Android smartphones have their own peculiarities, and OPPO A3 4G is a prime example. This device combines strengths that can pleasantly surprise the user, but it has important nuances that you should pay attention to before buying. What makes this smartphone stand out, who is it suitable for, and is it worth the money? Let’s take a closer look at it.
Content
| Technical characteristics | |
| Display | 6.67″ IPS Panda Glass |
| 1604×720 264 ppi | |
| 90 Hz up to 1000* nits | |
| Processor | Snapdragon 6s 4G Gen1 |
| Graphics | Adreno 610 |
| RAM | 6 GB + 6 GB swap |
| ROM | 256 GB + micro SD |
| Communication | 4G LTE |
| Wi-Fi 5 | |
| Bluetooth 5.0 | |
| NFC | |
| Interfaces | 3.5 mm jack |
| USB Type C 2.0 | |
| Main camera | 50 MP f/1.8 |
| Front camera | 5 MP f/2.2 |
| Battery | 5100 mAh |
| Charging | 45 W SuperVOOC |
| System | Android 14 Color OS |
| Dimensions | 166x76x7.7 mm |
| Weight | 186 grams |
The OPPO A3 4G comes with a 45W charger, a white USB Type A > Type C cable with thick insulation, paper documentation, and a SIM card clip. There is a film on the smartphone screen. The case is not included.
Modern budget smartphones hardly stand out, they are all extremely similar and monotonous, but OPPO A3 4G has one interesting difference. If in HMD Pulse Pro the back panel is mirrored, here, on the contrary, it is matte.
The coating is pleasant to the touch and does not get dirty. The camera modules are flat, only slightly protruding. Of course, they could have been made much smaller without the large circular bezels around them, but it’s like a tradition or a trend.
The right side contains a power button with a fingerprint scanner (it works quickly, without complaints) and volume keys. On the opposite side is a SIM card and Micro SD memory card slot.
There’s nothing on top, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack, microphone, USB Type C 2.0 port and a speaker on the bottom. The sound is loud, but without low frequencies. In silence, the microphone is excellent, although in noisy conditions (on the street when the wind is blowing) it does not do so well.
There are no complaints about the pixel density (264 ppi), unless you suffer from myopia when viewing content on a smartphone from 10-15 centimeters, as mobile eSports players do. For 6.6-inch screens, 720p is still fine, although the placebo effect of some fans of the numbers in the specs table will not allow you to agree with this despite common sense.
The manufacturer claims brightness up to 1000 nits, and the colorimeter shows 695 nits in high brightness mode in daylight. This is an excellent indicator for a budget smartphone.
Tricky manufacturers often lie about brightness, so they can write 2000, 3000, 6000 nits (realme GT 6 issues in 6-7 times lower brightness than officially declared), although in fact there are less than 1000 nits. OPPO A3 4G’s screen turned out to be more or less honest and behaves well in different conditions, and the brightness is enough to use even on the beach on a sunny day.
After the OLED IPS matrix, the screen is soft and pleasant. Viewing angles are not perfect, saturation is somewhat lost, but there is no color distortion, such as greening of white, as in AMOLED matrices. These are the kind of displays that should be used in budget smartphones.
The main thing is not to forget to set the natural color display mode in the settings because out of the box OPPO A3 4G has saturated colors, like all modern smartphones. Companies try to make a beautiful picture, even if it is unrealistic. It is unpleasant to use this mode, so we immediately change it.
Although the display supports 90 Hz, you won’t be able to see the smoothness everywhere, or rather almost nowhere. It’s a typical Android experience, where the problem is crooked software and choppy animations (more on that in a separate section), which spoils the impression of the increased refresh rate. Gamers will confirm that it is more pleasant to have a stable 60 FPS than regular, systematic jumps from 15 to 90 FPS.
The hero of the review has a 50 MP main module that produces adequate photos in good lighting, but there are a few nuances. First of all, it’s the speed of image processing because if you move the camera from a fixed position too quickly, the photo will turn out blurry. It is recommended to hold the phone steady for at least half a second after pressing the button.
Portrait mode is available only for the front camera, which is rather strange. The background is poorly blurred, and there are many defects around the face.
For advanced users, there are manual settings, but they are unlikely to help improve the quality of photos. The color reproduction is close to realistic because the algorithms do not spoil the picture too much, except that some trees have too light shades of green.
At night, the front camera performs poorly – photos lack detail, there is a lot of noise, etc. The same applies to the main module, so it is recommended to use the flash if you need to take a picture. It’s good that at least the face scanner works quickly and stably, at least during the day.
OPPO A3 4G does not shoot Full-HD video very well in the daytime, and in the dark, stabilization problems are even more noticeable. The picture shakes, crumbles, as if we were shooting on a 2009 smartphone. There is no Full HD 60 FPS mode — the camera records a maximum of 30 frames per second.
The Snapdragon 6s 4G Gen1 processor is a budget processor. Its performance is at the level of the not-so-successful Snapdragon 680, which is often inferior to competitors Mediatek, Unisoc in stability.
In synthetic benchmarks Geekbench, PC Mark, Antutu, we got weak results at the level of the above-mentioned chip. The graphics also leave much to be desired. Activating the maximum performance mode does not change anything – let me remind you that our smartphone is budget, but despite this, it still falls short of its competitors in the price category of 7000-8000 UAH.
We got similar results with the Unisoc Tiger T606, but the Snapdragon 6s 4G Gen1 is actually much worse due to higher throttling. The chip is cheaper HMD Pulse Pro is stable in any conditions, and the hero of the review sometimes has minor drawdowns of 13%.
Most importantly, the smartphone lags everywhere during everyday use. Regular freezes of the interface are unlikely to be directly related to the processor because other models running pure Android 14 do not have such problems.
It’s no secret that all Android smartphones are bad to a greater or lesser extent, but here the comfort level has been crossed. Read more about this in the section «Software». Probably, a stronger processor would simply «pull out these software nuances, but the weak Snapdragon 6s 4G Gen1 is clearly not enough for this task.
The 6 GB of RAM is more than enough to keep a dozen running programs. Only the largest games need to be reloaded. The built-in 256 GB storage is nice, although the write/read speed (up to 300 MB/s) is two to three times slower than competitors.
There are no problems with the connection — 30 kilometers from Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyivstar’s connection speed is 20-30 Mbps, sometimes more. Transferring files to a computer is limited to USB 2.0 speed, i.e. up to 40 MB/s. The Speedometer 3 browser benchmark failed due to freezing.
Obviously, the Snapdragon 6s 4G Gen1 is not suitable for demanding mobile video games. OPPO A3 4G runs Genshin Impact, but with terrible graphics and 240p resolution, with FPS ranging from 7 to 30. Call of Duty Warzone is even more impossible to play – a slideshow with no chance of hitting the enemy. So to speak, ultra difficulty for those who like to hurt themselves.
But «mobile exclusives» works great. Thousands of video games from the Play Market will run at 30-60 FPS, sometimes on high graphics settings. Copies of Counter Strike, casual racing, strategy, «three-in-a-row» puzzles, and other fun games. It will do for a young gamer.
The company also launched a multiplatform game Disney Speedstorm, which is based on Asphalt 9 from Gameloft. The game is available for smartphones, tablets, computers and all modern game consoles. On OPPO A3 4G, this game runs at 20-30 FPS, you can play, but the graphics quality is minimal (set automatically).
A nice shell with useful features (program cloning, game overlay, built-in utilities, radio, etc.) is all well and good, but at what cost do we get all these proprietary «» features?
First of all, OPPO A3 4G is annoying with ads that fill half of the desktop. Yes, BBK smartphones are not as bad as the popular Xiaomi models in terms of advertising, but there is something to talk about here.
After the first launch, the owner of OPPO A3 4G already has several pre-installed games on the home screen that no one asked for. Fortunately, you can delete them. In addition, there are two more folders with other games that can be installed at will or by accidentally clicking on «Download all».
As an alternative to the Play Market, the app store sends notifications all the time, and also checks each program after installation from any source, showing the result of the check on the entire display. The smartphone search menu, which can be accessed by swiping down on the home screen, also has many ads that only offer to install games, but do not pop up on the entire display with a small cross (and thank you for that).
As we already mentioned, the OPPO A3 4G interface is laggy, and it happens so often that you start to get used to such bugs, as if this is the essence of the Android operating system. Scrolling is always choppy, scrolling through the feed is jerky and unstable, and the 90 Hz effect is not felt at all.
Some programs crash after launching, and sometimes they just close by accident. When moving around in the system, there are slight delays after pressing. It seems that OPPO A3 4G lacks the performance of the hardware, although other smartphones with similar processors are more stable.
A 5100 mAh battery paired with an economical IPS display and an undemanding processor gives excellent results. If you’re not a social media maniac, OPPO A3 4G will last 4-7 days at least. It was not possible to measure the battery life perfectly due to an error in the PC Mark 10 test.
When the battery charge dropped to 20%, the test ended prematurely without showing the result (another software issue). But you can look at the time of active screen use in the settings and extrapolate the results, taking into account the remaining charge.
In theory, with a minimum brightness level, you can get up to 20 hours 30 minutes of autonomy, and with 50% backlighting, this figure drops to 13 hours. If you turn the slider to the maximum (600-700 nits of brightness), then OPPO A3 4G holds on 8 hours and 30 minutes.
Great results, but the battery dies quickly in games. Pros four hours playing Genshin Impact, the battery went from 100% to 7%! In games, competitors from this price category show better results for 60-90 minutes at least.
The proprietary 45W power supply charges the phone quite quickly. It’s not lightning fast, but it’s reliable. At the beginning of the process (2% charge), the power is indeed 45 W, and then gradually decreases to 30, 20, 15 W or less.
From 2% to 100%, OPPO A3 4G charged in an hour, and it took 35 minutes to reach 60%. The main thing is that the smartphone does not heat up in this mode, it charges relatively quickly, and it is safe for the health of the battery and for the owner.
If it weren’t for the weak camera, scrolling freezes in many programs, and slow system response, the experience would be much more pleasant. After the old flagship Motorola Moto Z3, the review hero seems large and sloppy, but it feels nice in the hands thanks to the matte plastic.
Among the advantages is good battery life — it is almost impossible to discharge OPPO A3 4G in one day. To do this, you literally need to stay in the virtual world of social networks or video games. In economy mode with low screen brightness, I charged OPPO A3 4G once every 4-5 days.
The firmware is annoying with ads and slow performance, but there are also useful options like cloning programs, FM radio, etc. A stronger processor would make up for the software shortcomings of the stuffed Color OS. Competitors like Motorola, HMD, Nokia based on pure Android with weak processors run much faster and more stable.
After two weeks of use, it’s still not clear why the manufacturer asks for such a sum. In my opinion, OPPO A3 4G is a typical budget Android smartphone, but definitely not for 7500-8000 hryvnias. It would be better if it had 64/128 GB of ROM at a price of 4500-5000 UAH, but no more, and so far it has too many weaknesses.
Pros OPPO A3 4G you will have to pay 8000 UAH, if you don’t mind paying taxes. However, you can find not only «gray» models for 7000 UAH if you come across a discount. Considering all the shortcomings of the hero of the review, it’s too much to ask for it. Among the analogs, we will consider only 256 GB versions to make it fairer to compare in this price category.
Motorola Moto G24 Power with a large 6000 mAh battery, similar performance hardware, and «pure» Android 14 OS is a good alternative, and for less money. Overview We have already done this model before.
Nubia Focus 5G boasts a pale 120 Hz screen and a 108 MP camera (does anyone else pay attention to the number of megapixels in 2024?). There’s no memory card slot, and no FM radio.
Realme C63 has a Tiger T612 processor, similar firmware, and a case included. In general, the characteristics are very similar, as well as the appearance, but the price is 6500 hryvnias, which is one and a half thousand less than the hero of the review.
HMD Pulse Pro with a 50 MP selfie camera stands out with stable software and faster storage. Another option for fans of Android OS without unnecessary shells. Overview Finnish smartphones were also made on the site.
