Oppo A52 Review – The Power Of 5, 5Camera, 5000mah

Oppo has recently upped its onslaught on the budget midrange segment with the A-series of devices and we have the Oppo A52 to take on the likes of Xiaomi Note 9. Oppo has given the A52 a decent set of specs and very trendy design.

Oppo seems to have packed the A52 with a lot of features, making sure, the phone scores on all the areas to make it a serious contender against other dozens of smartphones in this segment from Samsung, Realme, Redmi and Xiaomi as well as Poco. 

Design 

The moment we unboxed the Oppo A52, the phone felt premium and the rectangular camera cutout at the back with Quad Cameras added to the premium feel fact. The overall design is very ergonomic and the A52 has a well-built body. There is a side-mounted fingerprint scanner on the left side which doubles up as a power button. On the bottom, you get a speaker, USB-C charging port along with a 3.5mm jack. While on the right side you get volume rockers and a sim card tray slot. The A52 supports hybrid sim-card arrangements which can be used for storage expansion using a micro SDcard. The back of the A52 is plastic, yet it feels solid and would be able to take a lot of abuse. The glossy mirror-like texture on the back is a fingerprint magnet though, but Oppo provides a TPU case inside the box which should take care of it. The review unit we have is the Twilight Black Variant and the dark colour enhances the smudges and fingerprints, even more, A52 though is available in a brighter Stream White colour as well.

Display

We believe while buying a phone, the screen should be one of the top considerations, as you will be looking at the screen whenever you use the phone. The Oppo A52 doesn’t disappoint here, with a tall 6.5-inch Full HD+ Neo-display with 20:9 ratio along with a punch-hole cutout on the left side of the screen. The IPS display here is bright and offers punchy colours, visibility in sunlight is good for the segment. The punch hole cut-out, although not groundbreaking anymore even in the segment, allows Oppo to give the A52 an almost bezel display area. The Display here is excellent for the segment and it’s a treat consuming content and playing games as well. The ambient light sensor is present and thus brings auto adjustment of screen brightness.

Performance

Powering the Oppo A52 is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 665 processor, this 11nm based SOC is an octa-core unit with four 2.0 GHz cores and four 1.8 GHz cores. The graphics are handled by Adreno 610 GPU. This is a popular package in this segment and offers snappy performance along with 4k video capabilities. The review unit came with 6GB RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage, storage expansion is available using an SD card which is a plus here. The Snapdragon 665 SOC provides snappy performance and can handle gaming and multitasking with ease. Occasionally we experienced stuttering here and there but that’s nit-picking as we are using multiple devices with flagship SOCs as well, For a normal user the stuttering is barely noticeable.  The 6GB RAM variant that we have, had no problems running graphic-intensive games like PUBG for long durations. The big battery also helped much in this.

Cameras

As said at the beginning of the review, the rectangular camera cut-out at the back looks awesome almost Samsung-ish, well lets come to the actual cameras now. The A52 comes with 5 cameras, that’s right 5 cameras! Four Camera sensors at the back make the rear camera setup, while only two are really relevant here. The main rear camera is a 12MP unit with an F1.7 aperture, the second camera is an Ultra-wide camera with 8MP and F2.2 aperture, then there is a 2MP depth sensor and 2MP Macro sensor. The Fifth camera available is the 16MP F2.0 Front Selfie Camera. The Main camera is good and shoots good pictures overall. The Camera app has Portrait mode, Night Mode, Time-lapse, Slo-Mo, Panorama and Pro Mode. In terms of Video, the Oppo A52 Can shoot 4K/30p, 1080/30p and 720p video. There was no 1080/60p option that we could find, this we feel could be limiting for some people. We have added Video Samples from the Camera below, in 4k and 1080p.

The camera produces good images in daylight but struggles in low light situations. The front camera with its 16MP sensor and F2.2 aperture is good and produces good images keeping the subject bright at the cost of blown-out background but that’s ok. Even during video calls the front camera consistently provided a bright image albeit with slow shutter speed. The Pro mode in the camera app allows manual controls for photography and is a welcome addition. Meanwhile, for people who want to exploit the full potential of the cameras available, the GCAM app supports the Oppo A52 and can be used to get better images. Some samples below.

Sample Low Light Macro

Sample Day light

Sample Stock Camera

Gcam Sample

Battery

A phone is only as good as its battery, and the Oppo A52 doesn’t disappoint here. The 5000mAh battery is not only huge in terms of size, it provides a great screen on times, we consistently got 7plus hours of SOT. There is support for a standard 18watt fast charging as well. For extracting full power from the A52 you should switch to the “high-performance settings” in the battery tab.

Experiences

Audio – The Oppo A52 has stereo speakers, the bottom-firing main speaker and the earpiece doubles up as the second speaker with slightly less volume. This setup is common now but gives a very nice experience during gaming or consuming content without a headphone. Meanwhile, The 3.5mm is present and for this, the A52 gets a huge thumbs up. Considering the segment Oppo is catering to with the A52 omitting the 3.5mm jack would have been a big deal. The A52 also comes with “Real Sound Technology”. Overall Audio quality from the 3.5mm jack and over Bluetooth was very good.

ColorOS7.1 – One of the better skins we have used on budget android devices, the main thing that we liked with the ColorOS7.1 was the transparency maintained in terms of alerting the user of permissions and access to data needed to while using some of the inbuilt apps from Oppo. Considering the Anti china sentiment going around, This small step really adds to the user experience, where the user knows what permissions and data are being used by the inbuilt apps. Good move! And yes bloatware can be deleted.

Issues –

Unnecessary Screenshots - The power button on the right is placed parallel to the volume rocker on the left, resulting in unwarranted screenshots while handling the phone.

No Call Recording – Call Recording is available almost all phones and we could not find this feature in the Oppo A52

Lack of 1080/60p – Snapdragon 665 supports 1080/60p but its not available in the Oppo A52

Incall Audio – While our voice sounded loud and clear while using the phone for calling, The voice through the earpiece sounded a bit electronic.

Verdict

The Oppo A52 is priced at Rs. 16,990 at this price there is a lot of competition offering similar specs and performance like Realme 6 Pro, Redmi Note 9 Pro Max or the much affordable Samsung Galaxy M31. But In Short, The Oppo A52 is a great device, the ColorOS 7.1 adds to the experience. The design, The Features and overall premium feel factor surely makes a compelling case for the A52.