OPPO A71

Oppo has made a name for itself as a selfie-centric smartphone maker. So, when the A71 was announced with superior performance specs, people had high expectations. The device has already gained a lot of popularity since the launch and Oppo has taken the time to launch an upgraded version of the phone.

While being one of the cheapest Oppo phones on the market, the phone came off as an underdog in the budget segment and stole the show with its prowess.

The Oppo A71 has a sleek, metal unibody no-nonsense design with a traditional 16:9 aspect ratio. Weighing a mere 137 gm and with a thickness of 7.6 mm, the device looks elegant on it’s own. To amplify the metal gloss, the phone body has been coated with nano-silver technology.

The A71 is easy to grip, and while the volume and power buttons might not be the most tactile presses, they are ergonomic and feel good on clicking – enabling single hand usage. The navigation buttons on the button are capacitive, and well positioned. The sensors and earpiece are present above the screen. The A71 does not have any LED notification light, though.

The left side carries the SIM card tray, with spaces for two nano SIM cards and a microSD slot, and thankfully, there is no gimmick like a hybrid tray. You can use all three slots simultaneously without losing out on functionality.

The 3.5 mm audio jack is present on the top. The bottom grill houses the speaker along with a microUSB 2.0 port. Since the refurbished A71 was launched in 2018, it is a slight disappointment that the port was not upgraded to a USB Type-C port. The audio prowess is pretty impressive. It gets loud and clear, lacks a little bass, and gets somewhat tinny around the maximum levels.

The A71 features a HD 5.2-inch screen with a 1280×720 pixel resolution. The screen size falls into a goldilocks zone without feeling too small or too large. As is customary with IPS-LCD displays, the colours and contrast on the screen are decent. The screen does not feel overly saturated, and carries with it decent viewing angles and minimal colour shifts on rotation.

The screen is smooth, responsive, and is capable of supporting four simultaneous touch points.

The user interface is kept clean and intuitive. A large credit for this goes to Oppo’s proprietary OS, the ColorOS 3.1, which draws heavy inspiration from the iOS. It might feel a little weird to be using an Android device in an iPhone design.

Powered an the old MediaTek MT6750 – a 64-bit octa-core processor clocking at 1.5GHz, the Oppo A71 sees virtually no lag during the opening and closing of general apps. The 3GB of RAM coupled with 16GB storage is sufficient for most smartphone users. If you’re a media junkie, though, you can throw in a microSD card and up the storage to 256GB.

The ColorOS 3.1 runs on the Android 7.1 Nougat which comes as an overdue sigh of relief when compared to the Android Marshmallow found on the F3 and F3 Plus. The design and control of the ColorOS lets the users manipulate through various apps intuitively and with sufficient fluidity.
It also brings new features alongside supporting Nougat’s unique features. The A71 introduces the new “Oppo Share”, which is Oppo’s take on the iOS’s AirDrop. However, it is not exclusive to only Oppo devices but can support file transfer from any compatible device.

The A71 also features a split-screen mode, which, while not compatible with every app works with most native and Google apps.

Gaming on the A71 can be a fun experience. On a low graphic setting, most hardware intensive games clock at around 24 FPS with minimum lags. The upper half of the phone heats up a little on prolonged usage, but that is not discomforting.

Although, Oppo is known for its “selfie phones”, the A71 was not marketed as one and is more rooted in performance enhancement. Since the popularity of the F-series, the general public seems to have marked Oppo only for selfie addicts, but that’s not the case here.

The A71 is equipped with a 13 megapixel image sensor on the rear camera with a f/2.2 aperture and an LED flash. Resulting photographs from the rear camera are vibrant and crisp, the colours can seem undersaturated and the sharpness lost in some instances, but that’s not a huge problem. The autofocus has a hard time adjusting to very bright conditions. Highlights were also reduced to simple white blobs in this case. Low-light conditions are where the camera struggles a lot. Noise and grains are pervasive and the colours lose fidelity. The 2x zoom is digital instead of being optical and comes at a huge sacrifice to picture quality.

The 5 megapixel image sensor in the front with a f/2.4 aperture serves as a decent selfie-taker. Equipped with Artificial Intelligence, the camera comes with an AI Beauty Technology feature, a panorama mode, HDR, and artificial bokeh mode. The camera works well in well-lit conditions, and the beauty mode simply loses sharpness and smooths things out while working on the complexion.

Due to its impressive specifications, the 3000mAh battery powering the A71 delivers impressive all-round performance. With moderate usage, the phone can easily survive a day without any worries about charging. On the PCMark’s battery test benchmark, the phone lasted over 10 hours, where the average score falls somewhere around 6 hours, thus evident of the A71’s battery prowess.

Small upgrades in the newer version of the A71 have made a huge difference on how the phone was when it was launched. The phone might not be as “2018” as most, but it is a classic Oppo phone and delivers on what it claims. There is a reason that Digit pitched the phone as the best gift you can give a friend or loved one.