Design of Oppo A5s
The Oppo A5s is a lightweight phone and its body is made of plastic. The first thing that will catch your attention is its large 6.2-inch display. This phone comes with a waterdrop notch. Oppo The A5s has thin bezels on the sides but the border at the bottom of the phone is a bit thick. The earpiece is placed right above the waterdrop notch.
The back panel of the Oppo A5s is made of glossy plastic which easily gets fingerprints but you will get a clear case in the retail box. Oppo A5s has two color variants – one black and the other red. The frame of the Oppo A5s is curved due to which the phone fits easily in the hand.
In Oppo A5s, the power button is on the right side of the phone while the volume buttons are on the left side of the phone. The hands can easily reach the volume buttons. The loudspeaker grill, micro-USB port and 3.5 mm headphone jack are provided at the bottom of the phone. The SIM tray is placed on the left side of the phone.
Oppo A5s is equipped with dual-nano SIM slot and microSD card slot. The back panel of Oppo A5s will have two rear cameras and a fingerprint sensor for security. A 4,230 mAh battery has been provided to power the Oppo A5s. VOOC rapid charger will not be available in the box with this budget smartphone of the Oppo brand.
Oppo A5s specifications and software
Oppo A5s has a 6.2-inch HD+ display, its aspect ratio is 19:9. Its viewing angles are good but it is not very bright outdoors. In the settings, you will get the option to adjust the color tone of the display. For speed and multitasking, MediaTek Helio P35 processor has been used in Oppo A5s, which has a speed of 2.3 GHz.
For graphics, the PowerVR GE8320 GPU has been used in Oppo A5s. Only one variant of Oppo A5s has been launched which is equipped with 2 GB RAM and 32 GB storage variant. If needed, it is possible to increase the storage with the help of microSD card. Oppo A5s includes dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth version 4.2, GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, FM radio and USB-OTG.
When we first started using the phone, our review unit was running on the March 2019 security patch. But after the phone received an update, the phone is now running on the April 2019 Android security patch. ColorOS does not have an app launcher and all the app icons are on the home screen.
There is some bloatware on the Oppo A5s. Our review unit came pre-installed with apps like Facebook, Opera, Phone Manager, Theme Store, Music Party and Game Space. Game Space automatically adds compatible games and gives you the option to lock screen brightness and block banner notifications so that your gaming sessions are not interrupted.
You can also uninstall some of these apps to free up storage. You can change the look of the UI with the help of free themes. Smart Sidebar is a pop-out tray where you will find app shortcuts and it can be launched from any screen. When the phone is on standby, you can also open the app by making letters i.e. gestures on the screen.
Oppo A5s performance, battery life and camera
The performance of the Oppo A5s is good considering the hardware it packs. The Oppo A5s handles scrolling and opening apps without any issues but it is not fast at multitasking. We found that the phone had to relaunch apps often as it could not handle a lot of apps running in the background.
The fingerprint sensor is provided on the back panel of Oppo A5s. The hand reaches the sensor easily and it unlocks the phone quickly. Face unlock support will also be available in Oppo A5s and it also works fast. We liked the display of Oppo A5s but the sound from the loudspeaker is a bit slow.
The sound quality of the Oppo A5s is below average compared to other smartphones we have tested in this price segment. Redmi 6 The MediaTek Helio P35 processor in Oppo A5s is slightly more powerful than the Helio P22 chipset in Oppo A5s. Redmi Y3 ,Review) And Redmi 7 ,ReviewCompared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 processor in the ), the Helio P35 scored slightly lower in CPU and graphics benchmarks.
We played PUBG Mobile on the Oppo A5s and it was set to low settings by default. Game space was enabled so the phone clears the RAM every time the game is launched.
However, it does take longer than usual to load the game. We found that the phone sometimes lagged while playing and thus had to set the frame rate to low for a smoother gaming experience. After playing PUBG Mobile for 20 minutes, we noticed that the battery had drained by 4 percent which is acceptable.
The 4,230mAh battery on the Oppo A5s offers decent battery life. In our HD video loop test, the smartphone lasted a little less than 24 hours. We used the phone normally like playing PUBG Mobile, using WhatsApp and using Google Maps for navigation. Despite all this, the Oppo A5s lasted for two days.
The charger that comes with the phone takes more than two hours to fully charge the phone. Oppo A5s has two rear cameras, a 13-megapixel primary sensor with aperture F/2.2 and a 2-megapixel depth sensor whose aperture is F/2.4. There is an 8-megapixel front camera for selfies and video calling, whose aperture is F/2.0.
We found the camera app on the Oppo A5s to be quite easy to use. Apart from the standard photo and video modes, the Oppo A5s also offers portrait and pano modes. In the default mode, you will find buttons for flash, HDR, timer and filter that you can apply before clicking a picture. Apart from this, a face beauty button is also provided. A 2x digital zoom button is also provided.
In daylight, the Oppo A5s captures light well and the exposure is also good. When taking macro shots, the Oppo A5s focuses quickly. It maintains the distinction between the subject and the background. The detail in macro shots was average and the images were not very sharp. When taking pictures in portrait mode, we found that the edge detection was not optimal.
The camera performance in low light was not very good. The phone takes a lot of time to lock focus, due to which the pictures lack brightness. Oppo A5s keeps noise under control but grains are visible on zooming and there is also a lack of detail. The selfies taken with Oppo A5s captured good details and the phone manages the exposure properly.
Both the primary and front cameras are capable of recording videos at a maximum resolution of 1080p. But the Oppo A5s does not come with video stabilization.
Our verdict
Oppo A5s has been launched in India in the price segment of less than Rs 10,000. This smartphone of the Oppo brand will face tough competition in this segment. The specialty of Oppo A5s is its battery life. We found the camera performance to be favorable but we have seen better than this in this price segment. In this segment, Oppo A5s has only 2 GB RAM which is less than other options available in the market.
If you are not fond of playing games on your smartphone and you value battery life, then Oppo A5s can prove to be a good phone for you. But if performance is important for you, then there are better phones in the same price segment. Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 ,Review) And Asus ZenFone Max Pro M2 ,Review) Smartphones can prove to be a great option for you.