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I’d never heard of OPPO phones until I met an Australian girl with one whilst travelling round Asia. She told me that they were increasingly replacing iPhones as they were much better value and still had excellent cameras. It turns out that OPPO is now one of the leading 5G smartphone manufacturers and largest phone companies in the world. So let’s kick off with our OPPO A9 2020 Review by looking at the design and technical aspects.
Design
The Oppo A9 (2020) has a 6.5 inch display with an ~82% screen-to-body ratio. For value smartphones, it is as close as you will get to a bezel-less display experience. The display is an IPS LCD touchscreen, which is a standard for value phones.
The screen is Corning Gorilla Glass 3, which although not protective as Corning Gorilla 6, should still be scratch resistant to daily objects, such as keys etc. The screen has an aspect ratio of 20:9. It is not a unique aspect ratio but is still not widely implemented. So, you will have to watch your videos cropped or with black stripes on both sides. The front side of the phone has a 16MP selfie camera which is decent, though, we have seen better. Above the selfie camera, there is a phone speaker grill.
To the right side of the device, there is a power button. On its left side, you will find the volume rockers along with the SIM tray. The Oppo A9 is a dual-sim phone, so the SIM tray has room for two sim cards and a dedicated memory card slot. Given the size of the device, the power button and volume rockers are situated at a decent distance for you to reach easily.
The bottom of the phone is its most crowded side. First of all, it has a 3.5mm audio jack. Next to it, you can see the microphone. On the middle, you can find the USB C port for charging the phone or connecting it with a PC. The charging port supports reverse charging so you can charge other devices from your phone. Finally, there is a stereo speaker on the bottom, which, although not the best, can get loud.
On the rear side of the device, you will find four cameras. The primary camera is a 48MP wide lens camera. It also has an 8MP ultrawide camera below the primary camera. The two other cameras are both 2MP. However, you cannot use them to take pictures. They are depth sensors for Mono and Portrait shots. Three of these cameras come bundled together while one 2MP depth sensor falls under the LED flash on the side of the three bundled cameras. Beneath the three cameras, you will also find the fingerprint sensor.
Overall, the back of the phone has a plastic finish. However, its unique colours, namely, Marine Green, Space Purple, Vanilla Mint, give it a glassy look. The plastic can get smudgy and get scratched easily. In our opinion, Oppo hasn’t compromised on the overall build quality of the phone.
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Technical
The Oppo A9 comes with an octa-core Snapdragon 665 processor. For the given price, the processor choice by Oppo is justifiable. You can get the device with either 4GB RAM or 8GB RAM, although there might be a slight price difference between the two. For GPU, the device has an Adreno 610 chip. It means that the device should run some major mobile games such as PUBG or any of Gameloft’s big titles without any hiccups.
The phone comes with ColorOS 6.1, which is Oppo’s customized Android operating system based on the Android 9.0 (Pie) OS. As of now, you can’t upgrade the phone to Android 10.0.
In regards to storage, the phone has a 128GB capacity. The phone does not have any other capacity variants. However, we are not complaining. 128GB storage should last you a long time. Furthermore, if you are not satisfied with the storage, you can always expand it using the dedicated MicroSD card slot.
The cameras on the Oppo A9, although not the best, are still above average. The selfie camera supports video recording at 30fps on 1080p resolution. The rear cameras allow you to record both 4K and 1080p resolution videos at 30fps.
The battery on the Oppo A9 is 5000 mAH, which is massive. It can hold enough charge to power you through a single day with moderate usage. For some markets, the battery of the phone may be its main selling point.
Performance
During our time with the Oppo A9, we found the device to be pretty decent. Obviously, you can’t compare its performance with high-end smartphones, but given its price, it is one of the best out there. Similarly, the device never lagged or froze while testing. Even with demanding games, the device performed better than expected. Although, sometimes, we did experience heating issues with it.
If you found this blog helpful, you might also like to read this Oppo A72 Smartphone Review and OnePlus Nord