OPPO Reno Ace Review

There was a time in the past when owning a phone from a Chinese phone meant holding an iPhone clone. These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find such a phone from a reputable brand as these companies started branching out with their own identities and, more importantly, their own innovations. In fact, many of the trends in the mobile market today don’t come from Samsung or Apple but from the likes of Xiaomi, Vivo, and OPPO. The latter is particularly known for its fast-charging technologies and the latest OPPO Reno Ace brings all of the company’s best parts in one accessible package.

The OPPO Reno Ace is almost unassuming in its design. At first glance, it almost looks like any other high-end smartphone with a gradient glass back if not for its self-imposed obsession with symmetry. From the first Reno to the latest Reno Ace, the line has always placed its rear cameras down the middle when almost everyone seems to want to shove them off to a corner.

That symmetry is also reflected on the front where, for the first time, OPPO has opted out of the “bubblegum stick”, a.k.a. “shark’s fin”, popup camera. That is presumably to make space for the larger battery, a compromise few would probably mind. The small waterdrop notch admittedly does little to tarnish the almost bezel-free beauty of the Reno Ace’s face and, thanks to the human brain’s ability to ignore persistent visual cues, it becomes almost invisible after prolonged use.

Perhaps the only flaw in the OPPO Reno Ace’s design isn’t one that’s seen but rather felt. At 200 grams, it is one of the heavier “normal” phones in the market. Considering how densely packed it is inside and the large battery that it’s hiding, that doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. Fortunately, it’s not heavy enough to be uncomfortable, just something our hands are no longer used to these days.

These days, specs are almost the most boring parts you’d hear about smartphones. Taken in isolation, the Reno Ace’s list is no different. In context, however, it reveals OPPO’s phone to be a gaming smartphone that doesn’t look like one. A stealth gaming smartphone if there ever was one.

The Reno Ace is one of the few phones that took advantage of Qualcomm’s “half upgraded” Snapdragon 855+. This particular mobile platform was designed especially to support gaming scenarios. It doesn’t exactly blow the competition out of the water as far as raw benchmarks go, especially considering OPPO seemingly dialed it down when running under normal circumstances. Its GameBoost 2.0 might remove those limits but even its bare performance, when paired with 8 or 12 GB of RAM and UFS 3.0 storage, is enough to compete in the big boys’ court.

And it’s not just the raw performance either. The Reno Ace’s other features all play a part in making it game-worthy without looking like an LED party. The composite fiber cooling helps keep the phone from throttling too soon while a 4D vibration motor tries to give that rumbling feel in your hands. The stereo speakers, combining the bottom speaker and the nearly-invisible ear speaker, activate when held in a land orientation, like when gaming or watching videos. And, of course, there’s the battery and the screen, which we’ll get to after a short diversion. In the meantime, here are some of those juicy specs:

• Operating System: ColorOS 6.1, Android 9 Pie
• CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+
• RAM: 8 or 12 GB
• Storage: 128 or 256 GB UFS 3.0, no microSD card slot
• Display: 6.5-inch AMOLED, 90Hz refresh rate
• Main Camera: 48MP f/1.7, 13MP f/2.4 (telephoto), 8MP f/2.2 (ultra-wide), 2MP f/2.4 mono
• Secondary Camera: 16MP f/2.0
• Battery: 4,000 mAh, 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 fast charging
• Other features: 3.5mm headphone jack, in-display fingerprint scanner

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