Oppo A83 review: Best mid

Oppo is a brand that is ruling the segment of selfie-centric smartphones. The company has been coming up with several smartphones with capable selfie cameras aimed at the selfie enthusiasts. The latest one from the company is the Oppo A83 with an AI-powered selfie camera similar to the one we saw on the Oppo F5 launched late last year. With this technology, the company is raising the bar for the other selfie-centric smartphones from its peers.

Oppo has always impressed us with its range of selfie-centric smartphones. The company seems to have understood that it has to take its success factor to the next level with enhancements along with a fair share of focus on the other aspects. Instead of delivering just a seflie-centric phone, the company has come up with mainstream trends such as full-screen design and facial recognition feature in the latest one to keep it above the rest.

Oppo A83 is the latest smartphone to have come from the company. It carries a pocket-friendly price tag of Rs. 13,990. The intelligent selfie technology makes this smartphone a step higher than the other selfie-centric smartphones in the market. Let's take a look at the detailed review of the Oppo A83 to know if the device is a worthy one on all aspects.

Oppo A83 is no different from many other smartphones in the market in terms of its design. Even the company's Oppo F5 came with a similar design. The smartphone features a metal unibody design that is curved at the edges. The device has a full-screen design that has left the front panel occupied only by the edge-to-edge display. The display is a 5.7-inch panel with a HD+ resolution of 1440 x 720 pixels and an aspect ratio of 18:9. The full-screen design is evident from the slim bezels at the top and bottom and the almost negligible bezels at the sides.

When it comes to the rear, the antenna lines are not visible as it gives a clean look. The most important thing that you will notice is the lack of a fingerprint sensor at the rear. Usually, the full-screen smartphones have a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor but this one misses out on that as has the Face Unlock facial recognition feature.

The volume keys are positioned at the right edge while the power button is at the left edge. These keys are easy to reach and access too. The top bezel has the selfie camera, the earpiece and the necessary sensors. As there are on-screen navigational buttons, the device has not buttons at its chin. Notably, the Oppo A83 feels lightweight and is sleek as well. The bottom edge of the smartphone provides room for the micro USB port and a 3.5mm audio jack. The only aspect that we didn't like is the fingerprint attracting build at the rear.

Oppo A83 flaunts a 5.7-inch edge-to-edge display with a HD+ resolution of 1440 x 720 pixels and an aspect ratio of 18:9. The display is pretty tall and vibrant as well. We found it impressive to watch movies and play games though not the ones those are rich in graphics. The screen does a good job given the price point of the smartphone. The display also has a decent level of brightness and we could view the screen without any issues with maximum brightness turned on.

Being a selfie-centric smartphone, the Oppo A83 cannot handle graphics intense games and tasks that consume a lot of resources. But the device does handle the everyday tasks such as web browsing, normal games, and multitasking without any glitches. If you are a fan of Shadow Fight 3 or other such resource-demanding games, then you might not get a great experience.

During our usage, we tried multitasking having more than 10 apps open at the same time and there was no significant slowdown in the performance as the Oppo phone makes use of a MediaTek MT6763T SoC, 3GB RAM and 32GB storage that can be further expanded up to 256GB using a microSD card.

When it comes to the battery life, the smartphone comes with a 3180mAh battery that can last As far as battery is concerned, the smartphone can render one day of backup. We could use the device for a day without data or Wi-Fi turned on all through the day along with a fair share of social media apps and games in use. The downside is that this smartphone does not support the company's VOOC fast charging feature.

During our review, we did try the Face Unlock feature and found it to be simple to setup and responsive in terms of its functionality. Though it is not as fast as seen in some of the high-end smartphones, this is acceptable as the A83 is a mid-range smartphone. However, we do have to mention that a fingerprint sensor would have been an icing on the cake as the facial recognition feature may not work well in all situations. In that case, the passcode is the only way to unlock the device.

Oppo has been playing the selfie game since quite sometime but it took things seriously with the F5 that came with a selfie camera that has Artificial Intelligence. The A83 also uses this selfie technology along with machine learning that will enhance selfie shots. It is claimed that the AI Selfie camera can identify the differences between skin color and tone, age and gender of the subjects in the selfie to beautify the each subject individually. This way, the output is more relevant and appropriate as well.

There is an 8MP selfie camera that renders good looking selfie shots and group selfies as well with the AI beautification feature. The selfie shots are perfect enough for us to share them on our social media profiles. The single front facer is capable of rendering a nice bokeh effect to our selfie shots as seen in the sample above.

The smartphone also comes with the Face Unlock facial recognition feature that replaces the fingerprint sensor. Oppo claims that the smartphone can be unlocked in 0.18 seconds.

Oppo A83 comes with a 13MP primary camera with autofocus, LED flash, and HD 720p video recording support. The camera doesn't really disappoint us with its performance as it renders decent and natural looking colors capturing an immense amount of details in broad daylight. However, the device does fail to render a good camera performance when there is not much light as the shots appear to have a lot of noise.

Oppo A83 runs the company's customized ColorOS 3.2 on top of Android 7.1 Nougat. It has a simple UI. The notifications and quick toggles are designed in such a way that they resemble those of iOS. There are useful software features such as three-finger screenshot, dual apps, cloud and more. But some complications are there it includes the inability to remove individual notifications from the panel with a swipe and the inability to change the wallpaper with a long tap on the display.

Oppo A83 is an impressive mid-range selfie smartphone that will easily fit within your budget. The perks of the device priced at Rs. 13,990 include the bezel-less display with 18:9 aspect ratio and its exceptional selfie camera with AI. On the whole, we feel that the Oppo A83 is a good buy for the selfie enthusiasts looking out for a device within Rs. 15,000.