OPPO A5s Price List May, 2021 & Specs in Philippines

Oppo A5s Review: Is it really a bang for your buck?

The Oppo A5s is a great entry-level smartphone with impressive battery life, decent performance, and a sizeable display. But do these features justify its budget-friendly price point?

Pros:

• Slim build
• Triple card slots for two SIM cards and a micro SD card
• Fingerprint scanner
• Smaller waterdrop notch than the Oppo A3s
• Good legibility in bright environments
• Good screen size
• Decent night shots as long as there’s good lighting
• Portrait shots with bokeh effect
• Expandable internal storage
• It handles day-to-day task pretty well
• Smooth performance when running small-to-moderate apps and games
• Two-day battery life
• It only takes 2 hours for a full charge even without having any fast-charging technology

Cons:

• Glossy plastic chassis is a smudge magnet
• Display only comes with HD+ resolution
• Shots lack natural color reproduction
• Discernible noise and loss of detail in low light
• Loss of video quality after zooming
• Oppo Game Space misses the mark when running graphics-intensive games
• Performance hiccups when multitasking and graphics-intensive gaming

Overall Design

The Oppo A5s sports a slightly bigger build than the A3s. It weighs 170g, making it just 2 grams heavier than the Oppo A3s. This negligible difference means that you will not feel any difference in terms of weight.

When it comes to aesthetics, both smartphones are sleek and slim, as they have 8.2mm thickness. Like the Oppo A3s, the A5s is encased in a glossy plastic chassis which seems cheap but is actually solid and sturdy. It looks bezel-less all throughout, except for the thick bezel on the bottom.

The A5s virtually has the same build and design as the A3s since Oppo incorporated the same glossy plastic design into the device. What makes it unique, however, is the existence of the fingerprint scanner and the toned-down waterdrop notch on the Oppo A3s.

Display

A waterdrop notch is nestled on top of the Oppo A5s’ 6.2-inch display, where the selfie camera is placed. This time, it is smaller than the one on the Oppo A3s.

In terms of the display, the Oppo A5s produces vibrant colors with a slight saturation. It offers above-average legibility in bright lighting conditions, as it provides just enough brightness. You may have to increase the brightness to 95% in order to view images properly.

Its 6.2-inch screen is a great size for gaming and watching videos, although it only provides an HD+ resolution (1520 x 720px). It is also topped with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 which is three times more damage-resistant than Gorilla Glass 2.

Camera

The dual cameras on the back of the Oppo A5s are fitted with a 13MP main sensor and f/2.2 aperture plus a 2MP depth sensor and f/2.4 aperture. The dual-camera setup offers decent performance, as it takes good shots for a budget device. The shots produced have decent detailing but lack natural color reproduction.

Meanwhile, the photos taken during night time, under sufficient lighting, come out with the right amount of color and detail. But under low light, there’s a lack of detail and discernible noise. This is already expected since the Oppo A5s lacks a dedicated night mode, so users have no choice but to stick with the standard photo mode if they want to capture images in low light.

The Oppo A5s is one of Oppo’s budget selfie phones, so it is expected that the cameras on this device are decent, at the very least. However, the shots produced by the rear cameras, while appearing good, come out with monotonous color reproduction which is similar to selfies. Portrait shots also need some improvement, as the background blur appears to be selective.

Performance

The Oppo A5s houses a Mediatek Helio P35 chipset which works with PowerVR GE8320 GPU and 3GB of RAM. It only has one storage variant of 32GB which is expandable up to 256GB. Based on benchmark tests conducted by some popular tech review sites, the score obtained for the Oppo A5s is similar to other entry-level devices.

The Oppo A5s can handle basic everyday tasks pretty well - performance is smooth and neat since there are no lags. The same goes for running casual mobile games, as there are no performance hiccups, all thanks to Oppo Game Space. This feature is not available in a lot of entry-level smartphones, which is what makes the A5s somewhat special. What the feature does is it helps the device deliver an impressive performance while gaming. It activates once the user starts up a game.

The Oppo A5s runs on an outdated Android 8.1 Oreo operating system with the ColorOS 5.2 interface. This user interface, while responsive, doesn’t respond super quickly.

Battery Life

The Oppo A5s is fitted with a 4,230mAh battery pack which scored 12 hours and 53 minutes on the PC Mark battery test. However, based on battery tests performed by some popular tech review sites, its battery capacity is about two days with mixed, casual use including Facebook, online streaming, and GPS; and for almost an entire day when watching YouTube videos and playing graphics-intensive games.

Also, during the battery testing sessions, Game Space was disabled since it starts up automatically. Even without the feature on, the phone would feel warm after two hours of use. They put a video on loop, which took the device’s battery to last for about 16 hours, while charging it to 100% took about 2 hours.

In terms of charging, the Oppo A5s does not come with any fast-charging technology. Nevertheless, one full charge via micro-USB only takes about two hours which is pretty fast considering it doesn’t use a USB-C port.

As for connectivity features, the A5s has all the usual ones including Bluetooth, Wifi, GPS, and 4G LTE. It has dual SIM support that makes switching from one network to another possible. The Oppo A5s also has a gyroscope sensor that makes it possible for users to play AR games.

For a phone with a ginormous battery, it would make sense for the Oppo A5s to use a USB-C port. Not because many competing smartphone manufacturers have started integrating that into their budget devices, but because it would make the A5s’ charging time a bit faster.

Verdict

At an affordable price, the Oppo A5s is a great budget option. It offers a good screen size with a smaller notch than its predecessor, expandable storage, decent CPU performance, and good battery life of about two days. If you are an OPPO A3s user and you are planning to get a better budget phone, it is worth upgrading to the Oppo A5s. It is also a worthy option for gamers on a budget, as the phone offers enough juice for small-to-moderate games.

Based on its price point, the phone seems to be a bang for the buck deal, but some features failed to achieve their intended results. Some downsides include an outdated operating system, subpar image quality, and basic camera and design. For fans of smartphone photography, the phone’s dual rear cameras may not live up to their expectations, as the quality of the images is subpar. Selfie lovers may also want to look for a much better device in the same price range. Furthermore, it doesn’t fall far from its predecessor in terms of design. Not to mention, it doesn’t have other storage options for internal storage and RAM, so users are stuck with the 3GB RAM option which delivers a mediocre performance.

All in all, the Oppo A5s is a great deal for those looking for a budget-friendly phone, but it comes with some specs that don’t fall far from its predecessor, as well as new features that don’t live up to expectations.

Oppo A5s Specs:

• Glossy plastic design
• Dual 13MP rear camera
• 8MP front camera
• 9 x 75.4 x 8.2mm
• 170g
• Red, Black, Gold, Green
• 6.2-inch HD+ IPS display with waterdrop notch, 271 PPI
• 720 x 1520 pixels
• Corning Gorilla Glass 3
• 32GB of storage, expandable up to 256GB via microSD card
• 3GB RAM
• Mediatek MT6765 Helio P35 2.3GHz octa-core
• PowerVR GE8320 GPU
• Android 8.1 Oreo (ColorOS 5.2) Operating System
• 4,230mAh battery
• Dual SIM
• Fingerprint Scanner
• 4G LTE
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• GPS