Oppo A78 Review

Ever since I was permanently hired by my company many years ago, I felt the need to have two separate telephone numbers. I noticed how private life and working life were two very different things and needed to be clearly separated. At the time there were no smartphones that today actually creep into our private lives and everything was limited to text messages and calls. However, even back then I preferred to separate my contacts and close the phone in my free time so as not to be reached by work-related calls. This led me to buy a new number which I started using for friends and left the old one for work. At the time I used the Nokia E65 as my first phone and the Motorola V3i as my second, then with the purchase of the iPhone 4 things started to "degenerate". Initially, not everyone had a smartphone so it was normal to use a classic phone because there was no suspicion but after a few years, owning and using a Motorola V3i was suspicious and colleagues understood that I was using a backup phone. When I bought the iPhone 5s years later I was able to downgrade the 4 for work so even with that number I could use WhatsApp and conform to the masses. In 2014 I bought the iPhone 6 which I then downgraded for work in 2016 and it was the phone I used as such until last December when I decided I had to change it but not for another iPhone. To tell the truth, I also have an iPhone 7 Plus that I could use as a second phone but the problem was the need to separate contacts, which is impossible with Apple's cloud.
The solution was therefore to buy an Android device but due to laziness I had never started to do a bit of research and find the right device. In the summer of 2022, together with my sister, we purchased a Redme Note as a gift for my father, a device that I installed and which I was positively surprised by. Above all, I liked the AMOLED screen and there I decided to go for the same model when I wanted to change my second phone. Then on December 2022, watching the football World Cup, I was intrigued by the billboard promoting a brand called "Oppo". Personally, this word in Italian has a singular and nice sound and I went to investigate to understand what it was. I discovered that it was electronics and at that point I wanted to see what devices it had in its catalogue. I immediately noticed the A78 smartphone model and watched several videos on YouTube. However, last winter I always gave priority to other expenses and did not purchase this phone. Last December, taking advantage of a promotion and now bored by the slowness of the iPhone 6, I went to a store and bought the Oppo A78!

Aesthetics

From an aesthetic point of view, I really like this Oppo especially because it has a design with squared edges. It is slightly narrower than my iPhone 12 Pro Max but more or less the same height so the result is a narrow and long screen, probably more similar to the Pro versions of the iPhones. The materials are plastic but sturdy and nice to the touch, moreover they make the phone much lighter and easier to handle, it is certainly more pleasant to use. Yes it grips better than my iPhone but clearly its aspect ratio is not as comfortable for browsing the web, reading or writing but for the use I have to do it is fine. Years ago I chose the Max version of the iPhone for this very reason, to have a more comfortable reading and writing tool. Even though today these phones all look the same on the front, I have to say that the A78 stands out better than my 12 Pro Max because it has thinner edges and only has the small hole for the front camera which remains on the left of the monitor. The rear part instead features very large round cameras placed vertically, around them there is a glossy design that acts as a frame maintaining the design of the cameras. The rest of the back is opaque which however plays with reflections giving the impression of shimmer.
The only buttons on the phone are on the side and are the power button and the volume buttons, otherwise there is nothing on the body. Yes, you can decide to enable facial recognition or fingerprint, I opted for the latter and I must say that I really like it. In fact, it is virtual and appears on the screen, I must say that it works very well and when using it I prefer it to the facial recognition that I have on the iPhone. The lack of other physical buttons led the software developers to create swipes that are practically identical to those of my iPhone so from that point of view I immediately felt at ease. In addition to this, as I said before, the solution of integrating the front camera without the presence of additional edges makes the phone much nicer and more modern than the iPhone. In fact there is no edge or the pathetic dynamic island. In my opinion it is simpler to just insert a small circular slit on the screen but Apple with its aggressive marketing continues to postpone this solution in such a way as to force people with less personality to change their phone every year just for aesthetics. In my opinion, other manufacturers have removed borders precisely because it is a simpler solution, this is indirectly making iPhones a little obsolete in terms of design regarding the screen.
From a software point of view, I noticed that no credit card is required to create a Google account, which is correct in my opinion, especially for those who have limited use of their phone. To store numbers there are three options; on the device, the Google account or on the SIM card. I really appreciated this versatility and not Apple's policy which practically for "your security" forces you by default to use the cloud for everything. In addition to this aspect, what I didn't like about the configuration of this, as well as other Android phones, was the confusion of icons and widgets that were totally useless to me. I wasted some time but I arranged all the icons in a logical and practical way, deleting about 20 gigabytes of useless apps and games. I haven't finished sorting out the apps yet but in the end the result will be highly functional, giving me a practical phone ready for more modern use compared to a classic phone. The only app I downloaded was "Documents", perfect for writing and sharing content with Apple's Pages, which fortunately interfaces perfectly.

iPhone 12 Pro Max on the left Oppo A78 on the right

Screen Comparison

Performances

It is clear that this review is based on a comparison with my iPhone 12 Pro Max which I have already mentioned several times, even if it is from three and a half years ago, I believe that the comparison is plausible considering the high standard of Apple technology. The Oppo A78 takes a little longer than my iPhone to turn on and once started I noticed that the colors of the Oppo are a little cooler but lighter. Viewing photos on the screen, however, doesn't work the same way. Comparing the page of one of my travel posts, I noticed how the dynamic range tends to leave the shadows much darker and the color rendering is not faithful. However, the color temperature of the screen can be set in at least four different ways. In general, however, browsing the Internet is pleasant and the screen does not tire you, moreover from an operational point of view the phone is clearly very fluid and is superior in every way to the iPhone 6 that I replaced. Clearly I'm not making intense use of this device so I'm not stressing it from the point of view of battery consumption or from a software point of view. However, I noticed how the battery performance is impressive even when using it as a Hot Spot, a function that requires a lot of energy from the phone. On average, if I use it like this for about three hours, the battery always remains at 100%. Furthermore, the phone has a fast charger and takes about an hour to reach 100% starting from 60%. Obviously in recent months I have been holding the phone like a jewel so the device is at its maximum efficiency. It is clear that with more frequent use the phone and its external and internal materials could perhaps suffer deterioration, unfortunately I cannot know this nor can I stress the phone on purpose.
To tell the truth, the purchase of this Android phone was an experiment for me from another point of view too. In fact, the idea is to start from scratch, creating an account and using the phone without directly or indirectly loading all your personal things into it. I made a new email, I have a number that I don't use for anything other than work, I don't use social networks and I limit browsing to the essentials. By doing this I should lower the profiling and in theory have a little more privacy. Clearly I don't keep photos or other types of personal documents. It's obvious that I have almost all of this information on my Apple device, but starting with a new one and trying to get used to it, I would like to do the same thing with a new Apple account in the future.

Pictures

Clearly today phones are used above all to document our lives which are no longer private. When I went to the store to choose this phone I noticed how many other people who had to replace the phone were undecided precisely because if there was a beautiful model but with a poor camera, people were in crisis over the choice. Personally, I had to laugh because as a photographer who owns dozens of cameras, I don't choose the phone for its photo features. But today it has become normal for people to use their smartphone as their main camera and to document anything, even the most stupid things. Having noticed this very strange reality for me, I decided to test the A78 also from a photographic point of view since I have some expertise in this sector. Obviously I will try to give my impressions starting from a phone standard and I will not try to compare the Oppo to a real camera. However, to be honest I must admit that for a couple of years now, high-end phones have been taking decidedly better photos than the compact digital cameras of the 2000s. The more the use of AI increases, the better the photos will become and the moment there is a phone with a 1-inch sensor, there will be trouble for digital camera manufacturers.
The Oppo A78 is advertised as a phone with a 50 megapixel camera, however this is a marketing operation but there is some underlying truth. I believe that the camera actually has 12 megapixels at both the wide angle and the tele focal length, which are then interpolated digitally in the wide angle focal length, reaching the resolution of 50 megapixels via the dedicated function that must be activated. The selfie camera, always according to the resolution that Photoshop gives me, should be 8 megapixels. The camera has many functions that are now common in all phones such as HDR, night, portrait, slow motion and even a totally manual mode. However, a macro mode is missing but on the other hand the phone has a very efficient LED flash. The night mode slows down the shutter speed but with the HDR mode active it creates an image with a bit too much of a watercolor effect. The same defect occurs when shooting indoors; the photos taken looked like a somewhat cartoonish version compared to the photos taken with the iPhone in HDR function. I think this works and is best used during the day but never in low light, not even with the night mode active. In general, due to the few advantages it brings, the HDR function is best left deactivated. By activating the “High Quality” function (50 megapixels) the photo actually gains a bit of detail and can be seen, for example, by taking a photo of a car and zooming in on the license plate number or by taking a photo of documents where by zooming in you can to read better. In my opinion, this is always an artificial resolution which however can be useful in the examples I have given. Even a close-up of a face gains some detail, however by zooming in you can see some artifacts and in any case faces in general do not need more definition especially if they are already framed from very close up. On panoramas you will hardly notice the difference, nor do the 50 megapixels increase the dynamic range or improve the colors. Let's say that in general this "High Quality" is just a marketing operation but that it can be useful in certain circumstances such as taking a photo of a distant road sign, there is the possibility of reading the writing better. What pleasantly surprised me, however, is the LED flash, it illuminates the subject very well and when I tried to take selfies with the rear camera, I obtained excellent results. In my opinion this flash can easily be used to document photos in discos where the lights are low and of different types, an environment known to put even the flash of normal cameras into difficulty. Lastly, I also tested the phone for taking photos of another phone screen. Many times if we don't want to take a screenshot or some apps don't give us the possibility, with this phone we can capture the image on a display quite decently. In conclusion, the camera on this phone performs well and can prove useful for certain moments, personally I would never use it to take photos that I care about or document a holiday. I certainly have high standards but anyone living in this day and age and especially teenagers, a category that was born with this type of photo, their quality and purpose, will have no problem using this phone's camera as if it were a professional one.

Samples Images

Picture of the screen of my iPhone

Back camera selfie without flash

Back camera selfie with flash

Conclusions

In conclusion, for €169 the Oppo A78 is a great phone, it does what only high-end phones once did and from what I can tell, using it alongside the iPhone 12 Pro Max I don't feel like I'm using a cheap phone. When I think that the cost of an iPhone can buy 8 and a half of this Oppo, the quality/price ratio is decidedly high. The only flaw that phones in this range have is that they have a limited number of security updates (assuming that these updates are in favor of the user and not the manufacturer which effectively makes the devices obsolete). However, even changing such a device every two-three years would still cost less than that of a Netflix subscription for example. The purchase of an iPhone, on the other hand, is so expensive that you need to keep it for at least five years to amortize the cost. For the moment, after five months of use, I have not seen any deterioration in performance or slowdowns and the battery lasts the same as when it was new. I even have to point out that I dropped my phone once, hitting an iron surface before falling to the ground. To my surprise, nothing was done both because it is light and because it has a screen film that is halfway between a glass and a simple film, the kind that is normally removed. This protection cushioned the blow especially in the lower left corner, however the blow caused bubbles between the protection and the display. I was certainly lucky but the fall reminded me of the old Nokias that when they fell many parts opened and then reassembled and the phone worked better than before. On the other hand, a few years ago, my iPhone 12 Pro Max fell from a height even lower than that of the Oppo and, falling on its side, the aluminum part was deeply chipped. In other words, in two similar falls where the phones hit the same side, the plastic one did nothing, the aluminum one chipped! What can I say except that I use it for work, this Oppo A78 gives me a very nice feeling that I often prefer to that of my iPhone.
A.M.