Oppo A72 punches above its weight in photography quality and performance. There is nothing innovative with it, just a better performance than most people will expect.
With Oppo A72, you have a 6.5-inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 and aspect ratio of 20:9. This doesn’t sound like too much but the display is bright and sharp enough for most usual tasks.
You won’t get the highest contrast level nor brightness level with this phone but there is no complaint here, considering what you pay for it. Users will have to settle with a 60Hz refresh rate, and compared with phones what feature 90Hz or 120Hz, the differences are evident.
When going through some tests, Oppo A72 proves to have a solid display as its crispness and color reproduction are up to standard. Users can change the color temperature if they like too.
With binge-watching and gaming, Oppo A72 can handle both of them without ghosting or lag.
Under the hood, the phone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of onboard storage. The combination results in an ok performance on paper, enough to prevent lag but not too impressive.
The phone can handle day-to-day tasks like social media, web browsing, or emailing with ease. Games like Asphalt 9 runs smoothly on this handset although you might have to wait for a few seconds for the phone to load and the frame rate can’t compare to that of higher-end phones.
Oppo A72 is a solid proof of most of us can get through a day fine using a budget-friendly phone.
The phone comes equipped with Game Space app by default, which mutes notifications when you are gaming. We assume the app might improve gaming performance but the differences are quite small.
4GB of RAM is the industry’s standard and games run ok on this handset. However, you may need to wait for a few seconds for the handset to load.
Oppo A72’s battery can last for an entire day under moderate use. Most of the time, you will have about one-fourth of the juice left if you start your day with a 100% charged phone.
However, please bear in mind that new phone with a new battery can achieve that performance but things might change when time goes by and the hardware starts to degrade.
Oppo seems to be quite honest with its all-day-use claim and you will be hard-pressed to drain the A72’s power cell at the end of the day.
ColorOS might mess up somewhere else but not with the battery. It does have handy features to give you the longest battery life possible.
The phone will notify you of apps that are draining the battery life. It will also tell you how you can have more time between charges with the handset by tweaking the settings. It can also suggest how much time each change will bring, which is useful.
Video streaming for a few hours will drain about 20% of the juice. This performance is impressive given the cost of the device. So our estimation is you will get around 10 hours of video watching with this handset.
The 5,000mAh battery might make you think you have more than that, but overall, you will never have to worry about the phone running out of juice at the end of the day.
If you care enough to make changes to preserve the battery life, getting another day with Oppo A72 isn’t hard. While there is no wireless charging, Oppo’s 18W ensures that you can get out of the house faster in the morning.
It’s 2020 and even if you go for the cheapest smartphone, chances are you can still get decent photos if the light is on your side.
Oppo A72 does a good job of taking photos with good quality. While the differences between them and those taken by flagship phones aren’t hard to detect, given the price of the handset, the results aren’t at all disappointing.
In good sunlight, you can expect to have decent color reproduction and strong brightness. You will have no problem with bright and dark areas as the phone can handle them very well. The speed at which Oppo A72 focuses and takes a picture after you tap on the shutter button is fast.
However, if you are looking for the best camera phone money can buy at this price point, there are other phones out there that can do a better job, Nokia 5.3 for example.
But if your standards are not that high, differences aren’t too obvious unless you zoom in and look at every detail.
Overall, the shots are fine if you want to share them on social media, but if you plan to enlarge them, you had better look for a more capable camera setup.
You will have no optical zoom with the quad-lens setup, consisting of a 48MP main camera, a 2MP depth sensor, and a 2MP macro lens. However, taking ultra-wide photos is still possible if you want to squeeze more into the frames.
The handset is smart enough to recognize the differences between scenes, like indoor and outdoor, to make adjustments for a better-looking shot.
The phone does have a Night Mode but the requirement here is you have to be able to keep the phone steady for at least two seconds.
Overall, the phone does an ok job brighten up dark areas and pick up details, but the performance is far from equal to that of more expensive smartphones from Xiaomi, Apple, or Google.
Considering how much Oppo A72 costs, what its cameras can do is impressive, definitely good value for money if you want a budget-friendly camera phone.
What you can get from the phone isn’t bad but for better photography, you might want to double what you intend to spend on a smartphone. But if your need is decent pictures for social media, the Oppo A72 can do the job well.