OPPO A3s

A recent launch, the Oppo A3s is a device which boasts of some flagship-like features, at a price akin to those in the budget segment. The phone is decently powerful, has a huge screen, offers a notch display, and even boasts of a dual camera set up at the back.

Oppo has always prided itself on the designs of its smartphones, and the A3s does not let down. Where it doesn’t exceed expectations, however, is the camera quality. Oppo is quite renowned for producing devices with impressive selfie cameras; the A3s, however, does not belong to that category.

The notch display is one of the highlights for the A3s’ design. It is one of the cheapest phones available right now with a notch, and this is certainly a major USP for the device. With Oppo, you would always expect a well-designed phone, and they certainly deliver with the A3s. The rear panel looks really attractive for a budget segment phone, and Oppo has tried really hard to make the A3s look like a flagship. The lack of a fingerprint scanner has been somewhat made up for by the inclusion of face unlock, although it is much less secure. The standard micro USB port, 3.5 mm headphone jack, and speaker grill are housed at the bottom, although speaker performance is not anything to jump around about.

The Oppo A3s offers a 6.2-inch HD+ display, with a resolution of 1520 by 720 pixels. A step up from standard HD resolution, the A3s has a display which is usable enough for everyday use. Brightness levels are decent and outdoor usage should not be a problem. Colours and details aren’t that vibrant, however, but we can forgive Oppo on this one.

The notch on the display isn’t as optimised as one would expect it to be, however. OnePlus, for instance, have done a significantly better job in making sure that the notch doesn’t block content on the screen, sadly, this isn’t the case with the Oppo A3s.

The Oppo A3s offers a Snapdragon 450 SoC with 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB internal storage, which can be expanded up to 256 GB. The phone runs on Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box. Performance is generally good when it comes to multitasking and other UI interactions, but heavy games can cause some problems for the device. This is probably to be expected, with the low amount of RAM and the budget SoC that is included in the device. Oppo does offer somewhat of a gaming mode, which allows users to tweak some options to deliver better performance. The face unlock feature performs quite decently; it is fast, but not very secure.

The dual camera setup on the A3s certainly follows industry trends, with a 13 MP primary lens and a 2 MP secondary lens for depth effects giving an extra dimension to images. The performance, however, is satisfactory at best. Photos have an average amount of details, in all kinds of light. The shutter speed is fast, though, which helps avoid blurry shots to an extent.

The selfie camera, upon which Oppo usually prides itself, isn’t that great, to be honest. Picture quality is scuffed, with indoor and low light selfies practically unusable. Outdoor selfies are satisfactory and decent, but that is pretty much it.

The Oppo A3s is powered by a mammoth 4230 mAh battery, which is a clear selling point of the device. Battery life, as expected, is brilliant, with the phone being able to last for almost two days on heavy usage. Now, with such a large battery, the time taken to charge it is incredibly high, due to the clear lack of any fast charging technology, which would have been much appreciated. Still, the Oppo A3s does a fantastic job of battery conservation and optimization, which means you shouldn’t have to worry about the charger too much.

A phone with many flagship features, the A3s is a certain buy for those looking for a certain combination of features in this price range. Speaking generally, however, the A3s doesn’t make too strong of a case for itself, with other devices in the market offering much more value for money experience.