OPPO has made its cemented itself as a key player in the midrange market. They’ve released numerous phones in this segment and have no intention of stopping from profiting from this lucrative investment. One such recent investment is the OPPO A3, their latest upper midrange offering. Priced north of Rs. 50,000, let’s see if the OPPO A3 can justify its steep price.

Design

The OPPO A3 is a glass phone, front and back, which gives it a premium feel in the hand. The Diamond black edition uses a special metal cover that was cut in triangle shapes to mimic the look of a diamond and it even reflects light like a diamond does. The phone is 7.8mm thin and weighs 159g.

The front of the phone is completely occupied by a bezel-less display, save for the notch at the top, which is almost unavoidable in phones nowadays. In that notch are the sensors, camera and earpiece. On the back there is only a single camera, which is weird considering this is the 2^nd half of 2018. More on the camera later. Right in the middle is the OPPO logo.

Display

The display of the OPPO A3 is obviously its most attractive feature as it’s what you’ll be seeing every time you pick up the phone. It is a 6.2-inch FHD+ display. The type of screen used is LTPS IPS LCD. The pixel density is 405ppi, which is more than adequate. The phone is a bit taller than others due to the screen being a 19:9 one instead of an 18:9 one. All that mumbo jumbo means you’ll be getting a high quality screen with good colors and great viewing angles.

Camera

Not totally a surprise, there is only one camera on each side of the OPPO A3, something that is not so unorthodox with OPPO’s own behavior but is against smartphone trends nowadays in general. Anyway, the front camera is an 8MP shooter with an aperture of f/2.2. Video recording maxes out at 1080p at 30 frames per second.

The main camera on the back is a 16MP shooter with an aperture of f/1.8 and phase detection auto focus. Accompanying it is a single LED flash. Here too, video recording maxes out at 1080p resolution at 30 frames per second.

Hardware

The hardware on the OPPO A3 is what you’d expect from a midrange device. We have the Mediatek Helio P60 processor, found on numerous other phones, alongside 4GB of RAM. The Helio P60 is an octa-core chipset all at 2 GHZ. OPPO being gracious has blessed the A3 with 128GB of storage and in case that isn’t enough, you can expand it up to 256GB with a microSD card. The battery in the OPPO A3 is a 3400mAh so you should be able to churn out about a day of moderate usage. The OPPO A3 comes with Android Oreo 8.1 out of the box.

OPPO A3 Pros:

• It has a large beautiful screen.
• The phone is aesthetically pleasing to look at
• It has lots of storage space and is expandable

OPPO A3 Cons:

• The phone is overpriced for its spec sheet