OPPO A78 5G Review: Good At Just About Everything, Including 5G
February 12, 2023Performance: MediaTek Dimensity 700, 8GB
Main Display: 6.56-inch HD+ (1612×720)
Weight: 188g
Storage: 128 GB
Battery: 5,000 mAh
Features: 1080p / 720p
Rear Camera: 50 MP Main, 2MP Depth Camera
Front Camera: 2 MP
Colour: Glowing Purple
Price: RM1099
Rating: 8/10
OPPO’s A78 5G offers a new take on what it means to be a good smartphone. That’s because it breaks with convention when it comes to measuring appeal. A phone needn’t have a flagship processor to be considered awesome. Neither is it a necessity to have a high megapixel count to be considered special.
The A78 5G brings enough to the table that it’ll steal the show. Firstly, it looks far better than most of its competition. Available in purple or black, the phone features color schemes that are meant to mimic cosmic phenomena. Our review unit is called Glowing purple and it offers shimmering effect as light hits it at different angles.
What’s it Like?
A quarter of the rear panel features a reflective surface that gives a shining prism-like effect meant to look like sparkling beams of light. It’s easy to get lost in how it splits into a spectrum of colors. Part of the OPPO glow signature effect, it commands attention, leading many to believe that it’s much more than a mid-range smartphone.
Weighing just 188g and being hair thinner than 8mm, the A78 features an industrial look with its elegant, yet refined contours. It’s solidly built too, which is quite telling once you pick it up. It feels as though the entire thing was constructed from a single block of aluminum.
Despite this, OPPO says that the phone was put through a series of rigorous tests to ensure that it’s capable of withstanding years’ worth of abuse. For example, the USB port can go through 20,000 insertion cycles and still soldier on. The power and volume buttons can be pressed more than 100,000 times and not get damaged.
In addition to this, the phone has also survived 28,000 times after being subjected to the micro-drop test. It’s meant to simulate those minor “heart attack” moments we go through as our phones slip out of our pockets or hands while seated.
It’s these impacts that in flick the bulk of the damage on our phones. This is something many of us go through several times a year, and it’s comforting to know that they can take said abuse repeatedly and not show any signs of damage.
At the front is a teardrop, 6.65-inch display that offers HD+ resolution. Though considered “old school” at this point, the dated display offers great-looking colors and decent viewing angles. OPPO claims that it covers 96% of the NTSC color gamut and 100% of DCI-P3. For the average Joe, the screen is sharp and vibrant enough that you won’t notice its shortcomings.
But since it’s an LCD panel, the colors do not seem as deep or vivid as what’s offered by an AMOLED screen. This is a given, but if you’re coming from another LCD panel, you won’t be missing out on anything.
The Hardware
Since it offers a 90Hz refresh rate, animations, screen transitions and app launches feel spritelier than screens with the archaic 60Hz one. The UI seems eager to please, which provides the illusion that the phone is running on powerful hardware. In actual fact, its MediaTek Dimensity 700 is a mid-range chipset at best.
It’s coupled with 8GB RAM that can be expanded by another 8GB with the help of the device’s storage space. Though this doesn’t sound very impressive, the sum of the A78’s parts allows it to handle everyday tasks fairly well. Rifling through several Chrome tabs while researching for an article didn’t seem to unsettle it one bit.
Neither did playing arcade-style games for hours on end. But get into more demanding stuff like open-world titles or sim-style racing games and you’ll notice it becoming a little sluggish. However, this only occurs when you’re trying to do too much too soon. For average users, you won’t come near to reaching the phone’s performance limit.
Use it for social media consumption, binge on YouTube/Netflix content, chat with friends or play regular arcade-style games, and you’ll notice that the A78 5G is more than enough phone for you. It will offer buttery smooth performance for everything it is tasked to do.
How’s the Sound?
It’s fitted with dual stereo speakers; one sits at the top near the ear piece and the other at the bottom. The sound that they produce is loud and fairly clear. This is great for watching funny videos or doom scrolling content on Facebook. But I wouldn’t recommend it for listening to music or anything that requires reasonably good clarity and a good helping of bass.
The phone gets a physical fingerprint reader which doubles as the power button. I had hoped that by now, under screen fingerprint technology would become the standard, but apparently that isn’t the case. That said, there’s nothing wrong with the A78 5G’s sensor. It works quickly to recognize your fingerprint and unlock the phone.
The Cameras
OPPO is leaning heavily towards AI and it shows in the way its cameras perform. On the rear are the main 50MP AI camera sensor and a 2MP depth one. The former can capture up to 108MP images with the use of its high-resolution algorithm. This needs to be enabled within the camera settings by selecting Extra HD.
However, for me, I found that for the best results, it’s best to leave it on the regular setting and allow the camera to do its own thing. Just point it at the subject and focus on it. Then the hardware works with the software to capture the best shots possible. Most of the time, photos look well-exposed, have good level of sharpness and depth.
The color science, however, feels a little artificial. The contrast seems to be a little over-aggressive, which does make for an attractive overall look, but dilutes the “realness” of any given scene. I get that this is a subjective argument, but I believe that the little imperfections in our world are what add to the overall appeal of a shot.
Thanks to good AI post-processing tech, the A78 5G can take pictures in poor lighting conditions, but still, produce pictures that have little noise, yet seem well exposed and in focus. It’s not perfect, but good enough for casual use and shares on social media. It goes to show how far technology has come in a few short years.
A regular mid-range device can produce perfectly usable shots in ill-lit environments. Don’t misunderstand me. The results are nowhere near that of flagship phones, but are decent enough for regular use. This wouldn’t have been possible two years ago. Most mid-range phones at that time produced close to unusable shots when taken at night.
The magic of the A78 5G comes from the camera’s ability to incorporate multi-frame noise reduction and HDR techniques. These things take place behind the scenes, which is why the phone makes you wait a second or two before producing the shot that you’ve taken.
It’s a similar case for the 8MP front camera. Though not great at producing stunning portrait shots, the results are still decent thanks to the AI processing and “retouching” tech. However, I feel that it over corrects skin tones to the point where textures look too smooth, at times. That said, the selfies that you capture are more than good enough to post on Instagram.
The absence of proper optical image stabilization means that you won’t be able to capture very smooth videos. But the software is able to do enough that most of the micro hand movements are ironed out. OIS is a must if you want to take videos that are enjoyable to watch.
What’s The 5G Performance Like?
Since it has a 5G radio, you can take advantage of the blisteringly fast internet speeds by using a YES 5G prepaid SIM card. On average, I was getting about 600 – 750mbps speeds in less-than-ideal coverage areas. Webpages opened in an instant and videos loaded so swiftly that there’s barely any buffering time.
Mind, with 5G speeds comes high data consumption. I managed to gulp 1.5GB of data by going to a single website and reading a couple of articles. Such is the price you need to pay to experience zero wait times while online. I loved every minute of it.
High-speed internet access is no longer a luxury enjoyed by consumers who purchase high-end phones and ultra-expensive cell service plans. Instead, they can pick up a reasonably priced device like the A78 5G and choose a Yes 5G sim card and enjoy the remarkable speeds.
Since the phone has a 5,000mAh battery and a fairly frugal chipset, you can expect slightly more than a day’s worth of power with moderate to heavy usage. If you’re a little more conservative, you can stretch the service life to nearly two days without needing to look for a power point.
When that time comes, it will be comforting to know that in just 30 minutes, you’ll be able to get back about 52% of charge thanks to the 33W SUPERVOOC charging capabilities. In addition to this, the onboard AI software learns your sleep habits and automatically reduces the phone’s overall power consumption when it thinks you’re asleep.
As a result, OPPO claims that the battery level will only drop about 2% overnight. That’s impressive considering that the phone is still working for the entire time that you’re asleep. Super Power Saving Mode can be turned on when the power drops to a low level. This allows the phone to frugally use power till you can get the battery topped up again.
Should You Buy This Phone?
The OPPO A78 5G is a very good choice for someone who wants a phone that looks expensive, offers decent performance for regular tasks and captures respective quality pictures during the day and night. This is the phone that can do all of that and then some. This is what makes it a great option for budget-minded consumers.
Despite the HD+ screen, mid-range chipset and physical fingerprint sensor, you don’t feel like you’re being shortchanged. But if you must have something that doesn’t get “flustered” when playing demanding games or recording videos for an extended period of time, look elsewhere.
This kind of work is best left to the super phones of today. For the average consumer, the A78 5G can do no wrong. It ticks all the right boxes and should allow for at least 2 years of trouble-free user experience.
