OPPO announced the Reno early last year and it marked the brand’s rejuvenation journey. The very first Reno series smartphone was iconic and had cutting edge hardware along with classy looks. Since then we have seen many iterations in the Reno series.
OPPO brought the new Reno 3 Pro to market just a few weeks back. Though the phone was announced in China late last year, we didn’t get to see the same exact smartphone here. Accessing our market situation, OPPO dropped 5G and the Snapdragon 765 SoC in favor of MediaTek P95 and 4G. That being said, the Reno 3 Pro still carries the DNA of the older gen.
We have been using the smartphone for over a week now and let’s find out if this could be your next smartphone in our full review.
Oppo Reno 3 Specifications
- Display: 6.4-inch AMOLED dual punch-hole display
- Software: Android 10, ColorOS 7
- Fingerprint Scanner: Yes, in-display
- CPU: MediaTek Helio P95 Octa-core processor
- RAM: 8GB
- Storage: 128GB internal, microSD support
- Main Camera: 64 MP + 13 MP + 8 MP+ 2 MP, quad-LED Flash
- Selfie Camera: 44 MP+ 2 MP
- Connectivity: USB-C, Dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, NFC
- Cellular: 4G LTE, Dual SIM
- Battery: 4,025mAh, Li-ion Polymer, non-removable
Box Contents
A complete list of items you get inside the box:
- OPPO Reno 3 Pro smartphone
- Sim Ejector Tool
- Charger
- USB Cable
- Silicon Case
- Warranty and User Guide
Design
If you’ve seen the past Reno series smartphones, you would see a change on the Reno 3 Pro. OPPO has dropped the Full View display with the Shark-Fin camera in favor of a Punch-hole display. The construction is different as well, you get a plasticy feeling outer frame with the glass on front and back. Gone are the eye-pleasing gradient colors, instead you get standard color options.
While the older gen Reno smartphones had the rear camera array right in the center, this has now moved to the left side. The designing at first glance matches all the generic smartphones coming out from the likes of Realme and other BBK owned brands. The phone is being offered in two colors and we have funky Aurora Blue shade with us.
As far as button placement is concerned, the power button is on the right while the volume buttons are on the left. The 3.5mm headphone jack is placed at the bottom along with the loudspeaker, primary microphone, and USB Type-C port.
As mentioned above, you get to see the quad-camera module at the back protruding quite a bit, to the point that the phone wobbles when kept on a table.
Display
The OPPO Reno 3 Pro comes with a 6.4-inch display upfront. This is an AMOLED panel and hence comes with all the bells and whistles that you’d expect on an AMOLED display. It perhaps is one of those areas where the brands don’t seem to have cut corners.
OPPO has done a great job of minimizing the overall bezels, which should be appreciated. This AMOLED panel is quite bright and crisp, with punchy, saturated colors. Like previous Reno phones, the display here also supports full DCI-P3 color gamut which we found to be accurate in our display tests. Outdoor legibility is good at best, the display isn’t that bright when compared to other flagship smartphones but gets the job done. Now with an AMOLED panel, you get the ability to add an in-display fingerprint sensor and that is what OPPO did.
The dual punch-hole is tucked away on the left corner and houses the main 44-megapixel selfie shooter which is assisted by a 2-megapixel depth sensor.
Overall, the display quality seems satisfactory and would be ideal for prolonged content consumption.
Performance and Software
The phone comes powered with the all-new MediaTek Helio P95 processor and is in fact the first smartphone in the market to carry this processor. MediaTek made the P95 for upper mid-range smartphones by providing a balance between performance and efficiency.
Along with that, you get hardware like dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5, NFC, dual-mode GPS. As the phone has a Hybrid SIM slot, you get the ability to add either two SIM cards or one SIM and a microSD card which can further expand the storage up to 1TB.
We are not a fan of benchmarks, but for those of you who are interested, the phone blows through all the major benchmarking apps. As for real-world tests, both PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 9: Legends ran at the highest settings and we didn’t notice a single frame drop. Switching between apps was a breeze thanks to the 8GB RAM which is more than enough.
Coming to the Software, the phone comes powered by the new ColorOS 7 on top of Android 10 out of the box. The UI is clean and easy to use, with several useful features. Swiping right from the home screen takes you to the Smart Assistant tab. The smart sidebar has shortcuts to let you capture screenshots and begin screen recording, among other things, and is quite handy. You can use on-screen buttons for navigation or switch to swipe gestures.
As with the case with the previous Oppo smartphones, there’s quite a bit of bloatware, including apps that you might never use. Thankfully, most of them can be uninstalled in the settings. Other preloaded apps include a few that duplicate Google’s core functionality, a Phone Manager, Facebook, UC Browser, NewsPoint, Dailyhunt, Paytm, Helo, Webnovel, and Amazon Shopping.
ColorOS also brings some nifty features like the Smart driving and riding modes that can help reduce distraction by blocking notifications and incoming calls. Digital Wellbeing helps you monitor the time you spend on the device, and includes wind-down and focus mode. There’s also the updated Game space, that lets you block notifications while gaming and use both mobile data as well as Wi-Fi to improve online games.
Overall, the UI is a highly skinned and customizable version of Android. Hence, if you’re someone like me who loves stock Android, then you’re definitely going to have a hard time getting used to the ColorOS.
Camera and Battery
Since its a premium OPPO smartphone, camera performance is expected to be top-notch easily surpassing the competition. The phone packs in a quad-camera setup at the back consisting of a 64-megapixel primary sensor with an f/1.8 aperture, a 13-megapixel telephoto camera, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera with a 119-degree field of view, and a 2-megapixel mono camera.
The camera app on the Oppo Reno 3 Pro has Night, Portrait, Time-Lapse, Pano and Slo-Mo modes. It has quick toggles for HDR and Dazzle Colour (which bumps up contrast) and shortcuts for different filters that you can apply before taking a shot. AI Scene recognition is on by default and comes handy by tweaking the settings as per the subject.
The rear camera setup is capable of 5x hybrid zoom and 20x digital zoom which resembles the previous Reno series smartphones. Photos taken in daylight had good amounts of detail which is noticeable when zooming on the images. The wide-angle-camera helps capture a wider field of view but there is a drop in quality when compared to the main 64-megapixel sensor. Shots taken with the telephoto camera were sharpened which was visible on zooming into the image. 5x hybrid zoom offers decent details too.
Portraits also looked good, and the phone managed good edge detection. It also lets you set the level of blur before you take the shot. Photos taken in low light were decent at best with a hint of grain peeking in. The night mode on the Oppo Reno 3 Pro produces brighter images with better details.
For selfies, the phone has a 44-megapixel selfie shooter along with a 2-megapixel depth sensor. Selfies coming out the Reno 3 Pro were above average with a hint of beautification happening in the background. The phone managed to get good edge detection and blurred out backgrounds correctly when taking portrait shots.
Video recording maxes out at 4K for the primary camera while the selfie shooter is restricted to 1080p. You do have the option to shoot using the different cameras and can also switch while a video is being recorded. There is a super-steady mode as well which stabilizes the video better by cropping in the frame.
Coming to the battery, the phone comes packed with a 4,025mAh cell which lasted us a full day with moderate to high usage. People with light to moderate usage could easily hit a day and a half worth of use. OPPO’s 30W VOOC fast charger took 30 mins to charge from 0-65% and approximately 1 hour 10 minutes to fully charge the phone.
OPPO Reno 3 Pro Pricing
- 8GB/128GB – INR 29,990
- 8GB/256GB – INR 32,990
Pros
- Good Design
- AMOLED Display
- Versatile Camera
- Solid battery life
Cons
- Bloated UI
- Low light camera performance could be better
Verdict – Should you go for it?
The under INR 30,000 smartphone has blown up exponentially with a handful of good options. When looking at the competition like the Realme X2 Pro or the Asus 6Z, the Reno 3 Pro seems lacking in the overall performance.
That being said, the Reno 3 Pro isn’t a terrible offering but the phone is not meant for a power user. It, however, is a very compelling choice for a person who is focused more on the camera performance. With a few tweaks, the camera on this can do wonders considering the price.
For a person looking for a value for money option then pick the Realme X2 Pro in a heartbeat.
