Oppo’s new A77 is a step up from the cheaper A57 which impressed us a couple of months ago. There’s big competition from the impressive Moto G5 Plus and the Huawei GR5, so how does this fare? And do you really need to pay more for a phone these days?
Key Specs
5.5in, 1080 x 1920 LCD screen, 64/4GB RAM, Octa-core 1.5GHz Cortex A53 CPU, Mali T860MP2 GPU, 13MP rear and 16MP front cameras, microSD/dual SIM slot, microUSB, Android 6, 3,200mAh battery, 153 x 75 x 7mm, 153g
Design and Handling
Oppo’s ‘We copied the iPhone’ design has been a familiar sight for some time, but who’s complaining when the phone costs one-third as much? It’s as solidly-built as ever and comes with a useful silicon case which offers some decent protection and grip without adding bulk or spoiling the looks.
The 5.5-inch Full HD screen is crisp, clear and gets bright, but colours are a bit washed out compared to top-end phones.
A 1.5GHz Octa-core processor keeps everything ticking along and there’s virtually no lag when launching general apps. Sporting 4GB/64GB or RAM is something we’d expect from much-dearer rivals. Angry Birds was fully playable, as was Pokemon Go. We only started seeing frames dropped with the 3D-rich, fast-paced Asphalt 8 but it was still playable.
The main ‘button’ at the bottom doubles as the fingerprint reader and, as usual with Oppo phones, is one of the fastest and most accurate on the market.
The main speaker at the bottom gets impressively loud and distinct for any phone. There’s not much bass but it’s certainly punchy when playing music. This translates to conference and video calls which are also loud and distinct.
Android 6 is used and Oppo’s Color OS sits atop it. This isn’t too intrusive and offers decent features like gesture controls, cloud backups, memory management to keep things ticking along nicely, security features including app lock plus antivirus. Not being Android 7 means that there’s no Google Assistant though.
Camera
The A77 is equipped with a rear-mounted 13-megapixel camera plus a front-facing, 16-megapixel, Selfie camera. And we were impressed.
The camera is quick to start and handles very well. There aren’t very many settings to play around with but as a happy snapper it punches well above its weight.
General landscapes were well exposed, sharp and exhibited an impressive degree of dynamic range – there was plenty of detail in light and shadowy areas. There’as an HDR mode that we expected to exacerbate this performance but in reality, we found it did very little.
General people pictures were mostly good and in most lighting conditions too – this is a very good low light camera and better than many expensive rivals. The issue that we kept having was focus – when the autofocus worked it was great, but too many photos were blurry where it hadn’t locked on properly. Simply touching the screen fixes this but we expect more from any level of phone these days. It was an issue that translated into movies too.
Battery
It uses a micro-USB connector supplied 5V/2A charger. I forgot to pack these (I am so used to USB-C and wireless charge now) for a weekend away as its final test.
I was concerned as it had to last from 5pm on Friday to 8am on Monday. I “optimised” battery hogging apps like Facebook, Instagram, and a few other background tasks turned off Bluetooth (Wi-Fi was required) and was prepared to use low power mode if it got to 20%.
It indicated that I was using 17mAh at idle so in theory, 3200mAh should give me 188 hours. With normal use, some calls, some SMS, about 50 photos, about 10 x 5-minute videos, some web browsing etc., I got to Monday morning with 37% left – pretty amazing.
Performance
OPPO’s A77 used a MediaTek MT6750T, eight core, 4 x 1.5GHz and 4 x 1GHz in a big/little configuration – it fires up cores as needed or idles along on as little as one. The GPU is a Mali-t860 MP2 (OK for Android games), dual image signal processors, PADF, Wi-Fi N, Wi-Di and Cat 6 (300/50Mbps) LTE with 2CA, VoLTE, WiLTE, and VoWi-Fi.
It is described as a “SoC for the super-mid-market” and is used in several phones costing well over $500. It is often compared to a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 SoC in terms of performance. OPPO uses it in the F3 so it is familiar with tuning it to Android. LG use it in the K10, 2017 series.
In tests around Sydney on the Telstra network, it ranged from 65-260Mbps (near its 300Mbps theoretical maximum) and Wi-Fi N from 200-400Mbps.
In all, this processor is a good choice offering higher mid-market performance in a mass-market phone.
- Source: itwire
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