OPPO officially entered the Ukrainian market quite recently, at the end of October, and immediately with five smartphone models, the most equipped of which is the hero of this review OPPO Reno2. According to a number of characteristics and cost, the device does not belong to the top flagships, but falls into the competitive niche of the medium-high price segment. Therefore, let’s see what Reno2 plans to attract the attention of buyers and what it has to offer in general in terms of functionality.
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OPPO Reno2 Package Contents
The smartphone comes in an unusually elongated cardboard box, inside which you can also find a leather-styled plastic case, wired headphones, a USB Type-C cable and a 20W fast charger.
It is also worth noting that a protective film is glued right out of the box on the display of the device.
Design and materials
It is quite difficult for manufacturers today to create a truly unique design for their models, and we must pay tribute to OPPO, its Reno2, although a little, stands out from the competition. And it’s worth starting with the fact that there are no cutouts or holes on the front panel of the smartphone; almost its entire plane is occupied by a display covered with Gorilla Glass 6 protective glass.
This was achieved thanks to the motorized block, which leaves the upper edge of the case. It is quite unusual here and resembles a triangle in shape. When you first get acquainted with the device, it may even seem that the unit with the front camera is a little jammed during the opening and it did not leave completely. But in fact, this is such a non-standard approach to its design.
The back of the OPPO Reno2 is made of Gorilla Glass 5, which extends slightly onto the side metal edges, making the smartphone feel good in the hand. And here, too, there were some interesting design details. The manufacturer placed the block with the cameras right under the protective glass of the rear panel, so it does not stand out and does not go beyond the body.
This is a bit of a controversial decision, since camera lenses are easier to scratch, and in the event of an unsuccessful fall of the smartphone, they can most likely be immediately written off. But it seems that OPPO believes very strongly in the accuracy of their users, well, or in the protective properties of the complete case. But at least to protect the cameras from scratches, the company’s designers have provided a small protrusion, located slightly below the lenses. As planned, he should slightly raise them above the surface if the smartphone, for example, is on the table. However, I would still bet on a case, it definitely protects the case better.
In addition to the display, the main controls in OPPO Reno2 are located on the side faces, on the right is the power button, and on the left are the volume keys. At the same time, they are located, as for me, very well, it is easy to reach them with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands.
The dimensions of the smartphone are 160×74.3 mm, and its thickness varies from 8.5 mm at the bottom of the case to 9.5 mm at the top, although such a difference is not felt either visually or tactilely. The weight of the device reaches 189 grams, which is typical for large models made of glass and metal.
The OPPO Reno2 case does not have water and dust protection, which is generally rare in models of this price category, so it is better to avoid exposing the device to rain or immersing it in liquid.
Display OPPO Reno2
The smartphone received a 6.5-inch AMOLED touch screen with a resolution of 2400×1080 pixels and a pixel density of 401 per inch. The manufacturer used a fairly high-quality matrix with good viewing angles, a maximum brightness of 479 cd/ m2 and a minimum brightness of 1.9 cd/ m2 .
There are two calibration options in the display settings called “Bright” and “Delicate”. The first makes the picture more colorful and corresponds to the DCI-P3 color space, and the second is closer to natural and displays a little more than 100% of the sRGB color space.
“Bright”
“Gentle”
In general, the factory calibration of the screen is done at a good level, with almost a reference gamma and uniform backlight. The only thing is that in both display modes the display is rather “cold”, its color temperature is at the level of 7500K. Therefore, those who do not like the blue bias will have to switch to a “warmer” color rendering manually, fortunately, this can be done in the smartphone settings. In addition, there you can turn on the “night mode”, which will change the color temperature of the screen at a specified time.
Interestingly, the smartphone has several options at once to reduce eye strain at night, for example, switching the display to black and white or white and gray with color inversion.
For users who are sensitive to the flickering of AMOLED displays, the setting also has an option to activate DC Dimming, which changes the brightness by changing the voltage supplied to the matrix. This almost completely eliminates flickering, but can lead to color distortion at low backlight levels, but I did not see this on the OPPO Reno2.
Fingerprint scanner
The fingerprint sensor in OPPO Reno2 is located under the display glass, at the bottom of it. The manufacturer used an optical scanner that needs a backlight to work. Therefore, at the time of operation, a small area of the smartphone screen glows with a bright light, which allows the sensor to read the fingerprint.
Unfortunately, in the dark it hits the eyes pretty hard, which, however, is a problem with all such scanners. As well as recognition difficulties if the user has water or moisture on their fingers. But otherwise, the fingerprint sensor in OPPO Reno2 works quickly and accurately, almost at the level of capacitive fingerprint scanners.
OPPO Reno2 Performance
The smartphone is built on the Qualcomm platform using an 8nm Snapdragon 730G processor with 8 Kryo 470 cores (2 Cortex-A76 cores at 2.2 GHz and 6 Cortex-A55 cores at 1.8 GHz) and Adreno 618 graphics. Qualcomm this chip is positioned as “gaming”, stating that the performance of the graphics core here is 15% higher than in the regular Snapdragon 730. But be that as it may, judging by synthetic tests, the performance of this chip is at the level of last year’s flagship Snapdragon processor 845. And taking into account 8 GB of RAM, as well as 256 GB of internal memory, this allows you to use your smartphone with great comfort, it does not slow down or freeze.
By the way, the data storage in OPPO Reno2 can be expanded using microSD cards, but the slot in the device is hybrid, so you can’t use two SIMs and a memory card at the same time.
In terms of graphics, according to 3DMark, the performance of the Adreno 618 chip is on par with the Adreno 530, which was used with the flagship Snapdragon 820 and 821 processors. This is enough to play modern Android games on medium and high graphics settings, but it already feels that the capabilities of the chip without much headroom.
Other features of the OPPO Reno2 platform include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, as well as A-GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO and Beidou positioning modules.
Interface
OPPO Reno2 runs on the Android 9 operating system with a proprietary ColorOS 6.1 shell. As in the case of other add-ons over the standard interface of the Google operating system, the shell slightly changes its appearance, expands the personalization options, and also adds some additional options.
At the same time, ColorOS 6.1 practically does not change the logic of the interface, traditional desktops are available to the user, where you can place application icons and widgets, as well as a separate menu. But the OPPO shell provides the ability to remove it by placing all programs on desktops.
The traditional Android curtain in ColorOS 6.1 opens to full screen and contains quick settings that you can change to your liking.
In addition to desktops on the main screen of the shell, there is a separate panel with additional widgets, such as weather, pedometer, photos, favorite contacts and quick launch applications.
In the settings of ColorOS 6.1, it is possible to choose themes, along with which application icons will change. In addition, the layout of the main screen, scaling and text size are configured.
In general, the interface from OPPO does not differ much from the standard Android, but adds more personalization options. And most importantly, it works quickly and with nice animation. The only thing it really lacks is the dark theme, which the company has added in the new version of its shell – ColorOS 7, which is based on Androiod 10 and should soon appear on the OPPO Reno2 as an update.
cameras
One of the main advantages of this smartphone model in OPPO is called a system of four cameras:
- 48-megapixel wide-angle camera with 1/2.0″ sensor, f/1.7 aperture, hybrid autofocus and optical stabilization
- 13-megapixel telephoto with 1/3.4″ sensor, f/2.4 aperture and hybrid autofocus
- Ultra wide-angle 8-megapixel with a 1 / 3.2 ″ matrix and f / 2.4 aperture
- 2-megapixel camera with 1/5″ sensor and f/2.4 aperture, which is used to measure the distance to objects when shooting portraits
As you can see, this is a completely modern set of modules, but let’s see how they shoot in practice. During the day, all three main cameras take fairly high-quality pictures with good detail, almost always with the right white balance and exposure. At the same time, I note that their color reproduction is almost the same, and this is not always found even in more expensive models. The main 48-megapixel camera in the smartphone takes 12-megapixel pictures using the Quad Bayer structure, in which pixels are grouped by 4 and covered with a common filter that passes red, blue or green. This allows the sensor to receive more information along with the light, resulting in more detailed images. In turn, the telephoto module in OPPO Reno2 is capable of taking photos with a 2x optical or 3x hybrid zoom. And to evaluate the quality of pictures taken in good light on the smartphone cameras, you can scroll through the gallery below, in which the photos are arranged in the order: wide-angle, 2x telephoto, 5x telephoto, ultra-wide-angle.
When shooting at night, detail drops for all OPPO Reno2 cameras, but this affects telephoto and ultra-wide-angle modules most of all, since they have a smaller matrix and aperture, and there is also no optical stabilization.
As a result, shooting in poor lighting makes sense only with the main 48-megapixel camera, so you can get pretty high-quality photos.
True, it is clearly visible that OPPO is still trying to get the most out of the camera modules themselves, while other manufacturers are increasingly betting on post-processing through machine learning. And in some situations, the difference is quite noticeable, for example, when shooting at night with ultra-wide-angle and telephoto cameras, algorithms could significantly improve the pictures by compensating for the size of the matrix and aperture by gluing several images with different parameters. So in this regard, OPPO still has work to do.
As already mentioned above, the front camera in Reno2 hides inside the case and leaves it due to a motorized mechanism. For it, the manufacturer used a 16-megapixel 1 / 3.1 ″ matrix with f / 2.0 aperture. At the same time, it is interesting that the module is automatically hidden if the accelerometer detects a fall, it takes literally a second.
Audio
To connect headphones, OPPO Reno2 has a 3.5 mm jack, and this will clearly appeal to those who are not ready to part with wired models yet. Well, for those who have already switched to wireless, the device has Bluetooth 5.0 with support for the aptX HD codec.
There is only one external speaker in the smartphone and it is located on the bottom of the case, next to the USB Type-C port. Here one could write that I would like to get stereo sound from the device, but in practice one speaker in OPPO Reno2 is so loud that you simply forget about it during operation.
Autonomy OPPO Reno2
The smartphone has a 4000 mAh battery, which is enough for more than one day of active use.
This is also confirmed by the Geekbench 4 synthetic test, in which the OPPO Reno2 under load and with a display brightness of 200 cd / m2 worked for more than 11 hours.
The device charges only via a USB Type-C port and it supports fast charging up to 20W, which OPPO calls VOOC Flash Charge 3.0.
