Oppo Reno Review - All Screen & Shark Fin Pop-up Camera By TechTablets

So I'm back here, looking at mobile phones, I like to mix things up a bit, I, don't just focus on laptops tablets. It keeps things interesting for not only me, but you, the viewers, so right here I've got the OPPO Reno. This is the base model with a Snapdragon 710, six gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage. Now it has a pop-up camera. Now, that's nothing new! It's not unique, but what is unique about the design of it is. It looks like a shark fin so that houses all 16 megapixel front-facing camera.

Furthermore, it also houses the rear flash oddly enough and the earpiece too as well. Now, because we don't have any notch, the viewing experience is great, and you can see slim bezels, and it is a large six point. Four-inch Samsung AMOLED panel, very quick peek at the box. So it's a very long box, as you can see so get the phone out of this. Now I picked up this one here from trading Shinji.

In fact, they sent it to me this as a loan unit. So we have the phone itself under this. We have the charger and I can see. We've got a case, so this charger here is rated to 5 volts four amps, it's 20 watts, and it will charge the phone fully in about one hour and 20 minutes. So it's very quick, but you have to use that exact charger.

If you use, for example, a Qualcomm quick charge, 3 chargers, then it will take a lot longer, we'll just run in at 5, volts, 2, amps I believe here's the case they've got, so it looks like it's CPU style, but I can feel that it is actually hard in the middle. So we've got the soft rubber on the outer edges, but it's a hard plastic. That's inside this and then our cable of course, in white. We have some earphones so good to say that they've actually included something else for us and there is all Intel right there. So the rear of the phone I am really impressed with the design of this.

It looks perfect. So this is not the model with the 5 times, optical zoom or 6 times, optical 10, hybrid. Otherwise, you would see then a third camera, so we've got a main 48 megapixel sensor here with an F 1.7 aperture above that 5 megapixels for our depth of field, and you can see that this tiny little knob there it sticks out. It actually doesn't do anything. Well, it does part of the design of it.

I think is just to raise it up a little. If you've got it sitting on a table, then it won't actually end up scratching the camera lens, which is part of the rear glass on it. So yes, it's an all glass phone and of course it is going to be slippery. That's part of the reason, probably why they included their case, for us now in hand feels very good I, like the fact they work on the rounded itches here and the position of that power button is actually perfect so right here, and then you got the volume rockers on the other side, which I think it's a good move, so you don't have to move your thumb up then, to adjust the volume, and you simply just unlock like tapping. It then and then pressing those two buttons.

Now these buttons are made out of metal. They do not rattle around. We have antenna lines. You can see right here, so there's one on the left hand, side and one on the right and down the very bottom here, as you can see, so, we've got 3.5 millimeter headphone jack microphone, type-c USB one, so it doesn't support display out our loudspeaker, and then we have a SIM tray, which is right on the left hand, side just above those two volume buttons. The tray will house two NATO SIM, so no micro SD card support here, and it does have this purple rubber gasket around it.

So this is just to keep out dust I, don't believe this has any IP rating. In fact, no it doesn't have an IP rating, but maybe splashes, if you did happen to get a few around water shouldn't seep in at least through here, but probably through the top camera, speaking of which this is the unique camera that has that looks like a shark fin. That's very cool! So when you press the front-facing camera, see how it has that nice little effector on the outside, and then it pops up, you can just hear a tiny little buzz of the motor there and the mechanism pushing it up. I'll just do that, one more time for you, because it is pretty cool the way it does it. So it pops up very quick.

It has that little animation around the outer edges of that AMOLED screen. So the case as expected fits it perfectly and offers very good protection, so will protect the screen against scratches because if you place it face down the raised edges on it, keep the glass away from the surface will go protection for the ports on the bottom and the buttons completely protected as well. The only place that is open is the top for the camera, of course, which needs to up. So they cannot cover that. So you can see here with the about phone having the white screen that the bezels are slim either side, no ugly, not CH.

This is just all screen where they 93.1% screen to body ratio, so it runs Android 9, it's color, OS version 6, which is their own skin and my vision as the 128 gigabyte model. So on first boot you get approximately 104 gigabytes, free, the Android security patch level as April v. The screen is a Samsung, our layer panel 6.4 inches. It has a resolution of 23 40 by 1080p. The Game comes out to be about 2.3. Ideally it should be 2.2, but it's not too far off, and it does have a very good brightness and maximum brightness is just gonna, absolutely kill my current camera settings right now, so that tops out about 800 likes and, yes, you can make it out in direct sunlight too, it's quite visible and, as you would expect for an AMOLED panel that blacks do look very good. We've got a good contrast on this screen, so they are deep blacks, their colors real-world images also look quite decent and overall, the touch response is good.

The accuracy, no problems. This is a really nice screen that are posed gone for now, as mentioned it's running, color OS. So that's there, I'm skin on top of android 9, and I don't particularly like it. It is straightforward, though the use of it. So if you have used for example, me why then you'll be right at home here, because the performance and how it works is very similar, but not the performance.

Actually, it's much better I've found very smooth to the point that it doesn't really feel like a Snapdragon 710. It really is that smooth the UI they've done a very good job with the animations I'm, not sending any micro start as what. So, if I'm not seeing any lags nothing's bogging down or anything like that, so recent apps, with the full screen gestures, typically just swipe up to get to them and hold. If you swipe curricular, didn't the first time, and you can see there look how smooth that is to swap between different apps, so just bringing up now crime here, and you can see that also the scrolling is very fast, very smooth. Everything seems to be running at 60 frames per second, with the refresh rate there, which is great so bringing that back up I'm.

Just going to go over now and show you a couple of benchmarks, so here is the non-Jewish course 154,000, that's not too bad for a snapdragon 710. That's all good one! Other thing: that's annoying me, though, is I. Don't know whether it's because I just can't find the seating and I try to enable as notifications and not showing at the top there. So they've taken a page out of Shelby's book here, hiding it away from us, so you have to swipe down then to your toggles and the Notification Center, where you can see everything, but I would prefer, like other phones, of course, to see all the icons are at the top. So I know I do have notifications, waiting and Miss just waiting.

What I need to check. So that's not great that they have done that. So we're going to take a look now at the internal storage. So it is using not to FS 2.1. No, it's not faster, but this is eMMC 5.1. It's using so good reads and writes are not the fastest, of course, but it's not going to be bottlenecked in the system, but they're fine, but for the price of the phone I do think they should have gone with you, FS 2.1, which would have been a bit faster, so no wide vine level, one, so I was kind of expecting that now the European ROM, that version might have it I, don't know, because I won't will not actually be buying that phone. So this means no Netflix night, Amazon Prime, no streaming services in Full HD.

Unfortunately, so while the speeds I've noticed that they are okay, but there's something a little funny that sometimes the speeds kind of drop off a bit. So when I'm closer to the router, where it should actually be performing the best it didn't. But as you see later on with my speed test, it didn't seem to affect it too much GPS. This is working fine, no real issues, their accuracy hovers around four to five meters and the screen being very bright means it's very visible, and it's going to be great to use in your car with Google Maps, for example. So here is my speed test with my three and a megabit fiber line.

I was getting the full speeds here, so that at least is good and here is LTE, so the 4G speeds all dependent on your carrier network load at the time, but I'm not having any problems I'm connecting up flying to LTE band one and three here in Spain, and this popped up to be warranty card in the middle of game. It just popped up. Okay, I was playing pub, G and hey I want you to register it, and that was another annoyance. So this is something with the software, the ROM that I don't particularly like now, one thing: I don't like about color OS and other manufacturers that also do this with their own custom skins, as they force you to log in to their servers. If you want to install large third-party applications, so here I go allowance station.

Okay, I want to install fortnight, but it's telling me that I need to verify my identity now. Why on earth do I need to do this, so you have to log in sign up and log in with your OPPO ID, what a pain and on to audio, so I have made one voice. Core I did a test. It sounds fine to me no issues, it's just normal ear, piece kind of sound that's coming through. It doesn't seem to be muffled or anything like that.

Now the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack on the bottom great to have this by the way. I just love my analog ports. The audio quality output is clean. It's clear it's loud, but it's just I, don't feel it sounds. It sounds as good as the like.

So even the Redmi Note 7, that's shown me Xiaomi seems to do 3.5 mm headphone jack. So if you heard me probably comment on this many times before, perfect and just doesn't seem to sound quite there. It's still fine, but just bear that in mind that it's not going to be the best. Now that an old speaker, decent volume, we don't have dual LEDs because unfortunately, I wish they really put one in that pop out earpiece as well. If they could have done that now, I'm going to show this because I know a lot of people are going to be asking me what about Google camera, it does have a 48 megapixel sensor, it's the same as the Redmi Note, 7 really note 7 pro, or it should work yeah.

It does ok. So here it is googled camera. Ok, you need to give it to, of course, permissions, and I've done that before, so you'll see that you're going to see this quite a few times whenever you use a third-party app the camera, the tops gonna pop up so be prepared for that, because I wasn't, I was actually holding it like this, and it pushed out- and there is a case I think that you could almost drop the phone. If you weren't paying attention I, don't know why it popped out now see any application, that's going to request access to the flash, which, of course is on the rear. That's why it pops out.

So what is working cameras working video only in 1080p, so you can take better photos using this Google camera port. That's designed for the Redmi Note 7! So that's great! So what isn't working is night sight and I just briefly show that, so you go into the night side here, and you take a snap. It has it hold still, and it never saves it. It just will never save it. Ok! So that's not too good! That's not doing that, and you'll see right now.

Also, that I do have open camera installed. Why this is. If you want electronic image stabilization with 4k, then you can install open camera that'll. Give you steadier footage because, as you'll see from my samples now with the camera everything's on auto by the way, no Google camera samples here, it's just the stock application that with video there is no electronic image stabilization in 4k, but there is at least with 1080p. So here's our video quality.

This is 4k in a Led electronic image stabilization. But if you use open camera and turn on that in the settings, then you will get steadier footage than this right here. I roll, the quality. This is good, it's just the shakiness to it. It makes it not quite as usable as you would hope.

Focus seems to be okay, it's not as fast as the dual pixel phase detection, autofocus and overall, not bad and I will throw this in here. This is now a sample with open camera.4K electronic image stabilization is on it might not look it. The trust me it's doing something. I walk ahead now, and you can see it's shaking around, so just not the best, not as smooth as the 1080p with the stock camera. At least we have a slight improvement over using 4k with the stock camera app, and this is the front-facing video quality with that 16 megapixel camera, if 2.0, and it doesn't have any autofocus to it whatsoever. But the quality to me seems fine, it's good.

It's lacking any electronic image stabilization. Unfortunately, now the rear camera has it in 1080p, but not the front one here, I'll swap over now to 1080p with the stock app, and you can select Roe nick image stabilization and this Street cat here wants to be part of my video, and there is five seconds of Fame and, of course, in screen fingerprint reader, it's not the fastest. The accuracy is about nine out of ten times. I'll show you how it works. So it's about a second.

You can see like one to two seconds somewhere in between there, and it's pretty much just like most optical fingerprint scanners. There we also have face unlocking, so you just need to tap and look at it, and it unlocks, and it takes an additional second, it's not too slow. And if you're worried about wearing out the camera, then of course don't use it. But apparently these motors they're rated to like 30,000 uses or something it should not be an issue. Do it one more time for you, it's a tap, it's locked.

So there we go one two unlock so around about two seconds: it's not too bad, but just a fraction slower. Then, of course using the in screen fingerprint reader. As for gaming performance is to be expected, it's not the fastest, but every game out there is gonna, be playable with smooth frame rates. It's just a matter of tweaking the settings. That's all you really need to do so.

Pub cheese, gonna work, fortnight's, you're, gonna, have to sign in as I showed you to at least install it, and it'll run on the lowest settings as well. So it's not going to be great to be capped at 30 frames per second, alright, so battery life, okay, you're losing about 11 percent per hour, and that's mostly on wireless, but I was doing a lot of demanding things too so because I'm plugging it in all the time and pulling the photos off and the video samples and checking them all that before I start to record it, so I know what I'm talking about I can't give you full stats just yet, but it's looking very good I would say two days for most people anywhere from about six to eight hours of on-screen time, but depending whether on wireless on data, how much you're using it's all going to vary there, the more your game, of course, the lower the battery life there. But to me, it's great: the more efficient AMOLED screen to definitely help. So it's a very bright screen.800 lux you'll see tan direct done daylight. So it's going to be great for a GPS use and also I, like the fact that there is no notch on it.

There's no hole in the screen, that's great! So the pop-up camera is interesting. It's very different. The way they've done it. So, if you're someone that does not take a lot of selfies, then this is probably a good option. Now.

One thing I don't like is the fact the flash is located within that pop-up module. Why couldn't they just put it on the back now, if you're, using through party camera apps to get 4k with electronic image, stabilization use, open camera for better daylight photos, use Google's, G, cam ports for the Redmi, note 7, okay, but night, so it's not working but using those third-party apps. They need access to the flash and what happens even if you're, not using the flash, it will push out the camera constantly it'll go in my micro L might stay out, and that to me is a bit of a problem of an issue. That's all because the flash module is in here, so they didn't think about it too much and thought or maybe people might actually use third-party camera apps. Now they didn't think about it at all there.

So the wrong, optimization, very, very good, very smooth gestures. It's running at 60, Hertz, 60 frames per second, and it's great, it's so smooth, and it performs much better than you'd expect for a snapdragon 710. Its downfall is, there's all these little quirks and things for color, always that I, don't particularly like using some Chinese in here. Even though it's a global ROM of all your languages, notifications, I've, tried everything. I looked in all the settings, I can't get them to stay at the top, I mean it.

They don't even show I can't see the notification at the top. You must always swipe down for that, which is an annoyance. Another annoyance is that pop-up that I had asking me to register the device or something in the middle of a game that was annoying. The other thing, too, is why on earth must we register to install some large third-party apps I hate it when manufacturers do that, it's so frustrating, and that came up as well that I needed to do that to install fault light fortnight. So that's why I didn't even install, though for no way I'm not doing that I don't want another account.

I have to sign up for another account now, so that is that's one of the downsides to the phone there. Now, of course, if you get the European model, you're not going to have all the Chinese bloatware, you won't see the Chinese characters. Things will be much better, I would say: I, don't know for sure, because I don't own it I haven't, got it I'm not going to buy one just to check up on that. Unfortunately, so overall, it's a hard sell for OPPO I think because you've got the likes of the Pixel 3a, which will take perfect photos. It looks like a very dated phone now compared to this design, fantastic design on it perfect build just.

There are so many other models out there that it's a little hard to recommend because of the software and what I've pointed out gaming performance ? perfectly fine, as you'd expect just tweak the settings to get the best optimal frame rate. Thank you so much for watching this lengthy review here. I hope you liked it. Please do give a thumbs up if you did and also think about subscribing for more reviews. Just like this one bye for now.

Source : TechTablets