TECH BREAK: OPPO A71 lives up to expectations

The A71 is OPPO’s latest smartphone device launched in September, marking a crucial step towards increasing the company's footprint in Kenya by providing what can be best described as an alternative in the mid-tier phones class.

I had an opportunity to play around with the device and here is what I think:  

DESIGN

For a mid-tier smartphone under Sh20,000, I have to commend Oppo for the impressive design.

The main body is made of metal wrapping around the back of the phone in a unibody design.

The edges wash out smoothly to merge with the 5.2 inch Gorilla Glass 4 protected capacitive touch screen on top.

The lustrous coating at the back gives the A71 a premium feel in the hand though it does get smudged with fingerprints.

PERFORMANCE

The A71 is well covered in the performance department. It runs on Mediatek’s MT6750 eight core chipset clocked at 1.5 GHz coupled with a 3GB RAM (Random Access Memory).

This translates to quite impressive real-life performance.

I ran the OPPO A71 through Antutu Benchmark (a widely accepted performance benchmarking tool in the tech world) and it managed an average score of 42,500 which is quite impressive.

Intense gaming is easily managed by this device partly due to the quad core chipset, 3GBs of RAM and the dedicated Mali-T860 graphics renderer.

CAMERA

Images from the phone's 13MP back camera are sharp and colourful. The flash manages to light up objects in the dark but there are limitations to this.

The 2x feature allowing a quick zoom into the subject works exceptionally well considering the slight loss of image quality after zooming.

Other features like the time-lapse and expert mode add an extra touch to an average performing camera.

The 5MP front shooter gets the job done for the selfie lovers though I've seen better at this price range.

USABILITY AND FEATURES

The OPPO A71 runs on a customised version of Android Nougat 7.1.1 out of the box; OPPO calls it the ColorOS 3.1.

The system is pretty neat with no bloatware pre-installed and the user interface is quite impressive.

The phone’s 5.2 inch touch screen is easily accessible with one hand and very responsive as well. Worryingly missing for a smartphone at this price

range is the fingerprint scanner. Many people would have appreciated the additional security feature.

Here's a breakdown of the pros and cons:

Pros

• Premium build quality

• Impressive UI
• Fluid performance and Multitasking
• Good battery life (3000mAh capacity)
• Slim and comfy at hand
• Superb sound quality
• No bloatware apps pre-installed
• Crisp and snappy Camera

 Cons

• Lacks a fingerprint scanner
• Other Chinese brands give it a run for its money

 In the end, the pros far outweigh the cons of this phone as the qualities that matter most to the users: its performance, dependability, usability and the design lives up to expectations.