The Oppo A78, which costs £219, is a good choice if you want a cheap 5G phone that won’t break the bank. It’s reliable and stands out.
At first, this may seem like an odd way to start a review. But the Oppo A78 5G doesn’t really do anything that stands out. It also doesn’t do anything that’s really bad either.
I wish the screen and cameras were brighter and clearer, but other than that, I wouldn’t change much. The price of the phone, which is just over £200, is kind of fair.
It has a great battery life, which may be what makes it better than similar devices. It also works well, disproving the idea that you need to weaken a phone’s power to add 5G.
So, the Oppo A78 5G isn’t the coolest phone, but it’s still a good one for people on a budget.
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Oppo A78 Full Specification
| LAUNCH | |
| Announced | January 07, 2023 |
| First Release | January 07, 2023 |
| NETWORK | GSM / HSPA / LTE / 5G |
| BODY | |
| Dimensions | 163.8 x 75.1 x 8 mm |
| Weight | 188 g |
| SIM | Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by) |
| DISPLAY | |
| Type | IPS LCD, 90Hz |
| Size | 6.56 inches, 103.4 cm2 (~84.0% screen-to-body ratio) |
| Resolution | 720 x 1612 pixels |
| Protection | Panda glass |
| PLATFORM | |
| Operating System | Android 12, ColorOS 13 |
| Chipset | Mediatek MT6833 Dimensity 700 (7 nm) |
| CPU | Octa-core |
| GPU | Mali-G57 MC2 |
| MEMORY | |
| Card Slot | microSDXC |
| Internal | 128GB/ 4GB RAM 128GB/ 8GB RAM |
| MAIN CAMERA | |
| Dual | 50 MP, f/1.8, 27mm (wide) 2 MP, f/2.4, (depth) |
| Features | LED flash, HDR, panorama |
| Video | 1080p@30fps |
| SELFIE CAMERA | |
| Single | 8 MP, f/2.0, 27mm (wide) |
| Features | HDR |
| Video | 1080p@30fps |
| SOUND | |
| Loudspeaker | Yes, with stereo speakers |
| 3.5mm jack | No |
| COMMS | |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band |
| Bluetooth | 5.3, A2DP, LE, aptX |
| Positioning | GPS, GALILEO, GLONASS, BDS, QZSS |
| NFC | Yes |
| Radio | No |
| USB | USB Type-C 2.0, OTG |
| FEATURES | |
| Sensors | Fingerprint (side-mounted) |
| BATTERY | |
| Type | Li-Po 5000 mAh, non-removable |
| Charging | 33W wired, 52% in 30 min, 100% in 67 min (advertised) |
| MISC | |
| Colors | Glowing Black, Glowing Purple |
| Models | CPH2483, CPH2495 |
Also Read: Samsung Galaxy A54 5G Review: A Powerful, Mid-Range Smartphone
Oppo A78 Price and Availability
The price is £219 or AU$359, which is about $280.
You can get it from January 7, 2023.
It was first shown off at the start of 2023, but the Oppo A78 might be hard to find in the UK because not many stores seem to carry it.
You can get the phone for much less in Australia, where it costs $359 instead of £219. Though that’s about the same as $280 in the US, Oppo doesn’t sell its phones there.
You might have guessed that price from the name, though, since Oppo’s A-series phones are its low-cost ones. The A78 was one of the first phones in the AX8 family, which took the place of the AX7 line.
Other phones in that price range that are strong rivals to the Oppo A include Moto’s G53 and G73, the Redmi Note 12, and the Nokia G42, to name a few. All of these are low-cost phones with similar features and experiences.
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Key Features
Great battery life: The Oppo A78 5G will easily last all day and then some.
Display that is smooth: With a frame rate of 90Hz, scrolling is smooth.
5G connectivity: Being able to connect to 5G for such a low price is always a plus.
Oppo A78 Hardware and Design
I have to say I love how OPPO has kept the look of their non-flagship smartphones very similar since the end of last year. It looks like the trend this week is for phones to have a more square shape, a shiny back, and a fingerprint reader on the side. I really like it. The phone feels very solid in your hand, and even though it’s square, it’s still easy to hold.
Again, there are two big camera bumps sticking out from the back of the phone. The first one holds the 50MP main camera, and the second one is a 2MP black-and-white self-portrait camera. Based on the title that OPPO put under this camera system, it looks like it is an “Innovative AI Camera.”
It’s annoying that there is more government information on the back panel next to the OPPO label. This is something I really don’t like, and I’m not sure why OPPO does it when other companies like Google and Apple don’t. I think it takes away from the beauty of the design.
OPPO’s cheap smartphones all come with a fingerprint reader on the side, and I had no problems with it this time either. After you get used to where it is, it works almost every time and correctly. The way I hold the phone—thumb on the right and index finger on the left—makes it more likely that I will press the power button with my right thumb.
OPPO also offers face unlock for those who would rather have it, and theirs may be the fastest on the market.
There is room for a second SIM card or a microSD card in the SIM tray, which can hold two SIM cards.
Ports
The speaker grille, USB-C charging port, and headphone jack are all on the bottom of the phone. The headphone jack is built into most cheap smartphones. It’s great that OPPO included a USB-C charging port that can handle 33W SuperVOOC charging as well as PD charging. Usually, one of the best things about OPPO phones is how they can be charged, and 33W in a cheap phone is great. It took me about 27 minutes to charge the phone from 5% to 50% and another 45 minutes to charge it all the way up to 80%. That sounds great, right?
Oppo A78 Display
After this point, OPPO starts to show signs of being sure of itself and having a clear mind. The 720p HD screen with 90Hz is good enough, and while I prefer the hole-punch camera to the teardrop, the smooth 60Hz screen more than makes up for this design choice. A refresh rate of 90Hz is much better than the usual 60Hz for a phone in this price range. This is a welcome addition since it now matches the refresh rates of popular midrange phones like the Samsung A series and even the Google Pixel 6a.
Aside from its 720p quality, the only real problem with this screen is how bright it gets. The OPPO A78 5G has a brightness of about 480 nits. It gets brightest in direct sunlight at 600 nits. This makes it a bit difficult to read texts and scroll through social media on days when it’s really sunny.
Oppo A78 Speakers
One speaker at the top and one at the bottom can fill a room with sound, and there is an “Ultra Volume Mode” that boosts the noise even more. It’s not as clear and lively as on more expensive devices or speakers designed just for phones, but it works well enough and shouldn’t let you down.
Oppo A78 Cameras
- Main 50MP sensor
- Zoom struggles after 4-5x
- Portrait mode is a little overkill
The display and pictures on cheap phones usually suffer because they need to stay under a certain price range. The A78 5G does have a bad display, but its camera specs look pretty good on paper.
The camera has two parts: a main 50MP camera and a black-and-white 2MP camera to help with focus. Unfortunately, specs aren’t everything, and it doesn’t really pay attention to parts that are darker or lighter; instead, it just flattens out the whole picture.
That’s not a bad thing, and it’s not much different from the sensors in a lot of other cheap cameras. But if you’re just starting out with photography, I’d spend a little more on something like the Pixel 6a that has sensors with more subtleties.
Still, there is an Extra HD mode that is supposed to show more detail, but it’s hard to tell on the 720p screen, and using it takes away the ability to zoom.
Now I’ll talk about the zoom, which can go up to 10x digital. As you might guess, though, you should really turn it down to about 4-5x in real life. Any higher than that will cause major object blur.
This is also true for the 8MP camera on the front of the phone: the colors are lost. That makes the dark color of my skin look a lot paler.
It’s important to note that the portrait view can be too much on both the front and back cameras. Take a look at the picture of the figure below. The background isn’t quite clear enough in some places, but it’s clear enough in others.
Oppo A78 Battery Life & Charging
All-day battery life
The Oppo A78 easily lasts all day and then some, staying longer than some high-end phones by a large amount. I used Spotify, and Netflix, scrolled through social media, and texted all day, but I only used up half of the power.
Fast charging
It comes with a power brick and a cord for fast charging, and the 5000mAh battery can be charged at 33W, going from 0% to 28% in 15 minutes and 51% in 30 minutes. When I charged my Samsung Galaxy A14 5G, it took only 30 minutes to hit 21% power. This is almost twice as much power.
According to PCMark, the Oppo A78’s battery life was an amazing 21 hours and 8 minutes, beating out phones like the Realmi 9i and the Nokia G62 by several hours. This is the second-best score we’ve seen so far for any phone, not just cheap ones.
Oppo A78 Performance
When Dan and I tried the previous entry-level OPPO phones, we both thought they were slow and didn’t work well. The OPPO A78 has a more powerful processor than the G35 in previous OPPO cheap smartphones. It is still a Mediatek processor, but the 6833 is stronger than the G35.
Overall, the speed is better. Apps open faster, and there is a huge difference in how long they lag. When typing on the old phone, it was hard to see what we were doing because the screen was behind the keys. That lag was still there, even though the A78 was faster and there wasn’t much time between typing and seeing the answer on the screen.
It makes sense that the lag got worse as I used more apps since the phone only has 4GB of RAM. The simple fix is to stop using so many apps at once. To do this, OPPO has put in place a very strict task manager that makes apps close quickly when they’re not being used.
Oppo A78 Software & Apps
- Android 13
- ColorOS 13
Oppo’s ColorOS is built on top of Android 13. It has some cool features, like the ability to move several apps around on the home screen at once. When users slide down from the top to open the drop-down menu, they will see big buttons for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth that make it easier to get to the most-used settings. There are also smaller buttons for airplane mode, the flashlight, and alerts.
Oppo seems to have paid attention to what people use the most with this setup, but it’s not perfect. For example, when music is playing, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth buttons are pushed to the left to make room for playback controls on the top right, which are too high for one hand to reach.
The A78 has a lot of unnecessary software, which is a shame. The device comes with Lords Mobile, Booking.com, Amazon Shopping, Facebook, Netflix, TikTok, Spotify, and LinkedIn already installed. If you look at the “Games” area for even a short time, you can download a few low-quality games right away.
It keeps telling people to download “Trending Apps” from the drop-down menu, which I’d rather not do.
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Oppo A78 Verdict
This cheap phone costs £219 and has a battery life of two days, 5G connectivity, good scrolling and game performance, and a good camera for casual photographers.
At this price, Android phones always have some problems, like extra software or hard-to-understand interfaces. But the A78 does a good job overall and should work for anyone on a budget.
