary sensor that will come in handy for depth-of-field or bokeh shots. The camera app still looks very iOS-like, which isn't always bad as it makes things simpler to use. You have various modes like time-lapse, HDR, portrait and the ability to adjust beautification settings, among other things.

Photos captured during day time will show an average amount of details. Colours are never quite accurate or true-to-life. The camera often overexposes or oversaturates the colours, which can sometimes look good and other times get a little too jarring. The shutter speed is pretty fast which is good to see and will make sure you don't take a lot of blurred shots. Autofocus, however, takes a few seconds to lock on to the subject, especially indoors so you will need to be patient with the camera. This also means recording videos is going to be a tricky business.

The Oppo A3s houses a 4,230mAh battery which is probably the biggest highlight of the device. The battery is exceptionally good here and you will get a good two days of battery life on average use. I was also impressed with the standby time which tells me the battery is not going to give up on you easily. While watching videos or playing games, the battery percentage would drop very slowly, which is great to see.

It's a good thing that the Oppo A3s comes with a stellar battery since charging the phone is going to be a long, painful process. It takes well over 3 hours to charge the device from zero to 100 per cent and the lack of fast charging is definitely missed here. I expect most A3s buyers will charge the device overnight.

Pros:

a. Bright notched display

b. Stellar battery life

c. Good build quality

d. Smooth performance

Cons:

a. Poor cameras

b. Chipset may not age well

c. Not enough RAM

d. No fast charging support

e. No fingerprint reader