A few brands dominate the mobile market really well but there are many new players bringing smartphones with decent specs and an affordable price tag. One such company is OPPO, who are a Chinese company that was started in 2004. While OPPO is pretty new to me, they are owned by the same company as OnePlus, who I have heard great things about. Oppo sent over their A72 Smartphone to test out. So, let’s see how an OPPO device performs around Cape Town!
Design:
When picking up the OPPO A72, you may be thinking that you are holding a flagship device.
There is no denying the fact that the OPPO A72 looks like a phone more expensive than it is. It reminds me of a Galaxy device from Samsung in a way. The frame, which is made of plastic, has curved edges and feels great in the hand. The back of the device is made of plastic as well but is really reflective and plays with the light which I like!
I love it when phone manufacturers do this 💙 @OPPOSouthAfrica #OPPOA72 #MakeSomethingBeautiful #CreatedwithOPPO pic.twitter.com/G29SPZ3gvY
— Cape Town Guy (@TheCapeTownGuy) December 23, 2020
There is a camera module located at the top left corner which houses 4 lenses! The front of the device features a large display, with thin bezels and a pinhole camera. You get a USB Type C port for charging, a power button with a fingerprint sensor, a volume rocker, Micro Sim port and a headphone jack. Yes, we are lucky with the A72 and can use AUX wired headphones.
The A72 comes in two colours: Twilight Black and Aurora Purple. I received the later to review and it would be my preference as it looks so good! Purple is definitely in!
Performance:
The A72 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 Processor with 4GB of RAM and for the most part, the performance is actually pretty good. Apps load quickly and multitasking is satisfactory. My only gripe was experienced in the camera. When taking photos or changing between modes, I did experience a lag. This was annoying when I was trying to capture a photo that I needed to do quickly. Other than this, I found gaming, photo editing, checking emails and catching up on social media to perform smoothly.
Display:
The A72 has a 6.5 inch LCD display with 1080 X 2400 Pixels. Ths glass is made of Corning Gorilla Glass 3, which is durable. With a 20:9 aspect ratio, the display is pretty tall, which is nice for reading long articles or scrolling TikTok (I can’t stop). The Display is an HD 1080P display, which ensures that you get a sharp image. Pictures and videos look sharp, crisp and vibrant. Colours look good too and these can be tweaked to your desire in the settings. The screen also goes pretty bright, so it can still be visible under the sun!
Camera:
The A72 has four cameras on the rear. You get a 48 MP Wide, 8 MP Ultrawide, 2MP depth and 2 MP black and white lens. Overall, the A72 captures really nice images, with decent colour reproduction, and nice focus on images. You do get scene detection to auto-tune your images for the best outcome. While the images do look good, they are best suited for sharing on social media as when you zoom in, that is when you notice that it is not flagship quality. I would not suggest printing them in A1 and putting them up in your homes. That being said, I am still impressed.
The main camera is the 48MP Wide which captures images with lots of details and vibrant colours.
The 8MP Ultrawide is great for getting more in the scene. These images came out really well with no distortion. You can also zoom in either 2x or 5x but when you zoom in 5x, the image does get grainy.
The 2MP depth camera allows you to capture images with a blurred effect in the background aka the Bokeh effect. To do this you simply use the Portrait mode. The lens does a great job determining what it should blur.
With the rear cameras, you also get HDR, Panorama, Time-Lapse and an LED FLash.
To assist in capturing images at night, there is a night mode which makes the whole image lighter to save the day when it is dark. This mode actually does a good job as you can see in these images:
The front of the device has a single selfie camera with a 16MP lens. This allows you to capture clear and crisp images, in HDR if you wish. There is also beauty mode, should you need to “perfect” your look.
You can shoot video in either 4K@30fps or 1080p@30/120fps. To keep video smooth, you get a gyro-EIS feature with does a decent job. You can also shoot videos in Slow-Motion. The A72 captures decent quality video though I did find that the lens keeps trying to focus even though it was:
Storage:
The Oppo A72 comes with 128GB of internal storage plus you can add in a MicroSD card for some more space.
Software:
The A72 comes loaded with Android 10 with Oppos ColorOS V7.1 overlay. I enjoyed the look and feel and found the software to run quickly and smoothly. I noticed barely any bloatware, which is great. ColorOS is a nice take on Android and I found setting up and using the phone, as easy as any other Android device. You can run certain apps in the dual-screen mode.
Battery:
The A72 packs a 5000 mAh battery which I was able to get nearly two days of battery life from. This is something that we don’t see in more expensive phones which drain more battery thanks to their higher specs. Thanks to the 18W fast charger, charging should take you about an hour and a half, not too shabby! You also get battery optimization features that show you which apps are using power as well as tools to save some juice.
What’s in the box:
Inside the sleek box, you get a see-through cover, USB Type-C Cable, earphones, 18W charging adapter, quick start guide, sim tray ejector and the phone of course.
Price:
The Oppo A72 sells for about R6000 online which is really well priced given its specs. The black version, which is specced the same, can be found for slightly cheaper. Regardless of which model you go for, you are getting a decent phone for your money!
Verdict:
The Oppo A72 is really a great device and it looks the part too. It has the looks of a flagship device with the performance of a middle-range smartphone, with a price that won’t break the bank. I am really impressed with its cameras and performance, which held up during my time with it. I would suggest the Oppo A72 for someone that wants a flagship device but does not want to spend that kind of money. With the A72, you get the best of both worlds!
