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Oppo A7 is the latest budget offering from Oppo. The design looks pretty awesome even when it’s made of plastic. It comes with a big screen, Dual cameras, Snapdragon processor and a huge battery. The device is pretty big and is surely not made for single hand use.
Wanna know more about Oppo A7? Check out our in-depth review below.
Oppo A7: Design and Build
Oppo is known for creating devices which look trendy. One of the examples is their latest offering, the Oppo A7. While the entire device is made of plastic, the laminated back is glossy and shines when the light hits the back at different angles. This is quite similar to the effects which can be found on the premium glass back smartphones. Also, it shares the same issues of capturing tons of fingerprint smudges easily.
Oppo A7 is not a small device and it is not super thin as well. The thickness of the device is 8.1 mm but the weight is surprisingly light at just 168 grams. While the back curved to the front along the sides makes it easy to grip, the device is surely slippery. Often you will find yourself using the second hand to reach the opposite corners of the display due to the tall display and design.
The Oppo A7 comes with a waterdrop notch which makes it look more premium. On the small notch up top, there is an earpiece and the front camera. Sadly, there is no notification light. Apart from that, the Volume keys and the Power key are on the right while the SIM tray with a dedicated MicroSD card slot can be found on the left. At the bottom, you will find the Micro USB charging port along with a speaker grill and the audio jack. Turn the device around and you will find the Dual camera unit on the back along with a flash. There is also a Fingerprint scanner on the back with OPPO branding just below it. Overall, the build quality is pretty good but there are devices in the same price range with more durable metal uni-body design.
Display
The Oppo A7 comes with a 6.2 inch IPS LCD screen which has a resolution of 720 x 1520 pixels and a pixel density of 271 pixels-per-inch. There is a waterdrop notch up top which is really small and doesn’t take up a lot of screen area. The bezels around the display are small but the chin is absurdly big. Oppo is using the Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protecting the screen against scratches and there is also a screen protector which comes pre-applied
Moving on to the screen quality, we found it pretty average. The HD+ resolution is no doubt a disappointment when even phones cheaper than Oppo A7 comes with FullHD+ screens. Apart from that, the text on the screen appears soft and if you look closely, individual pixels can be seen. The colors are OKAY while the viewing angles are good but the sunlight visibility is pretty weak which makes it hard to make out what’s on the screen outdoors. However, the big screen size with small notch surely creates an immersive experience while watching movies or videos indoors. Overall, the screen on the Oppo A7 is pretty average but it isn’t bad for watching movies or stuff while you don’t have a laptop lying around.
Performance and Software
We scratched our heads when we found out that Oppo has used an old SoC which can be found on devices much cheaper than the Oppo A7. Why Oppo did that? We really have no clue. The performance on the A7 has really taken a hit. It comes with the Snapdragon 450 SoC which is an Octa-core processor based on 14-nm architecture. Along with that, there is an Adreno 506 GPU which is too capable either.
Talking about the general performance, it was mostly OKAY but we did notice some lag while just scrolling through the UI. Basic apps and Games like Subway Surfer, Candy Crush etc works just fine but demanding title like PUBG mobile, Asphalt 9 works in the lowest setting only and even with those settings, the gameplay wasn’t smooth either.
The Oppo A7 comes in two different configurations, one with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage and the other one with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. While the 4GB RAM looks promising, it doesn’t help much with the performance except keeping more apps in the memory and help with multitasking. There is also a dedicated MicroSD card which can be utilized to expand the memory up to 256GB.
Well, the Oppo A7 comes with the usual Color OS skin running on Android 8.1 Oreo. It’s pretty common to other Chinese custom Android skins with no App drawer and preinstalled bloatware. There are a couple of useful features like Smart Scan which scan any text and turns it into an editable format. You can also use Gesture-based navigation instead of on-screen buttons to get more screen space. The Color OS 5.2 comes with the latest November security patch and there are no words on Android Pie update.
Oppo A7 Camera and Battery Life
The Oppo A7 comprises a Dual Camera unit which houses a 13 Megapixel sensor with f/2.2 aperture and a 2 Megapixel depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture. There is a 16 Megapixel sensor on the front for capturing selfies. The camera app is pretty basic and comes with common features like HDR, Panorama etc. There is no Phase Detection Autofocus, OIS or EIS.
Talking about the quality, there is nothing to get excited about. With no PDAF, focusing takes time and if you can hold the camera still, you can capture some good looking shots from the primary sensor. However, in low light, the quality falls considerably with the introduction of lots of noise. The Portrait mode images look average only with poor edge detection. Moving on to the front camera, the quality is pretty good actually. It can capture some sharp images using the front camera but don’t expect the same during low light. The primary sensor can record FullHD videos in 30 fps and there is no EIS or OIS to back up the stabilization.
Compared to other phones which are priced similar to the Redmi Note 5 or the Mi A2, the camera quality falls behind significantly.
The Oppo A7 comes with a huge 4230 mAh battery which is the best thing about the device. With even heavy usage, the battery was able to last 1.5 days and depending upon how you will use it, you may be able to get 2 days of battery life because the Oppo A7 is capable of doing that. However, we really wanted to see a new USB Type-C port on the device instead of Micro USB but it’s OKAY. Also, there is no fast charging and the normal 10W charger takes around 2–2.5 hours to completely charge the battery.
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