While most of the Chinese companies try to target the budget segment in India, OPPO is one of those few companies that looks at the budget segment with attention. Instead of offering the best specifications at a budget pricing, OPPO charges a premium for the excellent selfies that their devices tend to capture. The brand has built up an entire segment that focuses on selfie-focused audience.
The most important series for the device is the F series, but if you are looking for a more budget offering from the company that doesn’t compromise on the social shutterbug in you, then the Oppo A83 is the way to go. The Oppo A83 comes with most of the essential features of the Oppo F5 including the AI beautification and has the modern 18:9 aspect ratio display.
Design
The most important design aspect of the Oppo A83 is the 18:9 aspect ratio display which however, still fails to give the device a bezel-less design. The forehead of the device consists of a very noticeable earpiece and a front camera, the lack of a front flash on the device is rather surprising. The metal shell on the back of the phone blends into the phone but the glass in a way protrudes out of the casing and you can notice a bump.
The grip on the device is pretty good and we never felt the device slip out of our arms while reviewing it. However, the back of the device is a major fingerprint magnet which gets filled with all of your forensic data in just minutes of usage, to prevent this, the company has included a plastic protective shell in the box that helps prevent damage to the screen while avoiding fingerprints at the same time.
The power button is to the right of the device and the volume buttons are to the left and have a tactile feel. The SIM card tray is again to the right, above the power button and accommodates two SIM cards along with a microSD card, the inclusion of a dedicated microSD card slot over a hybrid slot is very much appreciated. The bottom of the device has the MicroUSB port, the 3.5mm earphone jack and the speaker grille. The taller screen means that the Android navigation buttons should now be on the screen as the bottom chin is way too small for it to accommodate any buttons. There is no fingerprint sensor on the device which is a major surprise considering the price that it comes for. The manufacturer however, has included an alternate unlock method that we will be talking about below.
Specifications
Despite the device being priced competitively in Oppo’s terms, the device comes with a lot of similarities in terms of hardware when compared to the Oppo F5. The Oppo A83 is powered by the MediaTek P23 which is a octa-core processor with A53 cores half of them running at 2.3GHz and 1.65GHz respectively. The RAM on the device is 3GB while the internal storage is 32GB which can easily be expanded to 256GB via the dedicated micro SD card slot. The connectivity options include the standard Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.2 and GPS/A-GPS. The display on the device is a 5.7-inch display with a HD+ resolution which is relatively less when compared to what is being offered in the market for the price but the display is still pretty sharp.
Software
The Oppo A83 comes with Android 7.1 Nougat based ColorOS that draws detailed inspiration from iOS. The influence of iOS is pretty evident as the company moves all the quick toggles from the status bar to a Control Centre styled menu that can be pulled from the bottom of the device. The company has also ditched the fingerprint sensor to unlock the device with your Face which works very well in our experience.
However, despite the extremely quick unlock speeds of the device via face recognition, the security aspect is still questionable. The software also allows you to draw gestures on the display to quickly launch custom apps as per designated. The Oppo A83 supports the split screen mode for supported apps and also allows you to run two instances of the same app similar to the dual apps feature in MIUI.
ColorOS comes with their own applications that take up additional space while there already are Google apps that serve the same purpose. The software appearance on the device can easily be tweaked with the Theme store in the ColorOS that contains over 100 downloadable themes. The only downside is the number of preloaded apps that come with the device including the UC News app.
Performance
The device is a decent performer and one of the only issues we noticed on the device was with the viewing angles that suffered, there was a noticeable color shift when viewing from off angles which weren’t an issue when you are using the phone. The performance didn’t have any issues and we could use the daily apps and run games without any throttling on the device. We tested the device with Asphalt 8 and Modern Combat 5 which both ran smoothly while the device did get warm.
Face recognition worked very well on the device and didn’t get fooled by images, however, the device doesn’t wait for the eyes to be opening and unlocks itself even when a small part of the face is covered. The Face unlocks can also be used to lock apps and the device itself.
Camera
The Camera app on the device draws inferences from the Apple’s design and goes the extra mile to add the 2X zoom which provides a digital zoom to the image. There are a few simple filters that can be toggled, you can also adjust the white balance, shutter speed, focus and ISO manually while in the Expert Mode. The camera also allows for an ultra-high resolution that takes a 50-megapixel image by combining multiple images.
The rear camera on the device is a 13MP camera with an f/2.2 aperture and the images look pretty good across most lighting conditions. There still is noticeable lack in detail when the images are zoomed in where we noticed a few textures to be rough. Night shots are pretty good and the device does take in a lot of light but even the slightest of shakes translates to a significant blur.
The front camera is an 8MP camera with an f/2.2 aperture and uses ”AI-powered” beautification feature that makes the skin look prettier. The results look very artificial when the setting is toggled to maximum level. There is also a depth effect for the front camera that adds a software bokeh to the images captured on the front camera. This works pretty well in most conditions and the images are very well outlined and the bokeh is natural.
Battery
The battery life on the device is above average and the 3180mAh battery on the device easily pulls in a day of usage and sometimes more. We could get about a day and a half of usage when used moderately and heavy usage resulted in about a day’s worth of battery backup. The charging is, however, what most would call painfully slow. The device takes about 3 hours to go from 0 to 100 which is extremely long and we would have loved to see fast charging.
Verdict
The device is an excellent but if you are looking for a selfie-focused device, the overall performance of the device is pretty good too. The only front camera of the device is the most important aspect of the device while the rear camera also captures some pretty good images. The battery charging time is painfully slow which could be one of the major disadvantages of the device. The software on the device is pretty optimized for a better battery life while also allowing you to runs multiple apps, thanks to the good memory management.
Great review seems fingerprint scanner would have been an added advantage