Oppo A83

Oppo A83 comes into the market, in style and power, breaking from its ‘selfie experts’ tag and bringing something more on the table.  It comes at a price of Rs. 8,540, a value-for-money device that combines capability and style for the tight-budget users.

Oppo is no longer just a ‘selfie expert’. It feels the fierce competition of its rivals, many of which have already upgraded to a better selfie camera. Using the Oppo A83, Oppo proves that it is not backing down that easily as it powers its set with a good display, great performance while maintaining the tradition of innovative selfies. It is a phone best suited for people looking for all-rounder handsets at an affordable range.

Oppo A83 comes with a familiar Oppo design of a rounded back, curved glass and corners. The metal body is well-finished and comfortable to hold, though it can get a bit slippery. The matte finish looks good but could attract a lot of finger smudges making it look unappealing. The rounded glass in the front looks great, and the plastic edge helps to protect the edges of the 2.5D glass, almost similar to OnePlus 5. Oppo A83 has a graceful design that makes it stand out in the flagship crowd, even looking better than Redmi Note 5 Pro, though it makes it up by providing better features.

Oppo A83 has a 5.7-inch display with 720×1440 pixels, which is still pretty sharp, but not the best in its class. The brightness is quite good, and the text appears to be crisp. The phone might present a bit of a problem with viewing angles. The white tones can get a bit of a yellowish or bluish tinge when viewed from the corner or off-centre. Plus, A83 does not come with the colour customisation option, compelling you to live with the colours that you have been provided with, like it or not.

Oppo A83 is powered by MediaTek MT6763T processor which is octa-core, having eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores – four of which runs at a high 2.3GHz for intensive tasks and the other four keeping at 1.65GHz, for regular use. The processor is partnered with a 3GB RAM which works well with the processor. The general performance of the phone is fine, running without any noticeable lags or stutters. Even the gaming experience is smooth though the phone can get a bit warm around the camera. Graphics-heavy games may stutter a bit. The processor got an all-round score of 68,132 which is good but is easily beaten by flagship rival Redmi Note 5 which gets around 77,236 points. FXBench’s T-rex test found the score go up to 36 fps, an improvement over the Oppo F5’s score, the credit going to the lower resolution screen. Face recognition in this phone is snappy and can be used to lock out apps and files too.

Oppo A83 is fitted with a rear 13-megapixel camera that has an f/2.2 aperture. A proper light source can get you detailed images. However, the actual quality of these photos is discerned better if you zoom in. The lack of proper textures and poor edge detection can be spotted.

Low-light pictures may appear surprisingly beautiful, but yet again, full screen will bring out all the captured noise and motion blurring.

It has an 8MP front selfie camera which also has an f/2.2 aperture. Good light can give you decent pictures which could be uploaded as profile pictures in social media, but that is not top rank. It comes with AI beautification functionality which can reduce blemishes, but at max level, it can go overboard making the selfies look artificial.

Oppo A83 has a sizable battery of 3180mAh which is not as good as the batteries of rival flagships which generally come upwards of 3,500 mAh. However, casual use can easily last this battery for a day. Heavy gaming or constant web browsing will make the battery drain fast. An HD video loop test kept the battery running for 11 hours 55 minutes which is a pretty good score for a small battery, but it could have done better at this range. Fast charging isn’t supported, and so it is understandable that it takes nearly three hours to get its bone dry battery replenished back to full power.

Oppo A83 steps away from the ‘selfie expert’ tag and provides a genuine all-rounder phone. However, it does not have any outstanding feature that will break the mould and put it ahead of its competitors. The overall experience with this phone would be satisfactory, but that is not considered a competitive edge. While it comes as a budget set, the Redmi Note 5 Pro turns out to be a better performer and even a better selfie shooter, making Oppo A83 take a dose of its own medicine.