Oppo is India’s third largest smartphone vendor, and along with its sister company, Vivo, it’s experienced immense success in the country. Although Oppo’s smartphones aren’t usually competitive with rival Xiaomi’s phones with respect to specifications, the company has used its marketing muscle and retail partnerships to become one of the best-known China-based smartphone brands in India.
But recently, Oppo was overtaken by Xiaomi in the Indian smartphone market, and with Xiaomi’s increasing focus on offline retail, it’s clear that it can’t afford to take competition lightly. That’s one of the reasons Oppo announced this week that it would launch a new smartphone in India on January 20: The Oppo A83.
The company didn’t reveal the Oppo A83’s pricing, but according to NDTV Gadgets, it’s expected to retail for Rs. 13,990 ($219). At that price, it’ll compete directly with the Xiaomi Mi A1, the Honor 7X, and others in the mid-range phone market.
The Oppo A83 launched in China last month. It has a 5.7-inch HD+ (1440×720) 18:9 LCD display, a 2.5GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6763T system-on-chip, 4GB of RAM paired with 32GB of storage, a 13MP rear camera, an 8MP front camera, and a 3090mAh battery. (It’s worth noting that NDTV Gadgets states that the Indian variant of the Oppo A83 might have 3GB RAM instead of 4GB, and a slightly larger 3180mAh battery.)
The Oppo A83 has a 3.5mm headphone jack, a micro-USB port, 4G LTE, and a OnePlus 5T-like facial recognition feature. According to Oppo, it uses new facial recognition tech that can unlock the phone within 0.18 seconds by honing in on 128 unique feature points on the user’s face. On the software side, it’s powered by Oppo’s custom UI on top of Android 7.1 Nougat.
Our view: On paper, the Oppo A83 falls short of rivals such as the Xiaomi Mi A1 and the Honor 7X in key areas, most notably the display resolution and lack of dual cameras. It remains to be seen how the phone is priced and how well it performs in practice, but we expect to learn more at the upcoming launch event.
Source: Oppo IndiaVia: NDTV Gadgets