Oppo recently added a new phone Oppo A7 Review

Oppo recently added a new phone to its A-series called the Oppo A7 ₹ 15,950, and it is emphasising its battery life and cameras as the main selling points. According to the company, A series models have been among its best-selling phones in India, and it hopes to continue that trend with the brand new Oppo A7. The Oppo A7 is a followup to the Oppo A5. 

It sports a smaller and more fashionable notch, more storage, and a more recent version of ColorOS. At Rs. 16,990, the Oppo A7 will face very tough competition from the likes of Realme, Nokia, and Xiaomi, not to mention the Oppo F9 ₹ 17,190 (Review), which costs only a couple of thousand rupees more. It's time to find out whether the new Oppo A7 is worth its asking price.

Oppo A7 design 

The Oppo A7 features a waterdrop notch, which makes it look quite modern. As a matter of fact, it looks pretty much identical to the Oppo F9, save for a different pattern on the back. The plastic body has a matte finish on the sides and a laminated back. The textured pattern looks good when light hits it at certain angles, especially on our Glaring Gold review unit. The Oppo A7 is a big phone, but thankfully at 168g, it's fairly light. The laminated back tapers to the sides a little and merges smoothly with the side frame, which looks and feels good. The pre-applied scratch guard on the display gets in the way when you swipe inwards from the sides, which isn't a very good feeling.

The volume and button placement is good, as is their feedback. The SIM tray on the left can accommodate two Nano-SIMs and a dedicated microSD card (up to 256GB). The laminated back and the even the screen of our review unit picked up fingerprints and smudges very easily. The 6.2-inch LCD has good brightness and colours, but the resolution is only HD+ (1520x720) which is disappointing, especially at this price. As a result, icons and text appear a little soft, and edges have a bit of jaggedness if you look closely. It's not that bad otherwise, but it's still lagging behind the competition. The waterdrop notch gives you more screen space on the top, but you forfeit a notification LED. The bezels around the display are fairly slim but the chin is quite thick. All the ports are at the bottom, include the Micro-USB port, 3.5mm headphone socket, and microphone.

Oppo A7 specifications and software 

At nearly Rs. 17,000, we were expecting at least a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 or MediaTek Helio P60 processor, but sadly, the Oppo A7 uses the much weaker Snapdragon 450. This SoC is not only old, but it is now typically being seen in phones priced under Rs. 10,000. The Oppo A5 ₹ 13,100 also had the same SoC, but it had a much lower starting price. As some consolation, the phone comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The RAM doesn't really do much when it comes to raw performance. In AnTuTu, we got a score of 72,081 points and GFXbench's T-Rex test gave us just 33fps. There is dual 4G with VoLTE support. Other specifications include Bluetooth 4.2, single-band Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, USB-OTG, FM radio, basic sensors like a compass, accelerometer, light sensor, and gyroscope, and support for three navigation systems.