Oppo Reno 3 Pro: Selfie Expert With Good Battery

Oppo always ends up with one of the best-looking smartphones and the Reno series is no different. Apparently, after its release in China, Oppo has finally unleashed the Pro variant of its Reno 3 series in India and globally. Its global variant is fairly different from its Chinese variant with the inclusion of a first-ever Mediatek Helio P95 or the addition of a dual-punch hole camera setup at the front. 

The Oppo Reno 3 Pro is out of the high-wattage smartphone and we got our hands on one for a few days which was a thrilling experience. From the design to display, performance and software, we bring to you a 360-degrees review on Oppo Reno 3 Pro available in India at Rs 29,990/-. Here’s everything you need to know about the chic & aesthetically brilliant phone from the Chinese manufacturer.

Looks like a lot is going on at Oppo selling Oppo Reno 3 Pro (4G) in India as it is offering a tonne of benefits with every purchase. First up, the device is available at Rs 29,990/- for its 128GB storage plus 8GB RAM variant while the 8GB plus 256GB is not available in India yet.

What’s more, is that Amazon India is offering Reno 3 Pro as a standalone purchase at just Rs 29,990/- or you can check out the bundled package with Reno 3 Pro plus Oppo Wireless Speaker at the same price although you need to check out really quick before it goes out of stock. Oppo is offering an Exchange Offer at up to Rs 7,700/- depending upon the phone you exchange. Additionally, there’s a 10% instant discount at up to Rs 4,000/- with HDFC Bank Debit/Credit EMI transactions and Rs 3,000/- with ICICI Bank Debit/Credit Cards.

If you are looking forward to upgrade, you can sell your old smartphone on Cashify to get the best price in just 60 seconds.

About the retail box, the front side is clad in a colour that you choose for your Reno 3 Pro i.e. Auroral Blue, Midnight Black or Sky White so you can get a gist on how the phone actually looks. Talking about the box contents, you get 

• the handset (of course) 
• a 30W VOOC charging adapter 
• Type-C USB cable
• warranty card
• quick start manual 
• 3.5mm earphone
• a pre-applied screen protector
• a transparent protective case 
• a SIM tray ejector tool 

Oppo pretty much offers everything you would need with the phone unlike major brands like OnePlus or Apple.

• Display : 6.40-inch (1080×2400 pixels) Super AMOLED Display
• CPU and GPU : Mediatek Helio P95 processor coupled with PowerVR GM9446 GPU
• RAM and Storage : 128GB+8GB RAM, 256GB+8GB RAM
• Rear Camera : 64MP + 13MP + 8MP + 2MP
• Selfie Camera : 44MP+2MP Dual Front Camera
• Battery: 4,025 mAh Li-Polymer
• Security: Face Unlock, Under-the-Display Optical Fingerprint Scanner

Oppo will surely get 5-stars if it comes to the design of Oppo Reno3 Pro which is impressive. We have seen a tonne of gradient back panels but indeed Oppo Reno 3 Pro surprised us with its new gradient design which tends to originate from the bottom-right on the back panel and the lines go all the way to other edges creating a majestic lighting effect.

We got our hands on the Auroral Blue version which tends to change colours based on how the light is getting reflected so that’s a good touch to it. The phone attracts a sandwich design with glass on top and back and a metal frame in the middle. The only difference is that the back is not a glass but a highly-glossy polycarbonate panel which is something that helped the phone weigh lighter than most at just 175 grams although it is a fingerprint magnet. Anyway, the gradient design seems to camouflage the side metal frame as well.

There’s no hustle-bustle on the rear panel as there’s just a quad-camera setup on the top-left corner. The bump does tend to cause a bit of wobble when you place the phone on a surface. 

You’ll get the SIM card tray on the left with two SIM slots and a dedicated microSD card support. Next up, there’s a volume rocker on the left as well. On the right side, you’ll find a power button and finally, at the bottom, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, a loudspeaker grille, and a Type-C USB port.

At the front, the phone has a colossal Super AMOLED panel more on which later. It has thin bezels on the sides and there’s no notch on top and no pop-up sensor but a dual punch-hole setup at the front.

Flagship Samsung smartphones are undoubtedly the best when it comes to displaying quality although there are other brands upping their game. Oppo has a slew of smartphones coming up with stellar Super AMOLED panels and Reno 3 Pro is one of them. The phone has a 6.4-inch Super AMOLED screen with 1080×2400 pixels resolution and a 20:9 aspect ratio. This does make the screen look tall which is great when viewing a movie or something or playing games on a landscape mode especially.

The display quality is top-notched, the colours are crisp with darker blacks and brighter whites thanks to the Samsung-made panel. Oppo has quoted that the screen’s brightness is at 500 nits (typical) on auto mode while it can scale up to 800 nits on max settings. We tried it and found out the device does indeed surpasses the quoted brightness with 522 nits  (typical) and 892 nits (max) beating the odds like OnePlus 7T, Samsung Galaxy A71, Realme X2 Pro, Xiaomi Mi Note 10, Xiaomi K20 Pro, and so on.

The screen has a wide viewing angle although you might notice that something’s off at the extreme angle although we wouldn’t wonder why you would want to view the phone at a weird angle to have a look at it. The thin bezels around the edges allow the display to go almost at the edges although having a dual punch-hole front camera setup might upset a few people as it is anchored towards the top-left corner leaving a few millimetre gaps with the edge causing it to eat up a lot of screen real estate but it is better than a notch any day.

Speaking about the specifications, the Oppo Reno 3 Pro has a MediaTek P95 chipset manufactured on a 12nm node. It is a tweaked version of Helio P90 and arrives with GPU, AI enhancements which reportedly produces 6% better performance than its predecessor. The processor runs on octa-core CPU with 2×2.2 GHz Cortex-A75 high-performance cores with 6×2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 power-efficient cores. Finally, there’s a PowerVR GM9446 GPU, and 8GB of RAM and 128/256GB of internal storage on-board.

As per GeekBench benchmarking scores, the device scores 7,028 points on a multi-core test beating its predecessor and Vivo V17 Pro. It’s a single-core test, the device rocked 2,017 points which is way less than what Oppo Reno2, Samsung Galaxy A71, Redmi K20 Pro and others in the rival gang. On GeekBench 5.1, the device scores 1,517 points on multi-core and 398 points on single-core test scoring almost half of what Redmi K20 Pro managed to score.

First up, the phone runs on the ColorOS 7 based on Android 10 which is the first-ever to arrive on Oppo smartphones. Although it isn’t a stock version, it is quite stock-ish and grabs a lot of features and customization options which is something I wouldn’t find light-weight.

It has an exceptional dark mode on the go which is supported by more than 200 apps along with that, there’s a tonne of customization options for layout, icons and more. Oppo Reno 3 Pro has Android 10-styled navigation gestures that you can check out along with the age-old virtual buttons. There’s a DC dimming feature on-board along with Flicker-Free Eye Care mode. There’s a high-performance mode in the battery tab along with Game Space and other features that you would get with ColorOS.

With a portfolio of six cameras, Oppo Reno 3 Pro brings on-board everything from a Quad-Bayer primary sensor, world’s first 44MP front camera, a 2MP B/W depth sensor both at the front and back, a telephoto, and ultrawide angle sensors on-board.

Also read: Best Camera Smartphones

Speaking about the camera app, it does have all the features you would need from the photo, night mode to pro mode, portrait mode, ultrawide and telephoto mode on-board. Although it lacks the kind of prowess a Google Camera offers, Oppo has still managed to affix a strong camera module on top of a cutting-edge processing app that works brilliantly even in low-light conditions.

The primary 64MP sensor didn’t fail to impress us as it offers both high-quality photos with low noise and impressive true to life colours. The details aren’t that top-notched in some points but overall, the sensor manages to grab the best photos especially in the daylight settings. It has a Quad-Bayer setup that allows it to capture crisp 16MP shots or you can go Ultra HD or even Ultra HD Pro mode to snag 108MP photos although there is some quality loss at such a point.

The ultra-wide-angle 13MP sensor takes 12MP shots as opposed to what was advertised but the overall shots are pretty vibrant with high dynamic range. The telephoto sensor can capture up to 20x hybrid shots that maintain quality in-between shots. 

The 44MP front camera captures 40MP shots by default although you can yank up to 44MP shots. The colours came out punchy, skin tones are natural and portrait shots have better edge detection as well. The night mode is something you should try as it is pretty much close to flagship smartphones.

No doubt battery life has christened as one of the factors when buying a smartphone. With a non-removable 4,025 mAh Li-Po battery, the phone does have a large battery which has become a staple when it comes to midrange and flagship smartphones. Combined with the power-efficient 12nm Mediatek Helio P95 chipset, the device churns out an endurance rating of 104 hours.

Apparently, the device does produce an on-screen time of around 10 hours on a heavy social media browsing while the talk time duration is reportedly at 28:38h according to GSMArena. Apart from that, the phone is able to pull off continuous video playback at 17:56 hours on a single time while the phone lasts at around 14:25 hours on web browsing on the go.

Oppo Reno 3 Pro arrives with a 30W VOOC 4.0 fast charging technology which is capable of powering the device from 0 to 100% in an hour although the precise duration came out to be between 53 minutes and 1:12 hours based on separate tests. The device does have a fast charging tech which allows its users to simply plug the phone for a couple of minutes and pull off at least an hour’s worth of juice without any hassle.

Talking about the audio aspect, Oppo Reno 3 Pro arrives with a single bottom-firing loudspeaker which does a pretty good job though. It scored -27.4 LUFS on a loudness score. This does give its loudspeaker a ‘Good’ rating although it falls just behind Oppo Reno 10x zoom which scores -24.7 LUFS in the loudness test. The loudspeaker handles vocals pretty smoothly although the low-frequency thump is lacking. The sound quality does show an increase when you pair the device with a 3.5mm headphone that comes in the box.

Oppo is using a Face Unlock feature which is pretty accurate and fast as well. It has a raise to wake feature that you can use for notifications, tap on the power button or double-tap on the screen and bingo, the Face Unlock feature will swing into action right away.

As a more secure feature for authentication, Oppo Reno 3 Pro has a third-generation optical under-the-display fingerprint scanner. It takes just 0.34 seconds to unlock the phone which is third of a second so you can get your hands on the phone without any hassle. Oppo calls it Hidden Fingerprint Unlock 3.0 which reportedly takes 358ms to unlock when the screen is off and 334ms when the screen is on.

Pros:

• World’s first 44MP dual front punch-hole camera
• Excellent video stabilization
• The lightning-fast under-the-display fingerprint scanner
• Vibrant & high-end quality Super AMOLED panel

Cons:

• A downgrade w.r.t gaming performance
• The punch-hole camera is eating too much of the screen
• No glass back