Background information
Antutu Benchmark manipulation with a kitchen and some motivation
by Dominik Bärlocher
Oppo Reno 2: The little sister tested in London
16.10.2019
Oppo is on an invasion course. After the Reno 5G, the Chinese manufacturer is launching the Oppo Reno 2 in Switzerland. At a competitive price. With a good-sounding camera. I tested the phone in London and can say: this could be good. Very good.
Oppo is keen on Europe. In China, the brand from Dongguan, Guangdong, is the th largest manufacturer of smartphones. In Europe, the Chinese are almost unknown. Probably not least because of the constantly changing situation in the trade war between the USA and China, the company, which wants to grow steadily, is looking for new markets.
I'm keen on the Oppo Reno 2, because not only are the smartphones quite promising in terms of hardware, but the Chinese company's aggressive pricing policy makes the brand interesting.
This morning I tested the Oppo Reno 2 in London as part of the official launch event. If you're expecting a full review now, you're out of luck. It's simply not possible to fully test a phone in just a few hours. But I can give you an idea of the first features. I was particularly impressed by the camera, which Oppo boasts about in its marketing material.
Four cameras and a knob
There's a press event in the afternoon, keynote and all, but when you can test a phone over coffee and Doc Martens boots, it beats any lab environment or press hands-on area. Because when it's all said and done, there's more chance of you taking a picture in Camden than at a manufacturer's exhibition.
This brings us to the camera. It looks quite striking at the back. The four cameras are arranged prominently one below the other. Below them is a decorative knob that appears to have no function. And if it does, it's not really obvious. But in the context of my work, such a knob is highly fascinating. Because hardware design is important. Although this usually relates to the edges and their design - and these are kept quite flat and pleasant on the Reno 2 - a knob like this can add or detract a lot from the haptics.
The Reno 2 feels good in the hand. Nothing outstanding, but compared to the admittedly boring phones of this year, the Oppo Reno 2 can keep up in terms of feel and weight. It weighs around 189 grams without a SIM card.
Coffee is empty. Unfortunately. Time for the camera test.
- 48 megapixels, f/1.7, 5x optical zoom, 20x digital zoom, AI noise reduction, OIS+EIS
- 8 megapixels, wide angle, f/2.4
- 13 megapixel, telephoto, f/2.2
- 2 megapixel, mono lens, f/2.4
This should not only be good for photos, but also for video. Oppo has even advertised the stabilisation separately. They are really serious about this.
Nothing to say. Okay, let's put it to the test. Unfortunately, unlike the Reno 5G, the Reno 2 only films in 1080p/60fps. 4K/60fps would definitely have been nicer. The stabilisation switches on via AI and then you can shake pretty well and the image remains stable. One guess: When the stabiliser is active, the phone crops your video a little and looks for fixed points in the video. These fixed points then move in the video, but remain anchored in the image at the point where the AI pins them.
This looks pretty neat. Video producer Stephanie Tresch, who edited the video above, gets in touch from Zurich. She says that the picture quality seems to suffer noticeably when the camera moves. She speaks of flickering. In addition, the sound is far below average compared to other smartphone cameras. In addition, Oppo is keeping up with the big players on the European market and has installed a kind of directional microphone. This means that when you film and zoom, the microphone zooms with you. Something like this.
More coffee. Black. No sugar. And a banana in macro.
Abominable. Why is it actually so hard to find a good cup of coffee? Can we have a press event in Reykjavik? There's Reykjavik Roasters. But the picture turned out quite well. The slight, fine unevenness of the metal of the telephone booth and the incidence of light are reproduced quite well and the banana still looks sharp.
How do you pronounce VOOC?
It's not just the camera, because Oppo has gone the extra mile with the non-successor to the Oppo Reno, the 5G version of which I tested a few months ago. The company has saved on the system-on-a-chip. The current processor is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, while the Oppo Reno 2 runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730. Although the processor was released this year and the Oppo Reno 2 is one of the first phones with the SoC, it can't quite keep up with its big brother. However, you only notice this when you really push the system.
I tried, but failed. Of course, benchmarks like Antutu will give you lower scores than the big competition, but theoretical scores are more or less worthless in everyday use.
There is also the issue of fast charging. It's popularly known as Quick Charge. But Quick Charge is actually a specific technology that is of course not sold to all smartphone manufacturers. There is Quick Charge, Fast Charge, Dash Charge and Oppo has VOOC. VOOC stands for Voltage Open Loop Multi-step Constant-Current Charging. This would actually be VOLMSCCC, but as nobody can or wants to pronounce it, Oppo has taken the two Os out of the word "Loop" and called it VOOC.
The question is, how do you pronounce VOOC? An English hard V like in "Village", which almost sounds like an "F"? An "OO" like in "Cool"? Then a "C". Pronounce that one. Have fun.
Haha.
VOOC charges the Reno 2's 4000mAh battery from zero to 75% in 30 minutes with 20W, according to information. VOOCing awesome.
The whole thing works behind a 6.5-inch (16.6cm) diagonal AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2400×1080 pixels. That's decent, but not something you should absolutely buy the phone for.
The software that can do something
The operation is where it gets exciting. The software likes users, it seems. I'm not a big fan of custom launchers on phones, as they usually make everything slower and uglier. Huawei's Emui is the prime example of ugly, Xiaomi's Miui of "fucked up beyond all repair". And this despite the fact that both manufacturers' hardware is actually good. Oppo's colour UI is also ugly, but at least you can manage icons en masse on the home screen. That's a good feature that will hopefully be adopted in Core Android.
This is why the Oppo Reno 2 is fascinating in terms of marketing. As a rule, smartphones that are not flagships tend to fall under the radar. A Samsung Galaxy S gets a fancy press thingy somewhere in London, a Huawei P is presented in Paris. A mid-range phone, such as the Oppo Reno 2, is usually just released and perhaps accompanied by a press release. Oppo, however, does things differently and clearly states that the mid-range is just as important to them as the flagships. This is a good thing, because the mid-range is where new features are tested in a comparatively harmless context. If something fails there, then at least there is no scandal that ruins the sales of a top-of-the-line device and at best leads to reputational damage. No one will ever forget the Note 7. Or the Galaxy Fold.
Time to go to the press event. One last cup of coffee, an absurdly sweet doughnut and then back to work. It was fun with the Oppo Reno 2.
A word from Andrea Jacob
We're always asked when we'll be offering the phone. As a rule of thumb, if my colleague Andrea Jacob knows before the event, she lets me know and I let you know. Because I think it's a bit indecent to give you all the information about a device and then keep one thing from you. So if it doesn't say anything, then I don't know.
Andrea Jacob spoke up and looked for me in the video of the live stream to give me the following statement: Yes, it's coming. It's her turn. But a date is still unknown. <p
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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