Oppo A5s review: Impressive design, capable battery but weak performance

Oppo A5S is a budget smartphone from the stable of Chinese smartphone maker Oppo. Successor of the Oppo A3S, the smartphone boasts a notch-based screen, dual camera module on the back and a powerful battery that makes it an interesting proposition in its segment. Priced at Rs 9,990, the phone competes with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7, Realme 3 and Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1. Let’s take a look at how the phone fares in terms of design, features and performance:

Design and display

The Oppo A5s has a glossy plastic build that looks mediocre but has a sturdy feel to it. The phone’s front is dominated by a 6.2-inch display, which covers almost the entire front, leaving thin bezels on three-sides and a thick one on the bottom. The phone’s back is made out of glossy plastic, which is a fingerprint magnet. Thankfully, the phone comes with a transparent case to protect the phone from scratches and smudges.

The Oppo A5s has a 6.2-inch waterdrop-shaped notch display of HD+ resolution, stretched in a tall 19:9 aspect ratio. The display looks vivid and has decent brightness, which makes it legible in bright outdoors. However, the sunlight legibility is just above average.

Camera

The Oppo A5s has a dual camera module on the back, featuring a 13-megapixel primary sensor of an f/2.2 aperture mated with a 2MP resolution depth sensor of an f/2.4 aperture. On the front, the phone has an 8MP selfie camera of an f/2.0 lens. The rear camera performs well in good light conditions. The photos come out with good detailing and the colour reproduction is natural. The camera is quick to lock focus exposure. The depth lens comes handy to take portrait shots with enhanced bokeh effect.

Though the has an artificial intelligence-based beautification mode, it does not work as intended and results in over saturation of colours that results in unnatural looking output. The camera struggles in low light and shots taken in such scenarios come out with loss of details, noise and washed out colours.

The front camera is as good as the rear camera. It works well to take selfies in good light conditions, but struggles in low light.

Oppo A5s Oppo A5s

Performance

The Oppo A5s is powered by a MediaTek Helio P35 system-on-chip (SoC). The phone comes in a sole variant with 2GB RAM and 32GB storage – expandable using a microSD card. The Oppo A5s boots dated Android 8.1 Oreo-based ColorOS 5.2 user interface.

The phone handles day to day tasks well and the performance seems sleek and snappy with no lags, until the phone is put to use to multitask or to open multiple apps. Similarly, the Oppo A5s handles casual games without stutters but fails to run graphic intensive games such as PubG and Asphalt 9.

Battery

The phone is powered by a 4320mAh battery. In a mixed usage, which includes WhatsApp, navigation and online multimedia streaming, the battery lasts for around two-days. The phone does not support any fast charge technology. However, the supplied charger is good enough to charge the battery full in about 2 hours.

Verdict

Priced at Rs 9,990, the Oppo A5s is a good-looking smartphone with a waterdrop-shaped notch display, decent cameras and a capable battery with good on-battery time of around two days. Except for its performance, the phone’s battery, display, camera and design makes it a good proposition in the budget segment.