Oppo A9 Review: Larger Battery, Quad Camera Performance and Price in Nepal

There is tough competition in the market for the budget smartphone and Motorola being dominant in the arena, but it faces competition with other brands Realme, Vivo, and of course Oppo. Oppo launched its two identical devices Oppo A9 and the A5 last September in the mid-range category. Most of the features are pretty much similar, including its big display, a large battery, four rear cameras, and a surprisingly low price.

Basically, Oppo A9 is an affordable phone wearing a premium flagship design. It is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 processor and 4GB RAM. The Oppo A5 2020 runs Android 9 Pie and is powered by a 5000mAh battery.

Design and Display

Oppo A9 follows the same design as Oppo A5, A7, and A1K. The company has also blessed this phone with its premium-like design. At the first glance, this phone too feels classy with a nicely curved and finished design and quad-camera array on the back.

This phone is mostly plastic. The front is Corning Gorilla Glass, but the back is a cheat. The sides are also built of plastic. Oppo attaches a plastic screen protector in the factory and a silicone case in the packaging, which is the basic protection for your phone.

The hardware of Oppo A9 quite efficient and reliable to the average users. There are metal buttons, a headphone jack, and an excellent speaker for a phone of this price range. The headphone jack is down at the bottom, alongside the speaker grille. The good thing is that Oppo has chosen USB Type-C as its goto data port instead of USB Type-B (as many budgeted phones do these days).

The fingerprint scanner is situated on the back of the phone. But make sure to save this device while you are walking in rain, or leaving out in a dusty place, as this phone isn’t dust or waterproof, a trade-off of being the budget phone. The bezels are thin and on the top of the screen, there is a teardrop notch and a little chunky bottom chin.

You’ll really feel the price drop in its display. The 6.5 inches LCD is running at a relatively lower resolution of just 720X 1600 pixels at 270 PPI (Pixels per inch). Yes, you are going to feel the screen difference if you compare it with one of Samsung’s high-end Super AMOLED screens.

The text and icons remain legible and sharp, and the videos look really fine and once you get the experience of this phone and factor in the price you’re paying, you will find the screen effective despite the drop in numbers. The phone is pretty thick measuring 9.1mm

The huge screen in Oppo A9 is very efficient when you are reading a book, text, or scrolling the other social media feed. You’ll get an immersive experience while watching any youtube videos, or movies too. This makes this phone’s display excellent for educational or entertainment purposes.

Camera

The camera is what sets Oppo A9 apart from A5 and also makes it a bit more expensive than that. The rear camera includes a 48MP wide-angle camera with an f/1.8 aperture lens, an 8MP ultrawide camera with an f/2.25 aperture lens, a 2MP depth camera with an f/2.4 aperture lens, and a 2MP monochrome shooter with an f/2.4 aperture lens.

There is a Dual-LED dual-tone flash to enhance the camera performance in the low light conditions. The wide-angle camera supports both Phase Detection Auto Focus(PDAF) and Auto Focus (AF) whereas the ultra-wide camera only supports Auto Focus. There are wide array of features like pro mode, panorama, portrait mode, and night scene mode among others.

The camera Oppo A9 works brilliantly in broad daylight. The images are sharp, with plenty of lifelike colors, and many details. The HDR adds up more to the picture and it works excellently. There is a dedicated night mode during low light situations. Although the picture lacks good details it’s okay given the price for this phone. The portrait works great, you might find some noise in the images but it is barely noticeable.

The front camera of Oppo A9 holds a 16MP wide-angle lens with an f/2.0 aperture which is an improvement over the 8MP selfie camera of A5. The selfie shooter works great, it’ll provide you with awesome shots with plenty of details, decent sharpness and good color reproduction, perfect for social media. The video recording is smooth in this camera with stabilization. You can shoot 4K video recording at 30fps, 1080p video recording at 30fps, and 720p video recording at 30fps.

Chipset

The Oppo A9 has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 chipset under the hood. This is a powerful processor that is used in a more expensive phone. The phone runs on Android 9 (which is not the latest one), but does a really fine job. The scrolling is not as smooth as the other fastest phones in the market but considering this as a part where Oppo compromised to reduce the price, it is acceptable. Other tasks like going through the menu, opening apps, and multitasking are comparably smooth.

You might feel downsized while playing heavy games like Call of Duty and PUBG in Oppo A9. The games work great but only in its medium graphic rate. After changing the graphic setting the game works perfectly fine. But normal games work smoothly. The phone is packed with 128 GB internal storage combined with 4GB or 8GB RAM. There is a dedicated slot for expandable storage.

Battery

The Oppo A9 features a large 5000mAh Li-Po non-removable battery. Even with the larger battery, Oppo has managed to maintain the normal shape and size of the device. The battery performance is exceptional on this phone. After a full charge in the morning, you can go all day long with heavy use like playing games and using heavy apps and there is still plenty of juice left before your bedtime.

You can have your phone running even after the normal use of two whole days if you exclude watching videos or playing games. The device comes with a 10W charger so it might take several hours to charge the phone to its fullest. Of course, there is no fast charging on this phone.

Oppo A9 Full Specifications:

DISPLAY
Type: IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size: 6.5 inches, 102 cm2 (82.5% screen-to-body ratio)
Resolution: 720 x 1600 pixels, 20:9 ratio (270 ppi density)
Brightness: 480 nits max brightness
Protection: Corning Gorilla Glass 3

BODY
Dimensions: 163.6 x 75.6 x 9.1 mm (6.44 x 2.98 x 0.36 in)
Weight: 195 gram
Build: Glass front (Gorilla Glass 3), plastic frame, plastic back
SIM: Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)

PLATFORM
Chipset: Qualcomm SDM665 Snapdragon 665 (11nm)
OS: Android 9.0 (Pie), ColorOS
CPU: Octa-core (4×2.0 GHz Kryo 260 Gold & 4×1.8 GHz Kryo 260 Silver)
GPU: Adreno 610

STORAGE
microSDXC (dedicated slot)
Internal: 128GB internal storage with 4 GB RAM

CAMERA
MAIN CAMERA (Quad-camera)
48MP wide-angle camera, f/1.8 aperture, 0.8µm, PDAF
8MP Ultrawide camera, f/2.25 aperture, 13mm, 1.12µm, AF
2MP Depth camera, f/2.4 aperture
2MP, f/2.4 aperture, 1.75µm
Features: Dual-LED dual-tone flash, panorama, HDR

Video: 4K video recording at 30fps, 1080p video recording at 30fps, 720p video recording at 30fps
Features: slo-mo, time-lapse

FRONT CAMERA
16MP wide-angle camera, f/2.0 aperture, 26mm
Features: HDR
Video: 1080p video recording at 30fps

NETWORK
Technology: GSM/ HSPA/ LTE
2G bands: GSM 850/ 900/ 1800/ 1900
3G bands: HSDPA 850/ 900/ 2100
4G bands: 1, 3, 5, 8, 38, 40, 41
Speed: HSPA 42.2/ 5.76 Mbps, LTE-A

SOUND
3.5 mm audio jack
loudspeaker with a Stereo speaker

COMMUNICATION
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac dual-band, hotspot, wi-fi direct
GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS
Bluetooth: 5.0, A2DP, LE
USB: 2.0, Type-C reversible connecter, USB On-The-Go

SENSORS
Acceleration, Gyro sensor, Proximity sensor, compass, fingerprint sensor (rear-mounted)

BATTERY
Li-Po 5000 mAh, non-removable
10W charging

COLORS
Marine Green
Vanilla Mint
Space Purple

LAUNCH
2019, September